"Cruel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a baby, Masther Jack?" said the man, reproachfully. "There, let it go. I'm your father's servant, and he must have his own way; but it's cruel work this coming out into such savage lands; and there's one man as will niver see home ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... handmaid for thy stay. Ah! who had e'er imagined she could fall To such a depth of misery as this, To tend in penury thy stricken frame, A virgin ripe for wedlock, but unwed, A prey for any wanton ravisher? Seems it not cruel this reproach I cast On thee and on myself and all the race? Aye, but an open shame cannot be hid. Hide it, O hide it, Oedipus, thou canst. O, by our fathers' gods, consent I pray; Come back to Thebes, come to thy father's home, Bid Athens, as ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... the central figure in a scandal that filled the friends of Frances with disgust, and that for her was an awakening cruel and humiliating. Men no longer permitted their womenfolk to sit to Stedman for a portrait, and the need of money grew imperative. He the more blamed Frances for having quarrelled with her aunt, told her it was for her money he had married ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... in moderate circumstances. He was undoubtedly more careful than ninety-nine out of a hundred of his fellow-citizens, in getting the value of what he spent, to the uttermost splitting of farthings; and when he spoke of money there was a certain cruel hardening of the hard lines in his face, which Veronica never failed to notice with dislike. She wondered how her aunt could have led an apparently tranquil life with such a man during more ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... undisturbed with the Hen, they would have emitted the Chickens' gentle cheep. They died that we might live. Here is beef, mutton, poultry. Horror, it smells of blood, it is eloquent of murder! If we gave it a thought, we should not dare to sit down to table, that altar of cruel sacrifices. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... long-suffering, brave, Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel; But O, too, Love is cruel, Cruel as ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... the sash and gave chase across the lawn. In the confusion some moments elapsed before the two heavier men followed him over the smooth turf, and the ladies from the window saw Arthur Agar kneeling over Seymour Michael on the stone terrace at the end of the lawn. They heard with cruel distinctness the sharp crackling crash of the Jew's head upon the stone flags, as Arthur shook him as ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... matter. The story was set forth in rhyming doggerel. The poet was not blessed with a gift of melody or of style. Absence of scansion tortured the ear. Coarseness of diction offended the taste. And yet, as he read on, Julius reluctantly admitted that the cruel tale gained credibility and moral force from the very homeliness of the language in which ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Moros are defeated on the coast of Panay, but they meet with enough success to embolden them to make further raids; these go unpunished by the Spaniards, and thus the islands are being devastated and ruined. The Christian and friendly Indians are at the mercy of these cruel foes, from whom the Spaniards do not defend them; accordingly, they demand freedom and arms, that they may defend themselves against the invaders. All would revolt, were it not for the influence of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... orders were issued that all natives found armed were to be executed on the spot. To the average American this might have seemed like a cruel order, but now the list of dead sailormen and marines had reached twenty-five, and there were scores of wounded American fighting men. Stern steps were necessary ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... they trust him, a gentleman lays no burdens on his people. If they do not trust him, they will think it cruel. Until they trust him, he does not chide them. Unless they trust him, it ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... if the curagh would soon be coming back with the priest. 'It will not be coming soon or at all to-night,' she said. 'The wind has gone up now, and there will come no curagh to this island for maybe two days or three. And wasn't it a cruel thing to see the haste was on them, and they in danger all the time to ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... people are so cruel! People will be saying that it was I who kept poor Cousin George in London this past two weeks, and that but for me he would have been in France long ago! And then the Queen, Ned!—why, that pig-headed old woman will be blaming it on me, that there is nobody to prevent ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to do? The only course in which there seemed to be safety was in telling all to her husband. If she did not, it would probably be told by the cruel lips of that odious woman. But yet, how was she to tell it? It was not as though everything in this matter was quite pleasant between her and him. Lady Susanna had accused her of flirting with the man, and that she had told to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... are a man who yet lives beneath the sun, though how you came here I do not know. I hate men, all hares do, for men are cruel to them. Still it is a comfort in this strange place to see something one has seen before and to be able to talk even to a man, which I could never do until the change came, the dreadful change—I mean because of the way of it," and it seemed to shiver. "May ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... modest 'If Thou wilt'; not pretending to know more than he knew, or to have a claim which he had not. But his hesitation is quite as much entreaty as hesitation. What do we mean when we say about a man, 'He can do it, if he likes,' but to imply that it is so easy to do it, that it would be cruel not to do it? And so, when the leper said, 'If Thou wilt, Thou canst,' he meant, 'There is no obstacle standing between me and health but Thy will, and surely it cannot be Thy will to leave me in this life in death.' He, as it were, throws the responsibility for his health or disease upon Christ's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... familiar with deeds of this very nature, and she had become skilful in the art of poisoning, she was at this time young, and unpractised in crime, and received its first suggestions with the horror which it naturally inspires. She had sought for pleasure only in the society of Glinski; it was a cruel disappointment, it was a frightful surprise, to find herself thrust suddenly, with unsandaled feet, on the thorny path of ambition. She sank back on the couch where they had both been sitting, and, hiding her face in both her hands, remained in that position while the duke continued ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... have said to him, I won't come. It's cruel to let him wait on a street corner and not even send notice, and to tip ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... boisterous, and terrible. What were their manners before the arrival of the Spaniards, it is not possible to discover; but the slaughter made of their countrymen, perhaps without provocation, by these cruel intruders, and the general massacre with which that part of the world had been depopulated, might have raised in them a suspicion of all strangers, and, by consequence, made them inhospitable, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... not vindictive or cruel. But old Miller said, when I came past the lodge, dripping wet, that the boar are increasing too fast and that you ought to keep them down either by shooting or by trapping them, and sending them to other ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... did not dishearten all of the suitors, however, and to her grief, for she was not cruel, they held her to her promise. On a certain day the few bold men who were to try their fortune made ready, and chose young Hippomenes as judge. He sat watching them before the word was given, and sadly wondered that any brave man should risk his life merely to win a bride. But when ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... portion. I know they are reserved for me; but I did not think to receive them at thy hands, that under that innocent guise there lurked a heart treacherous and cruel. But go; leave me to myself. This stroke has exterminated my remnant of hope. Leave me to prepare my neck for the halter, and my lips for this ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the water had brought forth many queer new animals; and among them was a huge monster, so ugly that I will not even try to tell you what it looked like, and so wicked and cruel that the people for miles around the swampy land where it ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... emphasized that the conflict was one of fundamental moral and political ideals rather than of economic interests, and the war has developed into a religious crusade. I prophesied that the war would be long and cruel, and it has proved the most ruthless war of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... watched several oxen in their stalls on the Eve of old Christmas Day, and that at twelve o'clock, they observed the two oldest oxen fall upon their knees and (as he expressed it in the idiom of the country) make a cruel ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... person, whom I had treated as a common "masher," heaped a whole shovelful of hot, hot coals upon my guilty head by writing me a letter less carefully dotted and crossed, somewhat more confused in metaphor than before, but beginning with: "I am afraid you are cruel. I think you must have betrayed me to your mates, for I do not remember that they did such things before ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... leopard was the basic cause of all this misery and treachery. Let us give Umballa a taste of it. Am I cruel? Well, yes; all that was gentle and tender in me seems either to have vanished or hardened. He has put terror into my heart; let me put it ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... ill, monsieur. Still there is a chance—just a chance that she may not die. Ah, when I sit here all alone in this strange place, I feel that she will perish, that soon I shall be quite deserted in this cruel, cruel world!" ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... It was a cruel decision. Stavoren, like every other city, had its quota of poor families, and these were in much distress at the time, many of them dying from sheer starvation. The cargo of corn would have provided bread for them throughout the whole winter, and the commander urged Richberta to reconsider ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... might as well have urged the stones in the streets to cry out in behalf of the perishing captives. Oh, the moral cowardice, the chilling apathy, the criminal unbelief, the cruel skepticism, that were revealed on that memorable occasion! My soul was on fire then, as it is now, in view of such a development. Every soul in the room was heartily opposed to slavery, but, it would terribly alarm and enrage the South to ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... I can not write any more; my heart is breaking. How