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More "Plight" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was repeated to the King by those whom he had appointed to speak with her, and when it was found that she could by no means be brought to renounce her husband, she was sent to her father, and this in so pitiful a plight that all who beheld her pass wept to see her. And although she had done wrong, her punishment was so grievous and her constancy so great, that her wrongdoing was made to appear ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... they be?" inquired the King, smiling. "Just because I have come in rough-and-ready plight, your house ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... temptation to speculators. If they can only gain control of it they can reap rich benefit from all the honest effort that has been put into it. They can destroy its beneficiary wage and profit-sharing, squeeze every last dollar out of the public, the product, and the workingman, and reduce it to the plight of other business concerns which are run on low principles. The motive may be the personal greed of the speculators or they may want to change the policy of a business because its example is embarrassing to other employers who do not want to do what is right. The industry cannot be ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... them to the Polish theatre of war. But, brutally as the poor Belgians have been treated, one shudders to think of the cruelty and the greed of the Prussian in the new conquered Russian territories, and of the pitiful plight of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... which reigned in Upper Hindustan after the assassination of 'Alamgir the Second, and the flight of Shah 'Alam. Upper Hindustan was then in a sad plight, ravaged alternately by the Abdalis, the Marhattas, and the Jats—the king a pageant, the nobles rebellious, the subjects plundered and oppressed, and the country open to every invader—though this was near 100 years ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... instructions must be read in the light of the information at the disposal of the superior officer at the moment of issue, and they adhered to them pedantically.[42] Lord Roberts could not have anticipated Broadwood's plight when he ordered Colvile ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... shocking," he remarked. "I had no idea that the largest city of the most enlightened country in the world was in such a sorry plight." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... people that possess it; but, tell me, they of the fat marsh, and they whom the wind drives, and they whom the rain beats, and they who encounter with such sharp tongues, why are they not punished within the ruddy city if God be wroth with them? and if he be not so, why are they in such plight?" ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... deny what thou hast challenged," said the Grand Master, "provided the maiden accepts thee as her champion. Yet I would thou wert in better plight to do battle. An enemy of our Order hast thou ever been, yet would I have thee honourably ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... been rebuilt by Ramses II. and decorated by the Rames-sides, was in a sorry plight when the XXIInd dynasty came into power. Sheshonq I. did little or nothing to it, but Osorkon I. entirely remodelled it, and Osorkon II. added several new halls, including, amongst others, one in which he celebrated, in the twenty-second year of his reign, the festival ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was left to Sylvia and Rumple, who put Rockefeller along at his very best pace, for they were all frightened at Rupert's sad plight, which was to rob their arrival of all the delight they had pictured when they should drive up to their father's house and personally announce to him the ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... not. Nor let thy false imagination That I was bed-rid, make thee think I am so: Thou shalt not find it. I am, now, as fresh, As hot, as high, and in as jovial plight, As when, in that so celebrated scene, At recitation of our comedy, For entertainment of the great Valois, I acted young Antinous; and attracted The eyes and ears of all the ladies present, To admire each ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... What will become of earth? men will no more Respect Society or strive to save Humanity alive: henceforth theyle seeke For lost fidelity on Caves or topps Of untrodd Rocks, and plight their trothes to beasts; Commix with them and generate a race Of creatures, though less rationall, yet more Indude with truth. O Clariana, can There be a motive able to convert This pretious Christall temple, built for purity And goodnes adoration, to a faine ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... de Soulanges. The handsomest wondered at her easy surrender. The men could not understand such luck as the Baron's, not regarding him as particularly fascinating. A few indulgent women said it was not fair to judge the Countess too hastily; young wives would be in a very hapless plight if an expressive look or a few graceful dancing steps were enough to ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... canal, where Sir Andrew Ffoulkes would be waiting with the coal-cart; then there was the spinney on the road to St. Germain. Armand hoped that, with good luck, he might yet overtake his comrades, tell them of Jeanne's plight, and entreat them to work for ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... followed he now had lost. It was pitchy dark, with a most villainous storm of rain and wind. Saracen caught the infection of his master's doubts; he stopped short, and bowed his head to snuff the ground. Prosper laughed at the plight they were both in, and looked about him, considering what he should do. Very far off he could see a feeble light flickering; it was the only speck of brightness within his vision, and he judged it too steady for a fen-flame. Lodging of some sort should be there, for where there is a candle ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... burns dead and dim; But Christabel the lamp will trim. 185 She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright, And left it swinging to and fro, While Geraldine, in wretched plight, Sank down upon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... irritated by his seeming indifference, 'a fellow is in a deuced bad plight, if he has to plead poverty, when he ought to be able to help one or two beside himself! I envy you, Scheffer. I envy you every time I come here. You can do so much! You could leap all the college gates in no time, if you ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hat and walked through the park beside the judge, hoping for some further details of his uncle's present plight and future condition, but the only thing his Honor added to what he already knew was his wonderment over the fact that St. George, having no immediate use for the money except to pay his bills, should have raised so large a sum on a mortgage ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of scorched timbers came to his nostrils, Jerry O'Keefe had recognized the desperation of his plight and he laid out his simple plans in accordance. He meant to stay where he was till the last endurable moment, hoping against hope for the coming of the rescuers. When it was no longer possible to remain, he would ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... in the chaffing. He was miserably conscious, all the while, that his own folly had been solely responsible for the present plight of these ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... die! They would go on forever, at least as long as there was the institution of private property and an intricate code of laws to safeguard it. Thus the judge argued to himself again in considering the plight of these Clarks, and decided to use the Washington Trust Company of ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... they get theirs!" chuckled Rolfe, listening rapturously, forgetting for the moment his own sorry plight. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... night, these horrid waves, these gusts that sweep the whirling deep; What reck they of our evil plight, who on ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... reckless words; their very recklessness caused her to fear. If they were sick of the whole thing—well, what about it? What were they to do? They were in it, weren't they, up to their necks? Of two people who mutually recognised the plight, only one must foam and rage and stutter out unpalatable truths about it; it was for the other to pour on the oil, to deceive and pretend and propitiate and cajole, to try to keep things running and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... undecided than she had been before consulting them. She now ventured to go to the house in the Rue du Colombier, intending to confide her troubles to her father and mother; for she was like a sick man who, in his desperate plight, tries every prescription, and even puts faith in old ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... mist out here to shroud her from attack. The air was clear and bright, with a robust breeze which stirred a flashing surf on the shoals. Under lower sails, the two sloops watchfully crept nearer until their crews could examine the stranded brig and read the story of her plight. She stood on a slant with the decks sloped toward the enemy. This made it impossible to use her guns with any ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... soon as he reached the king's apartment, he began to cry out, and call for justice in a lamentable tone. The king ordered him to be admitted; and asked who it was that had abused and put him into that miserable plight. "Sire," cried Saouy, "it is the favour of your majesty, and being admitted into your sacred councils, that has occasioned me to be so barbarously treated." "Say no more of that," replied the king, "only let me hear the whole story simply, and who ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... me, doth my lover, Kisses with each breath - I shall one day throw him over, And plight ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... remains in the memory of evening. But this passion for romance, and this disappointment, show how much we need real elevations and pure poetry; that which shall show us, in morning and night, in stars and mountains, and in all the plight and circumstance of men, the analogons of our own thoughts, and a like impression made by a just book and by the face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... million did; at the close of that century the figure was found to have decreased by more than fifty thousands of cho. From such a result, opposed as it is to all records of normal development, the unhappy plight of the agricultural classes may ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... cured!" Hilaire cried; "let me rise and dress;" He tried—fell back; and then he must confess He could not labour for another week! Oh, wretched plight— For him, his work was life! Should he keep sick, 'twas death! All four sat mute; sudden a my of hope Beamed in the soul of Abel. He brushed the tear-drops from his een, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... for Pulkova, which is about five miles away. The station-master told me that no carriage from Pulkova was waiting for me, which tended to confirm the fear that the dispatch had not been received. After making known my plight, I took a seat in the station and awaited the course of events, in some doubt what to do. Only a few minutes had elapsed when a good-looking peasant, well wrapped in a fur overcoat, with a whip ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... beating down too fiercely on the top of his head, he carefully drew the bushy top of the poplar sapling into such a position that it gave him shade. As its roots were still aground, it showed no tendency to float off and forsake him in his plight. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you know, now. It was I whom you heard playing, that first day. It was I, touched by your plight in that forlorn and dusty barracks, who gave you some slight relief. It was easy enough for me to cut across to Geddes's house, reach in through his kitchen window, lift his tray, and escape through the ragged hedges while his cook's broad back was turned. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... pinched my eyes to and pondered on my wretched plight. 'Twas silent all around; I heard nothing, nothing. That lasted pretty long, till I began to feel that the boards were so hard and that my body, which had been thrashed black and blue, was hurting me. My back ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... abruptly, as she was about to leave the room, "come here. I am strong now, and I want to talk to you. Now tell me all about it. How did I get into this plight? And how came ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... noblemen. They travel far and wide to become acquainted with different fashions and governments. So this prince journeyed in great state from land to land, until his purse was empty. He knew not what to do, for he would not discover his plight to the nobles of the land in which he happened to be; indeed, he did not care to let them know who he was. Now, he chanced to be in Padua, and he resolved to unbosom himself to the rabbi, tell him that he was a great noble of the Polish land, and borrow somewhat to relieve his pressing need. Such ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... long beautiful hair streaming over her magnificent shoulders; the postillion smoking his pipe, in his shirt-sleeves and waistcoat, having flung aside his greatcoat, which had sustained a thorough wetting; and I without my wagoner's slop, of which, it being in the same plight, I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... rest of my stay in that part of the country, I never failed to urge my cousin to narrate the events which had brought Coote-down to its present melancholy plight. But it was not till I called to take leave of her, perhaps for ever, that she complied. On that occasion, she placed in my hands a neatly-written manuscript in her own handwriting, which she said ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... habit of his youth!—although his shrewd mind had not left him in the usual plight of blank ignorance, which is often the portion of a splendid, young athlete leaving Eton! But now he studied subjects seriously, and the whys and wherefores of things; and he grew rather to enjoy the evenings alone, between the goings and comings of his parties, when, buried in a huge chair before ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... at first envisage his own plight in definite and comprehensible terms. Things happened to him so much of late, his own efforts had counted for so little, that he had become passive and planless. His last scheme had been to go round the coast of England as ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... brave, and even with death staring them in the face kept to their posts, ready to handle their useless guns, for I submerged at once. But I had stayed on top long enough to see the other cruisers, which I learned were the Cressy and the Hogue, turn and steam full speed to their dying sister, whose plight they could not understand, unless it had been due ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... but it was too late to get back into San Antonio, and while a few of the farmers managed to escape, the Mexican cavalry took up a position in the bed of a dry creek. The plight of those outside of the city was seen by those within, and General Cos instantly despatched more cavalry to the relief, and ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... hospital had been suggested to Hilda by the plight of little "Pervyse," and the hundreds of other babies of the war whom she had seen, and the hapless peasant mothers. Military hospitals are for soldiers, not for expectant mothers or orphaned children, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... the plight of the old man. His best friend could not have recognized him covered as he was with ink. As if ashamed of what he had done, Bowles scrambled to his feet, hurried out of the office and made a break for his own quarters. But ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford
... for I think he had two—and a very handsome girdle of a sky-colour and green (in French called pers et vert), saying that such a livery did become him well, for that he had always been perverse, and in this plight bringing him before Pantagruel, said unto him, Do you know this roister? No, indeed, said Pantagruel. It is, said Panurge, my lord the king of the three batches, or threadbare sovereign. I intend to make him an honest man. These devilish kings which we have here are but as so many calves; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... lords," the king said to his knights as he sat in a little room in an inn at Zara, "that my plight is a bad one. I am surrounded by enemies, and, alas! I can no longer mount my steed and ride out as at Jaffa to do battle with them. My brother, John Lackland, is scheming to take my place upon the throne of England. Philip of France, whose mind is far better at such matters than at setting ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... the head office of the big fruit brokers for whom Dan Cullen had worked as a casual labourer for thirty years. Their system was such that the work was almost entirely done by casual hands. The cobbler told them the man's desperate plight, old, broken, dying, without help or money, reminded them that he had worked for them thirty years, and asked them to ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... it seems from the tradition that it was by the beauty of his eyes that Eva O'Neil was conquered, just as the first Eve was by the eyes and tongue of the serpent. Not, God knows, that the great Eve was any great shakes, for she left the world in a nice plight by falling in love with a serpent; but upon my credit she was not the first woman, excuse the blunder, who fell in love with a serpent, and suffered accordingly. I ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... that since the Russian-Japanese War, Russia, weakened as she was, felt her influence in European affairs waning. I knew it was about time for her to make a desperate effort to regain European prestige. I recalled that upon Russia's plight after the Japanese war, Austria immediately annexed Herzegovina and Bosnia. She did this with the tacit understanding and backing up of Germany. I knew that as a result of this, Russia was again at work in ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... the corn-transplants and other vessels which perished there was no numbering made; and so great was the loss that the commanders of the fleet, being struck with fear lest the Thessalians should attack them now that they had been brought into an evil plight, threw round their camp a lofty palisade built of the fragments of wreck. For the storm continued during three days; but at last the Magians, making sacrifice of victims and singing incantations to appease the Wind by enchantments, 198 and in addition to this, offering ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... peace Kypris and Apollo of the silver bow take their pleasure, having set on this mad one that knoweth not any law. Father Zeus, wilt thou at all be wroth with me if I smite Ares and chase him from the battle in sorry plight?" ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... passes, Truth and Conscience, that show the bounded vse and decent forme of things, are tyed vp, and cannot be heard. Still Fructum non invenio, I finde no fruits. I am sorry to passe the fig-tree in this plight: but as I finde it, so I must leave it, till the Lord mend it."—Pp. 39, 40., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... green as the new foe came. The ravens had picked the eyes out of the dead buck and eaten a hole in its back. They had even begun on the living buck, but he had been able to use one front foot to defend his eyes; still his plight could scarce have been more dreadful. It made the most pitiful spectacle Rolf had ever seen in wild life; yes, in all his life. He was full of compassion for the poor brute. He forgot it as a thing to be hunted for food; thought of it only as a harmless, beautiful ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... outwork though it was of the main Boer army in its descent from the frontier. In a spruit, a branch of the Sand river, which runs through Schultz' farm, the Maxim, outpaced and overdriven, stuck fast, and it was promptly attacked and captured by a party of twenty-five of the enemy who had descried its plight from Talana, its detachment holding out until all were killed or wounded. In this affair nine Boer prisoners were also released. About 1.15 p.m., a party of two hundred Boers was seen descending Impati through the collieries at its northern extremity. The mountain already held the enemy's van; ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... old woman pursued me—yes, the corpse tracked me behind; and she has only just now disappeared, on hearing the sound of your voice. I then hid behind this tree, where you now see me, in a piteous plight." ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... unable to make deliberate choice. That she was ardently loved by each she realized with recurring thrills of pleasure; that she loved in return she felt no doubt—but alas! which? How perfectly delightful it would be could she only fall into some desperate plight, from which the really daring knight might rescue her! That would cut the Gordian knot. While laboring in this state of indecision she must have voiced her ambition in some effective manner to the parties concerned, for late one Wednesday night Moffat ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... of Warwick reached London, he proceeded at once to the Tower to release old King Henry from his confinement. He found the poor king in a wretched plight. His apartment was gloomy and comfortless, his clothing was ragged, and his person squalid and dirty. The earl brought him forth from his prison, and, after causing his personal wants to be properly attended to, clothed him once ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... decayed and impaired in its equipments that a whole day was consumed in the passage of a mail train over the eighty miles traversed. The Seaboard route to Portsmouth, Virginia, was prostrate and out of use. The Wilmington Road, though it was in somewhat better plight, was still served by feeble engines, which drew a few trains slowly along the track, ironed no more heavily than the wheels ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... mouthful of withered grass. When the snow got to be three or four feet deep, and her foster mother, along with a wide-antlered bull, three other cows, and a couple of youngsters had trodden out a 'moose yard' with its maze of winding alleys, her plight grew sore. All along the bottom edges of these alleys she nibbled the dead grass and dry herbage, and she tried to browse, like her companions, on the twigs of poplar and birch. But the insufficient, unnatural food and the sharp cold ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hewn in pieces than agree. And now, of his own accord, he was going!... Twenty times he was on the point of turning back. He walked two or three times round the town, turning away just as he came near the Palace. He was not alone in his plight. His mother and brothers had also to be considered. Since his father had deserted them and betrayed them, it was his business as eldest son to take his place and come to their assistance. There was no room for hesitation ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... example, he would hide himself amongst the meal and hang downwards by the feet as though he were dead. His master, therefore, though he did not build too much on what the cat had said, felt some hope of being assisted in his miserable plight. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... his flesh. He was rescued and the ship sailed for Jamestown with all possible haste. His wounds were dressed, but he was in a dangerous condition and there was no skilled surgeon to care for him, so his plight was pitiable. An Indian carried the sad news to Pocahontas, who at once deserted her comrades for solitary brooding in the forest. Then she took the long wood trail to Jamestown. Hours later one of the settlers found her standing outside the stockade, peering through the cracks ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... he was able to get a better grip on himself and realize fully his terrible plight, he began to think how, after all, the scout, with all his resource and fine courage, his tracking and his trailing and his good turns, is pretty helpless in a real dilemma. Here was an adventure, and rather too much of a one, and ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... make pride into a balm for broken hearts!" I said to myself in scorn of this flowery eloquence. For a few minutes I forgot my own plight to pity these people whom I had never seen. The Paris Daily Messenger slid off my lap on to the floor, and dropped with the back page up. When I had glanced toward the bed, and seen that Brian still slept, my eyes fell on the paper again. The top part of the last page is always devoted ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... than once careened so as to ship alarming seas. The air, filled with sleet and icy snow, cut like a knife through the thickest clothing, and again Edward Tilley, swooning with exhaustion and cold, lay lifeless in the bottom of the boat, sadly watched by his brother in hardly better plight and by Carver, who, like the father of a family, carried all his children in ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the mouth of the pass Suzanne, laden with the child, was pushed down by those who followed, and doubtless would have been trampled to death, had not one of Swart Piet's men, desiring to clear the way, or, perhaps, moved to pity at her plight, dragged her to her feet again. But when he had done this he did not let her go, but held her, staring at her beauty with ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... fever, partly also because the wind was extremely strong that day and caused waves of some size in the stream, which dashed against the canoe and splashed us all over. Again my men were seasick that day, and got furious with me as I could not help laughing at their plight. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the daughter of right-dealing Zeus, Justice, the queen of suppliants, look down, That this our plight no ill may loose Upon your town! This word, even from the young, let age and wisdom learn: If thou to suppliants show grace, Thou shalt not lack Heaven's grace in turn, So long as virtue's gifts on heavenly ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... in a worse plight than ever. There was no commissario to be had at that hour. I was in total darkness; not a door was open; nor was there an individual in the street; and, recollecting the reputation Rome had of late acquired for midnight assassinations, I began to grow a little apprehensive. After wandering ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... endeavour, my dear," said he, "to dress myself according to my station. Yesterday, not expecting to see you, I was in a sad plight. I would have preferred you to meet me in my naval uniform, but as that is now, to say the least, inconvenient, and as I reside on shore in the capacity of a merchant or business man, I attire myself to suit my present condition. Ah! my good brother-in-law, ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... caught sight, in the distance, of a horseman galloping along the road at full speed. His turban was off, and his sword broken. Others followed, in even worse plight; and as they came nearer I saw that blood was streaming from the heads or ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... holding her eyelids open with her fingers, for she knew that the 'good people,' if they do show themselves, are only visible between one winking of the eyes and another. But this vision did not pass away, and surely never were fairy knights in such a sorry plight as was this travel-stained, dishevelled company that drew rein at the door ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... a fine plight when you've broken one of my arms or legs," she would say to him. "Who'll keep you then, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... afternoon, sending word to Merry, who came promptly to the aid of the afflicted. The next day Dick left his aunt at the cottage with Kate, and warning them that he should be gone all day, and perhaps not see them until the next morning, he set off for Rosedale, where he told Jack Kate's plight. Vincent heard the story, too, and when it was ended he ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... and all that night, however, the party pulled steadily along the shore without finding an opening in the cliffs or any part which could be scaled by man. During this period their plight was miserable in the extreme, for the weather at the time was bitterly cold; they were drenched through and through with spray, which broke so frequently over the side as to necessitate constant baling, and, to make matters worse, towards evening of the second day snow began to fall ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... handling a ship he was the smartest officer of the deck he had ever known. But in early middle life disease overtook him, and, though flat on his back, he had been borne on the active list because there was nothing else to do with him. In that plight he was even promoted. There was another who, as a midshipman, had lost a foot in the War of 1812, but had been carried on from grade to grade for forty years, until at the time I speak of he was a captain, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... of the same seed of which churls spring, of the same seed spring lords; as well may the churl be saved as the lord. Wherefore I counsel thee, do just so with thy churl as though wouldest thy lord did with thee, if thou wert in his plight. A very sinful man is a churl as towards sin. I counsel thee certainly, thou lord, that, thou work in such wise with thy churls that they rather love thee than dread thee. I know well, where there is degree above degree, it is reasonable that men should do their duty ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... maid replied, As her light skiff approached the side, "I well believe, that ne'er before 455 Your foot has trod Loch Katrine's shore; But yet, as far as yesternight, Old Allan-bane foretold your plight, A gray-haired sire, whose eye intent Was on the visioned future bent. 460 He saw your steed, a dappled gray, Lie dead beneath the birchen way; Painted exact your form and mien, Your hunting suit of Lincoln green, That tasselled horn so gaily gilt, 465 That falchion's crooked blade and hilt, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... was the prince in a pretty plight. Not a pound in his pocket, not a pair of boots to wear, not even a cap to cover his head from the rain; nothing but cold meat to eat, and never a servant ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... Hera and Zeus, do honour. Yea, and thus Is Aphrodite to dishonour cast, The queen of rapture unto mortal men. Know, that above the marriage-bed ordained For man and woman standeth Right as guard, Enhancing sanctity of troth-plight sworn; Therefore, if thou art placable to those Who have their consort slain, nor will'st to turn On them the eye of wrath, unjust art thou In hounding to his doom the man who slew His mother. Lo, I know thee full of wrath Against one deed, but all ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... insistence that she accept Captain Yeovil's suit, it had been a great match for her, for the d'Aumeniers were impoverished exiles, while the Yeovils were a rich family and of a line almost as long as her own. It had been easy enough to plight her troth to the young Englishman at first, but since she had seen Marteau, she realized that it would not be easy to keep that engagement. Fortunately, Captain Yeovil had been on service in Spain and the South of France with the Duke of Wellington's army, and only a few weeks ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... there, as ever, in sad plight. Men, in their evil days, move my compassion; Such sorry things ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the truth, he was sadly in need of money. It was fortunate that his old friend, Mr. Harrison, Margie's dead father, had taken it into his head to plight his daughter's troth to him while she was yet a child. Mr. Harrison had been an eccentric man; and from the fact that in many points of religious belief he and Mr. Paul Linmere agreed, (for both were miserable skeptics,) he valued ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... Let the dead thing live as a lifelong sign Of perfect plight in love and union. This Were no dishonour done to fatherhood But honour shown to wedlock. Here is spread The feast, the bride-feast of my love and thine, Whereat the cup of death shall serve our lips To drink forgetfulness of all but love. Herein ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... but he found, June 6th, that provisions were being smuggled in to them, and so he attacked the building, beginning by opening fire with his mountain guns. Meantime, General Augusti, hearing of his soldiers' plight, sent four thousand ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... both his life and his fortune. And yet this risk can be diminished by forethought, for, when health depends upon climate, we can do much to control nature and by diligence improve evil conditions. If the farm is unhealthy by reason of the plight of the land itself, or of the water supply, or is exposed to the miasma which breeds in some localities, or if the farm is too hot on account of the climate, or is exposed to mischievous winds, these discomforts can be mitigated ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... understand the plight of the Russian army one must have some idea of the character of the Masurian Lake district. It was probably molded by the work of ice in the past. Great glaciers, in their progress toward the sea, have ground out hundreds of hollows, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... twentieth century. In the war that has just ended, however—or that would have ended if the Peace Conference would let it—we have seen an imaginative revolt against war, not on the part of mere men of letters, but on the part of soldiers. Ballads have survived from other wars, depicting the plight of the mutilated ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... truth in the charge brought by his rival, Alan Heathcote? There was no mistaking the fact that something external had caused the magnate's startling indisposition, and Grant, even though he was badly scared at his father's plight, drew his own conclusions in regard to the matter. Meanwhile he stood helplessly calling until he collected presence of mind enough to go around to the other side of the table and raise his father's inanimate form to a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... and under the Redgauntlets, since the riding days, and lang before. It was a pleasant bit; and I think the air is callerer and fresher there than onywhere else in the country. It's a' deserted now; and I sat on the broken door-cheek three days since, and was glad I couldna see the plight the place was in; but that's a' wide o' the mark. There dwelt my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, a rambling, rattling chiel' he had been in his young days, and could play weel on the pipes; he was famous at 'Hoopers and Girders'—a' Cumberland couldna, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... a pitiful plight. No sane man would venture down such a chasm, impenetrable with thorns, and night descending. So we built a beacon fire and waited for dawn. All during the long dark hours we heard the distant appeal of the hounds, and ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... should be like money tried before being required, not found faulty in our need. For we ought not to have our wits about us only when the mischief is done, but we ought to try and prevent the flatterer doing any harm to us: for otherwise we shall be in the same plight as people who test deadly poisons by first tasting them, and kill or nearly kill themselves in the experiment. We do not praise such, nor again all those who, looking at their friend simply from the point of view of decorum and utility, think ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... cathedral or counting the restored statues on the river bridge. I always feel a longing to speak to these late birds of passage for they look so forlorn without their mates, that they make me think of my own sad plight so far away from you all; when the lectures begin I hope that I will be more satisfied than ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... while the sod was forming, to say nothing of the large expenditure necessary for the purchase of the sheep. The land when so treated, however, enabled the investor to pay higher rents than the open-field husbandmen who "rubbed forth their estate in the poorest plight."[128] ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... post by the rose gate, felt a queer little chill creep over her. It was so solemn, so very much more solemn than she had imagined it would be. She wondered how she would feel if the time ever came for her to stand in Eugenia's place, and plight her faith to some man in that way—"for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... saw his church reduced to ruins and most of his parish destroyed by fire by the invading Huns, and never budged from his post—had himself recently drawn up for such occasions. What the usual form of such documents is I cannot say, but in view of the serious plight of France and the renaissance of patriotic fervour in the brave and unconquerable French nation, the cure had infused into this one an element of ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... the murder. Afterwards he attempts to speak positively, from recollecting that he mentioned the circumstance to William Peirce, as he went to the Mineral Spring on Fast-day. Last Monday morning he told Colonel Putnam he could not fix the time. This witness stands in a much worse plight than either of the others. It is difficult to reconcile all he has said with any belief in the accuracy ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... furniture. In a few minutes my arrival created a prodigious commotion. The whole population turned out to stare at me. The children ran into the bushes to hide. But feminine curiosity conquered feminine timidity. Although I was in the plight of the forlorn Odysseus after his desperate swim, I had no 'blooming foliage' to wind [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. Unlike the Phaeacian maidens, however, the tawny nymphs were all as brave as Princess Nausicaa herself. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... are really," wrote Nelson to Hood, "without firing, wine, beef, pork, flour, and almost without water: not a rope, canvas, twine, or nail in the ship. The ship is so light she cannot hold her side to the wind.... We are certainly in a bad plight at present, not a man has slept dry for many months. Yet," he continues, with that indomitable energy which made light of mere difficulties of material, and conveys so impressive a lesson to our modern days, when slight physical defects appear insurmountable, and ships not wholly ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... better than Peter Doane himself would recognize his desperation of plight—and if he had "gone bad" there was but one road for his feet and the security of the colony depended ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... won an easy victory; but for the past twenty-four hours the rain had been falling incessantly, Turenne's army had been marching on the previous day, and had been fighting for seven hours, and was incapable of further exertions, while that of Enghien was in little better plight, having passed the night in the rain on the ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... spears and shields, and some tobacco which they had received from me. However, they bore it all with the philosophy of an Indian, and laughingly continued their toilette. They appeared, however, to be a little mortified at the thought of returning to the village in such a sorry plight. "Our people will laugh at us," said one of them, "returning to the village on foot, instead of driving back a drove of Pawnee horses." He demanded to know if I loved my sorrel hunter very much; to which I replied, he was the object of my most intense affection. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... her son's sad plight she had spent on the rough journey over. As she sat beside him stroking his heavy hair back from his pallid brow, there was in her face a shadow of haunting anxiety, as if the recollection of some old time of terror added its pangs to those of ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... form of a lady in a light-colored dress with a red scarf upon her shoulders, sometimes moving slowly, sometimes stopping. This was Roberta, and those woods were a far better place than the exposed summit of Pine Top Hill, in which to plight his troth, if it should be so that he should be able to do it, and there were doubtless paths in those woods through which they might afterwards wander, if things should turn out propitiously. At all events, in those woods would he ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... reassuring, the gist of which escaped me, he constituted himself a reception committee of one and started for the ladder's foot. But our doughty Teuton was a resourceful person. Roused to the urgency of his plight, he looked wildly up at me, down at the officer, and, hastily pushing up the nearest window, hoisted himself across its sill, and again took refuge in the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... miles, except a solitary clump or two, and you will have some idea of Newstead. For the late Lord, being at enmity with his son, to whom the estate was secured by entail, resolved, out of spite to the same, that the estate should descend to him in as miserable a plight as he could possibly reduce it to; for which cause, he took no care of the mansion, and fell to lopping of every tree he could lay his hands on, so furiously, that he reduced immense tracts of woodland country to the desolate ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... cried Bart, as, laughing loudly, he grabbed the halter rope. The other boys came up, filled with merriment over the plight of the beast that had thus trapped himself. They cut the branches that held the ladder and the donkey came back to earth. He did not try to run away, and seemed so much ashamed of what had happened that he stopped braying. Then, the ladder having ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... whole day was consumed in the passage of a mail train over the eighty miles traversed. The Seaboard route to Portsmouth, Virginia, was prostrate and out of use. The Wilmington Road, though it was in somewhat better plight, was still served by feeble engines, which drew a few trains slowly along the track, ironed no more heavily than the wheels of a ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... she gave me Right royally dwarf-worked, To none will I pass it For prayer or for sword-stroke, Save to him who can claim it By love and by troth plight, Let that hero speak ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... some time before I got my senses again. When I did I found that I was tied hand and foot, and was lying there on the sands, with three or four of our fellows in the same plight as myself. They all belonged to the jolly-boat in which I had come ashore. The other boat had made a shift to push off with some of its hands and get back to the ship; but I did not know that until afterwards, for I was ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... over-ripeness, as of fruit that is beginning to rot at the core, was the dominant personality in her mind at the moment. She wondered if he knew how repulsive he was, and while she wondered, the judge, unaware of his tragic plight, went on eating lobster with unimpaired relish. His importance, founded upon a more substantial basis than mere personal attraction, had risen superior not only to morality, but to the outward failings of the flesh. Had he been twice as repulsive, she realized that his millions ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... and a profligate, and had got into a house of ill-fame, from which he came out in sorry plight. He complained bitterly that M. Farsetti had refused to lend him four louis, and he asked me to speak to his mother that she might pay for his cure. I consented, but when his mother heard what was the matter with him, she said it would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Abraham to interpret for me and went to talk with our ten hostages, who were herded together apart from the other ten armed Kurds. They seemed to regard themselves as in worse plight than prisoners and awaited with resignation whatever might be their kismet. So I asked them were they afraid lest Gooja Singh might meet with violence, and they replied they were afraid of nothing. They added, however, ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... hand in his. His chest rose. He knew she was seeking to beguile him, but he could not take his eyes off hers. He was in a worse plight than a woman listening to ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... to think, Mr. Hurdlestone," said one of the men. "I am very sorry to see you in this plight, but appearances are very much against you. Your father was an old man and a bad man, and it is little you owed to his parental care. But he could not have lived many years, and all the entailed property must have been yours; it was an act of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... to see that speaking record of a city's sorry plight, and at last we all understood. Not to understand after one look at the poverty and disease maps that hung on the wall was to declare oneself a dullard. The tenements were all down in them, with the size of them and the air space within, if there was any. Black dots upon the poverty ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... so quickly that I had scarcely realised our plight. Next I began to calculate our chances of reaching the lines before we would have to land. Our height was 9000 feet, and we were just over nine and a half miles from friendly territory. Reckoning the gliding possibilities of our type of bus as a mile to a thousand feet, the odds seemed unfavourable. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... head office of the big fruit brokers for whom Dan Cullen had worked as a casual labourer for thirty years. Their system was such that the work was almost entirely done by casual hands. The cobbler told them the man's desperate plight, old, broken, dying, without help or money, reminded them that he had worked for them thirty years, and asked them to do ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... in the same plight, I have no certificate," observed Brotteaux. "We are both suspects. But you are weary. To bed, Father. We will discuss ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... poor man, among the poor children, in that horrible Africa; and a vague longing to sacrifice herself began to awaken within her. Other letters followed, in which, while thanking her for her assistance, her brother-in-law gave to his poverty, to his desolate plight, to the misery that enveloped him, a still more dramatic coloring—the coloring that the common people impart to trifles, with its memories of the Boulevard du Crime and its fragments of vile books. Once caught by the blague of this ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... present state proceeds from fortune's stings; By birth I boast of a descent from kings; Hence may you see from what a noble height I'm sunk by fortune to this abject plight. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... pretense of a wedding ceremony which he had gone through with Madeline. Long since disillusioned but still having power and pride to suffer intensely the latter found herself in the tragic position of being-a wife and yet no wife. In her desperate plight she besought her grandfather's clemency and forgiveness but that rigid old covenanter had declared that even as she had made her bed in willful disobedience to his command so she should lie on it for ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... though he pushed the salt-cellar, as if by accident, below her place. She thought of her myrtle, tended in vain at home by Barbara Schmidt; she thought of Ulm courtships, and how all ought to have been; the solemn embassage to her uncle, the stately negotiations; the troth plight before the circle of ceremonious kindred and merry maidens, of whom she had often been one—the subsequent attentions of the betrothed on all festival days, the piles of linen and all plenishings accumulated since babyhood, and all reviewed and laid out for general ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resistance useless,' replied Saturn, 'for I tried it and failed; but at least one has a chance of success; and yet, having resisted this spirit and failed, I should not consider myself in a worse plight than you would voluntarily place yourself in ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... of your servants can give the necessary information," replied the urbane official. If I had lost an umbrella he could not have viewed my plight with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... a downright brazen thing, now my hand is in. I declare I'll tell you how to secure me. You make me plight my troth with you this minute, and exchange rings with you, whether I like or not; engage my honor in this foolish business, and if you do that, I really do think you will have me in spite of them all. But there,—la!—am ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... then! they had no battering-train. Ere this arrived, I trusted that Lord Lake would hear of our plight, and march down to rescue us. Thus occupied in thought and conversation, we rode on until the advanced sentinel challenged us, when old Puneeree gave the word, and we passed on into the centre ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thing the other day,' she said, 'when we upset you on the Versailles road. You were in a bad way; I don't think I remember ever seeing a man in a worse plight! I couldn't help ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... international confusion, is to blame for the wicked ideas which assailed me while I could not even try to sleep. One of them—and a loyal daughter could scarcely have a worse one—was that my own dear father, knowing Lord Castlewood's bad behavior, and his own sad plight in consequence, and through that knowledge caring little to avenge his death, for wife and children's sake preferred to foil inquiry rather than confront the truth and challenge it. He might not have meant to go so far, at first ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... way out of this plight for Peter, and that was for him to tell Rosie the truth. And why should he not do it? He was wild about her, and he knew that she was wild about him, and only one thing—his great secret—stood in the way of their perfect bliss. If he told her that great secret, he would ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... through the windows at will What's best to be done in a cold autumn night? Full many I've pass'd in more piteous plight; The morn ever settles ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... offer the English a conference." He says further that ammunition was falling short, and that he thought the enemy might sally in a body and attack him.[155] The English, on their side, were in a worse plight. They were half starved, their powder was nearly spent, their guns were foul, and among them all they had but two screw-rods to clean them. In spite of his desperate position, Washington declined the parley, thinking it a pretext to introduce a spy; but when ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... left him to take his chances in life with no help from me, still less if I did that which he could scarcely forgive. He could not understand all that has happened since we thought him dead. He would only remember that I deserted him in his present pitiable plight. Do you ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... pathetic case; no doubt he hadn't the remotest conception what he really was—and no doubt, also, there are many who would honestly take his view. As if the fact that he was born with all possible advantages did not make him and his plight inexcusable. It passes my comprehension why people of his sort, when suffering from the calamities they have deliberately brought upon themselves by laziness and self-indulgence and extravagance, should get a sympathy that is withheld from those of the honest human rank and file falling into ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... a plank struck; several of us escaped in the boats; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and two nights we suffered horribly: but at last we ran ashore near a French seaport; our sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money we were not suspected; people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recovered our fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant was considered as noble a captain as ever walked deck. But now, alas, my fate would have it that I should fall in ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "My Lord, Princesses will be wroth; On every side they sit and wait To plight to ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... perhaps the least steadily of the four—yet doggedly enough—was within reach, he struck out at him wildly, determined to get him disposed of first. It was a cruel blow even for a fellow in Dangle's plight. The small boy recoiled half-stunned, and uttered a yell which for an instant ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... are large and forbidding. And, certainly, no one can or should minimize the plight of millions of our friends and neighbors who are living in the bleak emptiness of unemployment. But we must and can give them good ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... led them to the brink of war," she said gravely. "We wait for its declaration every hour, my uncle and I. They know our plight. They are waiting for the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... slightingly defined by a French gourmand as a country of fifty religions and only one sauce! If this be true of those who have all the resources of the animal kingdom at their disposal, what can be the plight of those from whom these are shut out. This "one sauce" was, I believe, melted butter, or as it is more generally ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... flour, meal, sugar, coffee, preserves, jams, jellies, and everything else, was taken. Not a pound of anything to eat was left on the place. All the best cupboard ware, and part of the bedding and my wife's clothing were taken. This was a sorry plight to find ourselves in when we returned from the funeral. The country was full of soldiers, and nothing was done towards recovering the property. Thus we started on a darker and rougher road for ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... the Americans, this did not happen. Washington knew our weakness so well that he could see how easy it would be for a bold and determined enemy to do us great if not fatal harm. But he did not know that the English themselves were in an almost desperate plight. By Rodney's decisive victory at sea they began to recover their ascendancy against the Coalition, but it was then too late to disavow the treaty. In Parliament George III had been defeated; the defeat meaning a very serious check to ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... own safety, it hurt, unaccountably. The anger, the repulsion for these youths, was gone from him now; and at heart he sided fanatically with them against their captors. But it had not as yet occurred to him that his own plight was ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... world's desire, and the tree that shall not be abased, Till the day of the uttermost trial when the war-shield of Odin is raised. So my word is the word of wooing, and I bid thee remember thine oath, That here in this hall fair-builded we twain may plight the troth; That here in the hall of thy waiting thou be made a wedded wife, And be called the Queen of the Niblungs, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... who was so eminently respectable in life should be made so ludicrous on his eminence after death. He is bitter at the inertia of the men who set him up. Were he an ornament of the Church, not of the State that he served so conscientiously, how very different would be the treatment of his plight! If he were a Saint, occluded thus by the municipality, how many the prayers that would be muttered, the candles promised, for his release! There would be processions, too; and who knows but that there ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... and then sat down to supper after our work was done, and turned in to sleep; but not before we had posted watchmen to guard our canoe, lest the daring thieves of Uvira might abstract it, in which case we should have been in a pretty plight, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... that he was executed. I have often heard it said that he died at the foot of the scaffold. Hyvert was left alone, his determined brow, his terrible eye, the pistol in each practiced and vigorous hand threatening death to the spectators. Perhaps it was involuntary admiration, in his desperate plight, for this handsome young man with his waving locks, who was known never to have shed blood, and from whom the law now demanded the expiation of blood; or perhaps it was the sight of those three corpses over which he sprang like a wolf overtaken ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... thermometer well down, a blood-freezing wind blowing, wreaths of clouds drifting below and obscuring vision for minutes at a time, the rain possibly pelting down as if presaging a second deluge, the plight of the vigilant human eye aloft ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... silken reticule and drew forth a small, buckskin bag. "Will you not accept it? Yesterday, at the claims, I panned it out myself. I am sorry for your plight. I am sorry for anyone in the ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... down upon a boulder and reflected upon my unfortunate plight. I had not told anyone that I proposed to come to the Blue John mine, and it was unlikely that a search party would come after me. Therefore I must trust to my own resources to get clear of the danger. There was only one hope, and that was that the matches might dry. When I fell into the river, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... men who could have preserved their reason under monstrous circumstances such as these, and I take it that there is no man living who dare up and say that he would not be abominably frightened were he to find himself in such a plight. In these papers I have endeavored to show Captain Owen Kettle as a brave man, indeed the bravest I ever knew; but I do not think even he would blame me if I said he was badly ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... so sweet as freedom after captivity, safety after danger. When I gained the open street once more and breathed the open air, no one molesting or troubling me, I could have sung with joy. I fairly hugged myself for my cleverness in getting out of my plight. As for the combat I was furthering, my only doubt about that was lest the skulking Lucas should not prove good sword enough to give trouble to M. Gervais. It was very far from my wish that he should come out ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the arrogance with which they pretend to supply the need themselves, is the best proof of how deeply they misunderstand the gravity of their plight. Look at these Theosophists, Spiritualists, and members of the Inner Light,—mere cliques, mere handfuls of uninspired and uninspiring cranks. They'll never spread a uniform and unifying culture. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... People of the Axe, to whom command was given to run with a message to Bulalio the Slaughterer, their chief, and to return on the thirtieth day. Behold, O King, I have returned, though in a sorry plight!" ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... unusually well, for it is the sensitive, high-strung organism that is appreciative and effective. After a while the worry and fret of the requirements and the constant nag of the schoolroom have their effect upon those who are foredoomed to failure in that particular field. The plight of such young women is particularly hard, for they are usually ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... peril and plight the knight travels on until Christmas-eve, and to Mary he makes his moan that she may direct him to some abode. On the morn he arrives at an immense forest, wondrously wild, surrounded by high hills on ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... Suppose you, seeing his plight, try to stop him. Since we are pretending that he makes everything he touches elastic, the instant you touch him you bounce helplessly away ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... should have to leave their district it was very doubtful whether they would reach their destination, on account of the condition their horses were in. There were only about 100 burghers left out of 500. They also had about 50 families with them, and these were in a miserable plight. The district would have to be abandoned, and then came the question: What would become of these families? Even now they were very badly provided for. Some women wished to proceed on foot to the British, but he had advised them not to do ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... short of a hand, but thou of the famous wolf; to each the loss is ill-luck. Nor is the wolf in better plight, for he must wait ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... and proud, the courage to make others accept one's happiness seems easily within reach; but to be rebuffed in one direction and blamed in another is not a very pleasant plight. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... what ye told me about the snake bates anything I ever told you about Finn. Ochone, Shorsha! perhaps you will be telling me about the snake once more? I think the tale would do me good, and I have need of comfort, God knows, Ochone!" Seeing Murtagh in such a distressed plight, I forthwith told him over again the tale of the snake, in precisely the same words as I have related it in the first part of this history. After which I said, "Now, Murtagh, tit for tat; ye will be telling me one of the old stories of Finn-ma-Coul." ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... pronounced confidently from his place at the head of the table, "are already a broken race. They are on the point of exhaustion. Austria is, if possible, in a worse plight. That is what will end the war—the exhaustion of ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hang heavy on the face of earth, And woods stand leafless in their mourning plight,— Then gentle sympathy has twofold might, And kindness on the social winter's hearth Within our hearts the glow ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Marianna see her uncle in this wretched plight than she began to scream, whilst a torrent of tears gushed from her eyes; without noticing her lover, who had come along with him, she grasped the old man's hands and pressed them to her lips, bewailing the terrible accident that had befallen him—so much pity had the good child for the old ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... caught, immobilized and connected with the Fatherland. And it was not until they strove to move and discharge their functions on behalf of the Russian nation that they became fully conscious of their plight. German intrigue and subterranean scheming, under the mask of sympathy—now for the autocracy, now for socialism—had effected far-reaching changes in the Empire, which few even among observant politicians appear to have realized. These innovations were ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... otherwise? Is he to live and prosper, who aims at the life of that to which God has given being and authority? Shall he flourish in pride and glory who hath helped to pull down what God built up? Not so, Piso. 'Tis no wonder that the Christians are now in this plight. It could be no otherwise. And in every corner of this huge fabric wilt thou behold some of my tribe looking on upon this sight, or helping at the sacrifice. Yet, as thou knowest, I am not among them. There is ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... a hasty look, Each bent on his eager way; One glance at him was the most they took, "Somebody stuck," said they; But it never occurred to the nine to heed A stranger's plight and a ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... a glance at her brother. Roy, despite his plight and the dust which enveloped him, was tight-lipped and defiant. No sign of a breakdown appeared on his features, for which Peggy breathed a prayer ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... hail of straggling small shot hastened their movements, and then Bob proceeded to thank the young chief for saving their lives, explaining to him, as far as he knew, how it was that they had fallen into such a plight. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... door by a pleasant-faced little woman who hurried us to the fire. We told her our plight. "Why, certainly you must stay with me," she said. "I am glad the Bishop and Deb are away. They keep all the company, and I so seldom have any one come; you see Debbie has no children and can do so much better for any one stopping there than I can, but I like company, too, and I am glad of a chance ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... own, and a sturdy kindness, the mere memory of which was comforting and good to think on. The evil she had heard of him did not at all affect the confidence which Christophe had inspired in her. Being herself a victim she had no doubt that he was in the same plight, suffering, as she did, though for a longer time, from the malevolence of the townspeople who insulted him. And as she always forgot herself in the thought of others the idea of what Christophe must have suffered distracted her mind a little from her own torment. Nothing in ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... circulation. The pithy and plausible arguments of "Coin" and his ready answers to questions supposedly put by prominent editors, bankers, and university professors, as well as by J. R. Sovereign, master workman of the Knights of Labor, tickled the fancy of thousands of farmers who saw their own plight depicted in the crude but telling woodcuts which sprinkled the pages of the book. In his mythical school "the smooth little financier" converted to silver many who had been arguing for gold; but—what is more to ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... polish on his rough shoes; his clean-shaven face, touched her now as at other times. She wondered whether, if they had been alone, she would not have confessed her perplexities and asked his counsel. In their talks she had been impressed by his rugged common sense, and her plight was one that demanded the exercise of just that quality. Rose turned the pages of her book. Her father and Nan continued their conference in low tones in the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the contemplation of the little woman's faith in the truant. Does he know when the robins nest in America? In Japan they had nested three times since Pinkerton went away. The consul quails at that and damns his friend as a scoundrel. Now Goro, who knows Butterfly's pecuniary plight, brings Yamadori to her. Yamadori is a wealthy Japanese citizen of New York in the book and play and a prince in the opera, but in all he is smitten with Butterfly's beauty and wants to add her name to the list of wives he has conveniently married ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... rebuilt by Ramses II. and decorated by the Rames-sides, was in a sorry plight when the XXIInd dynasty came into power. Sheshonq I. did little or nothing to it, but Osorkon I. entirely remodelled it, and Osorkon II. added several new halls, including, amongst others, one in which he celebrated, in the twenty-second year ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... her when she stumbled, blaming her for their plight, threatening to leave her if she should fall, and flaying himself on with renewed panic, he brought her to the top of the double crevasse and the prospector's crossing. But here, with the levels of the spur before them, her strength reached low ebb. This time he was not able to rouse her, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... pluck of conspirators, and now that there seemed to be a very good chance that their nefarious doings would be made public they were both in deadly fear of the consequences. Silver was in the worst plight, since he was well aware that the law would consider him to be an accessory after the fact, and that, although his neck was not in danger, his liberty assuredly was. He was so stunned by the storm which had broken ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... position thus to treat overtures, friendly and courteous overtures, from one in his position. And never before—never—had a woman been thus unresponsive. Instead of feeling relief that she had disentangled him from the plight into which his impulsive offer had flung him, he was piqued—angered—and his curiosity was inflamed as never before ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... delay. The area of sail was too small to be of much assistance, and while the men were engaged in this work the boat drifted down towards the ice-floe, where her position was likely to be perilous. Seeing her plight, I sent the 'Dudley Docker' back for her and tied the 'James Caird' up to a piece of ice. The 'Dudley Docker' had to tow the 'Stancomb Wills', and the delay cost us two hours of valuable daylight. When ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... ill. But sith I win for thee this grace, I will, brother wolf, that thou promise me to do none hurt to any more, be he man or beast; dost promise me this?" And the wolf gave clear token by the bowing of his head that he promised. Then quoth St. Francis: "Brother wolf, I will that thou plight me troth for this promise, that I may trust thee full well." And St. Francis stretching forth his hand to take pledge of his troth, the wolf lifted up his right paw before him and laid it gently on the hand of St. Francis, giving thereby such sign of good faith as ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... activity and cheerfulness. The Sudra, however, is spoken of everywhere as a being whose degradation can never be removed, and to touch whom is to be defiled. Those who belonged to no caste were in a still worse plight and lived ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... his principle of never accepting a miracle, M. Renan has indeed got into a sorry plight, and Mr. Rogers, in controverting him, has not greatly helped the matter. By stirring M. Renan's bemuddled pool, Mr. Rogers has only bemuddled it the more. Neither of these excellent writers seems to suspect that transmutation of species, the geologic development of the earth, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... top-gallant breeze at north-west. The French fleet wore soon after, standing about north-east-by-north, on an easy bowline. They had been active in repairing damages, and the admiral was all a-tanto again, with every thing set that the other ships carried. The plight of le Scipion was not so easily remedied, though even she had two jury-masts rigged, assistance having been sent from the other vessels as soon as boats could safely pass. As the sun hung in the western sky, wanting about an hour of disappearing from ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... down the great thoroughfare, Howard Jeffries, tired and hungry and thoroughly disgusted with himself, stood still at the corner of Fulton street, cursing the luck which had brought him to his present plight. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... such largess, dispensed from his future, Martin turned and took his one good suit of clothes to the pawnshop. His plight was desperate for him to do this, for it cut him off from Ruth. He had no second-best suit that was presentable, and though he could go to the butcher and the baker, and even on occasion to his sister's, it was beyond all daring to dream ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... mountains a few miles from the city. One day, rushing downhill as fast as he could go, he put his foot into a hole and fell, rolling into a rocky pit of brambles. The king's wounds were not very severe, but his face and hands were cut and torn, while his feet were in a worse plight still, for, instead of proper hunting boots, he only wore sandals, to enable ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... ye could not, though ye would, lift hand— Ye halting leaders—to abridge Hell's reign. . . If such your plight, most hapless ye of men! But if ye could and would not, oh, what plea, Think ye, shall stead you at your trial, when The thundercloud of witnesses shall loom At ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... in the morning in sorry plight, and the delay was one of the injuries to the poor Indians, and counted as sufficient justification for the subsequent massacre. The delay, however, saved their lives. The messenger who aroused the people of St. Cloud in the small hours was traveling post after this Dole commission, for whose ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... wrought by civilization, of curses heaped on a strange, simple people by men who sought to exploit them or to mold them to another pattern, who destroyed their customs and their happiness and left them to die, apathetic, wretched, hardly knowing their own miserable plight. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... another man in Thorolf's place in the boat, and went on fishing as before. Thorolf was ill-contented with his lot, for he felt he had come to shame in their dealings together; yet he remained in the islands with the determination to set straight the humble plight to which he had been made to bow against his will. [Sidenote: Hall's death] Hall, in the meantime, did not fear any danger, and thought that no one would dare to try to get even with him in his own country. So one fair-weather day it happened that Hall rowed out, and there were three of them together ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... and to hold[131] from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,[132] in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part and thereto I plight thee my troth." ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... already at hand. 14. So, having called Damnippus, I spoke to him as follows: "You happen to be a friend of mine, and I have come to your house; I have done no wrong, but I am about to be put to death on account of my property; do you, therefore, in consideration of my wretched plight, kindly use your influence in my behalf to secure my safety." And he promised to do it. But it seemed better to him to mention it to Theognis, for he thought that he would do anything, if one should give him money. 15. And, while he was ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... houses; and to keep them well, Nor, spring and autumn, mourn their wretched plight, To daily toil must vigilance compel, Right ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... his throat; "but for that, I should be all the better for the dip. Let us go on deck again; I am stifling here. And keep up your spirits, Jack. Don't give way the least bit, or it will be all over with you. We are in a fearful plight, but help may yet come." And I promised him solemnly that I would ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... just come through the most dangerous parts of Bosnia in perfect safety; a feat which a blind man can perform more easily than one who enjoys the most perfect vision; for all compassionate and assist a fellow-creature in this deplorable plight. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... her anguish and plight, she led the pony this way and that, up and down, listening, trying to force a shout through her swollen lips. At length, in despair, she knew she could search no more. A lifelessness of feeling was creeping upon her. Mechanically she walked beside her ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... words the knight was in a pitiful plight, and innocently confessed to the Lady that he experienced so much pleasure at this touch that the pains of his malady increased, and that death was preferable ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... to the ground beneath the feet of the struggling men. A descending rifle butt had struck him a glancing blow on the head. Hal, engaged at that moment with another German officer, saw his friend's plight, and jumped back. ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... stopped, as though with a sigh of regret that it could no longer serve him, and Tom knew that volplaning alone would save him now. He was still over the enemy country, and had his plight been guessed at by the Germans, undoubtedly they would have sent a machine up to attack him. But they ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... all agreed that he had arrived here some time ago in a very miserable plight, exceedingly dirty, and riding upon a donkey. He was without baggage of any kind, and he introduced himself by giving a present to Kabba Rega of an old, battered metal basin and jug, in which he washed, together ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... time at his mother's house and elsewhere, not so much to escape his own dangers as to avenge Atli on Thorbiorn Oxmain at the right moment. At last he finds it; and Thorbiorn, as well as his sixteen-year-old son Arnor, who rather disloyally helps him, is slain by Grettir single-handed. His plight at first is not much worsened by this; for though the simple plan of setting off Thorbiorn against Atli is not adopted, Grettir's case is backed directly by his kinsmen and indirectly by the two craftiest men in Iceland, Snorri the Godi and Skapti the Lawman, and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... cool, resolute, a little angry, the blue battery of her eyes fixing him across her white embroidered shoulder. But he had turned away, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, brow rumpled into a frown, jaw set to anathema of the plight in which a needless fortune ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... message I forthwith hastened to the presence of my friend, and was sore troubled to find him in so grievous a plight. It was plain to all beholders that his course was well-nigh run, for a great change had taken place even in the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth." ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... word of his plight reached Boston, and a ship was immediately despatched, not only to bring the castaway home, but with the fine wardrobe necessary to a young gentleman of his station. But the same ship brought word of his father's death—his mother had gone long since—and as there were brothers ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... laughed at her notion, a sign of humour and courage in her (considering the plight) ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... arriving he addressed His care unto his pistols' plight, Replaced them in their box, undressed And Schiller read by candlelight. But one thought only filled his mind, His mournful heart no peace could find, Olga he sees before his eyes Miraculously fair arise, Vladimir closes up his book, And grasps a pen: his verse, albeit With lovers' rubbish filled, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... whom has he let it?" Paul asked quickly. "You see my plight, and my horse is worse off still. We lost our way going home ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... many in different plights, and according to their plight, kept in different places. The well bound were ranged in the sanctuary of Mr. Bronte's study; but the purchase of books was a necessary luxury to him, and as it was often a choice between binding an old one, or buying a new one, the familiar volume, which ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... spots. He had scarcely sat down when the door again resounded, and she played over the same game as she had done with the cauzee, who on his also entering the bed-chamber was somewhat pleased at seeing a brother magistrate in the same ridiculous plight with himself. The venerable lovers condoled by signs with each other, but dared not speak for fear of discovery. The chief of the butchers, on his arrival, was next ushered up stairs, and his present received, then made to undress and put on a blue vest with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... oppressed by thee. On the other hand, O bull of the Bharata race, fight with him with thy arms, putting forth as much strength only as thy antagonist hath now left!' Then that slayer of hostile heroes, the son of Pandu, thus addressed by Krishna, understood the plight of Jarasandha and forthwith resolved upon taking his life. And that foremost of all men endued with strength, that prince of the Kuru race, desirous of vanquishing the hitherto unvanquished Jarasandha, mustered ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... in, and she sees the plight; It will take her wits to set it right: That big bandana on Deb's black head, Ere Dick can jump, 'tis over him spread; Then two soft hands they hold him fast: The bright little rogue ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hand, I fancied them returning from the cave surly and disappointed, ready to vent their wrath on us. All, except the unspeakable Magnus, had shown so far a rough good nature, even amusement at our plight, but you felt the snarl at the corner of the grinning lips. You knew they would be undependable as savages or vicious children, who find pleasure in inflicting pain. And then there was always my own hideous danger as the favored of the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... such a woman are not to be depended on. If Lord Ventnor has cast her off, her hatred may 'prove stronger than her passion. Anyhow, I should be the last man to despair of God's Providence. Compare the condition of Iris and myself today with our plight during the second night on the ledge! I refuse to believe that a bad and fickle woman can resist the workings of destiny, and it was a happy fate which led me to ship on board the Sirdar, though at the time I saw it ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... After sitting down, on every occasion when I tried to get up again, my head would swim round, and I would fall down oblivious for some time. Being in a chronic state of burning thirst, my general plight was dreadful in the extreme. A bare and level sandy waste would have been Paradise to walk over compared to this. My arms, legs, thighs, both before and behind, were so punctured with spines, it was agony only to exist; the slightest movement ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... act. The duty of providing for their wants, immediate and still to come, fell entirely upon Mary. She felt this to be just, since it was chiefly through her influence that they had been brought to their present plight; but the responsibility was great, and it is no wonder that, brave as she was, she longed for some one to ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... being married to a man of no name: she would be gloomily convinced that Harry was by his father's villainy a proven knave. But what hurt her most was the growing suspicion that she was much to blame for her own plight. Alison Lambourne, who acknowledged no law but her own will, who had never dreamed that she could be wrong in her desires, driven to confess a ruinous blunder! Imagine her distress. At first she chose to pretend that ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... lay in evil plight (So many lovers yet abide!) I would my tongue could praise aright Her name, that should be glorified. Those lovers now, whom foes divide A little weep,—and soon forget. How far from these faint lovers glide The ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... you need a good hard impact to send you out of that mud. The wheels are stuck," called Julie, who had been considering the plight. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... literary productions. Braddock's appeals to the Philadelphia Assembly for a rough wagon-road and wagons for the army succeeded in raising only twenty-five wagons. Franklin visited him in his desolate plight and agreed to assist him, and appealed to the public to send to him for the use of the army a hundred and fifty wagons and fifteen hundred pack-horses; for the latter Franklin offered to pay two shillings a day each, as long as used, if provided with a pack-saddle. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... artists, he regretted to observe 'motives apparently limited to their own views and ambition to govern.' Again the negotiation was broken off, the project went to pieces, and now the hope of establishing a national academy in England seemed in its worst plight—hopeless—gone down ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... swirled back, albeit with many a rallying eddy, into Vittoria. That town was no place of refuge, but a death-trap; for Graham had pushed on a detachment to Durana, on the high-road leading direct to France, and thus blocked the main line of retreat. Joseph's army was now in pitiable plight. Pent up in the choked streets of Vittoria, torn by cannon-shot from the English lines, the wreckage of its three armies for a time surged helplessly to and fro, and then broke away eastwards towards ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... knaves had hold of Sir Percival's horse and thereupon others swarmed upon him and what with the blows of their maces and clubs, he was in sorry plight. Nor could Sir Launcelot turn to help him for he was in great conflict with the two knights and a large number of them on foot and Sir Neil equally so. As for Allan he had already ridden down two of the ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... and Jake crept out, dripping to the very crowns of their heads, with their Sunday shirts and jackets in a horrible plight. The truth, slowly gathered from their mutual accusations, was this: they had resolved to have a boating excursion on Redley Creek, and had abstracted the tub that morning when nobody was in the kitchen. Slipping down through the wood, they had launched it in a piece of still ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the wide sea, When they be yearning for the heaven-sent shower, When the parched fields be craving for the rain; Then the great sky at last is overgloomed, And men see that fair sign of coming wind And imminent rain, and seeing, they are glad, Who for their corn-fields' plight sore sighed before; Even so the sons of Troy when they beheld There in their land Penthesileia dread Afire for battle, were exceeding glad; For when the heart is thrilled with hope of good, All smart of evils past is wiped away: So, after ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... I fear the absurd nature of their tragic plight excited more of wonder than of concern. They merged into hedges and ditches swallowed them. Their case was only one incident of many, and what became of them I have never heard, except that Lieutenant Lane who commanded our rear guard was with us on the Eighth, so I ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... priest, and the thanksgiving service, though very important and necessary in church, could do nothing for him here, and that there was and could be no connexion between those candles and services and his present disastrous plight. 'I must not despair,' he thought. 'I must follow the horse's track before it is snowed under. He will lead me out, or I may even catch him. Only I must not hurry, or I shall stick fast and be ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... stopped by the obstacle. He plunged in with the terrified old lady, and landed her in safety where her services were wanted. Having put the horse into the stable (where it was afterwards found in a woful plight), he proceeded to the room of the servant, whose duty he had discharged, and finding him just in the act of drawing on his boots, he administered to him a most merciless drubbing with his own horsewhip. Such an important service excited the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... from whoever should not obtain the virgin. But the matter was difficult for her father Tyndarus, whether to give, or not to give [her in marriage,] and how he might best deal with the circumstances, when this occurred to him; that the suitors should join oaths and plight right hands with one another, and over burnt-offerings should enter into treaty, and bind themselves by this oath, "Of whomsoever the daughter of Tyndarus shall become wife, that they will join to assist him, if any one should depart from ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... too violent for raft or boat to live, and at so early a season native craft are never seen on these seas. Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at El-Muwaylah, who were startled by the wildness of the wind, could have learned our plight, or could have taken ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the times and the utter lack of news from home, when the last tidings had been most alarming. Poor lady! I think it was a comfort to her, for she loved my mother; but we could not but grieve to see her in such a plight. As we went home we planned that we would carry a faggot in the carriage the next day, and that I would take it upstairs to her. And so I actually did, but the sentry insisted on knowing what I was carrying hidden in a cloak, and when he ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and neighbors." That the church is named first as the proper place shows that it is to be preferred for a marriage. It can be solemnized there in a more seemly and dignified way than elsewhere, and those coming to plight their vows may be more deeply impressed with the solemnity and ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... turned to the tyrant Rome for rescue. They who had risen against Florus and had driven him out would have willingly accepted him again in place of Simon bar Gioras and John of Gischala, before two years had elapsed. Now, their plight was so desperate that they clambered daily upon the walls of their unhappy city to look for the first glimpse of the approaching enemy, Titus, whom they had learned to call ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the amputation of a limb, if it were kindly and courteously performed from a wish to help us out of our difficulty, and with the full consciousness on the part of the doctor that it was only by an accident of constitution that he was not in the like plight himself. So the Erewhonians take a flogging once a week, and a diet of bread and water for two or three months together, whenever their straightener ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... slept fitfully. Now and then she would wake with a start to a half-frightened realization of her surroundings and plight, and whenever she did wake and look past the fire it was to see Roaring Bill Wagstaff stretched out in the red glow, his brown head pillowed on one folded arm. Once she saw him reach to the wood without moving his body and lay ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... man having wife and mother to support, (I mention this in order to properly convey my plight) conditions here are not altogether good and living expenses growing while wages are small. My greatest desire is to leave for a better place but am ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... terrible, wearing misery, away from which there seems to be no road, and out of which there is apparently no escape? That was Harry Clavering's condition for some few days after the evening which he last passed in the company of Lady Ongar; and I will ask any such unmarried man whether, in such a plight, there was for him any other alternative but to wish himself dead? In such a condition, a man can simply walk the streets by himself, and declare to himself that everything is bad, and rotten, and vile, and worthless. He wishes himself dead, and calculates the different advantages ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of the malcontents turned towards their dethroned monarch; and emissaries were despatched to seek him out, and put before him the project of a restoration. He was found in Hyrcania, in a miserable dress and plight, living on the produce of his bow. At first he suspected the messengers, believing that their intention was to seize him and deliver him up to Tiridates; but it was not long ere they persuaded him that, whether their affection for himself were true ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... thought it would be well to go to New York for a few days until the storm blew over. Jeffries the book-keeper could attend to all that was needed. Mr. Lawrence would find Hope Mills in a bad plight, to be sure; but he would not be the first man who had come to ruin. Mr. Eastman put his desk in order,—he never kept any tell-tale papers,—walked leisurely out of Hope Mills with that serene, impassable face and high heart no misfortune ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... his master there, got on board the steamer again and returned to town. He then called at several places usually frequented by his master, and afterwards went home to Woburn Place. He has frequently been stolen, but always returns, sometimes in sad plight, with a broken cord round his neck, and with signs of ill-usage; but still he contrives to escape from ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... woods, that she seemed least solitary. She knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions. She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind—or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... business,—it would be mean to sneak out of that,—and I'll shoulder any sort of a load that's put out on the sand in the daylight. But, captain, I don't want to do anything to make me look into that hole. I can't stand it, and that is the long and short of it. I am sorry that Maka saw me in such a plight—it's bad for discipline; but it can't ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... brief sadistic pleasure as he watched Keaveney's face sag in horror. "What do you think we'll live on, for a year?" he asked. "On this planet, there's not more than a three months' supply of any sort of food a human can eat. And the ships that'll be coming in until word of our plight can get to Terra won't bring enough to keep us going. We need the farms and livestock and the animal-tissue culture plant at Konkrook, and the farms at Krink and on the plateau back of Skilk, and we need peace and native labor to ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... danger to protect the defenseless quartet in the cottage—the three women and the wounded, helpless man. In the very doorway of the cottage one had been killed—killed facing the enemy—the savage blood-thirsty horde who, having learned of the plight of their oppressor, had taken the warpath to venge their wrongs. Surely MacNair must know that this man had died as much in the defense of him as of the women. And yet, when he learned of the death of this man, he had said: "I am damned glad ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... unlike that of the lecturer. By some hard luck he happened to be passing that way when the crowd was looking for the Abolitionist, and was discovered. "There he goes," was the cry that was raised, and a fire of eggs and other things was opened upon him. He reached his home in an awful plight, and it was charged that his conversation was not ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... pretended to notice nothing, and he would rather have been hewn in pieces than agree. And now, of his own accord, he was going!... Twenty times he was on the point of turning back. He walked two or three times round the town, turning away just as he came near the Palace. He was not alone in his plight. His mother and brothers had also to be considered. Since his father had deserted them and betrayed them, it was his business as eldest son to take his place and come to their assistance. There was no room for hesitation or pride; he had to swallow down his shame. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... 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
... vessel," he announced. "I hope they are in no worse plight than we are." Then, there suddenly came to him a thought of the parents of Mary Nestor, who were somewhere on the ocean, in the yacht RESOLUTE ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... with his eyes turning here and there, like those of some captured wild animal which fears danger; and as he looked he caught sight of the footman gazing at him with a peculiar grin upon his countenance, which seemed to be quite friendly, and indicated that the man rather enjoyed the plight in which ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... Jeanne laughed with a bitterness she had not meant to put into her voice. "He was away when Owaissa came to me and heard my plight. And then there was need of haste. I had to go at once, and it would not have been pleasant even ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... do not want things to go too far between him and that woman. I want him to remember that I still love him, and am still waiting for him. Oh! he is mine, mine alone. But alas! I cannot say the word: our affairs are in such sorry plight." ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... he addressed His care unto his pistols' plight, Replaced them in their box, undressed And Schiller read by candlelight. But one thought only filled his mind, His mournful heart no peace could find, Olga he sees before his eyes Miraculously fair arise, Vladimir closes up his book, And grasps a ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... displeasing to the professor, who finally, in utter disgust, turned Hutten out of doors in midwinter. When the boy had tramped a while in storm and slush, two servants of Loetz overtook him on the road and robbed him of his money and clothing. In a wretched plight he reached a little inn in Rostock, in Mecklenberg. Here the professors in the university received him kindly, and made provision for his needs. Then he let loose the fury of his youthful anger on Loetz. As ever, his poetic genius rose ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... adjusted, the body was raised higher until the weight swung clear. In this plight they became a fearful sight to look upon. The flesh, to support their bodies with the additional weights attached thereto, was raised some eight inches by the skewers, and their heads sinking forward on their breasts, or thrown backward in a much more frightful condition, was a sight that made one's ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... in a most melancholy plight, brought an action of assault and battery against the commodore, and subpoenaed all the servants as evidences in the cause; but as none of them had seen what happened, he did not find his account in the prosecution, though he himself examined all the witnesses, and, among ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... it that his own position was now even less than before to the liking of Gold Harald, for no kingdom had he any more than aforetime; while to this was added the wrath of the King. So went he to his friend Hakon and made wail of his plight unto him, and besought of him good counsel, if he had such to give him, as to how he might become possessed of the realm; and he said he was minded to seek his kingdom by force of arms. Then Hakon bade him not breathe word of this to anyone lest it should become known: 'It ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... my lord awoke: the looking-glass above the fireplace soon intimated to him his plight: as you may imagine, I now live under threat ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... this young woman, and at the end of a year they had a son. She then said to her husband: "I am the daughter of the King of the Tung-t'ing Lake. It was you who saved me from my miserable plight on the bank of the Ching, and I swore I would reward you. Formerly you refused to accept my hand, and my parents decided to marry me to the son of a silk-merchant. I cut my hair, and never ceased to hope that I might ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... voluntarily confessed it, would get off with a year's imprisonment. The jailer held the lantern close to the tanned face of the reader and nodded encouragingly to Bousquier. The latter was mumbling the Lord's Prayer. Greatly agitated, and groping about for a way out of his plight, he said finally that everything was as he had first related, only the tobacco-dealer had paid him not with a gold-piece but a couple of silver coins. He repeated his confession before the magistrate, who had been summoned despite ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Li hesitated. The worm floated a trifle nearer to his half-open mouth. How tempting! After all, what was a hook to a fish when he was dying? Why be a coward? Perhaps this worm was an exception to the rule, or perhaps, perhaps any thing—really a fish in such a plight as Mr. Li could not be expected to follow advice—even the advice ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... a hard plight as it was; but without the old monkey for a companion he would have thought his condition was a hundred times worse, and would hardly have had the courage to go on as ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... time Tommy's head was to be seen above the water. He knew how to swim, but one cannot do much swimming in ice-cold water, and with skates on one's feet, besides wearing heavy clothing. Poor Tommy was in a sad plight. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... been a man, but he was one who seemed to have passed by and left his mark, and then to have gone on altogether out of sight. She had told him that she could not but think of John Gordon, but that that was all. She would, if he asked it, plight her troth to him and become his wife, although she must think of John Gordon. This thinking would last but for a while, he told himself; and he at his age—what right had he to expect aught better than that? She was of such a nature that, when she had given herself up in marriage, she would ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Alonso de Ojeda who, after shipwreck and untold hardships, had reached that place and been cared for by the natives. Ojeda had carried this image for many weary days, confiding in its protection to rescue him from the dangerous plight in which he found himself, and some of his companions who were now with the Narvaez party praised its beauty so highly to Las Casas that he conceived the idea of offering to trade for it a very good Flemish statue of his own. His proposal, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... even discern through the ruins of the paretic's reaction that his false beliefs concerning the body are often not so false after all, and that his damaged brain of itself is not so apt to return false ideas about his somatic interior as about his worldly importance and plight. There then seems to be more reality about somatic than about personal delusions: the contents of somatic delusions are rather more apt to correspond with demonstrable realities than the contents of personal delusions. Accordingly our analysis of delusional contents includes a ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... uncomfortable plight, and trying to arrange our camp beds on the snow, for we could not get any balsam boughs here to put under us, we were joined by several wild Indians, who, coming down the lake, saw our camp-fire. They had a number of thin, wild, wolfish, half- starved Esquimaux dogs with ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... happening there. In winter, with the thermometer well down, a blood-freezing wind blowing, wreaths of clouds drifting below and obscuring vision for minutes at a time, the rain possibly pelting down as if presaging a second deluge, the plight of the vigilant human eye aloft is far ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... thirty of Ludgast's men, but Siegfried, by means of three deep wounds and grisly that he dealt Ludgast through his white harness, overcame the king or these knights came up. His sword drew blood with each stroke, that King Ludgast came in evil plight, and begged for his life, offering his land as the price thereof, and said that his ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... had passed to the whole town, to be given to the four winds, he could not have looked a Bully more shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped. Even that unlucky female, Mrs. Sparsit, fallen from her pinnacle of exultation into the Slough of Despond, was not in so bad a plight as that remarkable man and self-made Humbug, Josiah Bounderby ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... a green necktie, and the latter as happy as the day is long. In the arms of both Kate and Martha are now two sweet prattlers—one christened, John O'Neill Barry, and the other, Martha Ridgeway Evans. Perhaps in after years they in turn may plight their vows on the banks of the Niagara, as Kate and Nicholas had done by those of the Shannon. Kate now and then visits her friends at their residence on the Canadian side of the lakes; but Nicholas is of the impression, that he is quite as well off in judiciously remaining at home to ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... swaying of the boat, finally wooed him from his book, which after all he had only taken up as a protection from tormenting thoughts. Had he—had he—any chance with Helena? A month before he would have scornfully denied that he was in love with her. And now—he had actually confessed his plight to Mrs. Friend! ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tale about tough men. Right from the first chapter we are living with men who are fighting for survival, the enemy being as often as not other men who would rob them. Chapter after chapter leaves the heroes in some new desperate plight, which, when overcome, is almost at once ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... obsequious rivals. In the end he was obliged to put up his shutters. Unhappily for him, he had never been a very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious worship in the town, and he had therefore no organisation to help him. Not being master of any craft, he was in a pitiable plight, and was slowly sinking, when he applied to the solicitor of the political party for which he had always voted to assist him. The solicitor applied to the member, and the member, much regretting the difficulty of obtaining places for grown-up men, and explaining ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... crept out, dripping to the very crowns of their heads, with their Sunday shirts and jackets in a horrible plight. The truth, slowly gathered from their mutual accusations, was this: they had resolved to have a boating excursion on Redley Creek, and had abstracted the tub that morning when nobody was in the kitchen. ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... life had fairly begun for little Jerome Edwards. Up to this time, although in sorry plight enough as far as material needs went—scantily clad, scantily fed, and worked hard—he had as yet only followed at an easy pace, or skirted with merry play the march of the toilers of the world. Now he was in the rank and file, enlisted thereto by ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the smartest officer of the deck he had ever known. But in early middle life disease overtook him, and, though flat on his back, he had been borne on the active list because there was nothing else to do with him. In that plight he was even promoted. There was another who, as a midshipman, had lost a foot in the War of 1812, but had been carried on from grade to grade for forty years, until at the time I speak of he was a captain, then the highest rank in the navy. Possibly, probably, he never saw water bluer ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... station. A number of wounded were there lying on the platforms; about a hundred of them, with their clothes torn, and covered with dust. They presented a sad picture. They were, it is true, only slightly wounded; but it cuts one to the heart to see soldiers in that plight, hauled out upon the ground without straw to lie upon or any doctor to attend to them. However, they had all had first-aid dressings. Below the bandages that bound their heads their feverish eyes gleamed ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... on him at the mere conceit that another man was able to peep into his heart and surprise there the foul notion that had seized him when John Sobieski brought the tidings of his son's desperate plight. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... misjudges and hates. He is removed from my path: it was necessary to my hopes. His life is, at all events, safe; his deliverance rests with his kinswoman. When she has plighted her troth, and surely she will plight it—" ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the general disposition was one of willingness to wait. The food, to be sure, lacked something of its wonted excellence; but it served (in the summer), and we did not grumble. The shelling, too, had fallen somewhat flat. Mafeking was more out of the way and in a worse plight than Kimberley. Reflections of this kind begot condescension and a noble ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... you could make pride into a balm for broken hearts!" I said to myself in scorn of this flowery eloquence. For a few minutes I forgot my own plight to pity these people whom I had never seen. The Paris Daily Messenger slid off my lap on to the floor, and dropped with the back page up. When I had glanced toward the bed, and seen that Brian ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of Commissariat Vidal? Was it possible that there was another Frenchman in as perilous a plight as myself? The thought had hardly entered my head when our party stopped and one of them uttered a peculiar cry. It was answered from among the brambles which lined the base of a cliff at one side of a clearing, and an instant later ten or a dozen more brigands came out from amongst ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hold[131] from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,[132] in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part and thereto I plight thee ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... three tiers of berths in the ship's cabin in which the wounded were to be conveyed to New York. Still thrilling with the suffering of being carried from the field, and lifted to his place, he saw a comrade in even worse plight brought in, and thinking of the pain it must cost his fellow soldier to be raised to the bed above him, he surprised his kind lady nurses (daily scatterers of Golden Deeds) by saying, 'Put me up there, I reckon I'll bear ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the most melancholy plight of all. At any other time he would have followed Tatiana Markovna to the end of the world, but after the outbreak of gossip it would have been unsuitable to follow her for the moment, because it might have given colour to the talk about them which was half-believed and already partly ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... the activity Simoun had displayed in urging Paulita's marriage, which had plunged Isagani into the fearful misanthropy that was worrying his uncle. He forgot all these things and thought only of the sick man's plight and his own obligations as a host, until his senses reeled. Where must he hide him to avoid his falling into the clutches of the authorities? But the person chiefly concerned was not ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... playing and smiling men in uniform drinking tea and playing for a little. That, too, Sara Lee was to understand later; but just then she did not. At home there was more surface depression. The atrocities, the plight of the Belgians, the honor list in the Illustrated London News—that was the war ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... possess it; but, tell me, they of the fat marsh, and they whom the wind drives, and they whom the rain beats, and they who encounter with such sharp tongues, why are they not punished within the ruddy city if God be wroth with them? and if he be not so, why are they in such plight?" ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... ring she gave me Right royally dwarf-worked, To none will I pass it For prayer or for sword-stroke, Save to him who can claim it By love and by troth plight, Let that hero speak If that hero ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... us that," Edgar said. "Our plight speaks for itself. Call your wife, I pray you, or female servants; they will know what to do to bring the young maid to herself. But tell her to let the girl know as soon as she opens her eyes that her father is alive, and is, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... no question as to the identity of these kites. They were the Gap Gang, and in desperate plight. Their lugger was gone, and their leader dead. At sixes and sevens among themselves, they had quarrelled with the only man who might somehow have saved them. Behind them lay the gallows; before ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... to me of savages From Afric's burning sun, No savage e'er could rend my heart As, Jessy, thou hast done. But Jessy's lovely hand in mine, A mutual faith to plight, Not even to view the heavenly choir Would be so ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... but one thing to do: I must wire our Secretary of State, apprising him of the exact situation in Abbevilliers with particular reference to my own plight, and strongly urging on him the advisability of instantly ordering a fleet of American battleships to the coast of France, there to make a demonstration in force. With me, to think has ever been to act. I begged the landlord for pen and ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to interview Dr. von Goeteburg, who answered him with ironical politeness, and depicted the pitiable plight of a Germany surrounded and attacked by a world of enemies. If, however, they were willing to leave him the princess's pearl necklace as security, he would consent to lend them the few marks they needed ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained. And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States, in Congress assembled, on all questions which by the said Confederation are submitted to them; and that the Articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... unsuspecting victims to the merchant ships in the Mersey at so much a head. Through bad seamanship, however, the vessel was run aground at Seacombe, opposite to Liverpool, and Capt. Darby, of H.M.S. Seahorse, perceiving her plight, and thinking to render assistance in return for perhaps a man or two, took boat and rowed across to her. To his astonishment he found her full of Irishmen to the number of seventy-three, whom he immediately pressed and ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... it. Yuan Shih-kai had the priceless opportunity of studying them at close range and soon made up his mind about certain things. When the storm burst, pretending to see nothing but mad fanatics in those who, realizing the plight of their country, had adopted the war-cry "Blot out the Manchus and the foreigner," he struck at them fiercely, driving the whole savage horde headlong into the metropolitan province of Chihli. There, seduced by the Manchus, they suddenly ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... heart, that she and her lover should run into the hands of Kurdish brigands on the first day of their flight. To be mewed up in a squalid Kurdish village in close companionship with a man who was only your husband by adoption, and to have the attention of all Europe drawn to your plight, was about the least respectable thing that could happen. And there were international complications, which made things worse. "English lady and her husband, of foreign nationality, held by Kurdish brigands who demand ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... making such a pretty picture that Migwan could not help snap-shotting him. Her camera still hung around her neck in its case, having luckily escaped injury by her fall. Then she stepped out and called to the men. Both started violently. Migwan hastened to explain her plight. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... knew of that which he had done. Thereat he uttered piercing cries of grief, Such as had never come from him before, For in loud lamentations to indulge He ever held a craven weakling's part, And, stifling outcries, moaned not loud but deep, Like the deep roaring of a wounded bull. But in this plight, prostrate and desperate, Refusing food and drink, my hero lies Amidst the mangled bodies, motionless. That he is brooding on some fell design, His wails and exclamations plainly show. But, O kind friends, 'twas to this end I came, Enter the tent and aid me if ye can; The words of friends ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... the soul of an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick to ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... transformation it is hardly possible to imagine. The clothes hung loosely about her, in forlorn dowdyness. She felt that she was ridiculous. All grace was gone, all beauty. It was distressing to witness her mortified plight. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... comes in, and she sees the plight; It will take her wits to set it right: That big bandana on Deb's black head, Ere Dick can jump, 'tis over him spread; Then two soft hands they hold him fast: The bright little rogue ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dim-descried. The officers are a collection of hideously selfish, brutal, drunken, licentious beasts; their mental horizon is almost inconceivably narrow, far narrower than that of mediaeval monks in a monastery. The soldiers are in worse plight than prisoners, being absolutely at the mercy of the alcoholic caprices of their superiors. A favourite device of the officer is to jam the trumpet against the trumpeter's mouth, when he is trying to obey orders by sounding the call; then they laugh at him derisively as he spits ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... country to cultivate the soil. There was, therefore, nothing for them to do; they had no money with which to speculate in town allotments, they had no land on which to commence farming for themselves, and they were in a wretched plight. Provisions had rapidly increased in price, so that flour rose from L20 to L80 per ton; no food was being produced from the land, and nothing whatever was being done to develop the resources of the colony, whilst the money which the settlers had ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... And, in truth, our plight was such that we stood in much need of comforting. Not only were we sick with our many hurts, but we were also prisoners. By the full light of day we examined carefully the cave, and found no outlet to it; and we examined carefully, also, the walls of the canon throughout its full length, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... subscriptions. We all know the story of the comedian informed in the midst of a performance of his beloved wife's death, who yet must laugh and antic to the end of the play. I appreciated the heavy-hearted actor's plight as I surveyed the little throng so vitally interested in their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part to feign satisfaction ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... had charge of the ship bade me come on board, and took me in with Xury and all my goods. I told him that he might take all I had, but he said "You shall have your goods back when we come to land, for I have but done for you what you would have done for me, had I been in the same plight." ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... from than on her own, she asked herself whether she had undertaken too much, and whether this sphinx-like face might hide danger for her. She at least knew it was far from being possible to tell by looking at the outside of a man's head what might be going on inside. Only the plight of her father's affairs had seemed to justify her; even this did not seem to now, but it was too late to wish herself out of it. Besides—for most extraordinary notions will come into foolish girls' minds—was she not in the company of a great Federal court; and shouldn't she ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... of whom I had strong hopes of their getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the largest proportion of worst cases get ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... "thou knowest that I am a plain man; to bid thee hope were to plight my word. And," he added seriously, "there be reasons grave and well to be considered why both the daughters of a subject should not wed with their king's brothers. Let this cease now, I pray thee, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and trudged manfully on. By and by he was able to eat a bit of bread, and felt better still. But as he recovered, he became aware that with fatigue and dirt his appearance must be disreputable in the extreme. How was he to approach Lady Joan in such a plight? If she recognized him at once, he would but be the more ashamed! What could she take him for but a ne'er-do-weel, whose character had given way the moment he left the guardianship of home, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... "They were in sore plight for fighting, for most of them had been obliged to sell even their arms and armour to procure food. Spinola, hearing of their approach pushed forward with a strong force to intercept them, and so came upon them at Fleurus, eight miles from Namur, on ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... see or hear most of this; he only knew that she was very ill; for he went out every day on the almost hopeless quest for work. Rushton's had next to nothing to do, and most of the other shops were in a similar plight. Dauber and Botchit had one or two jobs going on, and Easton tried several times to get a start for them, but was always told they were full up. The sweating methods of this firm continued to form a favourite topic of conversation with the unemployed ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... deplored my absence from Parliamentary life, and then began to talk confusedly of Russia. It took a little perspicacity to see that something was weighing on the good man's mind; something he had come to say and for his honest life could not get out. His plight became more pitiable as the interview proceeded, and when he rose to go, he grew as red as a turkey-cock and began to sputter. I went to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... remain at Leesburg that night. We rested on our arms, fearing Stuart might get an inkling of our plight and pounce upon us. My diary says I was unable to sleep because of suffering from a sprained knee and ankle, caused by my horse stumbling and falling on ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... wagon used as ambulance was heavy laden; at every infrequent cabin or lonely farmhouse were left the too ill to travel farther. The poor servants, of whom there were some in each company, were in pitiable plight. No negro likes the cold; for him all the hot sunshine he can get! They shivered now, in the rear of the companies, their bodies drawn together, their faces grey. The nature of most was of an abounding cheerfulness, but it was not possible to be cheerful on ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... that of the same seed of which churls spring, of the same seed spring lords; as well may the churl be saved as the lord. Wherefore I counsel thee, do just so with thy churl as though wouldest thy lord did with thee, if thou wert in his plight. A very sinful man is a churl as towards sin. I counsel thee certainly, thou lord, that, thou work in such wise with thy churls that they rather love thee than dread thee. I know well, where there is ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Sir John, I sue for yours: not to charge you; for I must let you understand I think myself in better plight for a lender than you are: the which hath something embold'ned me to this unseasoned intrusion; for they say, if money go before, all ways ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... silence of his sojourn in the house had told her that it was not so. The tremor in his voice as he reminded her that they once had been friends had plainly told her that it was not so. He had acknowledged that they had been betrothed, and that the plight between them was still strong; but, wishing to be quit of it, he had thrown the burden of ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... king said to his knights as he sat in a little room in an inn at Zara, "that my plight is a bad one. I am surrounded by enemies, and, alas! I can no longer mount my steed and ride out as at Jaffa to do battle with them. My brother, John Lackland, is scheming to take my place upon the ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... chance for deliverance, we must get the tidings of our dreadful plight to Fort Wallace, a hundred miles away. Jack Stillwell and another brave scout were chosen for the dangerous task. At midnight they left us, moving cautiously away into the black blank space toward the southwest, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... nostrils had told him of what the feast consisted. And, new as the experience was, he had bristled and snarled and struggled against his bonds to be free. Likewise, at first, tossed down in the canoe house, he had bristled and snarled at his fellow captives, not realizing their plight, and, since always he had been trained to look upon niggers as the eternal enemy, considering them responsible for the catastrophe to the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... gathering round their Lord; but my Cid was in search of him, and when he saw where he was, he made up to him, clearing the way as he went, and gave him such a stroke with his lance that he felled him down to the ground. When the Frenchmen saw their Lord in this plight they fled away and left him; and the pursuit lasted three leagues, and would have been continued farther if the conquerors had not had tired horses. So they turned back and collected the spoils, which were more than they could carry away. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... rain-sodden and abominably smoking little tug-boat—as the way was fifty years ago. Liverpool was a gray-stone labyrinth open to the deluge, and its inhabitants went to and fro with umbrellas over their heads and black respirators over their mouths, looking as if such were their normal plight—as, indeed, it was. Much of this was not needed to quench the enthusiasm of the children. The Waterloo Hotel, to which, by advice of friends, we were driven, seemed by its very name to carry out the idea ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... long time, striving in vain to come to the surface. Finally he rose, spitting the bitter brine out of his mouth. Although he was in such a desperate plight, his mind was on the raft. Battling bravely with the waves he reached it, and springing on board sat down in the middle of it. Thus ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... length, Darius found himself in so evil a plight that he began to march back to the Ister. And certain Scythians came to the Ionians, and counselled them to destroy the bridge, the sixty days being passed. And this Miltiades, the Athenian despot ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... and plight the knight travels on until Christmas-eve, and to Mary he makes his moan that she may direct him to some abode. On the morn he arrives at an immense forest, wondrously wild, surrounded by high hills on every side, where ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... own hands again.... As in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of art and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... but only stammered out, "Lord Sedley!"—"I will be known to you," said he, "by no other name than that by which I will plight my troth, Arthur de Vallance.—What has my Isabel to say to me in that character? I will not allow her to retract the sweet encouragement she gave me when I was the helpless object of her tender ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Even this poor fool has eyes, To see the wretched plight in which I stand. [Aside.] How, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... the fort, which, as the engineer Mascarene says, "had lain tumbling down" before his arrival; but Annapolis and the whole province remained totally neglected and almost forgotten by England till the middle of the century. At one time the soldiers were in so ragged a plight that Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong was forced to clothe them ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... among the Jews' own factions that the miserable citizens had turned to the tyrant Rome for rescue. They who had risen against Florus and had driven him out would have willingly accepted him again in place of Simon bar Gioras and John of Gischala, before two years had elapsed. Now, their plight was so desperate that they clambered daily upon the walls of their unhappy city to look for the first glimpse of the approaching enemy, Titus, whom they had learned to ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... as the little boat, probably belonging to James and John, is labouring across the six or seven miles to the eastern side. Matthew describes the boat as it would appear from shore, as being 'covered' and lost to sight by the breaking waves. Mark, who is Peter's mouthpiece, describes the desperate plight as one on board knew it, and says the boat was 'filling.' It must have been a serious gale which frightened a crew who had spent all their lives ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... an armistice was concluded, which put an end to the war except in the neighbourhood of Belfort. That exception was due to the determination of the Germans to press Bourbaki hard, while the French negotiators were not aware of his plight. The garrison of Paris, except 12,000 men charged with the duty of keeping order, surrendered; the forts were placed in the besiegers' hands. When that was done the city was to be revictualled and thereafter pay a war contribution of 200,000,000 ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Auban, Vilmorin's flight left him unequal to the task of dragging the girl along. She dug her heels into the ground, and, tug as he might, for all that he set both hands to work, he could not move her. In this plight I came upon him, and challenged him to stand and ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... credit be it said, only selected one shilling, with which I paid the bathing-man, and walked off undiscovered to my own machine. The fat old she-triton laughed till she cried. I dressed in my proper costume leisurely enough, and was amused to hear afterwards of the luckless plight in which a stout gentleman had found himself by the temporary loss of all his apparel whilst he was disporting ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the Asiatic or the American half—would be continually in the sunlight, and the other side would lie buried in endless night. And this condition, so suggestive of the play of pure imagination, this plight of being a two-faced world, like the god Janus, one face light and the other face dark, must be the actual ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... appeared, and a few minutes before dinner M. de Tourville made his entrance into the drawing-room, no longer in the plight of a shipwrecked mariner, but in gallant trim, wafting gales of momentary bliss as he went round the room paying his compliments to the ladies, bowing, smiling, apologizing,—the very pink of courtesy!—The gentlemen of the family, who ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... chopping or knee-slicing; and that all the prisoners of that degree were told off to do productive work: although humiliatingly deformed, they were still available for the common purposes of native life, and their defenceless and forlorn plight would probably make it an easier matter to handle them in gangs than to handle sound males; and if they died off under the rough treatment of task-masters, they would have no families to mourn or avenge them in accordance with family duty; for ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... perfectly sober, with a big ruddy face, giant frame, and twinkling gray eyes. He was the man who had risen to speak his faith in the Hon. Samuel Budd that day on the size of the Hon. Samuel's ears. He, too, was unashamed and, as he explained his plight again, he did it with ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... langrel of the French foe had caused much injury to the Ariadne, and her canvas was in a sore plight. Fifty of her seamen had been killed, and a hundred and fifty were wounded by the time she reached the starboard side of the Aquitaine. She would have lost many more were it not that her onset demoralized the French ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I Long and short in the same circumstances, as blind, find, mind, with i long, kindred, limb, shrimp, pinch, with i short; gh makes i long, as bright, might, plight, &c. and i is long without 'em, as ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... we break faith who have seen Those dead lips plight with the mist between, And how forget, who have seen how soon They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon? How scorn, how hate, how strive, wee too, Who must do so soon as those others do? For it's All Souls' night, and break ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... noises and Mac heard the last vestige of air hiss out of the chamber. He found the hatchway too tight for comfort and had a moment of fear when his tool pack caught in the orifice, wedging him neatly. He could hear Logan and Ruiz through his earphones, explaining their plight to Ground Control. They wanted to know why in blue blazes Valier hadn't contacted the doughnut when it came within range, and Logan had no defense save preoccupation with his own plight. Belatedly, Ruiz made radio contact with the doughnut, which was still well within ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... curve. As it seems to recede into the distance, the surface of the river forms a "misty line of light", just before it melts into the shadows of the forest. Where do the forest and the stream seem to meet? What does the word "plight" suggest about their meeting? What suggests a meeting-place out of sight? Why is the meeting represented as taking place in the shadow? Now what is described in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... thing on earth, that all thing breeds, Might be the cause of so impatient plight? What furie, or what feend, with felon deeds 45 Hath stirred up so mischievous despight? Can griefe then enter into heavenly harts, And pierce immortall breasts ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... bayou at the point opposite his only house and home, and it was pitchy dark, when, having swam across the stagnant channel, he trudged, wet and weary, to the barred door of Cacosotte's Tavern, and knocked. Mex undid the bolts and let her master in, her sagacious eyes swiftly taking note of his bodily plight and desperate mood. To her demonstration of savage tenderness he returned a ferocious growl, and shoved ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... summons his Majesty's lieges from their repose? A very soldado, o' truth. Hark ye, sir, or my lord, or thy grace, or whatsoever title your honour's honour may be pleased to approve, thou must curb thy tongue play, or by the seven witches of Gambleside thou may find thyself in but a sorry plight.' ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and haggard. She must consider her appearance a little more than she had done lately in view of this future time. Her being somewhat weather-browned would not matter; it would be rather an advantage, as testifying to her banishment; but she must be in comfortable plight, ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... Mind.[4] Pray what is this? demanded one.— That, sir, is Phoebus, alias, Sun: A classick work you can't deny; The car and horses in the sky, The clouds on which they hold their way, Proclaim him all the God of Day. Nay, learned sir, his dirty plight More fit beseems the God of Night. Besides, I cannot well divine How mud like this can ever shine.— Then look at that a little higher.— I see 'tis Orpheus, by his lyre. The beasts that listening stand around, Do well declare the force of sound: But why the fiction thus reverse, And ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... your glances bright Deal death to him who greets you on your way; Love my assailant, heedless of my plight, Cares nought if what he ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... bound On blissful burglary. A cunning sound In that wing-music held me: down I lay In amber shades of many a golden spray, Where looping low with languid arms the Vine In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight Herself unto her ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... not only confused and bewildered, but chagrined by the exhibition made before the lad and his own warriors, who, had they possessed any sense of humor, would have laughed at the sorry plight ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... is a safer guide than either right or duty. For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are often still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them, will lead us into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure. When men burn their fingers through following after pleasure they find out their mistake and get to see where they have gone wrong more easily than when they ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... he had seen him. Whereupon they said he was: he replied, that the God over all was his protector. But when his affection to him made him shed tears, he retired, desiring he might not be seen in that plight by his brethren. Then Joseph took them to supper, and they were set down in the same order as they used to sit at their father's table. And although Joseph treated them all kindly, yet did he send a mess to Benjamin that was double to what ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... than Peter Doane himself would recognize his desperation of plight—and if he had "gone bad" there was but one road for his feet and the security of the colony depended ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... they encountered an Indian who guided them to a place called Moose Factory. Here they wrote the letters home which reached their wives and the daily press before they themselves returned to civilization. A great hue and cry was raised by the newspapers about their plight. Newspaper correspondents vied with each other for the honor of being the first to meet ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... was an experiment along certain directions which were later to repay the dramatist most richly. Here first an exquisite lyric interprets the romantic note in the play; here first the production of a troth-plight ring confounds the faithless lover, and here we first meet one of the charming group of loving ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... one another everywhere was wickedness everywhere want. Her heart felt as if it would break. What was to reach these poor, miserable fellow creatures of hers? Who was to raise them out of their horrible plight? The coarse distortion and the narrow contraction of Christ's teaching which she had just heard, offered no remedy for this evil. Nor could she think that secularism would reach these. To understand secularism you meed a fair share of intellect what intellect would these poor creatures have? ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Will Ives, time has dealt more kindly with you than with me, I trow. You are scarce a whit changed from the day, seventeen years back come November, when I first stopped in sorry plight at this forge, with your pretty wife as my companion, to get your assistance as far as Figeon's Farm. Why, and here is Mistress Joan herself; and I warrant that that fine lad is the son ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... man turned with some apprehension mingling with his joy. He would almost as soon be detected appropriating funds from the bank where he clerked, as be caught in this ignominious plight. There was just a slight sense of relief, however, for they had been a long time in the water. But he ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... venial crimes in Love's gay spring, Prompt the youthful Female's sigh; When her roses all take wing, And Matrons sage her plight descry; ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... October, I, in my own capacity as Hector Ratichon, who had been absent from my office for twenty-four hours, would arrive there in the morning, find the place locked, force an entrance into the apartment, and there find M. le Marquis in his pitiable plight. After which I would, of course, immediately notify the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... because, you see, I hadn't any powder left; and I was coming through the woods—just as I told you—when the Yanks got sight of me." He smiled down at her bravely, striving to add a dash of comedy to his tragic plight. "And I tell you, Virgie, your old dad had to run like a turkey—wishing to the Lord ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... made haste to help bruin to the last of the seed-cakes, and escaped without injury, but in a ridiculous plight,—his hat smashed, his necktie and linen rumpled, and his watch dangling; but his fright was the most ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... But the troth plight had been given. Dalaber could have sung aloud in the gladness of his heart. She was his own, his very own; and what a life they would live together! No cloud should ever touch their happiness, or mar their perfect concord. They were one in body, soul, and spirit, and nothing could ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sun turns against the clock, When Avon waters upward flow, When eggs are laid by barn-door cock, When dusty hens do strut and crow, When up is down, when left is right, Oh, then I'll break the troth I plight, With careless eye Away I'll fly And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... short consultation, Naude advised me to come home. They would stay in the bush and wait until the moon went down, he said. I hated leaving them in such a plight, but Naude insisted, and I only came away when he said he thought there would be more chance for them to get through unobserved if they were fewer in number. How they managed without residential passes and handicapped by those parcels, I do ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... to remember—you made Yorkshire and Lancashire shake with your shout on that occasion. The ringers cracked a bell in Briarfield belfry; it is dissonant to this day. The Association of Merchants and Manufacturers dined together at Stilbro', and one and all went home in such a plight as their wives would never wish to witness more. Liverpool started and snorted like a river-horse roused amongst his reeds by thunder. Some of the American merchants felt threatenings of apoplexy, and had themselves bled—all, like wise men, at ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Jennet blush'd, how Alfred with a stride Bore off his prize, and fancied every charm, And clipp'd against his ribs her trembling arm; How mute we seniors stood, our power all gone? Completely conquer'd, Love the day had won, And the young vagrant triumph'd in our plight, And shook his roguish plumes, and laugh'd outright. Yet, by my life and hopes, I would not part With this sweet recollection from my heart; I would not now forget that tender scene To wear a crown, or make my girl a queen. Why need be told how pass'd ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... hopes ye annih'late, Ye powers of the sky! Who'll strengthen me, fainting, Against the god's might? Who'll heed my lamenting, My sorrowful plight? Ah! whom can I wend to? Will earth e'er attend to A powerless cry, Which cruel gods smile at? My hopes ye annih'late, Ye powers of the sky! Ha! ye have crush'd my heart! Oh Hother! Hother! Where art thou? Ah! I can no more! I'm ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... me all The teaeles a-painted roun' the wall; An' vu'st the bride did stan' to plight Her wedden vow, below the light A-shooten down, so bright's a fleaeme, In drough a churches window freaeme. An' near the bride, on either hand, You'd zee her comely bridemaids stand, Wi' eyelashes a-bent in streaeks O' brown above their bloomen cheaeks: An' sheenen feaeir, in mellow light, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... The Texan's plight had applied any spur the pursuers might have needed. Confident they were now going to gather in at least two bushwhackers, the shouting behind took on a premature shrilling of triumph. There was a blast of shooting, and Drew ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered on his face as he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's plight,—the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The effect of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion she was no ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on foot, without shoes or coat, and his head bandaged by a handkerchief. He announced himself as the Captain Duncan who had been captured by Wade Hampton in Fayetteville, but had escaped; and, on my inquiring how he happened to be in that plight, he explained that when he was a prisoner Wade Hampton's men had made him "get out of his coat, hat, and shoes," which they appropriated to themselves. He said Wade Hampton had seen them do it, and he had appealed to him personally for protection, as an officer, but Hampton answered him with a ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... thing from only one of these witnesses, you know nothing; you should be sceptical. If the witness is dead, you should be still more sceptical, for you cannot enlighten yourself. If from several witnesses who are dead, you are in the same plight. If from those to whom the witnesses have spoken, your scepticism ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Mount Cenis, on his return from Savoy, had broken his wrist. The people, he said, would rather they had both broken their necks "than any other joint, the King having racked the nation for their sakes, as he hath-done." Stafford expressed much compassion for the French in the plight in which they found themselves. "Unhappy people!" he cried, "to have such a King, who seeketh nothing but to impoverish them to enrich a couple, and who careth not what cometh after his death, so that he may rove on while he liveth, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reached the side of the Vindictive he saw a second storming party coming over the side, equipped with Lewis machine-guns and rifles and hand bombs. Frank approached the commander of the party, Lieutenant-Commander Hastings, and outlined the plight of ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... perfectly composed. She told him the substance of the letter, of David's plight, of the fever, of the intended fight, of Nahoum Pasha, of the peril to David's work. He continued to interrogate her, while she could have shrieked out the question, "What is in yonder document? What do you know? Have you news of his safety?" Would he never stop ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... armies on shore, while victory hung in the balance, were a prey to the most agonizing and conflicting emotions; the natives thirsting for more glory than they had already won, while the invaders feared to find themselves in even worse plight than before. The all of the Athenians being set upon their fleet, their fear for the event was like nothing they had ever felt; while their view of the struggle was necessarily as chequered as the battle itself. Close ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... would have cried if they dared. Their mother wept outright: and the good-natured Jerome could only shake his head and sigh, and mutter that he feared that was the plight of millions more in France. His smoking comrade again gave out, between two puffs, that before these boys were men, everything might be changed, and the nobles might chance to find their mouths stuffed with boiled nettles, for once, just to show what they were like. This speech made ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... wound made much worriment. The little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed that he could measure his plight. But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... indignant cries, all exclaiming with one voice that the princes ought to leave their horses and fight in the ranks on equal terms with their men, lest if any mischance should occur they should avail themselves of the facility of escaping, and leave the mass of the army in miserable plight. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the Sand river, which runs through Schultz' farm, the Maxim, outpaced and overdriven, stuck fast, and it was promptly attacked and captured by a party of twenty-five of the enemy who had descried its plight from Talana, its detachment holding out until all were killed or wounded. In this affair nine Boer prisoners were also released. About 1.15 p.m., a party of two hundred Boers was seen descending Impati through the collieries at its northern extremity. The mountain already held ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... that of the lecturer. By some hard luck he happened to be passing that way when the crowd was looking for the Abolitionist, and was discovered. "There he goes," was the cry that was raised, and a fire of eggs and other things was opened upon him. He reached his home in an awful plight, and it was charged that his conversation was ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... said, with social satire rather than politics. "A Disaster" treats of a lady who has lost both hat and wig together by the same gust of wind; her footman behind has caught one of these in each hand, and the rustics, who have preserved nature's covering, laugh at her plight. Collet's picture of "Father Paul in his Cups, or The Private Devotions of a Convent," was one of a series by our artist intended to illustrate Sheridan's comedy of "The Duenna," produced in 1775. This was close upon the period of Lord Gordon's riots (1780), and the "No ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... reduced by upsets and other accidents to enough musty flour for ten days, plenty of coffee, and a few dried apples. The bacon had spoiled. Most of the scientific instruments were in the bottom of the river. One boat was destroyed. The men were wet to the skin and unable to make a fire. In this plight they entered the Grand Canyon, somewhere in whose depths a great ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... The two of them had been watching the quarrel. "No farmer can hire a maid against her will. There are servants to spare here; take your pick and let these alone," and the tricky Martha and Nancy nearly fainted with trying to suppress their laughter as they witnessed Sir Tristram's plight. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... all in white, like a saint, And so is no mate for me— And the daisy's cheek is tipped with a blush, She is of such low degree; Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves, And the broom's betroth'd to the bee;— But I will plight with the dainty rose, For fairest of all ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... can comprehend the loneliness, the hollow futility of our plight. Fifty thousand skilled workmen with nothing to do. Some of the less adaptable gave up, prostrating themselves upon the bare rocks until their joints froze from lack of use, and their works corroded. Others served the ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... But his plight was desperate, nevertheless. He was dangling in space, the hard pavement thirty feet below him, with no possible way of pulling himself up to the roof again. And the hook was so small that there was no place ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... along a track up the Valley of Lebanon[34] (many miles wide) the Brigade pushed on to Rayak. All along the road, right from Khan Dimez, the previous day, there was evidence of the sorry plight of the Turk. Hundreds of dead horses, dead bodies (stripped by the villagers), broken wagons and even ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... not even know the language of the country, they could not ask their way; and as they were surrounded by enemies, they must be constantly on their guard lest they should be surprised and taken prisoners or killed. They were indeed in a sorry plight; and no wonder that they all fancied they would never see their homes again. When night came on, they flung themselves down upon the ground without having eaten any supper. Their hearts were so heavy, however, ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... Duke of York's army, after remaining in a sorry plight near Ostend, it moved forward to Quesnoy to prolong Coburg's right; but the retreat of the main body involved his retirement towards Ostend, near which town he routed some detachments of French. For a time the Allies gained a few advantages and recovered lost ground. But the Republicans ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the Crow, who had missed the Deer upon returning that evening, and had sought for him everywhere, discovered him; and seeing his sad plight, exclaimed— ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... ship alarming seas. The air, filled with sleet and icy snow, cut like a knife through the thickest clothing, and again Edward Tilley, swooning with exhaustion and cold, lay lifeless in the bottom of the boat, sadly watched by his brother in hardly better plight and by Carver, who, like the father of a family, carried all his ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... like the rest of us," replied Mistress Owen. "A good hater of the enemy in the aggregate, but a commiserator of one who happens to be in a plight. Peggy, how ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... painful sight To see a nation great and good Reduced to such a sorry plight, And courtiers crawl where freemen stood, And king and priests combine to seize the spoil, While widows weep and ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... vessel, but with a very lofty, independent mien, as if he had just happened that way on his travels, and was only lingering to take a good view of us. It was amusing to observe his coolness and haughty unconcern in that sad plight he was in; by nothing in his manner betraying that he was several hundred miles at sea, and did not know how he was going to get back to land. But presently I noticed he found it not inconsistent with his dignity to alight on the rigging under friendly cover of the tops'l, where I saw his feathers ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... clanged the bell, caught Patrick by the waist-line, thrust him under her desk, fenced him in with a chair, and turned to Isaac who had only just realized the full horror of his plight. Isidore Belchatosky and Eva Gonorowsky had torn off the white tunic—thereby disclosing quantities of red flannel—and exhibited its desecrated back. And speech, English speech returned to the Prince of Hester Street. Haltingly at first, but with ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... was almost unendurable for Helen. When she slept it was to dream horrible dreams; when she lay awake it was to have her heart leap to her throat at a rustle of leaves near the window, and to be in torture of imagination as to poor Bo's plight. A thousand times Helen said to herself that Beasley could have had the ranch and welcome, if only Bo had been spared. Helen absolutely connected her enemy with her sister's disappearance. Riggs might have been a ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... got to have the cash, kid! Got to have it, don't you see? It was I who landed us in this plight and I'm the one to get us out. It's nobody's ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... to the children of his tribe, and the men came one by one to shake hands with Dalgetty, while the women, clamorous in their gratitude, pressed round to kiss even the hem of his garment. "They plight their faith to you," said Ranald MacEagh, "for requital of the good deed you have done to the tribe ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... The present plight of the German people under war conditions may serve to show how nearly that end may be attained, and yet how inadequate even the most unreserved measures of industrial isolation must be in face of the fact that the modern ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... its equipments that a whole day was consumed in the passage of a mail train over the eighty miles traversed. The Seaboard route to Portsmouth, Virginia, was prostrate and out of use. The Wilmington Road, though it was in somewhat better plight, was still served by feeble engines, which drew a few trains slowly along the track, ironed no more heavily than the wheels ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... are sparrows, not larks; clay, not alabaster; deal, not mahogany. But if we cannot work miracles, we can speak true, strong words about Jesus Christ; we can bear witness to Him as the Lamb of God; we can urge men to repent and believe the Gospel. The world would have been in a sorry plight if it had depended entirely on its geniuses and miracle-workers. Probably it owes less to them than to the untold myriads of simple, humble, obscure, and commonplace people, whose names will never be recorded ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... wake; they'll have a devil of a time." For six months Byrnes had tried everything to bring the crime home to him, but in vain. At last he sent out and had McGloin and his two "pals" arrested, but so that none of them knew of the plight of the others. McGloin was taken to Mulberry Street, and orders were given to bring the others in at a certain hour fifteen or twenty minutes apart. Byrnes put McGloin at the window in his office while he questioned him. Nothing could be got out of him. As he sat there ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... in the land knows that it is I who have reduced him to his present plight. The Court is full of his kinsmen. Some day one of them will come into power. Then an inquiry will be set afoot, and disaster will overtake us. And since we have flouted Heaven and defied the laws of humanity, neither ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... a rambling, patronising effusion, in his usual style; but every word of it, in my present plight, had a sting ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... (as far as I was concerned) occurred after the whole grand show was over. Irving and I came away together, and we had hardly got into the street, when a most pelting shower came on, and cabs and umbrellas were in requisition in all directions. As we were provided with neither, our plight was becoming serious, when a common cad ran up to me, and said,—'Shall I get you a cab, Mr. Moore? Sure, a'n't I the man that patronizes your Melodies?' He then ran off in search of a vehicle, while Irving and I stood close up, like a pair ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... more replies of equal veracity, on reading being made to the respondent of the present interrogatory, Diderot "said that the answers contain the truth, persisted in them, and signed," as witness his hand. A sorrowful picture, indeed, of the plight of an apostle of a new doctrine. On the other hand, the apostle of the new doctrine was perhaps good enough for the preachers of the old. Two years before this, the priest of the church of Saint Medard had thought it ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... an heroic exploit, he said "he hoped they would not disgrace themselves by wearing their cloaks." The consequence was, that these feather-bed soldiers suffered most wretchedly, as they were soaked to the skin before they had got two miles on the road to Bristol. Their being kept in this woeful plight all day caused the death of two or three of them; Robert Ansty, a butcher, and Wilton, who kept the Bear inn at Holloway, never recovered from the effects of their trip to Bristol. There was, in truth, no more call for soldiers at Bristol on that day than there was for them in the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Back to Saybrook. Extermination of Pequot Tribe. Peace. Miantonomoh and Uncas. Dutch War with Indians. Caused by Kieft's Impolicy. Liquor. Underhill Comes. Mrs. Hutchinson's Fate. Deborah Moody. New Haven Refuses Aid. Appeal to Holland. Underhill's Exploits. Kieft Removed. Sad Plight of New Netherland. Subsequent Hostilities and ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... noiselessly about, very grave and silent, as if doing penance for some violation of the code of honor. By many gentle, indirect approaches, I perceived that part of his tail-feathers were undeveloped. The sylvan prince could not think of returning to court in this plight, and so, amid the falling leaves and cold rains of autumn, was patiently biding ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... had become more and more frequent for the last few years. And so, prostrated by sickness, nearly ruined in means, and now hopeless of encouragement from the Sovereigns, the discoverer of the New World arrived at Seville, on the 7th of November, 1504, in as miserable a plight as his worst enemy ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... the hunters, who desired to carry him alive to the King, tied him to a tree while they went in search of a wagon to carry him on. Just then the little Mouse happened to pass by, and seeing the sad plight in which the Lion was, went up to him and soon gnawed away the ropes that bound the King of the Beasts. "Was I not right?" said the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... stupidity was one of fear rather than disdain; she could not look Novikoff in the face, but trembled before him, like a slave. Her plight was pitiable as that of a helpless bird whose wings have been clipped, and that ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... Is not a preparation as long and arduous required to make a designer as to make a painter or a sculptor? And is not the half-baked designer in as sorry a plight as the half-baked artist of any kind? The answer to both is simple: The lay student is not in any degree a painter or a sculptor or a designer, neither is he in training for any of these professions. The advantage of the Design method is, that with no skill ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... means relaxed their vigilance. A round of the premises convinced Alaire that the place was effectually guarded, and showed her the futility of trying to slip away. She realized, too, that even if she managed to do so, her plight would be little better. For how could she hope to cover the hundred miles between La Feria and the Rio Grande when ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... melting into fable; only the new Spirit in its holiest power can restore to those homes their boasted security of "each man's castle," for Woman, the warder, is driven into the street, and has let fall the keys in her sad plight. Yet darkest hour of night is nearest dawn, and there seems reason ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... were represented in the organization: miners, masons, carpenters, plasterers, engineers, electricians, and many grades of helpers. Learning his plight, they rallied promptly to his aid. They appealed to their trades and to the central body of unions to intervene in his ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... pews, men worship God in words, But meet their kind with swords, When Fair Religion, stripped of holy passion, Walks masked as Fashion, Let me not wax indignant at the sight; Or waste my strength bewailing her sad plight. This is my task: to search in my own mind Until the qualities of God I find; To seek them in the hearts of friend and foe - Or high or low; And in my hours of toil, or prayer, or play, To live my creed each day. ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... manner of curious plans to attract attention to my plight from a long distance over the sea. Fire was my main thought. I knew that no vessel—scarcely a mail-carrying steamship—would pass a fire at sea without investigation. Had I been a modern Munchausen I might ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... wounded were there lying on the platforms; about a hundred of them, with their clothes torn, and covered with dust. They presented a sad picture. They were, it is true, only slightly wounded; but it cuts one to the heart to see soldiers in that plight, hauled out upon the ground without straw to lie upon or any doctor to attend to them. However, they had all had first-aid dressings. Below the bandages that bound their heads their feverish eyes gleamed in the light of the lanterns. Their bandaged arms were supported by pieces of linen tied ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... gallants at the playhouses. They were gentlemen or beggars as daily circumstances ordained. When this was the case with such authors as Greene, Peele, and Massinger, we need not wonder at finding "a whole knot" of writers in infinitely worse plight, who lived (or starved) by writing ballads and pamphlets on temporary subjects. In a brief tract, called "The Downfall of Temporising Poets," published 1641, they are said to be "an indifferent strong corporation, twenty-three of you sufficient ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... as before, was too frightened to articulate a sound, and my wife was in the same plight. With Dora, however, it was otherwise, and she electrified us by going up to ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... evil plight, but bearing himself with such dignity as was adapted to the princely character, Albert was ushered into the apartment of Victor Lee, where, in his father's own chair, reclined the triumphant enemy of the cause to which the house of ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... he lifted her down from her horse and led her upstairs to the royal chamber. In the meantime the real Princess was left standing below in the courtyard. The old King, who was looking out of his window, beheld her in this plight, and it struck him how sweet and gentle, even beautiful, she looked. He went at once to the royal chamber, and asked the bride who it was she had brought with her and had left thus standing in the court below. "Oh!" replied the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... mosquito-plague had infected the great, busy, joyous metropolis of the south. Ignorant of the real processes of the infection, New Orleans had fought it blindly, frantically, in an agony of panic, and when at last the frost put an end to the helpless city's plight, she lay spent and prostrate. The yellow fever of 1905 came with a more formidable and unexpected suddenness than that of 1897. It sprang into life like a secret and armed uprising in the midst of the city, full-fledged and terrible. ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... the morning, on the 8th, Mr Pickersgill returned, together with his companions, in no very good plight, having been at the head of the arm he was sent to explore, which he judged to extend in to the eastward about eight miles. In it is a good anchoring-place, wood, fresh water, wild fowl, and fish. At nine o'clock I set out ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... and in following her, he trod upon a soft place, which gave way with him, and before he knew where he was, he found himself in the midst of the market of the fell-mongers, who were calling skins for sale and buying and selling. When they saw him in this plight, naked, with yard on end, shaven face, dyed eyebrows and rouged cheeks, they cried out and clapped their hands at him and flogged him with skins upon his naked body, till he swooned away; when they set him on an ass and carried him to the chief of the police, who said, "What is this?" ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... ground he looked at the rent in dismay. He was generally nice and particular about his clothes, and he was very unwilling to go to Mary Erskine's, and let her and Bella see him in such a plight. He was equally unwilling to go home again, and to ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... problems confronting us are large and forbidding. And, certainly, no one can or should minimize the plight of millions of our friends and neighbors who are living in the bleak emptiness of unemployment. But we must and can give them good reason ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... they bound his hands. That sore unworthy plight Might well express his helplessness, doomed never more to fight. Again, from cincture down to knee, long bolts of iron he bore, Which signified the knight should ride ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... avenge Atli on Thorbiorn Oxmain at the right moment. At last he finds it; and Thorbiorn, as well as his sixteen-year-old son Arnor, who rather disloyally helps him, is slain by Grettir single-handed. His plight at first is not much worsened by this; for though the simple plan of setting off Thorbiorn against Atli is not adopted, Grettir's case is backed directly by his kinsmen and indirectly by the two craftiest men in Iceland, Snorri the Godi and Skapti the Lawman, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... such a case? Helen, above all, would never show it; and Althea was at once oppressed, and at the same time oddly sustained by the thought that she had, all inevitably, done her friend an injury. She lay awake at night, turning over in her mind Helen's present plight and framing loving plans for the future. She took refuge in such plans from a sense of having come to an end of things. To think of Helen, and of what, with their wealth, she and Franklin could do for Helen, seemed, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood Praying; for from the mercy-seat above Prevenient grace descending had removed The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh Regenerate grow instead; that sighs now breathed Unutterable; ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... a few attendants, rode leisurely off towards the south. Eight miles from Omdurman a score of swift camels awaited him, and on these he soon reached the main body of his routed army. Here he found many disheartened friends; but the fact that, in this evil plight, he found any friends at all must be recorded in his favour and in that of his subjects. When he arrived he had no escort—was, indeed, unarmed. The fugitives had good reason to be savage. Their leaders had led them only to their ruin. To cut the throat of this one man who ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... bleed; and with such horrible actions, partly by prayers, and partly with lunatic curses, they move or terrify the ignorant countryfolks into giving them alms. This poor fellow was such a one; and the king seeing him in so wretched a plight, with nothing but a blanket about his loins to cover his nakedness, could not be persuaded but that the fellow was some father who had given all away to his daughters, and brought himself to that pass: for nothing he ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... bombardment; when he is literally in the last ditch, with a strip of cold steel the only thing between him and death—then Tommy smiles, then he cracks a joke. Without a thought of himself, without a murmur, he faces any desperate plight. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... had risked everything on the success of this, and the poor child would have been left in a sad plight. Marriage was ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... called upon to do it. So he stood in the doorway of his deserted shop, for all his young assistants, his curlers and shampooers, had been mobilized, and looked up and down the deserted street, and congratulated himself that he was not in as bad a plight, financially and otherwise, as some ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... For when the Cause, whence Evil doth arise, Removed is, th' Effect surceaseth still. Abstain from Pleasure, and restrain your Will, Subdue Desire, and bridle loose Delight: Use scanted Diet, and forbear your Fill; Shun Secrecy, and talk in open sight: So shall you soon repair your present evil Plight. [1]' ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... coax you into sitting. I sent you, ten days ago, a batch of notes, and a most unworthy letter of thanks for one of your parcels of gift-books; and I write the rather now to tell you I am better than then, and hope to be in a still better plight before July or August, when a most welcome letter from Mr. Tuckerman has bidden us to expect you to officiate as Master of the Ceremonies to Mr. Hawthorne, who, welcome for himself, will be trebly welcome ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... inheritance, and would gladly have done her to death, knew not what better to do than to fly back here, leaving word for her lord where she was to be found; and thus it came that ere she had been gone from us a year, she returned in more desolate plight than at the first." ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Hsiu in Jang, when Liu Piao sent reinforcements with a view to cutting off Ts'ao's retreat. The latter was obliged to draw off his troops, only to find himself hemmed in between two enemies, who were guarding each outlet of a narrow pass in which he had engaged himself. In this desperate plight Ts'ao waited until nightfall, when he bored a tunnel into the mountain side and laid an ambush in it. As soon as the whole army had passed by, the hidden troops fell on his rear, while Ts'ao himself turned and met his pursuers in front, so that they were thrown into confusion ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... news which I am sure will be very welcome to you all. It is to the effect that our wireless operator has succeeded in getting into touch with the Bolivia and acquainting the captain of that vessel with our somewhat unfortunate plight. The Bolivia, as some of you are doubtless aware, is homeward bound, but upon learning the news of our accident, her captain has unhesitatingly interrupted his voyage and is at this moment heading for our position as rapidly as his powerful engines will drive him. He expects to arrive ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... towards the shore. Although he was upset by the accident which had so suddenly substituted the water for the ship (and it was nearing supper time, and there were always ices for supper!), Chimp was not a boy at all given to fear, and he could think of his new plight with composure. His first calm thought was regret for the mongoose which he was taking back to school, 'although,' as he said to himself, 'the chances are, Porker wouldn't let me keep it,' Porker being the way in which Chimp spoke of Dr. Cyril Bigley Plowden, Principal of Witherson College. ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... a painful sight To see a nation great and good Reduced to such a sorry plight, And courtiers crawl where freemen stood, And king and priests combine to seize the spoil, While widows ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... hiss out of the chamber. He found the hatchway too tight for comfort and had a moment of fear when his tool pack caught in the orifice, wedging him neatly. He could hear Logan and Ruiz through his earphones, explaining their plight to Ground Control. They wanted to know why in blue blazes Valier hadn't contacted the doughnut when it came within range, and Logan had no defense save preoccupation with his own plight. Belatedly, Ruiz made radio contact with the doughnut, which was still ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... my sister so to seek, Or so unprincipled in virtue's book, And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, As that the single want of light and noise (Not being in danger, as I trust she is not) 370 Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts, And put them into misbecoming plight. Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where, with her best nurse, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... efforts at self-control, Ned's muscles trembled and he found it difficult to walk steadily. Assuming that his chums were in like plight, the lad summoned all his courage and reached out a reassuring hand to the others. The contact with his friends seemed to restore the equilibrium that had been Ned's most valuable asset in times of stress and ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... eminently respectable in life should be made so ludicrous on his eminence after death. He is bitter at the inertia of the men who set him up. Were he an ornament of the Church, not of the State that he served so conscientiously, how very different would be the treatment of his plight! If he were a Saint, occluded thus by the municipality, how many the prayers that would be muttered, the candles promised, for his release! There would be processions, too; and who knows but that there might even be ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... just and lawful aid; And if thou fail us, all our hope is done. Scotland hath will to help, but cannot help; Our people and our peers are both misled, Our treasure seiz'd, our soldiers put to flight, And, as thou seest, ourselves in heavy plight. ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... the beginning of the fine lady into which Dolly finally blossomed, and when that day Frank went home to his dinner he noticed something in her manner which he could not understand until she told him of Mrs. Atherton's call, and the plight in which ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... year's imprisonment. The jailer held the lantern close to the tanned face of the reader and nodded encouragingly to Bousquier. The latter was mumbling the Lord's Prayer. Greatly agitated, and groping about for a way out of his plight, he said finally that everything was as he had first related, only the tobacco-dealer had paid him not with a gold-piece but a couple of silver coins. He repeated his confession before the magistrate, who had been summoned despite the lateness ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... most remarkable thing I have ever heard! Wouldn't you like to tell me how you happened to get into such a plight?" ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... pretty safe to figure that the legislature man Shall receive but scanty praises though he does the best he can, And with fellows on the left of him and fellows on the right, Full of sage advice and counsel, his is not a happy plight; But the record has been written and for us it stands for aye, So, it's good-bye, Mister Speaker! ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... benumbed her senses. Oh, if some one would come and carry her to mamma! It was so dreadful to be alone in the night. It was worse than hunger and cold. If she only had Dinah! Dinah would be sorry. Poor Dinah! She was in as bad a plight as her mistress. No one had taken her from the door-step where she was lying in a heap, soaked through and through by the rain. All her faculties were gone now, all her members disordered. There was nothing about her ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... wandering about the old cathedral or counting the restored statues on the river bridge. I always feel a longing to speak to these late birds of passage for they look so forlorn without their mates, that they make me think of my own sad plight so far away from you all; when the lectures begin I hope that I will be more satisfied than ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... going on in the village near by. He attended the various political meetings held at the "Travellers' Rest," and was a prominent man on training and election days. After a while, his wife began to look on these days with a troubled feeling, for they generally sent him home in a sad plight; and it took nearly a week for him to get settled down again to his work. Thus the declension began, and its progress was too sadly apparent to the eyes of Mrs. Foster, even before others, less interested than herself, observed it. ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... their selections for themselves, leaving the remainder for their followers. Amongst the captives were a father and two sons. In October, 1899, the Americans sent a gunboat to Cottabato, and the wife of this captive, mother of his two boys, represented her plight to the commander, who forthwith sent for Piang and ordered him immediately to send a message to the individual holding the captives to release them and hand them over to the messenger, who would conduct them back to Cottabato. Piang, without ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... with ease to lying and the practice of deceit; and even the taking of human life seemed no longer a monstrous thing. If he were caught in the Governor's company he would have a pretty time of it satisfying a court of his innocence; but he considered his plight tranquilly. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... the reassurance came that at least one good fighting man was waiting to do nothing but assist her. For the moment she threw caution to the winds and remembered nothing but her plight and her ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... in very handsome plight," said Chiffinch; "and you know his Majesty is gracious enough ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth. ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... be imagined, such battling as this did not put much money into the treasury of the parent company; and the letters written by Sanders at this time prove that it was in a hard plight. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... of which escaped me, he constituted himself a reception committee of one and started for the ladder's foot. But our doughty Teuton was a resourceful person. Roused to the urgency of his plight, he looked wildly up at me, down at the officer, and, hastily pushing up the nearest window, hoisted himself across its sill, and again took refuge in the St. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... or shall be ready in some proper house, with their friends and neighbors." That the church is named first as the proper place shows that it is to be preferred for a marriage. It can be solemnized there in a more seemly and dignified way than elsewhere, and those coming to plight their vows may be more deeply impressed with the solemnity ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... current, and sending him struggling down a rapid, it threw him at last, like a bundle of old clothes, on a shallow, where he managed to get on his feet, and staggered to the shore in a most melancholy plight. Thereafter he returned to the encampment, like a drowned rat, with his long hair plastered to his thin face, and his soaked garments clinging tightly to his slender body. Had he been able to see himself at that moment, ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... to abandon all hope of saving any more of our unfortunate shipmates, and had to think of our own safety. Just as we had come to this resolve, another sea rolled towards the wreck, and when it passed over not a fragment of her remained hanging together. We were in a sad plight. None of us had saved more than the clothes we had on our backs, and some of the watch below had not had time even to put on all theirs. In getting into the boat I had lost my shoes, which I thought a great misfortune, as my feet felt very cold, and I ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... him for so many years gave away. He opened his veins and lay down to die, when in his despair he heard the voice of Gefhardt, the friendly sentinel from the other prison. Hearing of Trenck's sad plight, he scaled the palisade, and, we are told expressly, bound up his wounds, though we are not told how he managed to enter the cell. Be that as it may, the next day, when the guards came to open the door, they found Trenck ready ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... fire; and nothing actually remained of the "Coldstream Guards" but a kettle-drummer of uncertain nationality, and a man carrying a red and green flag, which he might very possibly have captured from some Sunday-school treat. The opposite side were in no better plight: men were lying crushed under the ruins of the works which they had so gallantly defended; and hardly enough artillerymen were left to have pulled back, with their united efforts, the spring of one of the pea cannons. The leaders on both sides remained unscathed, and continued to ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... knew, too, now where to join his leader. The corner of the street by the canal, where Sir Andrew Ffoulkes would be waiting with the coal-cart; then there was the spinney on the road to St. Germain. Armand hoped that, with good luck, he might yet overtake his comrades, tell them of Jeanne's plight, and entreat them ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... sorrow must I tune my song, And set my Harpe to notes of saddest wo, Which on our dearest Lord did sease er'e long, Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse then so, 10 Which he for us did freely undergo. Most perfect Heroe, try'd in heaviest plight Of labours huge and hard, too hard ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... chief features of the South American coast-line had seemingly improved. To all appearance, she alone among the passengers, now that Christobal was gone, realized vaguely the perilous plight of the Kansas. The fact was that even a girl of her apparently frivolous disposition could not avoid the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... inspected. Many wretched young men, and some old ones, too, were routed out, but the proprietors of the camp seemed to have a right to their services, either by contract, or through the action of the criminal laws. Sad indeed was their plight, but the rescuers had no legal right to ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... undeniably the most depressing. It is not that Gissing's picture of poverty in the literary profession is wanting in the elements of truth, although even in that profession there is even more eccentricity than the author leads us to suppose in the social position and evil plight of such men as Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen. But the contrast between Edwin Reardon, the conscientious artist loving his art and working for its sake, and Jasper Milvain, the man of letters, who ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... he was to lie there that night, seeing that as yet we had no more beds than we had bought for our own need from old Zabel Nering the forest-ranger his widow, at Uekeritze. Wherefore she took me aside: What was to be done? My bed was in an ill plight, her little godchild having lain on it that morning; and she could no wise put the young nobleman into hers, although she would willingly creep in by the maid herself. And when I asked her why not? she blushed scarlet, and began to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... was night, So sad was their plight! The sun it went down, And the moon gave no light! They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried, And the poor little things, they lay ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... warning of scorched timbers came to his nostrils, Jerry O'Keefe had recognized the desperation of his plight and he laid out his simple plans in accordance. He meant to stay where he was till the last endurable moment, hoping against hope for the coming of the rescuers. When it was no longer possible to ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... miserable as such an accommodation is at all times, they were glad and thankful to creep into it. It was about eight feet square, and six or seven feet high. They now congratulated each other on their deliverance, but found themselves in very bad plight. The missionaries had taken but a small stock of provisions with them, merely sufficient for the short journey to Okkak. Joel, his wife and child, and Kassigiak the sorcerer, had nothing at all. They were therefore obliged to divide the small ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... in woful plight; borne in an hour syne by four carles who said you had been set upon by the Master of Albany, and sair harried, and they say the Tutor doth nought but wail for his bairns. How won ye out ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cousin, who tells the story in his Histoire de Constantinople, states that 'the weight of his body having more power to drag him down than his artificial wings had to sustain him, he broke his bones, and his evil plight was such that he did not ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... most expedient for it, relying on God, who will aid them. The storms were frightful. The almiranta suffered the most terrible voyage that ever ship has suffered. For after a few blasts they had to cut down the mast, and, when they reached thirty-six degrees, they lost their rudder. In such plight they agreed to return, suffering destructive hurricanes, so that, had not the ship been so staunch, it would have been swallowed up in the sea a thousand times. Finally God was pleased to have it return, as if by a miracle; and as such was it considered by all the inhabitants ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... crimes in Love's gay spring, Prompt the youthful Female's sigh; When her roses all take wing, And Matrons sage her plight descry; ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... Achilles. Infirm though he was, he would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick to a ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... since he boarded the sailboat, he looked into the face of the young lady. Her clothing was thoroughly drenched by the spray, and her face was moist as though she were a mermaid just emerged from the depths of the ocean. But even in her present plight Shuffles saw that she was a very pretty girl. She was shivering with cold, and it was necessary to ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... half an hour, but they could find nothing that looked like a road. Some of the sleigh load were openly apprehensive and inclined to blame Hardy for their plight, but for the most part they were plucky and good-natured, trying to turn off their ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... captain. He was seventy-four years old with snow-white hair and had only one eye. Graham soon sank into a chair and was quite past reading barometers or anything else. He could just assent to remarks made to him by the captain and that was all. Ellen was in no better plight and sat on a bench near me, and I cannot say I felt cheerful, for the schooner, which was empty and had not much ballast, was rolling considerably. I carried on various conversations and strained my eyes to see if Mr. Keytel's boat was coming. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... "Why should I attack you?" For the instant, in realization of his own plight, he had forgotten that the original purpose of his quest had been the capture of this man who was now become his captor... But the half-breed's words recalled ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... their royal succession was thus brought up; after his birth he was delivered, not to women, but to eunuchs of the greatest authority about their kings for their virtue, whose charge it was to keep his body healthful and in good plight; and after he came to seven years of age, to teach him to ride and to go a-hunting. When he arrived at fourteen he was transferred into the hands of four, the wisest, the most just, the most temperate, and most valiant ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... enough to have excited dread in one of stouter nerves than Max Blande, who, faint and exhausted, lay there in so helpless a plight that he was not in a condition to do more than anxiously watch his captors, as they talked loudly in ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... Ben, who was fond of company and always willing to talk. "This is how it wur. None-so-pretty she caught cold when she'd bin here a couple of weeks, and the master he sent for coo-doctor. And coo-doctor come and says: 'She's in a pretty plight,' says he; 'information of the lungs she's got, and you'll never get her through it. A little dillicut scrap of a animal like that,' he says; 'she ain't not to say fit for this part of the country! An' ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... he cannot see or make understand his case. He snatches at the slightest ray of hope. He is in despair from the beginning to the end. No prison has the trained men who, with intelligence and sympathy, should know and watch and help him in his plight. No state would spend the money necessary to employ enough attendants and aids with the learning and skill necessary to build him up. Money is freely spent on the prosecution from the beginning to the end, but no effort is made to help or save. The motto of the state is: "Millions ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... ditter doing there, Bart?" said Dunning, with a broad grin, as he came up and recognized the secretary in such a strange plight and attitude. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... should consider resistance useless,' replied Saturn, 'for I tried it and failed; but at least one has a chance of success; and yet, having resisted this spirit and failed, I should not consider myself in a worse plight than you would voluntarily place yourself ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... her accustomed date, As loath the Night, incens'd by Fate, Should wreck our lovers. Hero's plight; Longs for Leander and the night: Which ere her thirsty wish recovers, She sends for two betrothed lovers, And marries tham, that, with their crew, Their sports, and ceremonies due, She covertly ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... to M. Le Mercier to offer the English a conference." He says further that ammunition was falling short, and that he thought the enemy might sally in a body and attack him.[155] The English, on their side, were in a worse plight. They were half starved, their powder was nearly spent, their guns were foul, and among them all they had but two screw-rods to clean them. In spite of his desperate position, Washington declined ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... resources of the Venetians had grown less and their plight more desperate. In 1668 they had received some assistance from French volunteers under the Duc de la Feuillade. This was followed by an application to Turenne for a general who would command their own troops in conjunction with Morosini. It was a forlorn hope ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... from constraint, showed some signs of regaining health with free-will; yet, agreeably to his own foreboding, shortly before arriving at Lima, he relapsed, finally becoming so reduced as to be carried ashore in arms. Hearing of his story and plight, one of the many religious institutions of the City of Kings opened an hospitable refuge to him, where both physician and priest were his nurses, and a member of the order volunteered to be his one special guardian and consoler, by ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... of speech I was somewhat different from the low tramp I looked. But youth is often impatient and hard; my appearance consorted so little with my tongue that he had much excuse for regarding me as a ne'er-do-well, the less deserving of pity because he probably owed his plight to ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... ill?" and Dorothy quickly counted what a disgrace it would be to a good mother to find her son in such a plight. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... glorious summer morning, saw a resumption of the battle along exactly the same lines, with the same persistent attack and defense along the eastern part of the front, and with the British making full use of the blunder made by the German right. General von Kluck had realized his plight, but, even so, he had not secured an understanding of the size of the force that was threatening his flank, and he sent as a reenforcement a single army corps which had been intrenched near Coulommiers on the Grand Morin. The British had three full army corps and were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... different degrees are economic victims of the havoc and the waste of war. It is not Central Europe only, together with large parts of the Balkans, of Russia, and of Eastern Asia, that is in this evil plight. Europe as a whole is unprovided with the foodstuffs with which to feed its population and the raw materials with which to furnish employment. If there were prevailing among them the best of wills and of cooeperative arrangements, the European peoples could not keep themselves ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... your nonsense for some luckier night— Who can have put my master in this mood? What will become on 't—I'm in such a fright, The Devil's in the urchin, and no good— Is this a time for giggling? this a plight? Why, don't you know that it may end in blood? You'll lose your life, and I shall lose my place, My mistress ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... strongly depicted as in this, his last. We have here in new picturing, humanity at bay, as in the recently completed Kyrie of the grand mass. The apparently uneven battle of the individual with fate,—the plight of the human being who finds himself a denizen of a world with which he is entirely out of harmony, who, wrought up to despair, finds life impossible yet fears to die,—is here portrayed in dramatic language. To Wagner the first movement pictured to him "the idea of the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Tooth to expose the trick. The wily Indian, perhaps knowing the habits of the race he had forsaken, had been prowling about among the sullen prisoners. He openly laughed at them for the plight in which he found them, taunting them as cowards ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... lives, believe, in the fear of the Lord. She asked many questions about the religious sects in England, as to the state of real piety, their forms, baptism, &c. Then she came to our own Society. I was in poor plight for answering questions; however, I explained the spiritual view we took of those subjects, and asked permission to send her books, in the reception of which she seemed to promise herself ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... his hitherto luxurious couch, this also was transformed into the substance which had now become the curse of his existence. The despairing king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and Dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river Pactolus, a small stream in Lydia, in order to lose the power which had become the bane of his life. Midas joyfully obeying the injunction, was at once freed from the consequences of his avaricious demand, and from this time ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... passed like a swift dream for Sir Hugh. He could think of nothing but the Lady Mary, with a strange leaping of the heart; that she was in the Castle above him, hidden somewhere like a flower in the dark walls; that he would stand before her to plight his Lord's troth; that he would ride with her through the forest; and that he would have her near him through the months, when she was wedded to the Earl—all this was a secret and urgent joy to him; not that he thought ever to win her love—such a traitorous imagining never even crossed ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was thought good enough for a slaver. Captain Linsday, of Newport, who wrote home from Aumboe, said: "I should be glad I cood come rite home with my slaves, for my vessel will not last to proceed far. We can see daylight all round her bow under deck." But he was not in any unusual plight. And not only the perils of the deep had to be encountered, but other perils, some bred of man's savagery, then more freely exhibited than now, others necessary to the execrable traffic in peaceful blacks. It as a time of constant wars and the seas swarmed ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... pulse beat, his breast heaved; and this internal strife seemed to thunder into his ears. He was now enacting the tragedy of all crippled, starved, hunted wolves at bay in their dens. Only his tragedy was infinitely more terrible because he had mind enough to see his plight, his resemblance to a lonely wolf, bloody-fanged, dripping, snarling, fire-eyed ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... night was almost unendurable for Helen. When she slept it was to dream horrible dreams; when she lay awake it was to have her heart leap to her throat at a rustle of leaves near the window, and to be in torture of imagination as to poor Bo's plight. A thousand times Helen said to herself that Beasley could have had the ranch and welcome, if only Bo had been spared. Helen absolutely connected her enemy with her sister's disappearance. Riggs might have been a ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... of labor," replied Bince. "The same holds true of everybody else. Every manufacturer in the country is in the same plight we are." ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a little more than she had done lately in view of this future time. Her being somewhat weather-browned would not matter; it would be rather an advantage, as testifying to her banishment; but she must be in comfortable plight, and for ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... So we were troth-plight; and William went forth on his career of labor and success, and I remained at home, loving him, living for him, striving to make my every act what he would have it. I went into company as he had bidden me; I studied and improved myself; I grew handsomer, too. All ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... in this case the young lady did unconsciously feel a deep interest in refuting and overcoming Nevil Beauchamp. Colonel Halkett denied the benefits of those bills. 'Look,' said he, 'at the scarecrow plight of the army under a Liberal Government!' This laid him open to the charge that he was for backing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wonder at the alteration. But if the Horse be a hardy one, and used to be hard ridden, then you will see, that one days rest, and his belly full of good meat and drink, will in one day or two almost restore him to his former plight, the food being within that short space of time so distributed, that all the Vessels will be replenish'd again, as before. And the cleaner the Horse is, the sooner recruited, and the less sign of hard riding will appear. This seems to shew the facility, with which ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... anti-Semitic journal "La France Juive" and said, "I have to thank Drumont for much of the freedom of my present conception of the Jewish problem." While he was in Paris he was stirred as never before by the feeling that the plight of the Jews was a problem which would have to have the cooperation of enlightened statesmanship. What excited him in the strangest way was the unaccountable indifference of Jews themselves to what seemed ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... this, and his imperturbable good-humour banished the last vestige of Mrs Gilmour's vexation at the children's plight. ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the second night Loaysa passed in the tools, Luis went to work with them, whipped off the staple in a trice, opened the door, and let in his Orpheus. Great was his surprise to see him on his two crutches, with such a distorted leg, and in such a tattered plight. Loaysa did not wear the patch over his eye, for it was not necessary, and as soon as he entered he embraced his pupil, kissed him on the cheek, and immediately put into his hand a big jar of wine, a box of preserves, and other sweet things, with ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... won't give up yet," he said. "Console yourself; I believe many others have been in the same plight before us." ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... buildings are becoming dilapidated and useless," they wrote, "and those who inhabit them will be frozen or starved unless the Governors contribute from their private means." They likewise vigorously called the attention of the Home Government to their incongruous and lamentable plight. "We desire earnestly," they said, "to impress upon Her Majesty's Government that the attainment of the benevolent and noble object of the founder of McGill College has been unfortunately if not culpably delayed." Yet they insisted that the present problem ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... to her has frequently heard him knock her head against the wall, and pound it, when he was out of temper, through her gains of prostitution being less than usual. He lavished upon her every sort of cruelty and abuse, and at length she grew so wretched, and was reduced to so dreadful a plight, that she ceased to attract. At this he became furious, and pawned all her clothing but one thin garment of rags. The week before her first confinement he kicked her black and blue from neck to knees, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the usual story that is told, England had been engaged with a long and vain struggle with the demon of protection, and had been year after year sinking farther into the depths until at a moment when she was in her distress and saddest plight her manufacturing system broke down, "protection, having destroyed home trade by reducing," as Mr. Atkinson says, "the entire population to beggary, destitution, and want." Mr. Cobden and his friends providentially ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... straight, A Surgeon, cry'd, A Surgeon. He tumbled down, and, as he fell, Did Murther, Murther, Murther, yell. 540 This startled their whole body so, That if the Knight had not let go His arms, but been in warlike plight, H' had won (the second time) the fight; As, if the Squire had but fall'n on, 545 He had inevitably done: But he, diverted with the care Or HUDIBRAS his hurt, forbare To press th' advantage of his fortune While danger did ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... when she stumbled, blaming her for their plight, threatening to leave her if she should fall, and flaying himself on with renewed panic, he brought her to the top of the double crevasse and the prospector's crossing. But here, with the levels of the spur before them, her strength ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... I see you know, now. It was I whom you heard playing, that first day. It was I, touched by your plight in that forlorn and dusty barracks, who gave you some slight relief. It was easy enough for me to cut across to Geddes's house, reach in through his kitchen window, lift his tray, and escape through the ragged hedges while his cook's broad back was ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Formerly there were a drove of eight—the others being free—so exquisitely outlined in all their parts that one night, when the door had been left incautiously open, they stepped down from the wall and escaped to the woods. How deplorable would have been the plight of these unfortunate beings, if upon passing into the state of a living existence they had found that as a result of the limited vision of their creator they only possessed twelve legs and three ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... side of the lake Dick and Tom were working with feverish energy, almost beside themselves with fear at their comrade's terrible plight. ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... do in this sad plight? For once he acted right: He to the god his fate bemoaned, Asked pardon, and his folly owned. Jove, like a tender master, fond to save, His weakness ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... but the tax paid by Nature; for pride, humanity, and manhood stood staunch in spite of it. "No, no, I can't," said he "I mustn't. Don't tempt me to leave you in this plight, and be a cur! Live or die, I must be the last man on her. Here's something coming out to us, the Lord ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the face of necessity more nearly than any friend's, those Bronte girls, and the pinch of poverty was for their own foot; therefore were they always considerate to any that fell into the same plight. During the Christmas holidays of 1837, old Tabby fell on the steep and slippery street and broke her leg. She was already nearly seventy, and could do little work; now her accident laid her completely aside, leaving Emily, Charlotte, and Anne to spend their Christmas ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... hospital. The young man, wondering how she would receive the news of Katie's treachery, asked himself what she could find now in excuse for the girl who had used her faithful friend as the unconscious messenger of her broken plight? Stephen knew well enough that the old glamour would come back, but to-night he was full only of indignation against Katie. To have used Elizabeth as she had ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... she could bring herself to smoke a meerschaum, like other women in Rein, she might keep the mischief out; but it struck her as a disgrace to a female, and it made a great hole in the pocket. Those who were born in such a village as Rein were in an evil plight. The cottages were badly built, the kitchens reeked with smoke, and were so bitterly cold in winter, though the fowls had to roost there, that water froze in them. In fact, no one could stay in the kitchen in winter. Then all the family must crowd into the stube, living and sleeping there. When Nanni ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... For she could still profess to herself a miserable degradation in being married to a man of no name: she would be gloomily convinced that Harry was by his father's villainy a proven knave. But what hurt her most was the growing suspicion that she was much to blame for her own plight. Alison Lambourne, who acknowledged no law but her own will, who had never dreamed that she could be wrong in her desires, driven to confess a ruinous blunder! Imagine her distress. At first she chose to pretend that she had been overthrown by ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... straight to the camp at Aberan, and offered her for sale to the serdar; who, having agreed to take her, ordered her to be conducted to his seraglio at Erivan, and there put into service; that the horrid plight in which she stood, when exhibited to the serdar, her disfigured looks, and her weak and drooping state, made her hope that she would remain unnoticed and neglected; particularly when she heard what was his character, and to what extent he carried ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... barraine ground, whom winter's wrath hath wasted, Art made a mirror to behold my plight: Whilome thy fresh spring flower'd: and after hasted Thy summer prowde, with daffodillies dight; And now is come thy winter's stormy state, Thy mantle mar'd wherein thou maskedst ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... uncovered from the sand a pile of the eggs, and in a little while they were steaming in the hot water. Then Jack arranged the shell-dishes on the sand. He went over to where the others were gloomily considering their plight. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... a good fellow," said he. "I had misjudged you. I thank heaven that my compunction at leaving poor Staunton all alone in this plight caused me to turn my carriage back and so to make your acquaintance. Knowing as much as you do, the situation is very easily explained. A year ago Godfrey Staunton lodged in London for a time and became passionately attached to his landlady's daughter, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well grown animal—was in a very serious plight. It was eight or ten feet from the edge of the road where the logs were. And the calf had evidently struggled a good deal and was now quite exhausted. It turned its head to look at the children and ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... snapping of a twig in the underbrush brought his mind back with a jerk to their present plight. He wished they had brought the rifles from the plane. Some animal was lurking there in the shadows. Wolves, grizzlies, ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... was in a pitiful plight, and innocently confessed to the Lady that he experienced so much pleasure at this touch that the pains of his malady increased, and that death was preferable ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... from both cold and hunger, and was in pitiable plight. Again he writes: "Lieutenant Daunt, Ninth Regiment, and another officer of some Sixtieth Regiment, were frozen to death last night, and two officers of the Ninety-Third Regiment were smothered by ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... employed at all; and where there is, most of the sects have no ring, no giving away, nor any of those observances which were practised in the churches of old. There existed no impediment, therefore; and after a decent interval spent in persuasions, Margery consented to plight her vows to the man of her heart before they left the spot. She would fain have had Dorothy present, for woman loves to lean on her own sex on such occasions, but submitted to the necessity ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... enabled us to procure a larger and more varied supply of stores, than we could possibly have brought up from Port Lincoln in a single dray. We were now amply furnished with conveniences of every kind; and both men and horses were in good plight and ready to enter ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... complained and said Ben always showed the white feather. Mrs. Underhill couldn't endure cowards. She was angry, too, to see his nice winter jacket in such a plight. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... pressed in England, soldiers were pressed in France. In every great town of France, any able-bodied man, going through the streets on his business, was liable to be shoved by the crimps into a house called the oven. There he was shut up with others in the same plight; those fit for service were picked out, and the recruiters sold them to the officers. In 1695 there were thirty of these ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... tall man, dressed in a green cloak with a silver brooch at the shoulder. He had a golden band about his hair and golden sandals on his feet, and he was laughing heartily at the plight of ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... true, was now in a worse plight than before; but this time not alone. Damash had abandoned his men, run away, and lost the gun, pistols, and horse the Emperor had given, or rather lent, him. Many of the petty chiefs and soldiers had followed Damash's example, and some twenty-five matchlocks ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... spoke not of scruples, asked no vows, Nor offered any; she had never heard Of plight and promises to be a spouse, Or perils by a loving maid incurred; She was all which pure Ignorance allows, And flew to her young mate like a young bird; And, never having dreamt of falsehood, she Had not one word to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Law: for it is written (Deut. 27:26): "Cursed be he that abideth not in the words of this law, and fulfilleth them not in work." If therefore other men could be saved without the observance of the Old Law, the Jews would be in a worse plight than ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... beings the stock operator—the market-maker—is the straw to save them from drowning, and to him they turn as the one possible source of aid and hope. I only knew these men at sight's end, but they knew me and were sure in their abject plight that I could help them—by what wizardry they never stopped to think. They were terribly certain that unless the market turned, their brokers must have additional margin or their stock would be thrown overboard, sinking prices still lower and bringing down their friends' ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... who has no occupation, is in a sad plight: The man who lacks concentration of effort is worse off. In a recent test of the power of steel plates, designed for ship armor, one thousand cannon were fired at once against it, but without avail. A large cannon ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of a settlement, young gentlemen," said Alex, laughing, as he saw their plight. "But I think we can get through with what supplies we have and not trouble ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... "when I considered the sad plight of our poor cousin, I thought it would be best for me to go and see to him myself. There are the letters," he added, taking them from his pocket, and handing them to his sister. "You will see, Jemima, that the poor fellow is in sore straits—ill, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of oars was heard on either hand. It would be impossible to fight the enemy with any hope of success. Plight was their only resource. Morton steered for the frigate. The enemy's boats continued to come after them. Morton kept a look-out for the frigate's light. The Frenchmen saw at length that the pursuit was useless, and gave it up. No sooner was this ascertained than Lord Claymore ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... hearts not knowing that they loved, Not she at least, nor conscious of a bar Between them, nor by plight or broken ring Bound, but an immemorial intimacy, Wander'd at will, but oft accompanied By Averill: his, a brother's love, that hung With wings of brooding shelter o'er her peace, Might have been other, save for Leolin's— Who knows? but so they wander'd, hour ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... and the horse looked piteously towards the water but could not reach it. And the father of my grandfather saw Welleran go down to the river's brink and bring water from it with his own hand and give it to the horse. Now we are in as sore a plight as was that horse, and as near to death; it may be that Welleran will pity us, while the King's axeman cannot because of the commands of ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... said abruptly, as she was about to leave the room, "come here. I am strong now, and I want to talk to you. Now tell me all about it. How did I get into this plight? And how came I into ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... reticule and drew forth a small, buckskin bag. "Will you not accept it? Yesterday, at the claims, I panned it out myself. I am sorry for your plight. I am sorry for anyone in the ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... it?" said Deede Dawson, and seemed a little amused, as though the thought of his stepdaughter's plight pleased him rather than not. "Well, if she can't come down here, we'll go up there. Turn round, my man, and go up the stairs and keep your hands over your head all the time. I shan't hesitate to shoot if you don't, and ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... would have turned his brother's defeat into victory, drew back his thirteen thousand men in good order to guard Hungary. As Napoleon himself had been in a dangerous condition of over-confidence before Aspern, so now his soldiery were clearly in the same plight. Self-conceit had made them unreliable. Bernadotte's corps had displayed something very much like cowardice and mutiny at the last. The army still fought in the main like the perfect machine it was, but the individual men had lost their stern virtue. They believed that victory, plunder, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and crosser, which is a good sign. At last I have told him of Sada San's plight; and he is for starting for Kioto to-morrow to "wipe the floor with Uncle Mura," as he elegantly expresses it. But of course he 's still too weak to even think ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... stands, despite the labors of Stewart, Hamilton, Hegel, Comte, very much where it did when Socrates ran amuck among the casuistical Quixotes of his day, and left the philosophic tilters of Greece, the knights-errant in search of the supreme good, in the same plight with the chivalry of Spain after Cervantes, the science of mind, and particularly mental pathology, has made some steps forward on crutches furnished by the medical profession. The treatment of insanity is on a more rational and efficient footing. The statistician collects, and invites the moral ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... weeks before, when discussing the question with Juve, had now to accept his hypothesis as a certainty: his acts caused his unseen personality to hit you in the eyes! Only one person could pull the strings with such a demon hand!... Yes, Fandor could no longer doubt that his desperate plight was due to the terrific, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... for him all these years. She had been sought after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that dear old lady was past eighty she ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... fault, Maud—I say it was no fault of mine; I have no remorse, though more regrets than I can count, and all scored with fire. As people passed by Bartram, and looked upon its neglected grounds and smokeless chimneys, they thought my plight, I dare say, about the worst a proud man could be reduced to. They could not imagine one half its misery. But this old hectic—this old epileptic—this old spectre of wrongs, calamities, and follies, had still one hope—my manly though untutored son—the last male scion of the Ruthyns. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... learned of the plight of General Kearny, and was just starting a relief column upon a night march for the hill, when at nine o'clock one of his sentries challenged a dark figure ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... tyre, and all her garment blew, Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight: Upon her fist the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live. Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and they knew that the plight of the horses ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... up before the door of Lorna's home, from which she had departed in such blithe spirits, Bob's heart was thumping almost guiltily. He felt in some ridiculous way as though he were almost responsible for her plight himself. Perhaps he had done wrong to wait so long. Yet, even his quick eyesight had failed to discover the knockout drops or powder which the wily Shepard had slipped into that disastrous glass of beer. Maybe his interference ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... so at least 'tis said, No nuptial rites prevail[55], nor is the bride Led to the altar by her future lord; But all in secret does the bridegroom plight His troth, and each unto the other vow Mutual allegiance. Such espousals, too, Are authorised on earth, and many daughters Of royal saints thus wedded to their lords Have still received their ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... enemy, is almost paralyzed by bombardment; when he is literally in the last ditch, with a strip of cold steel the only thing between him and death—then Tommy smiles, then he cracks a joke. Without a thought of himself, without a murmur, he faces any desperate plight. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... confess I could not see them at the time, there were excellent reasons for not stating there and then the delicious plight in which we had really left Levy's myrmidons. I myself would have driven home our triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the table and simultaneously exposing his false play. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... of old Hagar, who hated the rider of old. In the first breathing spell he loosed the dog, which skulked, limping, into the first sheltered spot he found, and laid him down to lick his outraged person and whimper to himself at the memory of his plight. Grant pulled his horse to a restive stand before a group of screeching squaws, and laughed outright ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... time since he boarded the sailboat, he looked into the face of the young lady. Her clothing was thoroughly drenched by the spray, and her face was moist as though she were a mermaid just emerged from the depths of the ocean. But even in her present plight Shuffles saw that she was a very pretty girl. She was shivering with cold, and it was necessary to do ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... got down as far as this ledge, they were in a worse plight than ever. They stood on the brink of a great cliff. The rocks were too steep for them to get down. It was hundreds of feet ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... so as to plight faith for the Duke," said the Norman, who, though sharp to deceive, had that rein on his conscience that it did not let him openly lie; "but this I do know, that there are few things in his Countdom which my lord would not give to clasp the right hand of Harold and feel assured ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all: two of the ship's giant spars had gone by the board; entangled in her own wreckage, the vessel thumped and pounded with ominous violence against some sunken reef. The full scope of the plight of the once noble ship was plainly made manifest. Though thick streams of scud sped across the sky, the southern moon at the moment looked down between two dark rivulets, and cast its silvery glow like a lime-light, over ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... were many in different plights, and according to their plight, kept in different places. The well bound were ranged in the sanctuary of Mr. Bronte's study; but the purchase of books was a necessary luxury to him, and as it was often a choice between binding an old one, or buying a new one, the familiar volume, which had been hungrily read by all the members ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... example, that there never passed, till this very hour, six words between us. For our horses were of our own breeding, our arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own cutting out and sewing." Plato was by chance up on the next shelf, and observing those that spoke to be in the ragged plight mentioned a while ago, their jades lean and foundered, their weapons of rotten wood, their armour rusty, and nothing but rags underneath, he laughed loud, and in his pleasant way swore, by —-, he ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... Dorothy quickly counted what a disgrace it would be to a good mother to find her son in such a plight. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... at self-control, Ned's muscles trembled and he found it difficult to walk steadily. Assuming that his chums were in like plight, the lad summoned all his courage and reached out a reassuring hand to the others. The contact with his friends seemed to restore the equilibrium that had been Ned's most valuable asset in times of stress and ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... realized, as you said, that I was 'miscast,' that I had never been of this land, so I was headed for home. Home!" Emerson smiled bitterly. "The word doesn't mean anything to me now, but anyhow I was headed for God's country, an utter failure, in a worse plight than when I came here, when you put this last chance in front of me. It may be another ignis fatuus, such as the others I have pursued, for I have been chasing rainbows now for three years, and I suppose I shall go on chasing them; ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... principle or plausible pretext in this case which would not lead to granting a pension in any case of alleged disability arising from military service followed by suicide. It would be an unfair discrimination against many who, though in sad plight, have been refused relief in similar circumstances, and would establish an ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... said Mr. Micawber, 'this is luxurious. This is a way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself in a state of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been solicited to plight her faith at ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... must be many human souls in a like plight with myself, with the light of heaven blocked from them by a gilded tyranny, and yet I sighed, and sighed, and sighed, thinking of the white pure stars of Provence throbbing in ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... In this wretched plight we hear the summons to get ready to stand post. We go out upon our shivering horses, to sit in the saddle for two hours or more, facing the biting wind, and peering through the storm of sleet, snow, or rain, which unmercifully pelts us in its fury. But it were well ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... women apparently making fun of the unwashed "Yank" and evidently enjoying the spectacle. We were halted just as Dolan came limping along supported on one side by a stronger comrade. They saw his miserable plight, his distress, his swollen feet, and they heard of the stern command to shoot any prisoner who fell out or lagged behind. Their faces changed. With tears one or two implored the Captain to let him ride in the ambulance. He yielded to their entreaties. Southern ladies almost always ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... President was too rapid for him; he did not get the speech, and he noticed that the reporters for the other papers fared no better. Nothing daunted, however, after the speechmaking, Edward resolutely sought the President, and as the latter turned to him, he told him his plight, explained it was his first important "assignment," and asked if he could possibly be given a copy of the speech so that he could "beat" ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... goal of a holy pilgrimage, as indeed they had. He saw their standards, he heard the din of their firearms, and high above them on the wall of the tower he saw the khaki-clad figure of a single Sepoy calmly flashing across the valley news of the defenders' plight. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... that Edward could be very fond of presenting himself in this lamentable plight before the duke of Burgundy; and that having so suddenly, after his mighty vaunts, lost all footing in his own kingdom, he could be insensible to the ridicule which must attend him in the eyes of that prince. The duke, on his part, was no less embarrassed how he should receive the dethroned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... truth, he was sadly in need of money. It was fortunate that his old friend, Mr. Harrison, Margie's dead father, had taken it into his head to plight his daughter's troth to him while she was yet a child. Mr. Harrison had been an eccentric man; and from the fact that in many points of religious belief he and Mr. Paul Linmere agreed, (for both were miserable ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... nails and sprigs of rosemary into their arms to make them bleed; and with horrible actions, partly by prayers, and partly with lunatic curses, they move or terrify the ignorant country folk into giving them alms. This poor fellow was such a one; and the king, seeing him in so wretched a plight, with nothing but a blanket about his loins to cover his nakedness, could not be persuaded but that the fellow was some father who had given all away to his daughters and brought himself to that pass; for nothing, he thought, could bring ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... day that sets me free From yon dread Ogre's prison! Oh, happy world, since 'tis for me Such rescuers have 'risen. But see, your Majesty! the plight Of Hero—he the Prince, my brother! Wilt thou his wrong not set aright? Another favour ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... some apprehension mingling with his joy. He would almost as soon be detected appropriating funds from the bank where he clerked, as be caught in this ignominious plight. There was just a slight sense of relief, however, for they had been a long time in the water. But ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... he did by day, when the Negroes would watch him, but at night he tried to make his way to some land nearer at hand. Other vessels passed from time to time, and from these the Negroes bought provisions, but Montes and Ruiz were so closely watched that they could not make known their plight. At length, on August 26, the schooner reached Long Island Sound, where it was detained by the American brig-of-war Washington, in command of Captain Gedney, who secured the Negroes and took them to New London, Conn. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... flock, Could he the shepherd's voice but mock. He thought undoubtedly he could. He tried: the tone in which he spoke, Loud echoing from the wood, The plot and slumber broke; Sheep, dog, and man awoke. The wolf, in sorry plight, In hampering coat bedight, Could neither run ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... slept soundly; but Benjamin found no rest in such an unusual plight. Sleep was out of the question, and he had all the more time to think, and his active mind improved the opportunity, so that Boston, home, the printing office, and his parents were dwelt upon until he began to think he was paying too dear for the whistle again. It is not strange that ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... wood. If a weasel or a stoat had entered the vole's new burrow during the period when the flood was at its highest, only the most fortunate circumstances could have saved its occupant. Even had he managed to flee to the river, his plight would still have been pitiful. Unable to find security in his former retreat, and effectually deterred by the lingering scent of his pursuers from returning to his woodland haunts, Brighteye, a homeless, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... England as those of Winchester, Somerset, Rich, Herbert, had already made considerable progress in the siege when, at last, at the orders of the widowed Queen, the French also arrived, but in the worst plight and suffering severely from illness, so that they could not carry out the intention, with which they came, of sequestrating the place in the interests of France. When the fortress had been taken it was delivered to the two princes, who now possessed the whole country. This was an event ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... suffer. Over there we are looked upon in the same way that Germans are looked upon here, as quite outside the pale of common morality. Fully realising what this must mean for me, these kindly Germans would go off into a day dream of wonderment as to how they might feel in a similar plight, and one ended up with the reflection, 'Ja, es ist halt jetzt die Zeit der Maertyrer' (it is indeed the time of the martyrs once more)." Surely there is something strangely poignant about the convinced and steadfast martyrdom and self-sacrifice of both sides. Surely ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... flambe[obs3], knocked on the head; destroyed &c. 162. frustrated, crossed, unhinged, disconcerted dashed; thrown off one's balance, thrown on one's back, thrown on one's beam ends|; unhorsed, in a sorry plight; hard hit. stultified, befooled[obs3], dished, hoist on one's own petard; victimized, sacrificed. wide of the mark &c. (error) 495; out of one's reckoning &c. (inexpectation) 508[obs3]; left in the lurch; thrown away &c. (wasted) 638; unattained; uncompleted &c. 730. Adv. unsuccessfully ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... seemed everything else—everything outside the ship and the sea and our perilous plight! The death of Alresca, the jealousy of Carlotta Deschamps, the plot (if there was one) against Rosa—what were these matters to me? But Rosa was something. She was more than something; she was all. A lovely, tantalizing vision of her appeared ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the Whig propositions of '41 will not be detrimental to that party, even if in the interval they be appropriated piecemeal, as will probably be the case, by their Conservative successors. But for the moment, and in the plight in which the Whig party found themselves, it was impossible to have devised measures more conducive to their precipitate fall. Great interests were menaced by a weak government. The consequence was inevitable. Tadpole and Taper saw it in a moment. They snuffed the factious air, and felt the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of march two days earlier, not a Russian of them all would have ever again seen a krepost. As it was, two thousand left their bones in the woods to be picked by wolves and vultures. The rest succeeded in reaching Girsel-aoul, a fortress on the line about fifty miles north of Dargo, but in sorry plight indeed. Preparations had been made there for a military triumph, with salvos of cannon, music, and colors flying; and the minister of war, Prince Tschernitscheff, had most inopportunely arrived to witness it; but instead he beheld the battalions marching in with faintly beating ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... safe to figure that the legislature man Shall receive but scanty praises though he does the best he can, And with fellows on the left of him and fellows on the right, Full of sage advice and counsel, his is not a happy plight; But the record has been written and for us it stands for aye, So, it's good-bye, Mister Speaker! We are going ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... towards human stupidity was one of fear rather than disdain; she could not look Novikoff in the face, but trembled before him, like a slave. Her plight was pitiable as that of a helpless bird whose wings have been clipped, and that can ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... understand, somehow, that he comprehended her plight. Then, after a time, he put his left arm about her waist. She spread the great red wings out behind him, the right one passing over his shoulder; and in this fashion ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... forward, but that night had to be taken for rest and the morning found men and horses in a terrible plight. Not one drop of water had they left, and all they had been able to do for the horses and mules had been to sponge their parched mouths. They had camped near some trees and bushes, as usual, and it was just about daylight that Yellow Pine came to ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... nothing quite so disconcerting as to be prepared to overcome a resistance and then to find no resistance there; to be ready with convincing arguments, and then not have them called for. This, very naturally, was the plight of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... exercise of rowing had warmed Cabot as well as temporarily diverted his mind from a contemplation of the terrible scenes through which he had so recently passed. Now, however, as he rested on his oars, a full sense of his wretched plight came back to him, and he grew sick at heart as he realised how forlorn was his situation. He wondered if he could survive the night that was rapidly closing in on him, and, if he did, whether the morrow ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... more varied supply of stores, than we could possibly have brought up from Port Lincoln in a single dray. We were now amply furnished with conveniences of every kind; and both men and horses were in good plight and ready to enter ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... long and loud. "Of course he erred. You don't suppose that I would give the authorities my real name, do you? Why, man, I am a nephew! I have an aged uncle—a rich millionaire uncle—whose heart and will it would break were he to hear of my present plight. Both the heart and will are in my favor, hence my tender solicitude for him. I am innocent, of course—convicts always are, you know—but that wouldn't make any difference. He'd die of mortification just the same. It's one of our family traits, that. ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... on the south bank were not aware of the plight of the little party on the north bank. In spite of their losses, the Germans continued their grewsome rushes toward the approaches of the iron bridge across which our machine gunners were pouring a devastating fire. Lieutenant ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... not so unexampled as you are inclined to think. Nearly thirty years ago a young man as you are came in just such a plight as you and stood outside this window at two o'clock of a dark morning. Even so early in my life I was at my books," and he smiled rather sadly. "I let him in and he talked to me for an hour of matters strange and dreamlike, and ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... evening we chased another junk with two masts, and in something better plight to look at than the former. When we came on board we found them upon the same errand, but only that they were people of some better fashion than the other; and here we got some plunder, some Turkish ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... were so bad that he received a solemn warning that his scholarship was in some danger, though he was not actually deprived of it, and finally, instead of the good class his tutor had once expected, he took a low third, and left Cambridge in almost as bad a plight as Arthur Pendennis. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... biscuits of bread is usually a very small matter, but with me it might mean a great deal. How far should I have to go? When could I find out? What would be the plight of my people when found? Or should I find them at all? Might they not pass by and be on the way down the Columbia River before I could reach the main immigrant trail? These and kindred questions weighed on my mind as I ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... with a sudden impulse and walked away from Maiden Lane quickly. All that he thought now was that he would not have them see him in his plight. He felt the shabbiness of his clothes without looking at them. As he walked, a great sense of ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... he lived to repent his folly. One night after he had gone to bed he found that he had been changed into a hare, and to his dismay and horror he saw a couple of greyhounds slipped upon him. He ran for bare life, and managed to elude his pursuers, and in a terrible plight and fright he ran to Dolfawr, and to his bed. This kind of transformation he ever afterwards was subjected to, until by spells he was released from the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... frowned some power divine; Then trembling, as he turned to Zophiel, said, "But for one service shall thou call it thine: Bring me a wife; as I have named the way; (I will not risk destruction save for love!) Fair-haired and beauteous like my mother; say— Plight me this pact; so shalt thou bear above, For thine own purpose, what has here been kept Since bloomed the second age, to angels dear. Bursting from earth's dark womb, the fierce wave swept Off every form that lived and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... of children in the little Devonshire village near which it lived, managed one day to get wedged in a drain, and there it would eventually have died unseen if a passing labourer had not seen its plight and set it at liberty. Down to the day of its death the bird, though nowise relinquishing its spiteful attitude towards others, followed its rustic benefactor about the place ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... being greeted by such a kind old captain. He was seventy-four years old with snow-white hair and had only one eye. Graham soon sank into a chair and was quite past reading barometers or anything else. He could just assent to remarks made to him by the captain and that was all. Ellen was in no better plight and sat on a bench near me, and I cannot say I felt cheerful, for the schooner, which was empty and had not much ballast, was rolling considerably. I carried on various conversations and strained my eyes to see if Mr. Keytel's boat was coming. It was a long wait, and when at last ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... waited for him all these years. She had been sought after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often ventured to carry ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... eve of his journey, however, Hugh Flaxman had at last confessed himself to Catherine and Robert. His obvious plight made any further scruples on their part futile, and what they had they gave him in the way of sympathy. Also Robert, gathering that he already knew much, and without betraying any confidence of Rose's, gave him ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... then laughed outright; "Poor fellow!" he said, "you are in a sad plight! Ha! ha! what a dunce you must be to suppose, That the heart of a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... inarticulate and express those depths of human nature which can speak no language current in the world. Emotion is primarily about nothing, and much of it remains about nothing to the end. What rescues a part of our passions from this pathological plight, and gives them some other function than merely to be, is the ideal relevance, the practical and mutually representative character, which they sometimes acquire. All experience is pathological if we consider its ground; but ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... I fell in with some of my Keighley friends, and within a very short time I had been induced to part with all my money, and, in fact, some of my clothes. When I recovered my senses—for I must have lost them to act as I did—I found myself in a sad and sorry plight. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... sincerity, or Turner, or "sweetness and light," with all the ardor of youthful neophytes. And it was good for them. But after a while they became, if not exactly weary in well-doing, at least a little weary of the unintermittent tirades against ill-doing. They were in the plight of the good Christian who goes to church every Sunday only to hear the parson rebuke the sins of the people who are not there. The man who dated his moral awakening from "Sartor Resartus" began to find ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... other vessels which perished there was no numbering made; and so great was the loss that the commanders of the fleet, being struck with fear lest the Thessalians should attack them now that they had been brought into an evil plight, threw round their camp a lofty palisade built of the fragments of wreck. For the storm continued during three days; but at last the Magians, making sacrifice of victims and singing incantations to appease the Wind by enchantments, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... mysterious heap, and found an old, white-haired man, grievously mishandled, with blood on his face, blood dabbling the dead leaves in the ditch, blood on the turf where the pure hoar-frost had lain. There was but little life left in him, and it was not easy for him to explain his sorry plight when the words came only with hard-fought breathing, hoarse ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... alone—alone I say." Poor man alone! Ah, well-a-day, What fine result—what triumph rare! As one turns from the coffin'd dead So left you me:—I could but stare Upon the door through which you fled— I proud and grave—but punished quite. And what care you for this my plight!— You have recovered liberty, Fresh air and lovely scenery, The spacious park and wished-for grass; The running stream, where you can throw A blade to watch what comes to pass; Blue sky, and all the spring can show; Nature, serenely fair to see; The book ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... large men, Tom and John, were there, along came Robert (other name unknown), in a bad plight, his feet bleeding. Robert was put in the barn to thrash, until he could be fixed up to go again on his journey. But in a few days, behold, along came his master. He brought with him that notorious constable, Haines, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... is—but I will keep calm—quite calm and quiet. You know my son. He is heedless, but he loves me and his sister more than anything in the world. I, fool as I was, to persuade him to economy, had vividly described our evil plight, and after that disgraceful conduct of Mena he thought of us and of our anxieties. His share of the booty was small, and could not help us. His comrades threw dice for the shares they had obtained—he staked his to win ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dark designs should rue Of those who'd fain make light of all we do! But such the fate which oft doth merit greet, And which now drives us fairly off our beat! Thus it appears from this, our dismal plight, That some love darkness rather than the light. Henceforth, let riot and disorder reign, With all the ills that follow in their train; Let TOMS and JERRYS unmolested brawl (No Charlies have ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... cling to him, and won't let him go to such as you! How can I, when he is the father of this poor babe that's coming to me? I must have him back again! Milly, Milly, can't you pity and understand me, perverse girl that you are, and the miserable plight that I am in? Oh, this precipitancy—it is the ruin of women! Why did I not consider, and wait! Come, give me back all that I have given you, and assure me you will support me in ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... deliberately insulting to Arved, who, however, let it pass because of their mutual plight. If they fell to fighting, detection would ensue. So ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... match was evidently a love-match: whether the love was of that kind which forms the best pledge of wedded happiness, is another question. It is not unlikely that the marriage may have been preceded by the ancient ceremony of troth-plight, or handfast, as it was sometimes called; like that which almost takes place between Florizel and Perdita in The Winter's Tale, and quite takes place between Olivia and Sebastian in Twelfth Night. The custom of troth-plight was much used in that age, and for ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... roasted as well as it could be done, and sent a bottle of wine home to my house. In the meantime she and I and Joyce went walking all over White Hall, whither General Monk was newly come, and we saw all his forces march by in very good plight and stout officers. Thence to my house where we dined, but with a great deal of patience, for the mutton came in raw, and so we were fain to stay the stewing of it. In the meantime we sat ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... days at the hospital at St. Omer, and was then transferred to Boulogne, together with a New Zealand sergeant who was in the same plight as myself, and whom I later had the pleasure of meeting under more favourable and happier conditions at dear old St. Dunstan's. At Boulogne, I was given a thorough examination, and the doctors concluded that an absolutely useless member of the body was an unnecessary burden ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... the doors of national privacy is well enough; but let them remember that when nations lose their dignity and their racial pride, there is sure to follow the squabbling and the jealousy, the rough speech and vulgar manners, of the domestic circle, in the same plight of spiritual shamelessness. The best that any of us learn is to be a little more patient, a little more charitable, a little more careful of the dignity of others in our own homes, or abroad, and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... a friend. I certainly haven't any reason to feel friendly to you, especially as you came here with the intention of extorting money from me. But I can make allowance for you in your unfortunate plight, and am willing to do something for you. Bring me the document you say you possess, and I will give you fifty—no, a ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... she asked her husband to let her ride on his horse with him. The woman got up behind him, and they went on again. The horse was a very powerful one, and for a while went very fast; but two persons make a heavy load, and soon the enemy began to gain on them. The man was now in a bad plight; the enemy were overtaking him, and the woman holding him bound his arms so that he ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... all you pretty maids in town, Take heed of my sad plight. I've lost a kiss; I'll give a crown ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... he said calmly, "when I considered the sad plight of our poor cousin, I thought it would be best for me to go and see to him myself. There are the letters," he added, taking them from his pocket, and handing them to his sister. "You will see, Jemima, that the ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... a knave hath late compassion On Melicent's forlorn condition; For which he saith as ye shall after hear: "Dame, since that game we play costeth too dear, My truth I plight, I shall you no more grieve By my behest, and here I take my leave As of the fairest, truest and best wife That ever yet I knew ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... she sees the plight; It will take her wits to set it right: That big bandana on Deb's black head, Ere Dick can jump, 'tis over him spread; Then two soft hands they hold him fast: The bright little rogue is caught ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... will that our brotherhood May endure through the good and the evil as it sprang in the days of the good: But I bid thee look to the ending, that the deed I did yest'reve Bear nought for me to repent of, for thine heart of hearts to grieve. Thou art troth-plight, O King of the Niblungs, to Brynhild Queen of the earth, She hath sworn thine heart to cherish and increase thy worth with her worth: She shall come to the house of Gunnar ere ten days are past and o'er; ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... begged Andy. Frank had stopped to speak to an acquaintance, and did not see the plight of ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... on—Muriel pillowed on loose cocoanut husk, dozing now and again, and waking with a start to gaze round about her wildly, and realize once more in what plight she found herself; Felix crouching by her feet, and keeping watch with eager eyes and ears on every side for the least sign of a noiseless, naked footfall through the tangled growth of that dense tropical under-bush. Time after ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... in distress for want of water, on which account, and on account of the time of the day, they were not able to bear their weapons. So Anileus and his men were put to an ignominious rout, while men in despair were to attack those that were fresh and in good plight; so a great slaughter was made, and many ten thousand men fell. Now Anileus, and all that stood firm about him, ran away as fast as they were able into a wood, and afforded Mithridates the pleasure ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... eingeschraenktem Geiste."[47] Their work he characterizes as "Stuemperarbeit," and their virtues as brilliant evils and nothing more. There is nothing sacred, he claims, that has not been desecrated by this nation. But it is chiefly his own experience which he recites, when, in speaking of the sad plight of German poets, of those who still love the beautiful, he says: "Es ist auch herzzerreissend, wenn man eure Dichter, eure Kuenstler sieht—die Guten, sie leben in der Welt, wie Fremdlinge im eigenen ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... from fortune's stings; By birth I boast of a descent from kings; Hence may you see from what a noble height I'm sunk by fortune to this abject plight. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of a hand, but thou of the famous wolf; to each the loss is ill-luck. Nor is the wolf in better plight, for he must wait ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... excitement and admiration caused by the departure of the gallant band of cavaliers upon their foray when they beheld the scattered wrecks flying for refuge to their walls. Day after day and hour after hour brought some wretched fugitive, in whose battered plight and haggard woebegone demeanor it was almost impossible to recognize the warrior who had lately issued so gayly ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... night, So sad was their plight, The sun it went down, And the moon gave no light. They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried, And the poor little things, ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... my plight and my natural instincts asserted themselves. As if I had been then what I had been ten days before, I ordered Chryseros to loose Agathemer and he obeyed me, as if I had been what ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... home and entered the kitchen, his mother's first words related to the plight of Archie, who sat sullenly nursing his bruised mouth in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... his stockings falling over his heels, his shirt open and soaking with blood, speechless, for his mouth was filled with splinters of his broken jaw. Such was the man who the morning before had been Dictator, and master of all the armies of France. Couthon was in little better plight. Twenty-one in all were condemned on the 10 Thermidor and taken in carts to the guillotine. An awful spectacle. There was Robespierre with his disfigured face, half dead, and Fleuriot, and Saint-Just, and Henriot next to Robespierre, his forehead gashed, his right ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... at this time in great trouble. They were hiding in dens and caves because of the Midianites, who had conquered them and overrun their country. When their corn was ripe these enemies came and destroyed it, so altogether they were in sad plight. One day Gideon was threshing wheat in a secluded place, so as to escape the notice of the Midianites, when an angel from God appeared to him, bidding him to go and save the Israelites from their foes. Gideon obeyed the command: but before commencing the battle he much desired a sign from God showing ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... and Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland were to be regaled with choicest viands of Alice's choice larder and with the sweetest speeches of Alice's graceful heart. I was authorized only to convey the invitations to this delectable banquet, and here was a pretty plight for a man to be in, surely enough! But my bachelor friend Kinzie (ough, the Mephisto!) helped me out. I reported back to Alice that Judge Trask was out of town, that Colonel Flail was sick abed with grip, and that Mr. ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... "the Mahdi," as that meant the Redeemer of the world. She knew that the Egyptian Government regarded him as a rebel and an imposter. But continually striking her forehead and invoking heaven to witness her innocence and unhappy plight, she began to weep and at the same time wail mournfully as women in the East do after losing husbands or sons. Afterwards she again flung herself with face on the ground, or rather on the carpet with which the inlaid floor was covered, and waited ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... alas! Sir Ingoldsby Bray, Foul sin it were, thou doughty Knight, To hack and to hew A champion true Of holy Church in such pitiful plight! Foul sin her warriors so to slay, When they're scarcer and scarcer every day!— A chauntry fair, And of Monks a pair, To pray for his soul for ever and aye, Thou must duly endow, Sir Ingoldsby Bray, And fourteen marks by the year thou must pay For plenty of ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... parched fields be craving for the rain; Then the great sky at last is overgloomed, And men see that fair sign of coming wind And imminent rain, and seeing, they are glad, Who for their corn-fields' plight sore sighed before; Even so the sons of Troy when they beheld There in their land Penthesileia dread Afire for battle, were exceeding glad; For when the heart is thrilled with hope of good, All smart of evils past is wiped away: So, after ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... was at the wheel when the squall struck the ship, had put her in stays before the sail was furled, with the result that she heeled over and Desmond had narrowly escaped being flung into the sea. Seeing the boy's plight, Bulger had sprung forward, and, knocking Parmiter from the wheel, had put the vessel on the other tack, thus giving Desmond the one chance of escape which, fortunately, he had been able to seize. The captain had been incensed to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... what she must do, namely, travel down to the Ogula and tell them of the plight of their chief, bidding them muster all their fighting men and when the swamps were dry enough, advance as near as they dared to the Asiki country and, if they could not attack it, wait till ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... no adequate provisions for their needs. Pizarro, however, insisted and Almagro sailed with the other ship. Shortly afterward, Pizarro sent the remaining ship with the most obstinate of the mutineers to Panama. A letter revealing their sad plight, which was concealed in a ball of cotton sent as a present to the wife of the governor by one of the men on the island of Gallo, was smuggled ashore at Panama when Almagro's ship reached that point, despite his vigilant efforts to allow no ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... jumped out, and ran to his assistance; but he was so prickly all over, that it was difficult to lay hold of him. His needles and pins ran into my fingers in a dozen places. To make matters worse, his nose began to bleed, so that he was in a pitiable plight. However, I picked him up at last, found he was not seriously injured, gave him a clean handkerchief (which he promised to return), and started him off again in his cart, in a sitting position ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... as dark and seemingly as old as the rock out of which it grew, climbing a conical hill, to dominate all the wide, white reaches above which it stood, like an armoured sentinel on a watch-tower. As I gazed, struck with admiration, which for an instant made me forget our plight, he began to push. The car, surprised at his strength and determination, half decided to move, then changed her mind and refused to budge. In a second, before he could guess what I meant to do, I had flashed out of my ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... from fire, as the valley was very wide and covered with tall green grass which could not burn; and no sooner was the last wagon on safe ground than the fire gained the rim of the green bottomland. Our oxen were exhausted and in a bad plight, so we fortified and camped here for several days to recuperate before we forded the river. This took up several days, as the water was quite high and the river bottom a dangerous quicksand. To stop the wheels of a ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... upon a boulder and reflected upon my unfortunate plight. I had not told anyone that I proposed to come to the Blue John mine, and it was unlikely that a search party would come after me. Therefore I must trust to my own resources to get clear of the danger. There was only one hope, and that was that the matches might dry. ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seamen who live upon the debris of the vessel, postponing in anguish the arrival of the last hour. The very servants who danced attendance upon him like slaves in dress suits, knew of his misfortune and discussed his shameful plight; but not even the slightest suggestion of insolence disturbed the colorless glance of their eyes, petrified by servitude. He was such a nobleman! He had scattered his money with such majesty!... Besides, he was a genuine member of ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... my lords," the king said to his knights as he sat in a little room in an inn at Zara, "that my plight is a bad one. I am surrounded by enemies, and, alas! I can no longer mount my steed and ride out as at Jaffa to do battle with them. My brother, John Lackland, is scheming to take my place upon the throne of England. ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... occupants of the hospital beds themselves? We all know the splendid record of sufferings patiently borne, of indomitable courage and cheerfulness, and of countless little acts of thoughtfulness and consideration for others in a worse plight even than themselves. Who, after having had that experience, can falter in their belief that the "decent bodies" are in ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... his favourite's aim; In vain a rival barred his claim, Whose fate with Clare's was plight, For he attaints that rival's fame With treason's charge—and on they came, In mortal lists to fight. Their oaths are said, Their prayers are prayed, Their lances in the rest are laid, They meet in mortal shock; And, hark! the throng, with thundering ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... his tent thinking of nothing but his brother, and going in to the latter's pavilion, found him in evil plight; whereat he was sore troubled and sent for the Vizier Dendan and the Amirs Behram and Rustem, that he might take counsel with them. When they entered, they were all of accord to summon the physicians to treat Sherkan, and they wept and said, "The age will not lightly afford his like!" They ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... just ended, however—or that would have ended if the Peace Conference would let it—we have seen an imaginative revolt against war, not on the part of mere men of letters, but on the part of soldiers. Ballads have survived from other wars, depicting the plight of the mutilated ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... at length, I heard the sound of wheels coming along the road. I tried to shout, and, in some measure, succeeded; for a voice, which I recognised as that of my farmer-friend, answered cheerily. He was shocked to discover that his expected guest was in such evil plight. It was still dark, for the rain was falling heavily; but, with his directions, I was soon able to take my seat beside him in the gig. He had been unexpectedly detained, and was now hastening home with the hope of being yet in ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the question, what was I to do? My plight was almost as desperate as it could well be; for not only was I utterly bereft of every one of those who were nearest and dearest to me, but I was likewise homeless, and literally penniless. The house which I called home was destroyed; ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to do your duty, not from ignorance. I request you, if I speak my mind, to be patient, and consider only, whether I speak the truth, and with a view to future amendment. You see to what wretched plight we are reduced by some ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... maiden in the yellow night, The single-mooned eve!-on earth we plight Our faith to one love—and one moon adore— The birth-place of young Beauty had no more. As sprang that yellow star from downy hours, Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers, And bent o'er sheeny mountain ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... see no one, she will speak to no one, so she said to-day, until the Lady Barbara is recovered, until Lord Farquhart is free. It will be all that I can do to gain access to her to make my demand for the Lady Barbara's clothes. And she is—she says that she is sick of the whole world. Her cousin's plight, Lord Farquhart's danger, have sickened her of the whole world. It's for her sake that I would free Lord Farquhart. Until Lord Farquhart is released, Judith Ogilvie's mind cannot rest for a single second. So for her sake you must ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... out, dripping to the very crowns of their heads, with their Sunday shirts and jackets in a horrible plight. The truth, slowly gathered from their mutual accusations, was this: they had resolved to have a boating excursion on Redley Creek, and had abstracted the tub that morning when nobody was in the kitchen. Slipping down through the wood, they had launched it in a piece of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the experience of keeping their own counsel for a long term of years know that every year makes it harder to take others into confidence. A concealed troth-plight, marriage, widowhood—to name the big concealments involving no disgrace—gets less and less easy to publish as time slips by, even as the hinges rust of doors that no man opens. There may be nothing ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; But, first and chiefest, with thee bring Him that yon soars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The Cherub Contemplation; And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will deign a song, In her sweetest saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustomed oak. Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among I woo, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... might rather be described as long undulations carrying the schooner (its weight diminished from the same cause as that of the water) alternately to such heights and depths, that if Captain Servadac had been subject to seasickness he must have found himself in sorry plight. As the pitching, however, was the result of a long uniform swell, the yacht did not labor much harder than she would against the ordinary short strong waves of the Mediterranean; the main inconvenience that was experienced was the diminution in her ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... that so long as he lives he has something the matter with him. He no sooner gets cured of one than something else attacks him. There is no medicine like air and exercise and occupation. The man who gives in to trifling ailments is in a sad plight. He is never happy unless he is sick. He is unreasonable, and he is the last one to appreciate what can be done by a man who cures himself ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... nothing that could give him the slightest cause for hope. With every step he was being carried deeper and deeper into the recesses of the jungle where no hunter dare venture, where the elephant, the tiger, and the leopard rule as undisputed masters. His plight was terrible. Who would free him, who could free him of the bonds which held him in subjection to so cruel ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... confidently from his place at the head of the table, "are already a broken race. They are on the point of exhaustion. Austria is, if possible, in a worse plight. That is what will end the war—the ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not limited to this small corner, Miss Miller,' retorted Gwen, holding her head proudly; 'we should be in a poor plight if they were. And if we felt dull, London is not out of reach. I am ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... unavoidable horrors of the war, but because of the pogroms they have witnessed in the towns they have passed. They mistake those they have seen murdered for their own relations; they imagine they see their own mothers, sisters, or beloved ones in that plight. They are always raving about ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... as dead, pinched my eyes to and pondered on my wretched plight. 