cruel it is that poverty should have power to separate forever such true lovers as you ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... contribute in no less a degree to the embellishment of the city, than to the comfort of the inhabitants. The form of some, and the ornaments of others, are well deserving of attention, notwithstanding the injuries that have inevitably occurred from time, or the more cruel ones that have been caused by wanton mutilation. It is upon historical record, that there were several fountains at Rouen, as early as the twelfth century, but their number, which now exceeds thirty, received its principal increase towards the beginning ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... romances. For there exists for the stage a conventional history which nothing can destroy. Louis XI. will not fail to kneel before the little images in his hat; Henry IV. will be constantly jovial, Mary Stuart tearful, Richelieu cruel; in short, all the characters seem taken from a single block, from love of simplicity and regard for ignorance, so that the playwright, far from elevating, lowers, and, instead ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... been, that old unkindnesses against the Crown-Prince, some of which were cruel enough, might be remembered now: and certain people had their just fears, considering what account stood against them; others, VICE VERSA, their hopes. But neither the fears nor the hopes realized themselves; especially the fears proved altogether groundless. Derschau, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... all I had! And a brave lad he was, too! But he's gone now. He lost his own life in savin' two more, and now—now he's there, away in there!" she repeats, pointing to the cruel oven. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... love, or teach them even to read. They knew the haunt of every wild creature of the woods, and many were their quarrels over a nest of young birds, or the possession of the animals they trapped. They had no kind mother; their words were often harsh, and sometimes hunger made them really cruel to each other. They were much to be pitied, for their grandfather was lame as well as old, and could ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his jaw; it was cruel, brutal! They were killing her. His clinched fist moved blindly toward his neighbor: he touched her hand ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... to give alms for fear of being called uncharitable, yet they have not the charity to investigate the cases brought before their notice and see that their relief is intelligently bestowed upon worthy persons. Some religious societies are cruel sinners in this respect. The consequence is that a premium is put upon professional begging and we have plenty of it. Society will never murmur against the burden of the deserving poor. Concerning the life of the poor, however, Korosi gives these statistics:—The ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... too. And every kiss to her was as a charm, And to Leander as a fresh alarm, So that the truce was broke and she, alas, (Poor silly maiden) at his mercy was. Love is not full of pity (as men say) But deaf and cruel where he means to prey. Even as a bird, which in our hands we wring, Forth plungeth and oft flutters with her wing, ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... of the birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... strong and handy man, accustomed to agricultural pursuits, to earn a living from the soil, my example has little to teach in this direction. The cry of 'Back to the Land' will be meaningless until general ownership in the land is made possible. It is the burden of rent, often a cruel and unjust rent, that has driven men from the land. Not far from me at Thornthwaite there resided a man and his wife who were among the most frugal and industrious persons I have ever met, yet they found ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... a library there, in which are many curious books, both in Greek and Hebrew, which I will show to thee, whenever them mayest find it convenient to come and see me. Farewell! I am glad to find that thou hast pursuits more satisfactory than thy cruel fishing.' ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... a favorite sport with Billy, in the summer time, to hunt for bumble-bees' nests, and to "take them up," as the process of capturing them was called. Uncle Mike did not like to indulge the boy in this kind of sport. Perhaps he thought it a cruel and unfeeling kind of fun; and I know he had too kind a heart, to see a boy growing up in his family with a taste for cruelty to animals of any kind. At any rate, the danger connected with the sport was enough to condemn it in the ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... that copper nose. I tell you, there is more service, as you will soon see, in my valet of the chamber, and such a lither lad as my page Lutin, than there is in a score of these old memorials of the Douglas wars, [Footnote: The cruel civil wars waged by the Scottish barons during the minority of James VI., had the name from the figure made in them by the celebrated James Douglas, Earl of Morton. Both sides executed their prisoners without mercy or favour.] where they cut ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... But he maintained the strictest silence, and drawing his conaus over his head, thus communed with himself: "I have full faith in the Manito who has preserved me thus far, I do not fear that he will forsake me in this cruel emergency. Great is his power, and I invoke it now that he may enable me to prevail over this wicked enemy ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... them this morning. At