'Twas silent all around; I heard nothing, nothing. That lasted pretty long, till I began to feel that the boards were so hard and that my body, which had been thrashed black and blue, was hurting me. My back was stiff and my arms and legs grew cold. And yet I nor wished ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... captured, of the 75th New York, 6 killed, 2 drowned, and 4 wounded, and 200 mules and 200,000 rations thrown into the sea, the expedition returned to New Orleans, whence, by reason of unseaworthiness of transports, part of it had not yet started. The transports came back in a sorry plight, the Cahawba on one wheel, the river steamboat Laurel Hill without her smokestacks, and all the others of her class with their frail sides stove. The Clifton and the Sachem, whose losses are but partially reported, lost 10 killed, 9 wounded, and 39 missing. Nearly all the ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... my little king! Is your happy kingdom lost To the rebel knave, Jack Frost? Have you felt the snow-flakes sting? Houseless, homeless in October, Whither now? Your plight is sober, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... fallen, are too common to bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us. The rural population is indeed in a worse plight than the other classes. We quote—with the attestation of our own experience—the following passage from one of a series of articles which have recently appeared in a morning newspaper: "Taking the adult class of agricultural laborers, it is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... what we asked. But would she give us all we asked? Just as there might have been a renewed chance of getting an answer to this question, black men in a black boat hailed us. Sir Marcus had deigned at last to remember our plight. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... with sorrowful tears when he discovered how his poor people had been abused, but his own plight was so helpless that he was unable to aid them. Fortunately the boy's mother, Queen Garee, was not among these slaves, for Queen Cor had placed her in the ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Richard to assume the crown were not assembled in form of parliament;" yet it rehearses the supplication (recorded by the chronicle above) and declares, "that king Eduard was and stood married and troth plight to one dame Eleanor Butler, daughter to the earl of Shrewsbury, with whom the said king Edward had made a pre-contract of matrimony, long before he made his pretended marriage with Elizabeth Grey." Could Sir Thomas More be ignorant of this ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... crime, and voluntarily confessed it, would get off with a year's imprisonment. The jailer held the lantern close to the tanned face of the reader and nodded encouragingly to Bousquier. The latter was mumbling the Lord's Prayer. Greatly agitated, and groping about for a way out of his plight, he said finally that everything was as he had first related, only the tobacco-dealer had paid him not with a gold-piece but a couple of silver coins. He repeated his confession before the magistrate, who had been summoned despite ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... entertainments. In the sweat of our brows we earned such concerts as we had, and any one who has ever got up a concert, even at home, knows how much sweating such activities involve. In the end, moved by pity at our plight, the Y.M.C.A. people used to lend us concert parties, especially "Lena Ashwell" parties, the best of their kind. I have always found the Y.M.C.A. generous in sharing their good things with those ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... the city, and at last envoys were sent to the duke, who had them arrested. Nothing except absolute submission would satisfy him. In this dire need help came from an unexpected quarter. Mstislaf the Bold, son of Mstislaf the Brave, Duke of Smolensk, heard of Novgorod's plight and sent word to the city, "Torjok shall not hold itself higher than Novgorod. I will deliver your lands and citizens, or leave my bones among you." He was as good as his word. There was a great war between Souzdal and Smolensk; no quarter was asked or given. In 1216, Vsevolod's sons were ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... arm them. But of this Congress had taken no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the most desperate assault of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... must I tune my song, And set my harp to notes of saddest woe, Which on our dearest Lord did seize ere long, Dangers, and snares, and wrongs, and worse than so, Which He for us did freely undergo: Most perfect Hero, tried in heaviest plight Of labors huge and hard, too hard ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... as a man may be. He straightened out his hat, opened the front door quickly, pulled it to with a bang, as if he had just come in, and stalked upstairs in dignity. Never has a man more conscious and oppressive rectitude than one who has barely escaped a dreadful plight. No word came from the just-awakened terror in a night-dress. He had ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... But the record of Cousin, who tells the story in his Histoire de Constantinople, states that 'the weight of his body having more power to drag him down than his artificial wings had to sustain him, he broke his bones, and his evil plight was such that he did not ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... questions asked by the practical gas maker will be: "What guarantee can you give that as soon as we have erected plant, and got used to the new process of manufacture, a sudden rise in the price of oil will not take place, and leave us in worse plight than we were before?" and the only answer to this is that, as far as it is possible to judge anything, this event is not likely to take place in our time. A year ago the prospects of the oil trade looked black, as the output of American oil was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... fair and fond deceiver, How prompt are striplings to believe her, How throbs the pulse, when first we view, The eye that rolls in glossy blue; Or sparkles black, or mildly throws, A beam from under hazel brows; How quick we credit every oath, And hear her plight the willing troth; Fondly we hope 'twill last for aye, When lo! she changes in a day, The Record will forever stand, "That woman's vows, are writ ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. With the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, and a passion of anger at my uncle, that once more bereft me ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... T'ai-p'ings. After some reverses, he entered upon a long course of victories by which the rebels were driven from most of their strongholds; and in 1859, he submitted a plan for an advance on Nanking, which was approved and ultimately carried out. Meanwhile, the plight of the besieged rebels in Nanking had become so unbearable that something had to be done. A sortie on a large scale was accordingly organized, and so successful was it that the T'ai-p'ings not only routed the besieging army, but were able to ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... Pandu is to me, so art thou, O son, and so also Vidura of profound wisdom! It is out of affection that I tell you all this! O Bharata, thou art possessed of a hundred and one sons, but Pandu hath only five. And they are in a bad plight and passing their days in sorrow. How may they save their lives, how may they thrive such thoughts regarding the distressed sons of Pritha continually agitate my soul! O king of the earth, if thou desirest all the Kauravas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... were two other things: a U-boat, representing the might of Germany, and a whaler with perhaps twenty men in it, representing the plight ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the porch I bethought myself of the porter. A hotel porter had helped me out of a similar plight in Breslau once years ago. This porter, with his red, drink-sodden face and tarnished gold braid, did not promise well, so far as a recommendation for a lodging for the night was ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... and a few dried apples. The bacon had spoiled. Most of the scientific instruments were in the bottom of the river. One boat was destroyed. The men were wet to the skin and unable to make a fire. In this plight they entered the Grand Canyon, somewhere in whose depths a great ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... had been punished they soon learned the extent of the calamity they had inflicted upon the Spaniards. Through their spies they ascertained their diminished numbers, witnessed their miserable plight, and had the sagacity to perceive that they were very poorly prepared to withstand another attack. Thus they gradually regained confidence, marshalled their armies anew, and commenced an incessant series of assaults, avoiding any general action, and yet wearing out the Spaniards with the expectation ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... immediate return to the city. There he sat him upon his throne and sending for the Chief Minister, the father of the two damsels who (Inshallah!) will presently be mentioned, he said, "I command thee to take my wife and smite her to death; for she hath broken her plight and her faith." So he carried her to the place of execution and did her die. Then King Shahryar took brand in hand and repairing to the Serraglio slew all the concubines and their Mamelukes.[FN20] He also sware himself by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... him, in spite of his desperate plight, Horace could not help laughing. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Fakrash," he said, as soon as he could speak, "but—the Lord Mayor! It's really too absurd. Why, he wouldn't hurt a hair on ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... not exactly shun me, but showed me in many ways that he had entered into a new world, in which he desired to be alone. That Beulah Sands's plight had roused into intense activity all the latent romance of my friend's nature, did not surprise me. I foresaw from the first that Bob would fall head over heels in love with this beautiful, sorrow-laden girl, and it was soon obvious that the long-delayed shaft had planted its ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... was night, so sad was their plight, The sun it went down, and the stars gave no light. They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried, And the poor little things they lay ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... that a man can offer a woman, is walking the streets of Kenton City, cold, hungry, homeless—a beggar! What business is it of yours or mine what his past follies and weaknesses were? His temptations may have been beyond our understanding, but his present plight is not. He is begging—begging at our very doors—a man whom we have called by the name of friend! I can't help him. All I can do, as I said before, is to turn to you, whom I love better than all the world, and ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... kind of intellectual Norfolk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form or flavour remaining. Master Bitherstone now, on whom the forcing system had the happier and not uncommon effect of leaving no impression whatever, when the forcing apparatus ceased to work, was in a much more comfortable plight; and being then on shipboard, bound for Bengal, found himself forgetting, with such admirable rapidity, that it was doubtful whether his declensions of noun-substantives would hold out to the end of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... church, save where the altar stands, Dressed like a bride, illustrious with light, Where one old priest exalts with tremulous hands The one true solace of man's fallen plight. ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... emergency. The General has three boats chartered, with flats in tow, but the demand for these to tow out stock is greater than they can meet with promptness. All are working night and day, and the 'Susie' hardly stops for more than an hour anywhere. The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and momentarily it is expected that some of the houses will float off. Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water. Reports have come in that a woman and child have been washed away below here, and two cabins floated off. Their occupants are the same who refused to come off day before yesterday. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained. And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States, in Congress assembled, on all questions which by the said Confederation are submitted ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... reclined himself on the cushions, and assembling his courtly retinue, commenced his harangue respecting the plans necessary to be adopted under existing circumstances. His councillors, however, appeared in a very sorry plight to give advice: they looked at each other with woe-begone countenances, and their sleepy eyes seemed to concur in one opinion, though they did not actually venture to give it utterance, that the most rational course to pursue, after the fatigues of the day, was to indulge nature ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... cannot, but with life expire: Our vow'd affections both have often tried, 830 Nor any love but yours could ours divide. Then, by my love's inviolable band, By my long suffering, and my short command, If e'er you plight your vows when I am gone, Have pity on ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... that our friend Newland is taken up for shoplifting, because he thought proper to run after a pretty woman's carriage; and I am accused by his worship of being his confederate. I could forgive his suspicions of Mr Newland in that plight; but as for his taking me for one of the swell mob, it proves a great deficiency of judgment; perhaps he will commit your lordship also, as he may not be aware that your ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... if you can comprehend the loneliness, the hollow futility of our plight. Fifty thousand skilled workmen with nothing to do. Some of the less adaptable gave up, prostrating themselves upon the bare rocks until their joints froze from lack of use, and their works corroded. Others served the miners and prospectors, but ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... consider resistance useless,' replied Saturn, 'for I tried it and failed; but at least one has a chance of success; and yet, having resisted this spirit and failed, I should not consider myself in a worse plight than you would voluntarily place yourself in by ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... pitiable terror of the ordeal before her—a pitiful, mute, quivering distress, that this man, against whom, two hours before, she had felt such a store of bitter rancour, whose almost murderous assault she had so narrowly escaped, should now be in this plight. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... never talk to me Of covenants. Men and lions plight no faith, Nor wolves agree with lambs, but each must plan Evil against the other. So between Thyself and me no compact can exist, Or understood intent. First, one of us Must fall and yield his life blood to the god ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... lost, every soul and the good money! we've struck a reef, Adam, and 'tis the end and O the good money!' Hereupon I climbed 'bove deck, the vessel on her beam ends and in desperate plight and nought to be seen i' the dark save the white spume as the seas broke over us. None the less I set the crew to cutting away her masts and heaving the ordnance overboard (to lighten her thereby), but while this was doing comes a great wave roaring out ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... tribe died out from starvation. The Hudson's Bay in our district were in bad plight. We took six of them in—Hadn't heard of the Souris ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... it though thou plight thy word to boot? True servant wast thou to my sire King Brute, And Brute thy ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in spite of their plight. "Looks like it," he agreed. There was something ridiculous about being bundled into an antique Western jail. "Anyway, we didn't get bitten by that ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... us, also, had misgivings about our boots. I was reduced to choosing between boots with large holes in the soles or chuplies mended with string; the boots I kept for show days, as the holes didn't show, and the chuplies for ordinary work. Most of the other officers were much in the same plight. ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... clothes; the polish on his rough shoes; his clean-shaven face, touched her now as at other times. She wondered whether, if they had been alone, she would not have confessed her perplexities and asked his counsel. In their talks she had been impressed by his rugged common sense, and her plight was one that demanded the exercise of just that quality. Rose turned the pages of her book. Her father and Nan continued their conference in low tones in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... continued on their course, and, in three days time, were safely lodged within the walls of the Fort. One week subsequently, Mitchell and New followed their companions to the Fort, but in a sad plight. They had not suspected danger, and, consequently, had failed to guard against it. They had been surrounded by Indians and deprived of everything they possessed except their naked bodies. In this denuded state they arrived at the Fort. They were kindly ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the Spectre of the Smells— London Smells! What a world of retrospect his tyranny compels! In the silence of the night How we muse on the old plight Of Kensington,—a Dismal Swamp, and lone! Still the old Swamp-Demon floats O'er the City, as our throats Have long known. And the people—ah, the people— Though as high as a church steeple They have gone For fresh air, that Demon's tolling In a muffled ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... tree, Every rocky wall, This my sorrow know and see; So, in brief, doth all Nature know aright This my sorry plight; Thou alone Takest thy delight To ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... no grudge against her, heaven knows, but somehow I resented my present plight, for which I thought she was responsible. She had given me fair warning, but she should have known that it was my purpose to carry out the orders of General Forrest; and if I was to be warned at all she should have told me the precise nature of the danger. ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... ship was taking him around the Horn—it took time to go around that Horn, as everybody knew—or suppose a whaler had taken him off and carried him up north, could he expect to get back in a day, and did she want him to find her in such a plight? ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... before any one had heard of it. Yuan Shih-kai had the priceless opportunity of studying them at close range and soon made up his mind about certain things. When the storm burst, pretending to see nothing but mad fanatics in those who, realizing the plight of their country, had adopted the war-cry "Blot out the Manchus and the foreigner," he struck at them fiercely, driving the whole savage horde headlong into the metropolitan province of Chihli. There, seduced by the Manchus, they ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... fallen mad; and me beseemeth, said the dwarf, he resembleth much unto Sir Launcelot, for him I saw at the great tournament beside Lonazep. Jesu defend, said that knight, that ever that noble knight, Sir Launcelot, should be in such a plight; but whatsomever he be, said that knight, harm will I none do him: and this knight's name was Bliant. Then he said unto the dwarf: Go thou fast on horseback, unto my brother Sir Selivant, that is at the Castle Blank, and tell him ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... my lad," says Jurgen, a little sorrowfully. "And God speed to you, for many others are in your plight." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... glad of it, Timothy, for your sake; but I am sorry, judging by your present plight, that it appears to have done ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... the frontier. In a spruit, a branch of the Sand river, which runs through Schultz' farm, the Maxim, outpaced and overdriven, stuck fast, and it was promptly attacked and captured by a party of twenty-five of the enemy who had descried its plight from Talana, its detachment holding out until all were killed or wounded. In this affair nine Boer prisoners were also released. About 1.15 p.m., a party of two hundred Boers was seen descending Impati ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... heart of mine in their impetuous course, have penetrated into its core. O black-eyed lady, those impetuous and cruel shafts are maddening me beyond endurance. It behoveth thee to relieve me from this plight by surrendering thyself to me and favouring me with thy embraces. Decked in beautiful garlands and robes and adorned with every ornament, sport thou, O sweet damsel, with me to thy fill. O thou of the gait of an elephant in rut, deserving as thou art of happiness though ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... so far from being convinced by them, that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that MATTER, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible. Common sense (which, in truth, very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it, it will counsel you best. Read and hear, for your amusement, ingenious systems, nice questions subtilly agitated, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... now I have to watch myself Each hour. Oh, hapless plight! For if I should be great, of course, Those lines ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... had waited for him all these years. She had been sought after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often ventured to carry ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... The miserable remnant watched his receding sails with dreary foreboding, a foreboding which seemed but too just, when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than the Indians had ever known, howled through the forest and lashed the ocean into fury, Most forlorn was the plight of these exiles, left, it might be, the prey of a band of ferocious bigots more terrible than the fiercest hordes of the wilderness. And when night closed on the stormy river and the gloomy waste of pines, what dreams of terror may not have haunted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... helplessness as nothing out of the ordinary way. And he raised no hand to set her free. A chill struck through her. But the next moment he did raise his hand and the blood flowed again, at her heart. Of course, she was in the darkness. He had not seen her plight. Even now he was only beginning to be aware of it. For his hand touched the bandage over her mouth—tentatively. He felt for the knot under the broad brim of her hat at the back of her head. He found it. In a moment ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... into the distance, the surface of the river forms a "misty line of light", just before it melts into the shadows of the forest. Where do the forest and the stream seem to meet? What does the word "plight" suggest about their meeting? What suggests a meeting-place out of sight? Why is the meeting represented as taking place in the shadow? Now what is ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... be able to swim to a neighbouring island. This was a counsel of despair, for wounded and exhausted as they were, the feat was impossible. When the Sioux rushed down to the shore, they realized the plight of the French, and did not even waste an arrow on them. One by one the swimmers sank beneath the waves. After watching their tragic fate, the savages returned to scalp those who had fallen at the camp. With characteristic ferocity they hacked and mutilated the bodies. ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight, When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch. Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall staunch Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... experience has taught us how completely an army is tied to the wheels of the wagons. Tell a general how fast the train can travel and he will know how long the journey will be. We passed our wagons in a terrible plight: some upset, some with balky mules, some stuck in the mud, and some broken down. The loud-swearing drivers, and the stubborn, patient, hard-pulling mules did not fail to vary and enliven ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... came to his grandfather's while it was yet unreviving night; but he had little difficulty in rousing the old man. He told him all he knew about Alice, as well as the plight in which he had found her. Simon looked grave when he heard how his daughter had come between Richard and his friends. He hurried on his clothes, put the pony to, and got into the cart: he would himself fetch the girl! ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... making any complaint, lest Johnny should be moved to espouse her cause, and avenge it on Matty; but it had gone to her heart, and to Allie's as well, that, after such forbearance, neither Bessie nor I should have noticed her plight. However, we made up for it now by an outburst of indignation and resentment, especially violent on my part; whereupon, the sage Allie turned my own moral lecture, so lately delivered, upon myself, recalling my exhortations to the effect that we should be patient and forgiving ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... pray to the Lord for the servant of God, Velasco, and for the hand-maid of God, Kaya, who now plight each other their troth, and for their salvation. . . . That he will send down upon them perfect and peaceful love. . . . That he will preserve them in oneness of mind and in steadfastness of faith. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... probable she would have encountered Girty or a member of his band of redmen, rather than have this young man find her in this predicament. It provoked her to think that of all the people at the fort it should be the only one she could not welcome who should find her in such a sad plight. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... was in an awkward plight. Of course, Patch must on no account be left behind; but, on the other hand, how was I to get him along? Tearing a piece off the edge of the sack, I frayed out some of the thread and made a kind of bag, which I put over the wounded paw, tying it round the leg. This took ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... us take leave of the Intendant, and return at once to the city, but not in that plight!" added he, smiling, as Le Gardeur, oblivious of all but the pleasure of accompanying him, grasped his arm to leave the great hall. "Not in that garb, Le Gardeur! Bathe, purify, and clean yourself; I will wait outside in the fresh air. The odor ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was back again in her own room in New York. There, at least, she would have been free to shut herself up, away from all eyes but her own. Moreover, she had to look forward to what she should do at the end of the meal. For all she saw, she was going to be then in even a worse plight than she was now. For he would be able to talk, and she must needs answer and keep from crying. Above all things else, she must keep from crying. She did not wish him to think her a little fool as well as ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Letter, I penned it in as good French as I could muster, begging Monsieur Foscue to communicate at once with his Eminence, telling him how I had been captured, and that my Letter of Credit had been taken from me, and of the Sorry Plight I was now in. I was given to understand that from Six to Nine Months must pass by before I could expect an Answer; for that Safe Conducts to Christian Packets between Algiers and Marseilles were only granted thrice a year, and the last was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... multitudes there are around us everywhere, many known to my readers personally, and any number who may be known to them by a very short walk from their own dwellings, who are in this very plight! Their vicious habits and destitute circumstances make it certain that without some kind of extraordinary help, they must hunger and sin, and sin and hunger, until, having multiplied their kind, and filled up the measure of their miseries, the gaunt fingers of death ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... old with snow-white hair and had only one eye. Graham soon sank into a chair and was quite past reading barometers or anything else. He could just assent to remarks made to him by the captain and that was all. Ellen was in no better plight and sat on a bench near me, and I cannot say I felt cheerful, for the schooner, which was empty and had not much ballast, was rolling considerably. I carried on various conversations and strained my eyes to see if Mr. Keytel's boat was coming. It was a long wait, and when at last he did get ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... blood on his face, blood dabbling the dead leaves in the ditch, blood on the turf where the pure hoar-frost had lain. There was but little life left in him, and it was not easy for him to explain his sorry plight when the words came only with hard-fought ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... say, for all Alex's anxiety to set me free, he paid little enough attention to my plight. He jumped through the opening into the secret room, and picked up the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... riot, mixed with reports of the military being called out and firing on the people, numbers being killed, &c. Fortunately there was much exaggeration in these tales, and by degrees most of the Birmingham men found their way home, though many were in sad plight through the outrageous behaviour of themselves and the "victorious" crew who went off so gaily with them in the morning. The elections in after years ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... long fast even Richard bestirred himself to help; and when the cakes were baked and eaten—with what zestful sharp-sauce of appetite none but the famished may ever know—we were all in better heart, and better able to face the new and far more desperate plight in which our lack of common ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... chances under review, turning the white between his thumb and forefinger. Unfortunately he was on bad terms with some old friends who would once have taken pity on him in such a plight. He had lampooned them in verses; he had beaten and cheated them; and yet now, when he was in so close a pinch, he thought there was at least one who might perhaps relent. It was a chance. It was worth trying at least, and he would ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... would have agreed to this; for, though some love of gaming had been formerly amongst his faults, yet he was not so egregiously addicted to that vice as to be tempted by the shabby plight of Robinson, who had, if I may so express myself, no charms for a gamester. If he had, however, any such inclinations, he had no opportunity to follow them, for, before he could make any answer to Robinson's proposal, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... You may smile, but my plight was awful. In the sultry night I grew cold. My bridle-hand, still lying under her palm, turned and folded its big stupid fingers over hers. Then our hands slid apart and we rode back. "I wish I were good enough to know the stars," she said, gazing ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... unaccountably. The anger, the repulsion for these youths, was gone from him now; and at heart he sided fanatically with them against their captors. But it had not as yet occurred to him that his own plight was far ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tiresome delays occurred. They waited for the 'Thunder' at the Isle of Wight; and when the rest went on to Plymouth, the 'Jason' stayed behind ignominiously in Portsmouth because her captain had no ready money to pay a distraining baker. The 'Husband' was in the same plight for twelve days more. The squadron was, however, increased by seven additional vessels, one of them commanded by Keymis, through the enforced waiting at Plymouth, where, on May 3, Raleigh issued his famous ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... one chance for deliverance, we must get the tidings of our dreadful plight to Fort Wallace, a hundred miles away. Jack Stillwell and another brave scout were chosen for the dangerous task. At midnight they left us, moving cautiously away into the black blank space toward the southwest, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... battle-ship "Mikasa," commanded the pursuing squadron, which overtook and surrounded the Russian ships, pouring in a terrible fire which soon threw them into hopeless confusion. Not a shot came back in reply and Togo, seeing their helpless plight, signalled a demand for their surrender. In response the Japanese flag was run up over the Russian standard, and these five ships fell into the hands of the islanders without an effort at defense. The confusion and dismay on board was such that an attempt to fight could have led only to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... stood beside the altar with a friend, To hear him plight his faith to a young bride, A rosy child of simple heart and mind. Yet two short years before, on that same spot, I heard the funeral chant above the bier Of a first wife—a woman bright as fair, Or blessed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... demanded an effort. She would have slipped and hurt herself many times were it not for Hozier's firm grasp, nor did she realize the sheer exhaustion that forced him to seek support from the neighboring wall with his disengaged hand. The man in front, however, was alive to their dangerous plight. He said something in his own language—for his English had the precise staccato accent of the well-educated foreigner—and another man appeared. The sight of the newcomer startled Iris more than any other event that had happened since ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... in my favour, in which case there might be trouble. I had a shrewd suspicion that the chief was something of a coward at heart. He seemed nervous and anxious, and I saw him talking eagerly with his principal supporter. As for myself, I constantly dwelt upon the ghastly plight of the two poor girls. I resolved that, with God's help, I would vanquish my huge enemy and rescue them from their dreadful position. I was in splendid condition, with muscles like steel from incessant walking. At length the warriors squatted down upon the ground in the form of a ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... all, Revealed or unrevealed, in heaven or earth, In how sad plight our city is, thy mind, If not thy eye, discerns. Prophet, in thee Resides our sole hope of deliverance. Phoebus, if thou hast not the tidings heard, Has to our envoys answered, that the plague Will never ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... had been wakened at daylight the next morning by some noise in the room. Looking up, they saw the little fellow at the fireplace breaking an egg. He had built a fire, had got eggs from the kitchen, and was cooking his breakfast. The little girl was mischievous and cheery in spite of her bad plight, and nobody knew of the baby except Grayson and the doctor. Grayson would let nobody else in. As soon as it was well enough to be peevish and to cry, he took it back to its mother, who was still abed. A long, dark mountaineer was there, of whom the woman seemed half afraid. ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... which was a cruciform church whose mimic clock tower was capacious enough to hold a whole chorus of singers. The enormous pie in which twenty-eight musicians were discovered when the crust was cut may have been the original of that pasty whose opening revealed four-and-twenty blackbirds in a similar plight. Wild animals wandered gravely at a machinist's will through deep forests, but in the midst of the counterfeit brutes there was at least one live lion, for Gilles le Cat[5] received twenty shillings from the duke for the chain and locks he made to hold the savage beast fast ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Lion was dead, the second captain in his hammock, and the admiral had no one to assist him but the mates of the vessel, some of whom crawled up to their duty more dead than alive. The ship of the second in command, the Dort, was even in a more deplorable plight. The commodore was dead; the first captain was still doing his duty; but he had but one more officer ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... all yesternight, Thine eyes were blue, thy hair was bright As when we murmured our troth-plight Beneath the thick stars, Rosaline! Thy hair was braided on thy head, As on the day we two were wed, Mine eyes scarce knew if thou wert dead, But my shrunk heart ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of the chase, having plenty of work, for, had a gale come on, our ship, and a good many others, would assuredly have been driven ashore, in the plight we were in. Anyhow, at night their ships got into the Texel, and our vessels, which had been following them, anchored five or six leagues out, being afraid of the sands. Altogether we had burnt or sunk twenty-six of their ships of war, while we lost only ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... Come with me," and he held out his hand with an air of royal condescension which contrasted ridiculously enough with his grotesque outside. Perpetua turned away from him with a little moan. "Alas, poor wretch," she sighed, her pity for his plight for the moment overpowering her sense of her own peril. Robert did not catch her words, but he saw her trouble and ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... childish practice is still a rule in polite society, it is one "more honoured in the breach than the observance." In no city on the Eastern side of the Alleghany Mountains did I meet a single drunken American in the street. The few whom I did detect in that plight were manifestly recent importations from Great Britain ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... themselves with the simple statement that "yesterday morning an insurrectionary rising took place in the City of Dublin"; that "the authorities had taken active and energetic measures to cope with the situation, which measures were proceeding favourably"; but this official condolence in their plight was rather discomforting, as the whole city was still in the possession ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... when he is literally in the last ditch, with a strip of cold steel the only thing between him and death—then Tommy smiles, then he cracks a joke. Without a thought of himself, without a murmur, he faces any desperate plight. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... sank like lead. Thanks to the lifebuoys Underhill and the men rose quickly to the surface. Two of them, who could not swim, cried out despairingly for help. Underhill seized one and held him up; the other was saved by the promptitude of young Smith. Seeing their plight, he caught up a rope which had been brought ashore, and flung it among the group of men struggling in the water. The drowning man clutched it, the others swam to it, and by its aid all were drawn ashore, gasping for breath, and sorely battered ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Zarsko-Selo, the railway station for Pulkova, which is about five miles away. The station-master told me that no carriage from Pulkova was waiting for me, which tended to confirm the fear that the dispatch had not been received. After making known my plight, I took a seat in the station and awaited the course of events, in some doubt what to do. Only a few minutes had elapsed when a good-looking peasant, well wrapped in a fur overcoat, with a whip in his hand, looked in at the door, and pronounced very distinctly the words, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... impossible in the face of the gale, she stopped thinking. "We know nothing ... we know nothing," were the words she heard in the shriek of the wind, and revealed religion appeared in tattered, miserable plight, a forlorn spectre borne away on the wind. So distinct was the vision, so explicit her hearing, that she could not pretend to herself that she was a Christian in any but a moral sense, and this would not satisfy Monsignor. Then question after ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... oh, how glad I am you came!" she cried, low. "I knew you would not fail me if you but learned of my plight; but it's wonderful you should be here so soon. I prayed every minute of my ride that Juanita would find ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... everything out was simply to reduce our situation to the last rigor of its elements. She herself had seen nothing, not the shadow of a shadow, and nobody in the house but the governess was in the governess's plight; yet she accepted without directly impugning my sanity the truth as I gave it to her, and ended by showing me, on this ground, an awestricken tenderness, an expression of the sense of my more than questionable privilege, of which the very breath has remained with me as that of the sweetest ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube's forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... him against the rocks, brought him back in fierce eddies, and again and again threw him against a solid face of stone. When he was rescued he was a mass of bruises, but fortunately no bones were broken. It was some days before he could get out, and in his sorry plight, bandaged so his face was scarcely visible, Spencer found him. "Herbert, do you believe in the actuality of matter?" was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... behind in the chamber, and came boldly up to me, and besought me to suffer her once more to serve her old master and her dear young mistress; for that now she had saved her poor soul, and confessed all she knew. Wherefore she could no longer bear to see her old master in such woeful plight, without so much as a mouthful of victuals, seeing that she had heard that old wife Seep, who had till datum prepared the food for me and my child, often let the porridge burn; item, over-salted the fish and the meat. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... their sweetness is melting into fable; only the new Spirit in its holiest power can restore to those homes their boasted security of "each man's castle," for Woman, the warder, is driven into the street, and has let fall the keys in her sad plight. Yet darkest hour of night is nearest dawn, and there seems reason to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... o'erworked drudge, is on thy mind? No more in even swathe thou layest the corn: Thy fellow-reapers leave thee far behind, As flocks a ewe that's footsore from a thorn. By noon and midday what will be thy plight If now, so soon, thy sickle fails ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Shall ever turn your head to any use; Write but like Wordsworth—live beside a lake, And keep your bushy locks a year from Blake; [44] Then print your book, once more return to town, And boys shall hunt your Bardship up and down. [45] Am I not wise, if such some poets' plight, To purge in spring—like Bayes [46]—before I write? 480 If this precaution softened not my bile, I know no scribbler with a madder style; But since (perhaps my feelings are too nice) I cannot purchase ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... sparkled as the reassurance came that at least one good fighting man was waiting to do nothing but assist her. For the moment she threw caution to the winds and remembered nothing but her plight and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... the mighty king: "How might that chance, sith I am heathen and be christened not a whit, whereas the lady is a Christian and therefore would not plight her troth? It would be a ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... it easy to understand their plight. If we know ourselves we are strengthened that much, because we can bolster up our weaknesses. We will know enough to combat timidity. We can then know what we are capable of, and thus become conscious of our innate powers that only need to be called into action in ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... reply, imply, plight, suppliant, explicit, implicit, implicate, supplicate, duplicate, duplicity, complicate, complicity, accomplice, application, plait, display, plot, employee, exploit, simple, supple; (2) pliant, pliable, replica, explication, inexplicable, multiplication, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... tops. Under this the soldiers of the legions without their arms, and wearing but a single article of clothing,—the campestre or kilt, which reached from the waist to the knees,—passed in gloomy succession. Even the consuls were obliged to appear in this humble plight, the six hundred hostage knights ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that he derived his impression from the deep, ray-like wrinkles that were like star-fish round the man's eyes; but if so, it must have been that something in the quality of the voice reflected the expression of the face, for they were not in such plight as would enable them to observe one another's faces much. The icy wind bore with it a burden of sparkling sand, so that they were often forced to muffle their faces, walking ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... unable to aim at the enemy, we could make no use of the bow gun. Every brace and bowline cut away, her canvas torn to rags, her hull shot through, and half her men dead or wounded, she was, indeed, a sorry sight. The Niagara went by on the safe side of us, heedless of our plight. Perry stood near, cursing as he looked off at her. Two of my gunners had been hurt by bursting canister. D'ri and I picked them up, and made for the cockpit. D'ri's man kept howling and kicking. As we hurried over the bloody deck, there came a mighty crash beside us and a burst of ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... and the grand vizier walked in a melancholy mood through the fields, not knowing what to do in their sad plight. They could not get out of their stork-skins, and it would not do for them to go back to the town to tell any one of their condition, for who would believe a stork if he said that he was the caliph? And even if they had believed him, would the inhabitants of Bagdad be willing ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... exceeding joy, and thanketh thee for acting as he bade thee, and now he hath despatched me to order that thy men be bidden to wend their ways, and that thou present thyself before him pinioned and fettered to the end that thou be seen in such plight of the envoys sent by Pharaoh concerning whom and whose master our Monarch standeth in fear." "To hear is to obey!" replied Haykar, and forthwith let pinion his arms and fetter his legs; then, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Monument. General Howard's Pursuit of the Nez Perces After the Battle in the Big Hole. Their Final Capture by General Miles. Chief Joseph's Curious Message to Howard. White Bird's Flight to Woody Mountain. His Sad Plight on Arrival There. He Still Lives Within the British Lines. Chief Joseph on the Colville Reservation. He Wants "No More Fight" ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... hysterical tears, and he soon found himself involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was left with the uneasy conviction that he knew very little of his wife. She was not of a nature to let any slight to her go unpunished. What was ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arrival created a prodigious commotion. The whole population turned out to stare at me. The children ran into the bushes to hide. But feminine curiosity conquered feminine timidity. Although I was in the plight of the forlorn Odysseus after his desperate swim, I had no 'blooming foliage' to wind [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. Unlike the Phaeacian maidens, however, the tawny nymphs were all as brave as Princess Nausicaa herself. They stared, and pointed, and buzzed, and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... an impost of 7s per week, an under gaoler undertook to provide food for Ralph and to lend him a mattress. His companions in this wretched plight were a miserable pair who were suspected of a barbarous and unnatural murder. They had been paramours, and their victim had been the woman's husband. Once and again they had been before the judges, and though ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... a deep, dark pit, and lay in its miry bottom, groaning and utterly unable to move. He heard a man walking by close enough to see his plight. But with stately tread he walked on without volunteering to help. ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... scenery did not entirely compensate. To-day's experience has taught us how completely an army is tied to the wheels of the wagons. Tell a general how fast the train can travel and he will know how long the journey will be. We passed our wagons in a terrible plight: some upset, some with balky mules, some stuck in the mud, and some broken down. The loud-swearing drivers, and the stubborn, patient, hard-pulling mules did not fail to vary and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... or drove long distances in wagons over the sun-baked prairie. The heat was intense and the hot winds, blowing incessantly, seared everything they touched. After two years of drouth, the farmers were desperately poor, and Susan, concerned over their plight, wondered why Congress could not have appropriated the money for artesian wells to help these honest earnest people, instead of voting $40,000 for an ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... tears, and he soon found himself involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was left with the uneasy conviction that he knew very little of his wife. She was not of a nature to let any slight to her go unpunished. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... matter. Seeing a small figure curled up under the spout of the pump, drenched to the skin and black as Othello, she stooped down to investigate the phenomenon. Oh, what was my despair when she discovered who it was, and in what plight! ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... But they could not very well be dishonest, nor die! They would go on forever, at least as long as there was the institution of private property and an intricate code of laws to safeguard it. Thus the judge argued to himself again in considering the plight of these Clarks, and decided to use the Washington Trust Company of B——, whose officers ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... promised to plight her faith to Compton the moment Lady Bassett should be restored to health; and so, with hopes and smiles, and the novelty of a daughter's love, she fought with death for Lady Bassett, and at last she won ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... terribly fatigued but little wounded. The Myramen drew off, having suffered heavy losses, for many a good man had fallen. Those who were beyond the river came over slowly and did not arrive till the fight was over, and when they saw the plight of their men Arnor would not risk himself any further, for which he was much blamed by his father and by others. Men thought he was not much of a warrior. The place where they ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... men, quite beside themselves. Her lip curled, and her eyes laughed satirically as she thought of the follies of those men—how they had let women lead them up and down in public places, drooling and sighing and seeming to enjoy their own pitiful plight. If that expression of satire had not disappeared so quickly, she might have got at the secret of her "miserable failure." For, it was her habit of facing men with only lightly veiled amusement, or often frank ridicule, in her eyes, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... have not written since we left Dublin; but do not be angry, I was not well during the time we were in Dublin, nor for two or three days after we landed: but three days' rest at Bangor Ferry recovered me completely, and thanks to Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman, I am now in perfectly good plight. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Hickson, I have done all I could—Cousin Manasseh knows it—to show him I can be none of his. I have told him,' said she, blushing, but determined to say the whole out at once, 'that I am all but troth-plight to a young man of our own village at home; and, even putting all that on one side, I wish not for ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the pawnbroker's. His father refused to do anything for him. "He saw me without bread to put in my mouth, and offered me not a crumb, although he had money belonging to me in his hands. He saw me in boots full of holes, and gave me to understand that I was not to come to see him in such plight." Such was the poor fellow's distress, that he was almost glad when the purpura, with its intolerable pains, returned, that he might crawl to the hospital, where he could say, that, "bad as the hospital-fare ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... enough to remember—you made Yorkshire and Lancashire shake with your shout on that occasion. The ringers cracked a bell in Briarfield belfry; it is dissonant to this day. The Association of Merchants and Manufacturers dined together at Stilbro', and one and all went home in such a plight as their wives would never wish to witness more. Liverpool started and snorted like a river-horse roused amongst his reeds by thunder. Some of the American merchants felt threatenings of apoplexy, and had themselves bled—all, like wise men, at this ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... truth, a very maelstrom of artful intrigue and shameless rapacity, looking to the absorption of the Indian's land, and of the few worldly possessions he now has. Nay, many would foresee for the Indian, through the consummation of his enfranchisement, naught but gloom and sorest plight. These would invest their picture with the sombrest hues; and, making this assume, under their pessimist delineation, blackest Tartarean aspect, would crown it with the exhibition of the Indian, as one sunken, at the instance of the white, in extremest depths of human sorrow; as plunged, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Unktomi, "that the villagers and chief who bound and deserted you are in sad plight. They have hardly anything ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... in one bosom! or what buskin hero, standing under the load of them, could have more effectually moved his spectators by the most pathetic speech, than poor miserable Nokes did by this silent eloquence, and piteous plight of his ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... old man visited him, and gave him a pull from his flask. Next morning, much refreshed, he wandered into the country, which he found to be an uninhabited island. He now repented of his undutiful conduct in leaving his parents, and felt his sad plight to be a fitting punishment ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... danger. When I gained the open street once more and breathed the open air, no one molesting or troubling me, I could have sung with joy. I fairly hugged myself for my cleverness in getting out of my plight. As for the combat I was furthering, my only doubt about that was lest the skulking Lucas should not prove good sword enough to give trouble to M. Gervais. It was very far from my wish that he should come out of the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... dupe. With the thought of it he actually ground his teeth; tears of rage and mortification sprang to his eyes. He recalled his own feelings in instances where shame had fallen upon other men; he recalled his own easy indifference and the temptation to laugh at the plight of the poor devils. It had never entered his mind that some day he might be the object of like consideration in others more or less fortunate, according ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... bought and sold, Jesus Christ—John had eaten and drunk; To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold. (Salva reverentia.) Now it was, "Saviour, bountiful lamb, "I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me! 50 "See thy servant, the plight wherein I am! "Art thou ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... they grow indignant for an instant with a society that produces beggars. Not because it produced me. But perhaps it might produce them—as beggars. And then remembering that they are responsible for my plight—they being society—they beg my pardon by giving me money and a pleading look. Oho! You should see the pleading looks they give me. Men and women pass and plead with me not to hit them too hard with my slapstick and bladder. They plead with me to spare them, not ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... me in the street one night. He was in the most pitiable plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history, or at least the outline of it. In brief, it amounted to this—he had been ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... little sorry for her, and also a bit rueful at his own plight. Things had gone wrong for him from the commencement of the evening. And this—well, the gage of battle had been flung in his face and he was no man to refuse the challenge. But his muscles were taut until the soft voice of Naomi broke in on ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... bride's beauty made amends for all. Just the same soft white dress of the afternoon—or was it one like it?—with no ornaments, no bridal veil. I have always pitied men who have to plight their troth to a moving mass of lace and tulle, weighed down with orange-blossoms massive as lead. This was my own little wife as she would walk by my side through life, dressed as she might be the next day ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... to be the Mixer and Cousin Egbert who did this and, considering the plight of our host, I thought it in the worst possible taste. I had raised my hand against the one American I had met who was at all times vogue. And not only this: For I now recalled a certain phrase I had flung out as I stood over him, ranting indeed no ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... unless every man present gives me his word of honour as a gentleman that I shall go free whithersoever I will. If, therefore, you think a magistrate requisite to inquire into this business, send for one. I think, however, that you would do much better to plight me your word at once, and let me go. I know no one but Sir John Fenwick here: therefore I can betray no one but him; and to Sir John Fenwick I pledge my word that I will ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... with wisdom. My inclination was never to war, not did I delight in the destruction of my race. I made no distinction between my own children and the children of Pandu. My own sons were prone to wilfulness and despised me because I am old. Blind as I am, because of my miserable plight and through paternal affection, I bore it all. I was foolish alter the thoughtless Duryodhana ever growing in folly. Having been a spectator of the riches of the mighty sons of Pandu, my son was derided for his awkwardness while ascending the hall. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with blood, speechless, for his mouth was filled with splinters of his broken jaw. Such was the man who the morning before had been Dictator, and master of all the armies of France. Couthon was in little better plight. Twenty-one in all were condemned on the 10 Thermidor and taken in carts to the guillotine. An awful spectacle. There was Robespierre with his disfigured face, half dead, and Fleuriot, and Saint-Just, and Henriot next to Robespierre, his ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... all that night, however, the party pulled steadily along the shore without finding an opening in the cliffs or any part which could be scaled by man. During this period their plight was miserable in the extreme, for the weather at the time was bitterly cold; they were drenched through and through with spray, which broke so frequently over the side as to necessitate constant baling, and, to make matters ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... trotting, and you will sometimes find yourself compelled to give your escort the appearance of being discourteous by drawing rein suddenly, leaving him, unwarned, to trot on, apparently disregarding your plight. Both your horse and his will resent your action, and unless he resemble both Moses and Job more strongly than most Americans, he will have a few words to say in regard to it, after you have repeated it once or twice. And, lastly, Esmeralda, no riding ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... "thou forgettest thy best auxiliaries, the good greyhounds, Help and Holdfast! I warrant thee that when the humpbacked baron caught thee by the cowl, which he hath almost torn off, thou hadst been in a fair plight, had they not remembered an old friend and come in to the rescue. Why, man, I found them fastened on him myself; and there was odd staving and stickling to make them 'ware haunch!' Their mouths were full of the flex, for I pulled a piece of the garment from their jaws. I warrant ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a young stock-broker in a bad financial plight, scarcely noticed that a female figure was passing him. Had the morrow's market been less a matter of life and death to him he might have thrown her a glance; but as it was she did not come within the range of his consciousness. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... from the author's sky. But in the unhappy days but lately passed away, the poet's lot was most miserable. His work brings him no livelihood; his patron's liberality goes but a little way. The historian is in no less parlous plight. The advocate makes some show of wealth, but it is, as a rule, the merest show; only the man already wealthy succeeds at the bar; many a struggling lawyer goes bankrupt in the struggle to advertise himself and push his way. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... old Lambernier met me just as I entered the woods. What shall I do if he tells that he saw me? This is not the road to the mill. It is to be hoped that he has not followed me! I should be in a pretty plight!" ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... their tents, laughing at the plight of their captain, as he issued, furious, from the ruins. Frank began to run too; but thinking that this would be considered an indication of guilt, he stopped. Atwater was ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... near by. He attended the various political meetings held at the "Travellers' Rest," and was a prominent man on training and election days. After a while, his wife began to look on these days with a troubled feeling, for they generally sent him home in a sad plight; and it took nearly a week for him to get settled down again to his work. Thus the declension began, and its progress was too sadly apparent to the eyes of Mrs. Foster, even before others, less interested than herself, observed it. At the end of ten years from the happy wedding ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... desperate, dear wife. Now what shall we do, who have no chance of succour, since none know of our plight? Yield, or strive to escape ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... tow, but the demand for these to tow out stock is greater than they can meet with promptness. All are working night and day, and the 'Susie' hardly stops for more than an hour anywhere. The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and momentarily it is expected that some of the houses will float off. Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water. Reports have come in that a woman and child have been washed away below ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... crossed by the army, although the two young knights, Baldwin and Berard, succeed in doing so in quest of adventure. The Saxons will not attack, trusting that the French will be destroyed by delay and the seasons. And, indeed, after two years and four months, the barons represent to the Emperor the sad plight of the host, and urge him to call upon the men of Herupe (North-west France) for performance of their warlike service. This is done accordingly, and the Herupe barons make all haste to their sovereign's aid, and come up just after the Saxons have made an unsuccessful attack. They send ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... ascertain how the day was going. I fired my musket but twice. The glimpses I did manage to take were far from satisfactory, however; several of our people being killed or wounded, one gun fairly crippled by a shot, and our rigging in a sad plight. The only thing encourag'ng was Neb's shout, the fellow making it a point to roar almost as loud as his gun, at ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... inquired the King, smiling. "Just because I have come in rough-and-ready plight, your house is full ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Chinaman: merely, the humorous bent of the two was identical. In the ancient Oriental tale, a man who wore the thief's collar as a punishment was questioned by an acquaintance concerning the cause of his plight. ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... since the Russian-Japanese War, Russia, weakened as she was, felt her influence in European affairs waning. I knew it was about time for her to make a desperate effort to regain European prestige. I recalled that upon Russia's plight after the Japanese war, Austria immediately annexed Herzegovina and Bosnia. She did this with the tacit understanding and backing up of Germany. I knew that as a result of this, Russia was again at work in the Balkans. Greeks, Servians, Bulgarians, and Montenegrins, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... creatures as foreign soldiers, whitecoats; so she cowered on. They were in the starry open country, on the high-road between the vine-hung mulberry trees. She held the precious head of her mistress, praying the Saints that strength would soon come to her to talk of their plight, or chatter a little comfortingly at least; and but for the singular sweetness which it shot thrilling to her woman's heart, she would have been fretted when Vittoria, after one long-drawn wavering sob, turned her lips to the bared warm breast, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a like plight, but a great deal more helplessly. If he escaped as to character with the many who knew him, yet of necessity he lost his good post. He was succeeded by Mr. Fitzgibbon, who, more fitly, I doubt not, than Kerr, has held this important office ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... kisses and farewells, Kate and kind Lady de la Poer left the carriage, and entering the brougham that was waiting for them, drove to Bruton Street; Kate very grave and silent all the way, and shrinking behind her friend in hopes that the servant who opened the door would not observe her plight—indeed, she took her hat off on the stairs, and laid it on the ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... consent, squatted on the sand near the edge of the pond. It was warmer for them that way. Martin edged over close to them. Not one member of Dick & Co. did the captain of the North Grammar nine really like, but in his present woeful plight Hi wanted human company of some kind, and he could not very well go in search of people ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... Desprez' private room; and he had just set it down on the floor in front of Anastasie, when the Doctor arrived, and was closely followed by the man of business. Boy and hamper were both in a most sorry plight; for the one had passed four months underground in a certain cave on the way to Acheres, and the other had run about five miles as hard as his legs would carry him, half that distance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said, only selected one shilling, with which I paid the bathing-man, and walked off undiscovered to my own machine. The fat old she-triton laughed till she cried. I dressed in my proper costume leisurely enough, and was amused to hear afterwards of the luckless plight in which a stout gentleman had found himself by the temporary loss of all his apparel whilst he was disporting ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... no principle or plausible pretext in this case which would not lead to granting a pension in any case of alleged disability arising from military service followed by suicide. It would be an unfair discrimination against many who, though in sad plight, have been refused relief in similar circumstances, and would establish an exceedingly troublesome ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Sambo. Gently as a nursing mother he set Gibbie down in a corner behind him, then with one rush sent every Jack of the company sprawling on the floor, with the table and bottles and glasses atop of them. At the vision of their plight his good humour instantly returned, he burst into a great hearty laugh, and proceeded at once to lift the table from off them. That effected, he caught up Gibbie in his arms, and carried him with ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... which could not be used with safety over the heads of our troops. Our outer lines of breastworks had been captured, and were held by the enemy. So much as was left of Berry's division was in absolute need of re-forming. Its supports were in equally bad plight. The death of Berry, and the present location of our lines in the low ground back of the crest just lost, where the undergrowth was so tangled and the bottom so marshy, that Ward, when he marched to Berry's relief, had failed to find him, obliged the Federals to fall back to the ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Carey as you say, mother," Annie caught up the words. "Well, I suppose the Careys will be in a far worse plight than we can be, and Cyril has been such a fool, though I don't suppose he meant much harm, with his dandyisms and idleness and his college airs—all that he ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... full of pain. Every ambulance and wagon used as ambulance was heavy laden; at every infrequent cabin or lonely farmhouse were left the too ill to travel farther. The poor servants, of whom there were some in each company, were in pitiable plight. No negro likes the cold; for him all the hot sunshine he can get! They shivered now, in the rear of the companies, their bodies drawn together, their faces grey. The nature of most was of an abounding cheerfulness, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... silence of his wound made much worriment. The little blistering voices of pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought, definite in their expression of danger. By them he believed that he could measure his plight. But when they remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terrible fingers that clutched ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... definitely overpowered he ceased his struggles. He was helped to his feet. A glance at his captors taught him that these were safari men and not savages of the country; and, with full knowledge of the general situation, he was not long in guessing out his present plight. But now was ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... the little clothing allowed him being miserably dirty and ragged, his beard and hair dishevelled, his legs torn by thorns and briers, his face gashed, blood-stained, and swollen. Colonel Schuyler, a prisoner there, beheld his plight with deep commiseration, supplied him with clothing and money, and did his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... list was Demosthenes. In this dilemma, Phocion, who did not wish to speak upon such a question, was loudly called upon by the people for his opinion; when he rose and said that the persons whom Alexander demanded had brought the state into such a miserable plight that they deserved to be surrendered, and that for his own part he should be very happy to die for the commonwealth. At the same time he advised them to try the effect of intercession with Alexander; and it was at last only ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... the fire below continued for hours, and about midnight it appeared that some impression was made; and after that, the men drove it back, inch by inch, until daylight, when they had completely got it under. The ship was now in a frightful plight. The after-part was literally burnt out—merely the shell remaining—the port quarter blown out by the explosion: fifteen feet of water in ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... moment gazed, And quickly turn about; In doleful plight, the deacon sighs, "Murder will ...
— The Story of the Two Bulls • John R. Bolles
... you do; you have never been put in such an odious plight. For instance, you have cherry-colored ribbons to wear to-night, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... drinks or gambles, woman knits, To put their sorrow out of sight, From folly unto folly flits The weary mind, or wrong or right; My melancholy taketh flight Reading the worst books I can get, The worst—yet best! such is my plight— ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... chose to become converts to the Romish Church, we might whistle for our acres, and light our pipes with the certificate. Our Yankee friends at Brazoria, however, laughed at our dilemma, and told us that we were only in the same plight as hundreds of our countrymen, who had come to Texas in total ignorance of this condition, but who had not the less taken possession of their land and settled there; that they themselves were amongst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... of wind did not last long, and the rain soon settled down into a steady drizzle, but we were in a sad plight. It was after nine o'clock before we had put ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... cried out, "O! I burn, I burn! And I feel in a pitiful plight;" But the Goose held fast the lid of the churn, So Reynard he ...
— The Fox and the Geese; and The Wonderful History of Henny-Penny • Anonymous
... that I was not in a bad plight; but although I appreciated this, I grew more and more troubled and uneasy. For several days I had not seen a sail, and if I should see one how could I attract attention? It must be that the condition of the vessel indicated that there was no one on board. Had I known that the ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... left London. My face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... was out of the question, and that there was very little chance that he would be able to escape; he began to accuse himself of rashness in having accepted from the Convention the very disagreeable commission which had brought him into his present plight, and to wish that he was once more among his legitimate adherents in the Quartier St. Antoine. He soon, however, regained his equanimity. Those whom he had in his rough manner treated well, returned the compliment; ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... appearance a little more than she had done lately in view of this future time. Her being somewhat weather-browned would not matter; it would be rather an advantage, as testifying to her banishment; but she must be in comfortable plight, and ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... one whom she trusted, how that there had come a king to her; "And he rode through my flaming fire, and said he was come to woo me, and named himself Gunnar; but I said that such a deed might Sigurd alone have done, with whom I plighted troth on the mountain; and he is my first troth-plight, and my well-beloved." ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... Paul, whose plight was as pitiable as that of a pet pomeranian turned out of a perfumed and cushioned boudoir to hold his own among foraging street curs, for a while bore up with an artificial courage. Under the long strain of successive anxieties his mother had broken in body and mind, and Paul was with her ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... associated with this idea, the term has come to be applied by analogy in many different senses. From the idea of evil as degraded, contemptible and doomed to failure, the term is applied to persons in evil plight, or of slight consideration. In English legal phraseology "devil" and "devilling" are used of barristers who act as substitutes for others. Any remuneration which the legal "devil" may receive is purely a matter of private ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... black as night, Oriana, Ere I rode into the fight, Oriana, While blissful tears blinded my sight By star-shine and by moonlight, Oriana, I to thee my troth did plight, Oriana. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... from Alfred also, who hates his water life—[Greek text] he calls it—but hopes to be cured in March. Poor fellow, I trust he may. He is not in a happy plight, I doubt. I wish I lived in a pleasant country where he might like to come and stay with me—but this is one of the ugliest places in England—one of the dullest—it has not the merit of being bleak on a grand scale—pollard trees over a flat clay, with regular hedges. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... its stealthier movement. It seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the evening his jaded mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of contemplating trifles, reverted to its own tormented processes. "Am I not hiding?" he said to himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his plight. ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... had about reached the end of our tether. Even if we had been inclined to abandon the object of our search, which, shadow as it was, was by no means the case, it was ridiculous to think of forcing our way back some seven hundred miles to the coast in our present plight; so we came to the conclusion that the only thing to be done was to stop where we were — the natives being so well disposed and food plentiful — for the present, and abide events, and try to collect information ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... let us take leave of the Intendant, and return at once to the city, but not in that plight!" added he, smiling, as Le Gardeur, oblivious of all but the pleasure of accompanying him, grasped his arm to leave the great hall. "Not in that garb, Le Gardeur! Bathe, purify, and clean yourself; I will wait outside in the fresh ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... thinking of some man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered on his face as he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's plight,—the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The effect of it was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... my distressed plight! (If, as thou seem'st, thou art so mean a man,) And seek not to enrich thy followers By lawless rapine from a silly maid, Who, travelling [33] with these Median lords To Memphis, from my uncle's country of Media, Where, all my ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... Daughter of All America and the Son of All Japan stand hand in hand before their people, and as they plight their troth, all bitter feelings pass away, the shouts of anger cease, and there is ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... passed one day through the village a poor beggar-woman. Her garments were torn and ragged, and her feet were bleeding from the rough road on which she had travelled, and she was in very evil plight. And being weary she sat her down under a chestnut-tree ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... against her, heaven knows, but somehow I resented my present plight, for which I thought she was responsible. She had given me fair warning, but she should have known that it was my purpose to carry out the orders of General Forrest; and if I was to be warned at all she should have told me the precise ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... they reached Woodworth's camp, and two men, John Stark and Howard Oakley, returned and met Reed's party. It was quite time. With frozen feet and exhausted bodies, the members of the second relief were in a sad plight. They left the settlements strong, hearty men. They returned in a half-dead condition. Several lost some of their toes on account of having them frozen, and one or two were crippled for life. They had been three days on the way from Starved Camp to Woodworth's. Cady and Stone overtook ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... vain to some of the passing boats to pick him up, but all were so absorbed in their efforts to advance and their eagerness to engage the enemy that none paid attention to Malchus or the others in like plight. Besides, it seemed probable that all, if they stuck to their canoes, would presently gain one bank or other of the river. Malchus, too, had started rather low down, and he was therefore soon out ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... and hour after hour, the little cavalcade crept toward Chattanooga, Grant's face becoming more haggard and furrowed with pain at every step, but showing a fixed determination to reach his goal at any cost. On every side signs of the desperate plight of the besieged garrison were only too apparent. Thousands of carcasses of starved horses and mules lay beside the road amid broken-down wagons, abandoned provisions and all the wreckage of a disorganized and ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... much reflection, she might have considered that she had found him singularly wanting during those hours of stress when a man of worth would have made some effort, however desperate, to enhearten her rather than repine upon his own plight. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... without a country" was in such a sorry plight, There wasn't any place on land where he might pass the night, But if you'd like to see a man as badly off as he, Who hasn't any place at all to stay on land or sea, Who has no spot he may enjoy to any great extent, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... into the valley, which, in due time, was sent to my relief. Miss Anthony, who, with a nice little Mexican pony and narrow saddle, had made her descent with grace and dignity, welcomed me on the steps of the hotel, and laughed immoderately at my helpless plight. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... you have given to Mr. Phelps. I don't call this billet part of the acknowledgment. All the world is dispersed: the ministers are at their several villas: one day in a week serves to take care of a nation, let it be in as bad a plight as it will! We have a sort of Jewish superstition, and would not come to town on a Saturday or Sunday though it were to defend the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... character, I need not ask of you, though eager and active in politics as you are, not to be severe in criticising my palpable neglect of all parliamentary duty. It would not be easy to explain to you, or even to make you comprehend, or any one in prosperous and affluent plight, the private difficulties I have to struggle with. My mind, and the resolute independence belonging to it, has not been in the least subdued by the late calamity; but the consequences arising from it have more engaged ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... chanced that heavy losses had befallen Counsellor Werter, which brought him within an inch of ruin. Had it not been for a sister left him who took care of him, the poor old gentleman would have been, indeed, in a miserable plight. A single word spoken by John Durer would have restored his ancient benefactor to court, and replaced him in the Emperor's favor. But vanity is without a heart; and wounded pride never forgives ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... people, with the greater confusion, because no one pitied him. As soon as he reached the king's apartment, he began to cry out, and call for justice in a lamentable tone. The king ordered him to be admitted; and asked who it was that had abused and put him into that miserable plight. "Sire," cried Saouy, "it is the favour of your majesty, and being admitted into your sacred councils, that has occasioned me to be so barbarously treated." "Say no more of that," replied the king, "only let ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... who had been deeply affected by the terrible appearance of her favourite Ivor, and who had never seen him in such a plight before, quietly slipped out of old Molly's hut and went straight to that of the keeper. She found him seated on a chair with his elbows on his knees, his forehead resting on his hands, and his strong fingers ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the enemy with hand-grenades and bayonets, and so completely repulsed them that they fled in hopeless disorder leaving many dead and wounded behind them. It was unfortunate that there was no mobile reserve available for pursuit, as the Turks were in such a plight that a large number would have been rounded up. General Cox's brigade seized Ramleh on the morning of the 15th, taking ninety prisoners, and then advanced and captured Ludd, being careful that no harm ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... not know what to say to Corney when he should come to the door. Besides, he was aware that his hands and coat were soiled with blood, and he was unwilling that the inmates of the cabin should see him in that plight. ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... are all human things that repose on a lie. We may expect, in a delay perhaps as brief as that which was required to pillory, and, therefore, to hamstring the miserable falsehood and ineptitude called the Party System (that is, in some ten years or less), to reduce the Official Press to the same plight. In some ways the danger of failure is less, for our opponent is certainly less well-organized. But beyond that—beyond these limits—we shall not attain. We shall enlighten, and by enlightening, destroy. We shall not provoke public action, for the methods and instincts ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... pony-back, he on foot—along the mountain trails, watching the lightness of her small figure against the splendid background of peak and pine, he became a troubled, introspective person; concentrating upon himself and his disagreeable plight the attention he had hitherto given to a delightful outer world, sown with the caches of antiquity, in ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Laodicean that chanced to occupy it, and himself awaken as with the sound of a trumpet this people who slept upon the verge of a precipice, between hell that gaped below and God who sat on high, serenely regardful of his creatures' plight. Though so short a time in Virginia, he was already become a man of note, the prophet not without honor, whom it was the fashion to admire, if not to follow. It was therefore natural enough that the Commissary, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... neither handsome nor revealed aught which might stir vague, deep currents of romance, Missy regretted that even Arthur had seen her in such a sorry plight. She wished he might see her at a better advantage. For instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-habit—a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and daring ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Trinity Lodge, on my way from Bakewell to Matlock I turned aside to Chatsworth, and had scarcely gratified my curiosity by the sight of that celebrated place before there came on a severe storm of wind and rain, which continued till I reached Derby, both man and pony in a pitiable plight. For myself I went to bed at noon-day. In the course of that journey I had to encounter a storm worse if possible, in which the pony could (or would) only make his way slantwise. I mention this merely to add, that notwithstanding this battering, I composed on pony-back the lines to the memory ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... have mercy when you have none?" he asked, quickly. "Let the prisoners die of grief; I am a prisoner too, and shall know also how to die. I shall not leave Innspruck unless you promise me that you will become my wife on my return, and plight me your faith before the altar of God. I swear by all that is sacred to me, I will not leave this city unless I take with me your solemn pledge that you will overcome your ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... care, we at last got to the water about four o'clock in the morning of the 6th. They were completely exhausted, and it was quite impossible they could go back the same day, to take water to those we had left behind. The man, myself, and the boy were in but little better plight; the anxiety we had gone through, the great heat of the weather, and the harassing task of travelling over the heavy sandy hills, covered with scrub, in the dark, and driving jaded animals before ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... "Your plight was better than mine, Sir Cuthbert," said a voice from behind us, and a large man in the full uniform of a post-captain took a step forward to include himself in our circle. His mastiff face was heavy with emotion, and he shook his head miserably as ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the Faust now as when I first read it—longer ago than 'Le Bon Pasteur,' and in other subsequent Attempts. I was tempted to think this was some Defect—great Defect—in myself: but a Note at the end of the Volume informs me that a much greater Wit than I was in the same plight—even Coleridge; who admires the perfect German Diction, the Songs, Choruses, etc. (which are such parts as cannot be translated into Prose); he also praises Margaret and Mephistopheles; but thinks Faust himself dull, and great part of the Drama flat and ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... beautiful young gentlemen plunged in after her; and the tenth remained and shed tears, looking over the side of the vessel. They were all picked up, and restored dripping to the deck. The beautiful young lady upon seeing them said, "What am I to do? See what a plight they are in. How can I possibly choose, because every one of them is equally wet?" Then said my friend the captain, acting upon a sudden inspiration, "Take the dry one." I am sorry to say that she did so, and ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... want to know whether I have ever experienced anything like my feeling for you since the first moment I saw you, I never have and never shall, and thereto I plight thee my troth." ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... words she flung herself upon the gate and tore at the chains, her strong hands able as a man's. As the sight of her in peril had worked for both weakness and strength in Dupre, so had McElroy's plight affected her. That helpless moment was the one defection of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... white, like a saint, And so is no mate for me— And the daisy's cheek is tipped with a blush, She is of such low degree; Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves, And the broom's betroth'd to the bee;— But I will plight with the dainty rose, For ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... was the upset of my ink, whereof you see the remains; and our last moments were spent in reparations and apologies. My two squires are in different plight from what they were ten weeks ago, racing up hills that it then half killed them to come down, and lingering wistfully on the top for last glimpses of our bay. I am overwhelmed with their courtesies, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as depicted in the Old Testament is well known to anyone who has glanced through this storehouse of mythology. It would be well for the multitude of devout female adherents of all creeds to take the time, just a little of the time they give to the plight of the poor, benighted heathen and read some of the passages in the Old Testament dealing with their lot. The entire history of woman under the administration of these "heaven-made" laws is a record of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Titus, in their readings, and then settling on seventh Nahum, sixth Zephaniah or second Calathumpians for the sermon, I do nothing but search the Scriptures in the Edinburgh churches,—search, search, search, until some Christian by my side or in the pew behind me notices my hapless plight, and hands me a Bible opened at the text. Last Sunday it was Obadiah first, fifteenth, 'For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen.' It chanced to be a returned missionary who was preaching on that occasion; but the Bible is full of heathen, and why need he have ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... advised me to come home. They would stay in the bush and wait until the moon went down, he said. I hated leaving them in such a plight, but Naude insisted, and I only came away when he said he thought there would be more chance for them to get through unobserved if they were fewer in number. How they managed without residential passes and handicapped by those parcels, I ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... it, is it?" said Deede Dawson, and seemed a little amused, as though the thought of his stepdaughter's plight pleased him rather than not. "Well, if she can't come down here, we'll go up there. Turn round, my man, and go up the stairs and keep your hands over your head all the time. I shan't hesitate to shoot if you ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... the Moon laughed loud at the gathering crowd, While he held his sides in mirth, To see old Kris in a plight like ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick to ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... the University of Salamanca, where, out of sight, they were out of mind, for he thought no more about them, and did not even send them the means of subsistence. In these straits, after struggling for some months against their wretched plight, the lads were obliged to leave Salamanca, and beg their way home, tramping barefoot through France and Italy, till they made their way back to Rome, where they found their father harsher and ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his efforts at self-control, Ned's muscles trembled and he found it difficult to walk steadily. Assuming that his chums were in like plight, the lad summoned all his courage and reached out a reassuring hand to the others. The contact with his friends seemed to restore the equilibrium that had been Ned's most valuable asset in times of stress and danger ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... gallant band of cavaliers upon their foray when they beheld the scattered wrecks flying for refuge to their walls. Day after day and hour after hour brought some wretched fugitive, in whose battered plight and haggard woebegone demeanor it was almost impossible to recognize the warrior who had lately issued so gayly and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... had a profound conviction that, revealed in this ghastly plight before the eyes of his fellows, his case would be regarded differently; that instead of commiseration there would be for him only the derision which is so humiliating to a sensitive nature. He felt so undignified, so glaringly conspicuous, so—well, ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... one's instinct was rather to stand still, awestricken and mute. The thunder growled and cracked incessantly, but far away, toward the Inchanga Valley. If the wind had shifted ever so little and brought the storm back again, our plight would have been poor indeed; and with this dread upon us we trudged bravely on and breasted the hillside with what haste and courage we could. During the rare momentary intervals of darkness we could perceive that the whole ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... cobbler, is dead, in spite of his rhymes, and is probably one of the instances where death has saved a man from damnation. You were the ruin of that poor fellow amongst you: had it not been for his patrons, he might now have been in very good plight, shoe-(not verse-) making: but you have made him immortal with a vengeance. I write this, supposing poetry, patronage, and strong waters, to have been the death of him. If you are in town in or about the beginning of July, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the country he observes and grasp exactly what is happening there. In winter, with the thermometer well down, a blood-freezing wind blowing, wreaths of clouds drifting below and obscuring vision for minutes at a time, the rain possibly pelting down as if presaging a second deluge, the plight of the vigilant human eye aloft ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... was in revolt against their world and the pedantry of its little inflexible laws; and all her old traditions had become odious to her, seeming, for the moment, deeply tainted with dishonour, and partly the cause of her disastrous plight. A great, ruining wave had broken over her life, and in her passionate helplessness she cried only for some firm and absolute shore, else the silence of the engulfing waters, not for the vain ropes of social convention ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... intellect, with a droll sense of humor, not then so well understood as the lighter school of writers have since made it, Churchland was the delight of the headquarters. He listened to the melancholy story of Jack's compromising plight. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... into which it plunged me. To have suffered, myself,—to have fallen under the ban of suspicion and the disgrace of arrest—had certainly been hard; but it was nothing to beholding another in the same plight through my own rash and ill-advised attempt to better my position and Carmel's by what I had considered a ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... and sometimes amusing anecdotes are told in connection with the inopportune visit. Thus not long ago the newspapers chronicled the plight of a woman who undertook to surprise an acquaintance from whom she had not heard for several years. She was driven to their house and dismissed the carriage. A strange face met her at the door, and she learned that her friend had ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the time of the brutal flogging of my Aunt Esther—for she was my own aunt—and the horrid plight in which I had seen my cousin from Tuckahoe, who had been so badly beaten by the cruel Mr. Plummer, my attention had not been called, especially, to the gross features of slavery. I had, of course, heard of whippings and of savage ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... that same good-breeding, which he put forward as a supreme guide of conduct, suddenly reminded him of his absurd plight, the marquis offered a finger for his friend's demonstrative grasp and passed hastily behind his curtain, while the other took his leave, in haste to continue ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... came, and we succeeded in leaving the palace quite unobserved, thanks to the private door. It was bitterly cold and snowing hard, and we had scarce left the court-yard when I fell to shivering, my teeth clicking like castanets. Lady Morley-Frere, seeing my plight, held out a silver flask, and from the depths of her cloak growled out, "Drink, drink! 'Twill set you right in a trice. 'Tis hot and spiced, and good for you." I obeyed her. I had hardly swallowed it before a ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... corn-field to the Dunkard Church. A great gap had now opened in Jackson's line. Jones' division, its flank uncovered by Hood's retreat, found itself compelled to seek a new position. D.H. Hill's brigades, in the same plight, gave ground towards Sharpsburg; and Greene, following in pursuit, actually crossed the turnpike, and penetrated the West Wood; but neither Hooker nor Mansfield were able to support him, and unassisted he could make ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... miserable plight. My strength had been assailed by anguish, and fear, and watchfulness, by toil, and abstinence, and wounds. Still, however, some remnant was left; would it not enable me to reach my home by nightfall? I had delighted, from my childhood, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... young man and a profligate, and had got into a house of ill-fame, from which he came out in sorry plight. He complained bitterly that M. Farsetti had refused to lend him four louis, and he asked me to speak to his mother that she might pay for his cure. I consented, but when his mother heard what was the matter ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Juliet—date I confess it?—has always hovered for me close to that border which is not sublime. For the hapless lovers missed all for want of a little common sense. There was naught inevitable in their plight. I see the Comic Spirit leaning across to stay the hand of the impetuous Romeo. Why not take a ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... trap, and the hunters who desired to carry him alive to the King, tied him to a tree while they went in search of a waggon to carry him on. Just then the little Mouse happened to pass by, and seeing the sad plight in which the Lion was, went up to him and soon gnawed away the ropes that bound the King of the Beasts. "Was I not right?" ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... raw fish and a last hearty drink from the lake, we each took a spear and started on a search wilder than any ever undertaken by Amadis of Gaul or Don Quixote himself. Even the Bachelor of Salamanca, in his saddest plight, did not present so outrageous an appearance to the eye as we. We wore more clothing than the Incas, which is the most that can be ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... pulling each other's hand, fancying it was the man in the Drum. The drummer came up, and finding them in such an awkward plight showed them with his fist who the man in the Drum really was. But as his fine Drum was ruined, he said, with a sigh, "Alas! Fools have fancies with ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... nor any of his men believed him; but he swore that he would never seek to do them harm, and that if he found any of them in evil plight he would deliver them out of it. With that Robin ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... followed. Everything in Milton's life and writings shows him a man unusually susceptible to the attraction of women, one whose love was of that strongest sort which is built on a chastity born not of coldness but of purity and self-control. Such a man, in such a plight, with the added misery of knowing that he owed it to his own rash folly, may be pardoned for forgetting the true bearing of his own doctrine that laws are made for the "common lump of men." Cases like his are the real tragedies, the tragedies of life so ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... from her lips, and were spoken slowly as though chosen with care. "The sad plight of the children particularly appealed ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... their belongings into the big truck. Just as they were about to start they saw some infantry coming, seven men whom they knew, but in such a plight! They were unshaven, with white, sunken faces, and great dark hollows under their eyes. They were simply "all in," ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... for—days when a not-large and not-full can of not-hot water, slammed down at her bedroom door by a governess-resenting housemaid, was as much as the gods allowed her. And there was, to dulcify for her the bath of this evening, the yet sharper contrast with the plight she had just come home in, sopped, shivering, clung to by her clothes. Because this bath was not a mere luxury, but a necessary precaution, a sure means of salvation from chill, she did the more gratefully bask ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... and walk awhile Taking all cheerings with a smile; To see him strip,—his well-trained form, White, glowing, muscular, and warm, All beautiful in conscious power, Relaxed and quiet, till the hour; His glossy and transparent frame, In radiant plight to strive for fame! To look upon the clean-shap'd limb In silk and flannel clothed trim;— While round the waist the kerchief tied Makes the flesh glow in richer pride. 'Tis more than life, to watch him hold His hand forth, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... me, in order to ascertain how the day was going. I fired my musket but twice. The glimpses I did manage to take were far from satisfactory, however; several of our people being killed or wounded, one gun fairly crippled by a shot, and our rigging in a sad plight. The only thing encourag'ng was Neb's shout, the fellow making it a point to roar almost as loud as his gun, at ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... said Deede Dawson, and seemed a little amused, as though the thought of his stepdaughter's plight pleased him rather than not. "Well, if she can't come down here, we'll go up there. Turn round, my man, and go up the stairs and keep your hands over your head all the time. I shan't hesitate to shoot if you don't, and I ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... when the Mate set us to slap the paint on the burned patch, we understood the Old Man's manoeuvre, which had the object of preventing the tow-boat from rounding to on our starboard side. Her skipper would there have assuredly seen evidences of our plight, and would not have been slow to ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... and would have cried if they dared. Their mother wept outright: and the good-natured Jerome could only shake his head and sigh, and mutter that he feared that was the plight of millions more in France. His smoking comrade again gave out, between two puffs, that before these boys were men, everything might be changed, and the nobles might chance to find their mouths stuffed with boiled nettles, for once, just to show what they ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... he must needs leave my mother. But ere he departed he sware to her that he would return when he had achieved his quest; but he kept not his oath. Thus have I sought him in many a court. All this did my lady mother tell me, and also of the troth-plight. Little good hath it done me that he be my father, and that he sware to my mother, ere he departed, that for her honour, and for her profit, he would return to her without fail. Doth he live, God send him mocking (this I pray in all humility), ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... in danger of being surrounded, and thinking Brutus is in the same plight, or a prisoner or dead—and that Titinius is taken or killed—gets his bondman, whose life he once saved, to kill him in return ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... clad in starry veil, amid his dream, For whose sweet sake he mourned, appeared the maid, Fairer than erst, yet with that heavenly beam. Not out of knowledge was her lovely shade, With looks of ruth her eyes celestial seem To pity his sad plight, and thus she said, "Behold how fair, how glad thy love appears, And for my sake, my dear, forbear ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... staying with Miss Abingdon, and old Wrot will be ironing out his surplice—at least Mrs. Wrot will, and he 'll look on and think he 's doing it. And I 'll be here, probably with a cold in my head as usual, and thereto I plight thee my troth!' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... retiring for the night, Felt restless, and perplexed, and compromised: He thought Aurora Raby's eyes more bright Than Adeline (such is advice) advised; If he had known exactly his own plight, He probably would have philosophised: A great resource to all, and ne'er denied Till wanted; therefore ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Disarmed by his own act, he was set on by the police, brutally struck down, kicked and stoned, and was dragged off to gaol, faint and bleeding, to meet there some of his comrades in much the same plight as himself. Then Manchester went mad, and race-passions flared up into flame; no Irish workman was safe in a crowd of Englishmen, no Englishman safe in the Irish quarter. The friends of the prisoners besieged "Lawyer Roberts's" house, praying his aid, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... blanket over her bare shoulders, and folded it round more like a coat. He feared she might collapse before they could accomplish their design. The plight of this girl struck deeply ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... any one, sinner as I am!" said I. "Nay, Margaret, I doubt not my thoughts have been far unholier than thine. Thou rememberest not, I am sure; but ere we were professed, I was troth-plight unto a young noble, and always that life that I have lost flitteth afore me, as a bird that held a jewel in his beak might lure me on from flower to flower, ever following, never grasping the sweet illusion. Margaret, sister, despise me not for my confession! ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... might be the Asiatic or the American half—would be continually in the sunlight, and the other side would lie buried in endless night. And this condition, so suggestive of the play of pure imagination, this plight of being a two-faced world, like the god Janus, one face light and the other face dark, must be the actual state of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... (in Hedemarken) were compelled to seek relief from the Poor Fund when their families were large. The smaller farmers and the labourers are in the worst plight, since the falling off in the timber trade has made them feel the want of the usual steady demand for labour at high wages.' Further: 'it has become very difficult for the least affluent and for labourers to gain a livelihood in the prevailing money and timber crisis.... ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Protestants into their houses. My mother's house had long been filled with soldiers, as well as that of my sister De Darassus; and not knowing where to go, I suffered great agony of mind for fear my poor wife should give birth to her infant in the street. In this lamentable plight, the good providence of God led us to the house of Mdlle. de Guarrison, my wife's sister, from whence, most fortunately, a large number of soldiers, with their officers, were issuing. They had occupied it for some time, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... gist of which escaped me, he constituted himself a reception committee of one and started for the ladder's foot. But our doughty Teuton was a resourceful person. Roused to the urgency of his plight, he looked wildly up at me, down at the officer, and, hastily pushing up the nearest window, hoisted himself across its sill, and again took refuge in the St. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... with —what above all he wanted, and what might have been so easily obtained through negotiation with the revolted Numidian tribes —a good light cavalry. He thus wantonly brought himself and his army into a plight similar to that which formerly befell Agathocles ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion's jackal, than any ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fool's caps. Uncle said I'd better put one on and go to bed, for I looked as though I'd been to a French bal masque. I never want to hear him say so again, and I'll never let dawn catch me out in such a plight anymore." ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... in what plight things stood in Northumberland, by the often seditions, tumults and changings of gouernors, so that there be which haue written, how after the death of king Ethelbert, otherwise called Edelred, diuers bishops and other of the chiefest nobles of the countrie disdaining such ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... and dried his poor animal, handling her as gently as possible, for she was in a sad plight. It was plain he must not have her here any longer: worse to her at least was sure to follow. He went up, trembling himself now, to Mrs Merton. She told him she was just running to fetch him when he arrived: she had no idea how ill he was. But he felt all the better for the excitement, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... curses the hunter and he falls dead before her. Then she resumes her solitary roaming in the gloomy forest, "distressed by grief for her husband's fate," unmindful of his cruelty, or of her own sad plight. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... be yearning for the heaven-sent shower, When the parched fields be craving for the rain; Then the great sky at last is overgloomed, And men see that fair sign of coming wind And imminent rain, and seeing, they are glad, Who for their corn-fields' plight sore sighed before; Even so the sons of Troy when they beheld There in their land Penthesileia dread Afire for battle, were exceeding glad; For when the heart is thrilled with hope of good, All smart of evils past is wiped away: ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... provide at once the best means to meet the emergency when it arises, and the best means are those which are the most certain and economical. Those now authorized have the virtue neither of directness nor economy. We have already eliminated one of the causes of our financial plight and embarrassment during the years 1893, 1894, 1895, and 1896. Our receipts now equal our expenditures; deficient revenues no longer create alarm Let us remove the only remaining cause by conferring the full and necessary power on the Secretary ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 1866 the desperate plight of the cause of union called for skilful generalship in four different arenas of political action. In any one of them a false move would have been fatal to success; and there was always the danger that, on so extended a front, ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... man, who seemed scarcely capable of looking after himself, and he thought it unwise to leave him in such a plight. At the same time, he was impatient of lingering in the heart of the clammy fog at such a late hour; so, as his companion seemed indisposed to move, he caught him again by the arm without ceremony. The abrupt action seemed to waken again the fears ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... anywhere near correct, then you are entitled to my most hearty apology. Fred is a peculiar and high-strung boy, but I believe his impulses are right in the main. I will add that I believe his account of how he came to be in this strange plight. He took the car early this morning. I am just returning from a spin in our larger automobile. I saw my runabout at the edge of the road and it occurred to me to stop and see if my son were here. ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the largest proportion of worst cases ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... John thought over his plight and was distressed, and he spoke to God in Welsh: "Not fitting that you leave the daughter fach alone. Short in her leg you made her. There's a set-back. Her mother perished; and did I complain? An orphan will the pitiful wench be. ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... others were laughing at the plight of the German, he made an effort to arise and the machine promptly slid down an incline and sparked and gyrated until Hans' hair fairly stood on end ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... in a more desperate plight than Lincoln when he entered office on the fourth of March, 1861, four months after his election, and took his oath to support the Constitution and the Union. The intervening time had been busily employed by the Southern States in carrying ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... childe, Rome had not been now assailed. If I had neuer brought forth a sonne, I should haue laied mine old bones and ended my life in a free countrie. But I coulde neuer haue susteined, or suffred more miserie, then is nowe fallen vnto mee, nor neuer more dishonour, then to beholde thee in pitifull plight, a traytour to thy natife soile. And as I am the moste wretched wight of all mothers, so I trust I shal not long continue in that state. If thou procede in this enterprise, either sodaine death, or perpetuall shame bee thy rewarde." When ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... thou spirit-elf, Rise up and bless. Help us to cleanse in holiness Show how to dress in saintliness Our weary selves, Expurge our deeds of earthiness Expunge desires of selfliness Rise up and bless ... This strong Soul dying in such plight.... ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the human race must grow away from God as it takes upon itself the burden of knowledge. That surely is inherent in the fall of man. No philosopher has yet improved upon the first chapter of Genesis as a symbolical explanation of humanity's plight. When man was created—or if you like to put it evolved—there must have been an exact moment at which he had the chance of remaining where he was—in other words, in the Garden of Eden—or of developing further along his own lines with free will. Satan fell from pride. It is natural ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... its area of meaning on the one side, and "civilization" encroaching on the other, the word "barbarism," as popularly apprehended, is left in a vague and unsatisfactory plight. If we speak of Montezuma's people as barbarians one stage further advanced than Mohawks, we are liable to be charged with calling them "savages." Yet the term "barbarism" is a very useful one; indispensable, indeed, in the history of human progress. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... 'We're lost, every soul and the good money! we've struck a reef, Adam, and 'tis the end and O the good money!' Hereupon I climbed 'bove deck, the vessel on her beam ends and in desperate plight and nought to be seen i' the dark save the white spume as the seas broke over us. None the less I set the crew to cutting away her masts and heaving the ordnance overboard (to lighten her thereby), but while this was doing comes a great wave roaring out of the dark and dashing aboard us whirled ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. With the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, and a passion of anger at my uncle, that once more bereft ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that, if he would bring his companions home, he must avoid injuring the sacred cattle of the Sun, which pastured in the Isle of Thrinacia. If these were harmed, he would arrive in Ithaca alone, or in the words of the Cyclops's prayer, I in evil plight, with loss of all his company, on board the ship of strangers, to find sorrow in his house.' On returning to the Isle Aeaean, Odysseus was warned by Circe of the dangers he would encounter. He and ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... Exposed to hunger and thirst, and cold and insult, what had he done to deserve such misfortunes? And that was Christmas, too; what a merry day to all the world without; and in what a contemptible plight was he! What would little Master John think of his absence; and how much would be sold at his little store before night? These reflections only enhanced the agony of his imprisonment; so wrapping himself tightly in the folds of his cloak, he crouched down in a corner ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... found by May, the most high-blooded and aristocratic of greyhounds; and from this plight did May rescue him;— invited him into her territory, the stable; resisted all attempts to turn him out; reinstated him there, in spite of maid, and boy, and mistress, and master; wore out every body's opposition, by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... well say so; for sore indeed would be the plight of the unwary seaman who should find himself under similar circumstances, unprepared. A long line of white foam suddenly appeared on their starboard bow, racing down toward them and spreading out right and left with frightful rapidity, until ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... while praising the friends of her own social position. She realizes, of course, that the situation is changed by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other two do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight was only discovered through an accident to one of the children. The charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she suspects ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Gazette. What fate has been like Thine? Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious plight, forthward in the world's van the glory and symbol of a man's new idea—Pity. Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame with Thy light than ever before—Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... due, not to any outstanding brilliance in the handling of his troops nor to the gallantry and efficiency of those concerned in the operations under his orders, but simply to his opponent being almost bereft of armament. Be that as it may, Russia was in such evil plight for arms and ammunition from the summer of 1915 on to that of 1916 that she was wellnigh powerless, except in Armenia. She only became really formidable again during the period of quiescence that, as usual, set in during the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... mistress alone it evermore did chirp. Now does it fare along that path of shadows whence naught may e'er return. Ill be to ye, savage glooms of Orcus, which swallow up all things of fairness: which have snatched away from me the comely sparrow. O deed of bale! O sparrow sad of plight! Now on thy account my girl's sweet eyes, swollen, do redden ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... "things strike us in a totally different light according as they are near at hand or far off. It is no time for you to despair. Such as I am, and brought to this sorry plight by the buffets of time and fortune, I yet make shift to endure a life wherein my pleasures are to translate Greek and dine sometimes with sundry very worthy friends. Look at me, mademoiselle, and say,—would you consent to live in the same ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... other the merchants and the adventurous seamen, whom they employed in the profitable Indian traffic, would not have listened for a moment to any thought of giving up a struggle which had been so resolutely and successfully maintained for so many years. For financially the archdukes were in even worse plight than the Netherlanders, even though for a short time, with the help of Spinola, appearances seemed to favour the Belgic attacks on the Dutch frontier districts. In 1605 the Genoese general, at the head of a mixed but well-disciplined force in his own pay, made ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... of Captain Grigg and Lieutenant Shepherd, to help move the Federal prisoners from Richmond, Va., to Andersonville, Ga. We were on this service until 26th of March. These prisoners were in a pitiable plight and infected with small-pox. William Allen and Pink Pryor caught it from them; don't see why we all did not. During this time or early in March the Brigade made an expedition against Suffolk, Va., and after a running fight with negro cavalry, took that town, but did not hold it long. ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... so passionate and her firmness of resolve so evident that every mere beholder fell back, letting the Callender-Valcour group, with Steve and the gentle detective, press closer. With none of them, nor yet with Hilary, was there anything to argue; their plight seemed to her hopeless. For them to marry, for her to default, and for him to fly, all in one mad hour—one whirlwind of incident—"It cannot be!" was all she could say, to sister, to stepmother, to Flora, to Hilary again: "We cannot do it! I will not!—till ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... of that," Paul said. "They are sure to come back and see our plight soon. I can't see what's keeping Russ. He promised to come back as soon as he fixed up another ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... terror as she saw their plight; but she spoke cheerfully to Ann Mary and the boy, who looked to her for courage, and told them that they were to have the fun ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... and Mac heard the last vestige of air hiss out of the chamber. He found the hatchway too tight for comfort and had a moment of fear when his tool pack caught in the orifice, wedging him neatly. He could hear Logan and Ruiz through his earphones, explaining their plight to Ground Control. They wanted to know why in blue blazes Valier hadn't contacted the doughnut when it came within range, and Logan had no defense save preoccupation with his own plight. Belatedly, Ruiz made radio contact with the doughnut, which was still well within range. All this ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... be obeyed, my lord," said Glendinning; and choosing those whose horses were in best plight to be his attendants, he went off as fast as the jaded state of their cavalry permitted. Hill and hollow vanished from under the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... a beautiful crimson light upon the snow-draped cliffs and ice-clad trees. During the intervals between the songs, the two men listened for the sound of coming help. With a good fire, plenty of cigars, and Broussard's cheerful singing, their plight was not so bad. But a disturbing thought came to ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... annul The troth to which the high accomplishers, Hera and Zeus, do honour. Yea, and thus Is Aphrodite to dishonour cast, The queen of rapture unto mortal men. Know, that above the marriage-bed ordained For man and woman standeth Right as guard, Enhancing sanctity of troth-plight sworn; Therefore, if thou art placable to those Who have their consort slain, nor will'st to turn On them the eye of wrath, unjust art thou In hounding to his doom the man who slew His mother. Lo, I know thee full of wrath Against one deed, but all too placable Unto the ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... and happy and profitable toil, bruised and manacled, bundled on to a fear-provoking horse, hurried off he knew not whither, through a drought-stricken land under a searing sun, the road reeking with dust—what a plight for a devout Buddhist, who had sought to avert calamity and prolong life by the ascent of the chill mount where, alone in all the world, is revealed the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... pawnbroker's. His father refused to do anything for him. "He saw me without bread to put in my mouth, and offered me not a crumb, although he had money belonging to me in his hands. He saw me in boots full of holes, and gave me to understand that I was not to come to see him in such plight." Such was the poor fellow's distress, that he was almost glad when the purpura, with its intolerable pains, returned, that he might crawl to the hospital, where he could say, that, "bad as the hospital-fare is, it is at least certain, and is, after all, ten times better than that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... way, and announced that she would see to it in person. As for herself, she was as dry as a butterfly which had just emerged from a chrysalis, and I congratulated myself upon the care I had taken of her. But before we reached home she was in a plight almost equal to my own, for the wind had blown the wheat across the path, and it was impossible for me to ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... Smyrna. A man who died in the Isle of Milo, had been excommunicated for some fault which he had committed in the Morea, and he was interred without any funeral ceremony in a spot apart, and not in consecrated ground. His relations and friends were deeply moved to see him in this plight; and the inhabitants of the isle were every night alarmed by baneful apparitions, which they attributed to this ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... forced to run ashore—the Cristobal Colon last, at two o'clock in the afternoon. The Spanish losses, besides the fleet, were 323 killed and 151 wounded; the Americans lost one killed and one wounded. The city of Santiago, deprived of its fleet, found itself in a desperate plight and surrendered on July 16. Shortly afterwards General Miles led an expedition into Porto Rico, but operations were soon brought to a close because of the suspension of hostilities, and from a military point of view the importance of the campaign ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... tireless wing. Through the pearly blue of the summer sky, Or sing the sweet songs of spring. And I think, little dears, if you had seen The same sad sorrowful sight, You never would cage a free wild bird To suffer a captive's plight. —MARY MORRISON. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... encouraging opposition to these party tactics led to a long interview with Sir Wilfrid, in which there was considerable frank language used on both sides. Sir Wilfrid gave every indication that he was profoundly moved by what he called "the plight of the French-Canadians of Ontario." They were, he said, politically powerless and leaderless; the provincial Liberal leaders, who should have been their champions, had abandoned them; the obligation rested upon him to come to their rescue. The suggestion that, while he might be within his ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... herself, ma'am. She come to me in sore plight late one evening, when we was all in bed, and 'Mrs. Ricketts,' said she, dear lamb, 'will you help me to go away to Mrs. Cameron, to Bath? I want the money to go third class to Bath. Can you let me have nine shillings and fourpence halfpenny, Mrs. Ricketts? and I'll give you this for the money!' ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... men crouched there silent, realizing their desperate plight. They must escape, before the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... then in such a state, that he could not bring his mind to bear upon the question of which cakes his wife would probably prefer, and he stood helplessly holding up his hand till the good woman behind the counter discovered his plight, and uttered a loud cry of compassion. She ran and got a wet napkin, which she rubbed with soap, and then she instructed him by word and gesture to rub his hand upon it, and she did not leave him till his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of British soldiers. The last time I had been there was on my return from leave in January 1917, when I dined and slept at the newly-opened officers' club. Since the Boche swoop last March it had become a target for British gunners, and seemed in as bad a plight as the village we had come through the night before. We had no time to visit it that morning, and trotted on along a road lined with unburied German dead, scattered ammunition, and broken German vehicles. The road ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... Madame,' said the Duke of Zollern, 'is in so sorry a plight in this country, that she will certainly be ready to assist herself by the means you mention. But, in this case, we are not sure if the "means" be willing; for I fear Mademoiselle de Graevenitz, like her brother, is of the Protestant sect? Is that ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... lily's stem so slender, Yet like spring roses fresh and fair, As Freyja's troth-plight, warm and tender, Thou as the will of gods art pure. Kiss me, and let my burning passion Kindle thy soul to perfect bliss, Of earth and heaven I lose the vision, ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... were waiting to speak to him. They had lost heavily over old Ben and didn't know how they'd pull through; and the whole neighbourhood was in the same plight; the bar was ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... reaction that his false beliefs concerning the body are often not so false after all, and that his damaged brain of itself is not so apt to return false ideas about his somatic interior as about his worldly importance and plight. There then seems to be more reality about somatic than about personal delusions: the contents of somatic delusions are rather more apt to correspond with demonstrable realities than the contents of personal delusions. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Thorkel's sardonic voice that brought the Lady of Northampton back to herself. "Now, is this how you take the sight of your own handiwork? Or is it because you regret that the King is not in this plight? One mouthful and no more has she had of the blood of ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... arrived in very bad plight indeed: he had brought away from Cork nothing but what he could carry on his body, and had been forced to pawn what he could pawn in order that he might subsist. And then he had been taken with ague, and with the fit strong on him had crawled away to Spinny ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... As Heston broke away from the last tacklers, I backed suddenly into the outstretched arms of the Ohio State fullback, who, it appears, had been backing up step by step with me. Heston ran thirty yards for a touchdown. You can imagine how unpopular I was with the home team, and how ridiculous my plight appeared. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... exceedingly. Still, O thou of faultless limbs, thou canst not look so beautiful, when (as at present) thou art soiled with mud and dirt, as thou couldst, if decked with every ornament and wearing gorgeous apparel. Why, O excellent girl in such plight servest thou a decrepit old husband, and one that hath become incapable of realising pleasure and also of maintaining thee, O thou of luminous smiles? O divinely beautiful damsel, do thou, forsaking Chyavana accept one of us for husband. It behoveth thee not ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... if he needed care and petting and good food. No one knew exactly how he lived. His rooms, according to Dick's report, were fireless and ill kept, but he stuck to them because his landlady, whom he had fished out of some financial plight, had difficulty in obtaining other lodgers. He belonged to no clubs, and wandered out alone for his meals, mysteriously refusing the hospitality which his friends pressed on him. It was plain that he was very poor, and Dick conjectured that he sent ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... a sad plight between two realities of such mighty proportions that they could be disbelieved in localities far removed ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... with dysentery—and there they remained sweltering and gasping through the tropical night until six of the morning. For two weeks they remained in this cell. Meanwhile, I knew nothing of my husband's plight, being mercifully deceived by both him and our friends, every day Mr. Heath bringing to Parktown telegrams from my husband assuring me of his good treatment by the Government, and imploring me ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... ghost."—"I know not that I am guilty," exclaimed I, "of having expressed any sort of affection for her. I know somebody who can best bear me witness in this respect." Emilia smiled, and rejoined, "I understand you; and, if we are not discreet and determined, we shall all find ourselves in a bad plight together. What will you say if I entreat you not to continue your lessons? You have, I believe, four tickets yet of the last month: and my father has already declared that he finds it inexcusable to take your money any longer, unless you wish to devote yourself to the art of dancing ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... in," the Prussians answered. "We are all friends for tonight, for we are all in equally bad plight. Can you tell us how matters have ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... my mistress! O, lady, weep no more! lest I give cause To be suspected of more tenderness Than doth become a man. I will remain The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight troth ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... mere chance work. If I hadn't been in the insurance office for so many years, and by that means become acquainted with most of the directors of the bank, I never would have attained my present comfortable place. It makes me sick when I think of the miserable plight we would now be in, if that piece of good fortune had not ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... him, and, turning, I continued, "I am very sorry, Miss Cullen, if I did anything the circumstances did not warrant," while cursing myself for my precipitancy and for not thinking that Miss Cullen would never have been caught in such a plight with a man unless she had been half willing; for a girl does not merely threaten to call for help ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... bureau of the hotel, the correspondent found several cables awaiting him from the alert office of the New York Eclipse. One of them read: "State Department gives out bad plight of Wainwright party lost somewhere; find them. Eclipse." When Coleman perused the message he began to smile with seraphic bliss. Could fate have ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained. And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States, in Congress assembled, on all questions which by the said Confederation are submitted to them; and that the Articles thereof shall ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... is not so unexampled as you are inclined to think. Nearly thirty years ago a young man as you are came in just such a plight as you and stood outside this window at two o'clock of a dark morning. Even so early in my life I was at my books," and he smiled rather sadly. "I let him in and he talked to me for an hour of matters strange and dreamlike, and enviable to me. I have never forgotten that ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... role of the good Samaritan. "I—I need not tell him about us," he stammered. "I could just say that I met you. I have had such a wretched time myself, I feel sorry for anybody that's in the same plight. I should like to ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... place by a black tape. 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
... Hogan was the man that got beyond the Indian lines to make the ride to inform you of our plight. Didn't you see him?" ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... squirmed and bored a heel desperately into the turf above a Whipple whose troubles had ceased in 1828. She made a rough noise in her throat, but it was not informing. The Wilbur twin, forgetting his own plight, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Yorkshire and Lancashire shake with your shout on that occasion. The ringers cracked a bell in Briarfield belfry; it is dissonant to this day. The Association of Merchants and Manufacturers dined together at Stilbro', and one and all went home in such a plight as their wives would never wish to witness more. Liverpool started and snorted like a river-horse roused amongst his reeds by thunder. Some of the American merchants felt threatenings of apoplexy, and had themselves bled—all, like wise men, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Rashness they meant resenting Insults and Injuries done their Lady; and by Ignorance, not knowing how to buy and sell, and live by the Loss. So that, all Things considered, it were a Marvel her Affairs should be in better Plight than they are, or her Debts be paid with more ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous
... now in a doleful plight. Every one was very hungry; they were in an open plain, no house was visible, and they knew not which way to go. They wandered about for some time, looking for a brook or a spring where they might quench their thirst; and then a rabbit sprang out from some bushes. The whole party immediately ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... catching the others up; other mules and camels in front were in a similar plight. These were also unloaded, and then the men pulled and pushed and heaved them out, first taking off their shoes and stockings, and rolling their trousers up as ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... among the Heathen—but she never had time to fulfill her intention. She went off like a lamb,—and there being no will, her money fell to me, as the nearest survivin' relative—eh! the puir thing!—if her dees-imbodied spirit is anywhere aboot, she must be in a sair plight to think I've got it, after ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... thee, Mary, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... of Madra, with his wondrous skill and might, Faltering, on his knees descending, fell in sad inglorious plight, ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... satisfactory account of himself he would be released. He only doggedly shook his head. When I asked if he had been hurt in his bout with Dutch he smiled and extended his arms in denial. He was a very decent-looking fellow, blue-eyed and smooth-shaven, who seemed to accept his plight with a ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... Johnston says his men are in good plight, after combats enough to make a battle, in all of which the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... bathed in blood, like a hill overrun with water from its springs, I am languishing with grief even as the lotus in the rainy season. What can be more painful than this, that thou, O grandsire, hast been brought to this plight on my account by my people fighting against their foes on the battle-field? Other princes also, with their sons and kinsmen, having met with destruction on my account. Alas, what can be more painful than ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... came to me from the prison to be sent home, some two hundred miles beyond Bangor, Me. As I looked at him I was perfectly astonished that we had a man among us who would think, for a moment, of sending away a dependent, human being, and sickly, too, in such a plight; a rather thin coat, vest and pants that might last him two or three days; no collar, cravat, mittens, overcoat, or boots, but brogans, and those not mates, one of which so pinched his foot that he was forced to remove it shortly ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... with flats in tow, but the demand for these to tow out stock is greater than they can meet with promptness. All are working night and day, and the 'Susie' hardly stops for more than an hour anywhere. The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and momentarily it is expected that some of the houses will float off. Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water. Reports have come in that a woman and child have been washed away below ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... clouds rolled about him; night fell. The man in the moon laughed at him; the stars winked at each other as if delighted at the Woggle-Bug's plight, and a witch riding by on her broomstick yelled at him to keep on the right side of the road, and not ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... Darwin and Spencer; the very words came back thick and distinct, and like one who finds progress impossible in the face of the gale, she stopped thinking. "We know nothing ... we know nothing," were the words she heard in the shriek of the wind, and revealed religion appeared in tattered, miserable plight, a forlorn spectre borne away on the wind. So distinct was the vision, so explicit her hearing, that she could not pretend to herself that she was a Christian in any but a moral sense, and this would not satisfy Monsignor. Then question after question ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... of the "English people" to call her relative "the Mahdi," as that meant the Redeemer of the world. She knew that the Egyptian Government regarded him as a rebel and an imposter. But continually striking her forehead and invoking heaven to witness her innocence and unhappy plight, she began to weep and at the same time wail mournfully as women in the East do after losing husbands or sons. Afterwards she again flung herself with face on the ground, or rather on the carpet with which the inlaid floor was covered, and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that Benjamin was alive, asked whether this was their younger brother; for he had seen him. Whereupon they said he was: he replied, that the God over all was his protector. But when his affection to him made him shed tears, he retired, desiring he might not be seen in that plight by his brethren. Then Joseph took them to supper, and they were set down in the same order as they used to sit at their father's table. And although Joseph treated them all kindly, yet did he send a mess to Benjamin that was double to what ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... gave him a pull from his flask. Next morning, much refreshed, he wandered into the country, which he found to be an uninhabited island. He now repented of his undutiful conduct in leaving his parents, and felt his sad plight to be a fitting punishment ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... very large force, led by Clinton, advanced towards Morristown; and this was believed to be a serious and determined attempt to attack Washington, whose army was in a pretty bad plight, and not at all prepared to fight large bodies of well-appointed troops. Lord Stirling, with the other officers of the regular army, aided by forces of militiamen greatly excited by atrocities which had been ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... was surprised and angry, and his shame at being seen in such plight, in his own house, overcame any prudence or self-control he had left. Besides, he felt himself ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... friends and neighbors." That the church is named first as the proper place shows that it is to be preferred for a marriage. It can be solemnized there in a more seemly and dignified way than elsewhere, and those coming to plight their vows may be more deeply impressed with the solemnity and importance ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... grubbing in the dirt and soiling her hands in that style! It was his impression that only Dutch women worked in a garden; and for all he knew of its products she might be setting out a potato plant. Quick Edith caught his expression, and while she crimsoned with vexation at her plight, felt a new and sudden sense of contempt for the semblance of a man ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... and Dennis looked around vainly for some additional covering. The thronging fugitives were all in a similar plight, and their only course was simply to endure till some path ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... alarming seas. The air, filled with sleet and icy snow, cut like a knife through the thickest clothing, and again Edward Tilley, swooning with exhaustion and cold, lay lifeless in the bottom of the boat, sadly watched by his brother in hardly better plight and by Carver, who, like the father of a family, carried all ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... regard, and reverence. The refusal of a divine right to presbytery, and the infringing of ecclesiastical discipline from political considerations, were to them the subject of much offence; and the king hoped that, in their present disposition, the plight of their native prince, flying to them in this extremity of distress, would rouse every-spark of generosity in their bosom, and procure him their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... written since we left Dublin; but do not be angry, I was not well during the time we were in Dublin, nor for two or three days after we landed: but three days' rest at Bangor Ferry recovered me completely, and thanks to Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman, I am now in perfectly good plight. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... me not. Nor let thy false imagination That I was bed-rid, make thee think I am so: Thou shalt not find it. I am, now, as fresh, As hot, as high, and in as jovial plight, As when, in that so celebrated scene, At recitation of our comedy, For entertainment of the great Valois, I acted young Antinous; and attracted The eyes and ears of all the ladies present, To admire each graceful gesture, note, and footing. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... Evil doth arise Removed is, the Effect surceaseth still. Abstain from Pleasure, and restrain your Will, Subdue Desire, and bridle loose Delight, Use scanted Diet, and forbear your Fill, Shun Secrecy, and talk in open Sight; So shall you soon repair your present evil Plight.' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... discussing the times and the utter lack of news from home, when the last tidings had been most alarming. Poor lady! I think it was a comfort to her, for she loved my mother; but we could not but grieve to see her in such a plight. As we went home we planned that we would carry a faggot in the carriage the next day, and that I would take it upstairs to her. And so I actually did, but the sentry insisted on knowing what I was carrying hidden in a cloak, and when he saw it, the honest man ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... love! I thought in your smiling cheek Dainty dimples played hide and seek; Passing by like a winter's night, With stormy sighs from lips all white. Poor little god, how comes your plight? ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... nations. Surely, if this childish practice is still a rule in polite society, it is one "more honoured in the breach than the observance." In no city on the Eastern side of the Alleghany Mountains did I meet a single drunken American in the street. The few whom I did detect in that plight were manifestly recent importations from Great ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... district it was very doubtful whether they would reach their destination, on account of the condition their horses were in. There were only about 100 burghers left out of 500. They also had about 50 families with them, and these were in a miserable plight. The district would have to be abandoned, and then came the question: What would become of these families? Even now they were very badly provided for. Some women wished to proceed on foot to the British, but he had ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... early a season native craft are never seen on these seas. Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at El-Muwaylah, who were startled by the wildness of the wind, could have learned our plight, or could have taken measures ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... hot and dry, but this Monday was cooler and the north wind, blowing freshly over the wide Nile, broke the amber-brown of the water into little waves of sparkling blue edged with silver ripples. The river was beautiful to her, even in her sorry plight, and to-day there were little clouds in the sky, furtive, scuddy little clouds with wind-teased edges, and they cast soft shadows over the river and over the tender green of the fields and the flat, mirroring water standing level in the trenches. In the fields ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... appeared his dilemma, and his long Western journey, which at first he had welcomed as promising a diversion of excitement and change, now began to appear like exile. He dreaded to think of the memories he must take with him; still more he deprecated the thoughts he would leave behind him. His plight made him so desperate that he suddenly left the orchard where he was gathering apples, went to the house, put on his riding-suit, and in a few moments was galloping furiously away on his black horse. With a renewal of hope Webb watched his proceedings, and with many surmises, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... his plight reached Boston, and a ship was immediately despatched, not only to bring the castaway home, but with the fine wardrobe necessary to a young gentleman of his station. But the same ship brought word of his father's death—his mother ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the hand was covered with blood. His eyes then filled again; and he swept his sleeves across them and his forehead. That was better. Blinking, and wiping his face again and again, he looked dully around him until memory came back, and brought recognition of his plight. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... either who recklessly pursue the path of self-aggrandisement, (15) whether in private or in public life; but consider well (16) that the best of men, (17) the true nobility, are discovered by their virtues; (18) they are a laborious upwards-striving race; whilst the base are in evil plight (19) and are discovered by their demerits. (20) Since in proportion as they rob the private citizen of his means and despoil the state (21) they are less serviceable with a view to the public safety than any private citizen; (22) and what can be worse or more disgraceful for purposes ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... It seems thou hast been in some better plight; Sit down, I prythee: men, though they be poor, Should not be scorn'd; to ease thy hunger, first Eat these conserves; and now, I prythee, tell me What thou hast been—thy fortunes, thy estate, And what she was that I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... ledde. I am sent in all haste to espie and to marke How our letters and tokens are likely to warke. Maister Roister Doister must haue aunswere in haste For he loueth not to spende much labour in waste. Nowe as for Christian Custance by this light, Though she had not hir trouth to Gawin Goodluck plight, Yet rather than with such a loutishe dolte to marie, I dare say woulde lyue a poore lyfe solitarie, But fayne would I speake with Custance if I wist how To laugh at the matter, yond commeth one ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... sight, which should recure my pain, My sorrows are redoubled all in vain. Now I perceive that only I alone Am her belov'd, her looks assure me so: The thought thereof provokes me to bemoan Her heavy plight that grieveth at my woe. This intercourse of our affections— I her to serve, she thus to honour me— Bewrays the truth of our elections, Delighting in this mutual sympathy. Thus love for love entreat's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... and do likewise. See for yourself. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You are unhappy, and unhappiness is dangerous, in rare cases fatal. If you tell me to-morrow that Unorna is a charlatan, you will be in no worse plight than to-day, nor will your opinion of her influence mine. If she helps you to find what you want—so much the better for you—how much the better, and how great the risk you run, are ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... song In her sweetest, saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustom'd oak: Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly— Most musical, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... of the pregnant womb To the sheen of my naked soul. Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh The whole world leaps to my will, And the unslaked thirst of an Eden cursed Shall harrow the earth for its fill. Almighty God, when I drain life's glass Of all its rainbow gleams, The hapless plight of eternal night Shall be none ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... a marvel, the missionary a miracle, that Leclere pulled through at all; and so weakened was he, that in the spring the fever got him, and he went on his back again. Batard had been in even worse plight, but his grip on life prevailed, and the bones of his hind legs knit, and his organs righted themselves, during the several weeks he lay strapped to the floor. And by the time Leclere, finally convalescent, sallow and shaky, took the sun by the cabin door, Batard had reasserted ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... as you say, mother," Annie caught up the words. "Well, I suppose the Careys will be in a far worse plight than we can be, and Cyril has been such a fool, though I don't suppose he meant much harm, with his dandyisms and idleness and his college airs—all that he has ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... stock-broker in a bad financial plight, scarcely noticed that a female figure was passing him. Had the morrow's market been less a matter of life and death to him he might have thrown her a glance; but as it was she did not come within the range of his consciousness. To her amazement, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... all these wars been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world. For through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain. Therefore, wit ye well, Sir Lancelot, I am set in such a plight to get my soul health; and yet I trust through God's grace after my death to have a sight of the blessed face of Christ, and at the dreadful day of doom to sit on His right side, for as sinful creatures as ever was I ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... they were broken up, and became completely demoralized. A number of the men were drowned while swimming the river, Young himself was shot and killed, a few were captured, and those who escaped—about twenty in all—finally joined Escobedo, but in such a plight as to be of little use. With this distressing affair came to an end pretty much all open participation of American sympathizers with the Liberal cause, but the moral support afforded by the presence of our forces continued, and this was frequently supplemented with material aid in the shape of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... Ashton, and she hers to him, and when in a burst of rapture, he kisses the skirt of her dress, we feel as though we touched it with our lips to stay our goddess from soaring away into the very heavens. And when they plight their troth and break the piece of gold, it is we—not Edgar—who quickly exchange our half for the half she was about to hang about her neck, solely because the latter has for an instant touched the bosom we so dearly love. Again, in the Lady ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... acidity would delay a decision to apply lime where needed, the time given to such discussion would be worse than wasted. It is much more important to be able to detect the presence of harmful acids and to neutralize them than it is to know why the soil should be in such plight that it could not supply the required lime and had become dependent upon its owner for assistance. On the other hand, some of us find it difficult to accept a fact without seeing a reason for it, and we may do well to consider ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... eat, and dragg'd it to his hole. The crystal eye, alas! was miss'd; And puss had on her plumpers p—st, A pigeon pick'd her issue-pease: And Shock her tresses fill'd with fleas. The nymph, though in this mangled plight Must ev'ry morn her limbs unite. But how shall I describe her arts To re-collect the scatter'd parts? Or show the anguish, toil, and pain, Of gath'ring up herself again? The bashful Muse will never bear In such a scene to interfere. Corinna, in ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... they founded convents in all Eastern Asia, gathered in councils to fix the doctrine, proclaimed dogmas and rules. As they became powerful they, like the Brahmans, came to esteem themselves as above the rest of the faithful. "The layman," they said, "plight to support the religious and consider himself much honored that the holy man accepts his offering. It is more commendable to feed one religious than many thousands of laymen." In Thibet the religious, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... me, but showed me in many ways that he had entered into a new world, in which he desired to be alone. That Beulah Sands's plight had roused into intense activity all the latent romance of my friend's nature, did not surprise me. I foresaw from the first that Bob would fall head over heels in love with this beautiful, sorrow-laden ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... few attendants, rode leisurely off towards the south. Eight miles from Omdurman a score of swift camels awaited him, and on these he soon reached the main body of his routed army. Here he found many disheartened friends; but the fact that, in this evil plight, he found any friends at all must be recorded in his favour and in that of his subjects. When he arrived he had no escort—was, indeed, unarmed. The fugitives had good reason to be savage. Their leaders had led them only to their ruin. To cut ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... were butchered, or taken prisoners for a fate worse than butchery—to be torn apart in the market-place of Vera Cruz, baited in the streets to the yells of on-lookers, hung by the arms to out-of-doors scaffolding to die by inches, or be torn by vultures. The two ships at sea were in terrible plight. North, west, south was the Spanish foe. Food there was none. The crews ate the dogs, monkeys, parrots on board. Then they set traps for the rats of the hold. The starving seamen begged to be marooned. They would risk Spanish cruelty ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... deserted us on forsaking our own dear old ship. A storm came on; a plank struck; several of us escaped in the boats; we had lots of gold with us, but no water. For two days and two nights we suffered horribly: but at last we ran ashore near a French seaport; our sorry plight moved compassion, and as we had money we were not suspected; people only suspect the poor. Here we soon recovered our fatigues, rigged ourselves out gayly, and your humble servant was considered as noble a captain as ever ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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