present it is very doubtful whether we shall fall in with them at all, as we are proceeding upon the merest conjecture only, and not on any positive information. Some days must now elapse before we can be relieved from our cruel suspense; and if, at the end of our journey, we find we are upon a wrong scent, our embarrassment will be great indeed. Fortunately, I only act here en second; but did the chief responsibility rest ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... how cruel! I suppose there is some story attached to it. There has been some fatal likeness,—some terrible ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the last goes home content. To know how to choose the bait is also an art. The trout bites at the fly, the pike at the worm, and a yearning maiden at her lover's letter. Take notice! To-day, which began with such cruel sorrow, will ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Ras and cape of the Brettons dwell an austere and cruel people with whom you cannot treat or converse. They are large of person, clad in skins of seals and other wild animals tied together, and are marked with certain lines, made with fire, on the face and as it were striped with color between black and red, (tra ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... no sooner uttered this cruel threat, than, tumbling into the pit, he made the very foundations of the Mount ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... JUL. Muza, that cruel and suspicious chief, Distrusts his friends more than his enemies, Me more than either; fraud he loves and fears, And watches her still footfall day ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... a clean breast of the whole matter, but the cruel lash cut my sentence short. I had on no coat, only my waist, and I am sure a boy never received such a whipping ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... hands, supported the crown, seemed, though vainly so, to call upon the king, who was fast disappearing from it. The bed still sunk. Louis, with his eyes open, could not resist the deception of this cruel hallucination. At last, as the light of the royal chamber faded away into darkness and gloom, something cold, gloomy, and inexplicable in its nature seemed to infect the air. No paintings, nor gold, nor velvet hangings, were visible any longer, nothing but walls of a dull gray color, which the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... interest here is that after an hour of this desperate brutal business the champion ceased to be the favorite; the man whom he had taunted and bullied, and for whom the public had but little sympathy, was proving himself a likely winner, and under his cruel blows, as sharp and clean as those from a cutlass, his ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... I ever heard of in all my service for the Lord. Repeatedly I fell on my knees with his wife, and asked the Lord for his conversion, when she came to me in the deepest distress of soul, on account of the most barbarous and cruel treatment that she received from him, in his bitter enmity against her for the Lord's sake, and because he could not provoke her to be in a passion, and she would not strike him again, and the like. At the time when it was ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... had been given. His early friendships, where they could be retained, he did retain warmly and generously even to the last; he seemed almost to draw a line between them and other things in the world. The truth, indeed, was that beneath that icy and often cruel irony there was at bottom a most warm and affectionate nature, yearning for sympathy, longing for high and worthy objects, which, from the misfortunes especially of his early days, never found room to expand and unfold itself. Let him see and feel that anything was ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... The cruel treatment of inoffensive Chinese has, I regret to say, been repeated in some of the far Western States and Territories, and acts of violence against those people, beyond the power of the local constituted authorities to prevent and difficult to punish, are reported ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fifteenth century, the doors of the screen made in such a way that they will not entirely close, in order to show plainly forth to all sinners that the gates of heaven are always open; past Martinhoe village, which was the scene of one of the most cruel and cold-blooded of all the Doone murders, when they carried off the wife of Christopher Badcock, a small tenant farmer, and, in rage at finding nothing in the poor home but a little bacon and cheese, murdered her baby in a fit of senseless brutality, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... back! You have gone far enough. On ahead are only cruel hardship and continual failure. Here are fortune, fame, wealth, ambition, honor—and more. I told you one time I would lay my hand upon your shoulder out yonder, no matter where you were. I said that you should look into my face yonder ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... crystal bounds With spirits of balm, and fragrant Syrops mixt. Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone, In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena Is of such power to stir up joy as this, To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst. Why should you be so cruel to your self, And to those dainty limms which nature lent 680 For gentle usage, and soft delicacy? But you invert the cov'nants of her trust, And harshly deal like an ill borrower With that which you receiv'd on other terms, Scorning the unexempt ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... have gone up in all ages from the victims of man's greed, lust, cruelty, tyranny, and shrillest of all from the tortured victims of his superstition and fanaticism, it is difficult to answer the sneer, 'Believe, if you can, that this foolish, unjust, cruel being called man, is made in the likeness of God. Man was never made in the image of God at all. He is only a cunninger sort of animal, for better for worse—and for worse ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... Margaret cruel, and could only look at Rita remorsefully, feeling that she had sinned, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... in Robert Southey. As for the true Cid, let us not ask whether he was ever—as M. Dozy, in his excellent Recherches sur l'Histoire Politique et Lttrare de l'Espagne pendant le Moyen Age, says that he could be—treacherous and cruel. What lives of him is all that can take form as part of the life of an old and haughty nation, proud in arms. Let the ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... turned with the arrow in my hand I saw what made the hare pay no heed to me. There was a more terrible enemy than even man on its track. Sniffing at my footprints where they had just crossed those of the hare was a stoat, long and lithe and cruel. I knew it would not leave its quarry until it had it fast by the throat, and the hare knew it also by some instinct that is not to be fathomed, for I suppose that no hare, save by the merest chance, ever escaped that pursuer. The creature seemed ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... parallelogram. Our arms and legs were stretched to their full extent, and tied severally to the trees; and thus we lay, spread out like raw hides to dry. Our savage captors drew the cords so taut that our joints cracked under the cruel tension. In this painful position, with a Jarocho standing over each of us, we passed the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... their bodies from the miseries of idleness and beggary." In reality the scheme was one by which it was hoped to prevent the growth of Catholicism. The conditions and methods of instruction were positively cruel, since the children were actually withheld from any communication with their parents. Mr. Lecky deals with the subject fully in the first volume of his "Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," Froude gives the scheme his praise and admiration, but at the time of its institution ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... cruelties that are inherent in the whole business of war, either civil or international, and inseparable from it. Said our Lieut.-Gen. S. M. B. Young at a banquet in Philadelphia, "War is necessarily cruel; it is kill and burn, and burn and kill, and again kill and burn." The truth was more bluntly expressed by the British Rear-Admiral Lord Fisher, now the first sea ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... woods, our men pursuing close at their heels. There were several of the enemy killed, and wounded, and a few prisoners taken, all of whom the barbarous Captain Montgomery, who commanded us, ordered to be butchered in a most inhuman and cruel manner; particularly two, who I sent prisoners by a sergeant, after giving them quarter, and engaging that they should not be killed, were one shot, and the other knocked down with a Tomahawk (a little hatchet) and both scalped in my absence, by the rascally sergeant neglecting to ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... hostages stands out among the innumerable German cruelties as one of peculiar horror. Everywhere in the occupied departments the Maire has been the surety for his fellows, and the Germans have handled them often as a cruel boy torments some bird or beast he has captured, for the pleasure of showing ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time, however. Mrs Inglis evidently made a great effort to say something, and asked about Frank and the family generally, and then said something about his journey, and then about the sudden breaking-up of the winter roads. Mr Oswald felt it to be cruel to make her speak at all, and turned ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... added hastily, for she was not a cruel woman, "that she really hates you, of course. But you've frightened her, and shaken her nerves, locking her up in her room like that. Upon my word, you are ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... for his master, the Big Chief, was a very hard man; he put him to the most toilsome labour, and treated him with every sort of indignity. Moreover, he was compelled to be a witness of practices so revolting and cruel, that he often put the question to himself whether it was possible for devils to display greater wickedness and depravity than ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... mere words the intense seriousness and gravity of the situation. You can imagine a dark night at sea—a night so black that the senses feel oppressed. You can add to these a thrill of impending danger and a vision of capture by a cruel enemy and the thought that the very next second will sound the signal for an uproar and outbreak of combat, but your impressions will fall far short of the reality—that must ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... him something to eat every time he came, and made quite a pet of him. One day while he was out in the open country, Osman's men captured this youth and took him at once before their leader, who, probably regarding him as a deserter, ordered both his hands to be cut off close to the wrists. The cruel deed was done, and the poor lad was sent back to Suakim. It was this that roused the wrath of Miles as well as that of his comrades. When they saw the raw stumps and the haggard look of the poor fellow, who had suffered much from loss of blood, they got into a state of mind that would have ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... accomplishing it, when once I had it in my head to began it. But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could think of nothing but how I might destroy some of the monsters in their cruel, bloody entertainment, and if possible save the victim they should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... terrible slam," acknowledged Herb. "If I weren't so busy eating this pie, Jimmy, I'd be tempted to make you take back those cruel words." ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... sailed away. Days lengthened into weeks, weeks lengthened into months, the months into a year, yet the second son did not return. Cruel storms wrecked so many of the merchant's ships that he lost the other half of his possessions, and was forced to take refuge in a miserable cottage by the marshes beyond ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... in their strangeness, or feelings so endearing in their tenderness, that suddenly she seemed as much above, as before she seemed below, the ordinary measure of infant comprehension. She was like a creature to which Nature, in some cruel but bright caprice, has given all that belongs to poetry, but denied all that belongs to the common understanding necessary to mankind; or, as a fairy changeling, not, indeed, according to the vulgar superstition, malignant and deformed, but lovelier than the children of men, and haunted by ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the years of 1408 and 1409, and many years previous to these dates, India experienced some terrible bloody conflicts, when hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were butchered by the cruel monster Timur Beg in cold blood, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries by Mahmood the Demon, on purpose to make proselytes to the Mohammedan faith, it is only natural to suppose that under those circumstances ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... former acquaintanceship. But as another person, a man, stepped between her and the woman, Jinnie glanced up at him. He was very handsome, but involuntarily the girl shuddered. There was something in the curling of his lips that was cruel, and the whiteness of his teeth accentuated the impression. His eyes ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... just at dusk he went back down the trail and set his bear traps again, but not even a prowling fox came along in the night to spring their cruel jaws. The canyon was deserted and the water-hole where he drank was unvisited except by his mules. These he had penned in above him by a fence of brush and ropes and hobbled them to make doubly sure; ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... bitterly upon that cruel arrangement of Nature's whereby the father transmits his vigorous qualities in twofold measure to the daughter, not in order that she may be a somebody, but solely in order that she may transmit them to sons. "I don't believe it," she decided. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... ceaseless swash of waves, Emil hid his face, and had an hour of silent agony that aged him more than years of happy life could have done. It was not the physical hardship that daunted him, though want and weakness tortured him; it was his dreadful powerlessness to conquer the cruel fate that seemed hanging over them. The men he cared little for, since these perils were but a part of the life they chose; but the master he loved, the good woman who had been so kind to him, the sweet girl whose winsome presence had made the long voyage so pleasant for ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Mother Nature has done with us. Let the wrinkles come; let our voices grow harsh; let the fire she lighted in our hearts die out; let the foolish selfishness we both thought we had put behind us for ever creep back to us, bringing unkindness and indifference, angry thoughts and cruel words into our lives. What cares she? She has caught us, and chained us to her work. She is our universal mother-in-law. She has done the match-making; for the rest, she leaves it to ourselves. We can love or we can fight; it is all one ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... with a grim cruel voice, and he kicked the wall with his feet to make Ivan let go the quicker, and buried his scanty teeth in the fleshy legs of his victim, and worried ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... from them instead of leaving them immediately after the removal of the cloth, as I should always otherwise have done. He was never willing to go, and I frequently had to carry him away by force, for which he thought me very cruel and unjust; and sometimes his father would insist upon my letting him remain; and then I would leave him to his kind friends, and retire to indulge my bitterness and despair alone, or to rack my brains for a ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... attempted to mediate between the contending parties; and the intractable spirit of the Catholics insensibly cast him into the opposite scale. His moderation was guarded by timidity; but his son Theophilus, alike ignorant of fear and pity, was the last and most cruel of the Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against them; and the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. After the death of Theophilus, the final victory of the images was achieved by a second ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the old-fogey methods of the German newspapers, which are invariably twelve or fifteen hours later than journals elsewhere in Europe on world news events. Although New York, London and Paris had the cruel truth with their morning papers on Tuesday, it was not until the middle of the forenoon that "extras" made the facts ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... endeavored to show the purifying and ennobling influence of science upon religion; how it has assisted, if indeed it may not claim the main share, in sweeping away the dark superstitions, the degrading belief in sorcery and witchcraft, and the cruel, however well-intentioned, intolerance which embittered the Christian world almost from the very days of the Apostles themselves. In this she has surely performed no mean service to religion itself. As Canon Fremantle has well and justly said, men of science, and not the clergy only, ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... schools and an excellent teacher of his subject before he recognized the divine origin of Christianity. St. Basil was a college friend of Gregory Nazianzen and of Julian, later emperor and apostate, when the three studied rhetoric at Athens. Indeed, the most cunningly cruel decree which Julian later promulgated against the Christians forbade them the use of the ancient pagan literature of Greece and Rome. This decree Basil bitterly resented. "I forgo all the rest," he says, "riches, birth, honor, authority, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... at people. She flushed and winced before citizens who a week ago had been amusing objects of study, and in their good-mornings she heard a cruel sniggering. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... pleas'd with wildly-warbled song, The minstrel's life will they prolong With food and shelter warm? No,—see, to shun the cruel snare, Again he wings the frozen air, And dies amidst ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... great orator and warrior, and one or two others have features exceedingly resembling some of the Provencal noblesse of France: the common expression is, however, almost uniformly characteristic of their nature, cold, crafty, and cruel; I hardly found one face in which I could have looked for either mercy or compunction—always excepting the women, of whom here are a few specimens. It would be but gallant to add to the number, if there are many such amongst the tribes; for the features of these are ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... bearing fruit, one pig always alive, and another ready cooked.' Occasionally, however, we find a different picture. In the Welsh poem called 'Y Gododin' the poet Aneirin is represented as expressing his gratitude at being rescued by the son of Llywarch Hen from 'the cruel prison of the earth, from the abode of death, from the loveless land.' The salient features, therefore, of the Celtic conceptions of the other-world are their consonance with the suggestions made by Celtic scenery to the Celtic imagination, the vagueness and ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... consequence of the predatory nature of Irish warfare, which plundered, burned, and devastated as it went along, it was impossible that thousands of the wretched Irish should not themselves be driven by the most cruel necessity, for the preservation of their lives and of those of their families, to become thieves and plunderers in absolute self-defence. Their habitations, such as they were, having been destroyed and laid in ruins, they were necessarily driven to seek shelter in the woods, caves, and other fastnesses ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... sensation of remorse at the independence of my life. On going to the city, I had hoped to be able to live in the same manner. But here I encountered want of an entirely different sort. City want was both less real, and more exacting and cruel, than country poverty. But the principal point was, that there was so much of it in one spot, that it produced on me a frightful impression. The impression which I experienced in the Lyapinsky house had, at the very first, made me conscious of the deformity of my own life. This feeling was ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... evening, where the new-comer who aspires to honor among them was born and brought up, and what that interloper has done, or has not done, in the course of his life. There may be no court of assizes for the upper classes of society; but at any rate they have the most cruel of public prosecutors, an intangible moral being, both judge and executioner, who accuses and brands. Do not hope to hide anything from him; tell him all yourself; he wants to know all and he will know all. Do not ask what mysterious telegraph it was which conveyed ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... ascended the throne in 1461; notwithstanding his reign was disturbed by a series of wars, he found time to occupy himself with useful institutions, and founded that of the first society of printers in Paris; he also established the School of Medicine, and the Post Office. Superstitious and cruel, he first used iron cages as prisons, then instituted the prayer styled the Angelus. Although he increased the power of France, his tyranny, injustice, dissimulation, and avarice caused him to be hated by his subjects. His successor Charles VIII was but ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... living in a country where arts have given place to arms. But the public will, perhaps, receive with indulgence a work written under such peculiar circumstances; not composed in the calm of literary leisure, or in pursuit of literary fame, but amidst the turbulence of the most cruel sensations, and in order to escape ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... words. They were a revelation to Dot, the almost silent looker-on. It was as if a flashlight had given her a sudden glimpse of this man's soul, showing her bitter enmity—a black and cruel hatred—an implacable yearning for revenge. She felt as if she had looked down into the seething heart ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... taken by surprise, fell heavily, and, by cruel ill luck, struck her temple, in falling, against the sharp corner of a marble table. It gashed her forehead fearfully, and she lay senseless, with the blood spurting in jets from her ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... lighthearted than myself," answered the other, with a sigh. "Ah! Harold, I have none of the old elasticity about me to-night. I would I were back under my father's roof, never to hear the roll of the battle-drum again. This is a cruel war, Harold." ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... stolen from their wigwams and given to eat of fairy bread, that dwarfed and changed them in a moment. Barring their kidnapping practices the elves were an innocent and joyous people, and they sought more distant hiding-places in the wilderness when the stern churchmen and cruel ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... be so cruel," she sobbed. The guttural sonority with which she rolled the "r" in "cruel" made the epithet appear one of revolting barbarity. She fixed ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... justice—ashamed, Francine attempted to make excuses. Emily's generous nature passed over the cruel persistency that had tortured her. "No no; I have nothing to forgive. It isn't your fault. Other girls have not mothers and brothers and sisters—and get reconciled to such a loss as mine. ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the shoulder and attached to a strong iron band locked round the leg immediately above the ankle. These men have tried to escape. Necessary as it may be to adopt such measures to prevent them from repeating the attempt, surely it is unnecessarily cruel to compel these poor creatures to wear their irons at night. Their dinner consists of a can of soup, a plate of meat, and ten ounces of bread. They are allowed one hour, and are then marched back ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... going on, the society young lady improves the shining hour by asking the master "if he does not think it cruel to make a poor horse go just as fast as it can," to which he replies that the horse will desire to go quite as long as she can or will, whereupon she withdraws into the cave of sulkiness again, but brightens perceptibly as you dismount and ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... fluids, Charley?" cried the major; "the cruel performance I have been enacting on that cursed beast has left me in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... 1811 Shelley records how he suddenly heard with "inconceivable emotion" that Godwin was still alive. He "had enrolled his name on the list of the honourable dead." Godwin, to quote Hazlitt's rather cruel phrase, had "sunk below the horizon," in his later years, and enjoyed "the serene twilight of a doubtful immortality." Serene unfortunately it was not. With a lonely home and two little girls to care for, Godwin thought once more of marriage. Twice his ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... his children's eyes, While his own with gladness flash, "These," the Umbrian father cries, "Ne'er shall crouch beneath the lash! These shall ne'er Brook to wear Chains whose cruel links are twined Round the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... young; you have never known loneliness or disappointment. We have! Happiness is fifty times more precious, when it comes to those who have suffered. You would not be cruel enough to damp our happiness! You can do it, you know, if you persist in an attitude of coldness and disapproval. I don't say you can destroy it. Thank God! it goes too deep for anyone to be able to do that. But you can rub off the bloom. Don't do it, Claire! ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... words of deception, which he had just had the opportunity of learning, and was trying to get possession of his enemy's body. Doubtless it was well for Ulysses to keep out of the giant's hands. But that does not justify his speech, which was both cruel and blasphemous. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... inhabitants are distinguished for a softness and inoffensiveness of manners, degenerating almost to effeminacy; it is here then, only, that we are exempt from the general influence of climate: here only that, in spite of it, we are cruel and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... trees rose up on either side of the river, with thick underwood, which here and there gave place to small patches of grass. From the banks we occasionally saw huge alligators gliding slowly off into the water, or watching us as we passed with their cruel-looking yellow eyes. Curiously shaped lizards crawled along the banks, or lay extended on the boughs of the trees, gazing at us, and occasionally puffing themselves up into extraordinary shapes. From either side also came strange sounds—the shrill call of pea-hens, the cooing of ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where Boardman Robinson would have found a mother, her white, drawn face half hidden by the shoddy shawl of black, to which cling the hands of her emaciated ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... would confess them, and undergo with cheerfulness such new penances as I was loaded with. Others too would occasionally entertain and privately express such doubts; though we all had been most solemnly warned by the cruel murder of Saint Francis. Occasionally some of the nuns would go further, and resist the restraints or punishments imposed upon them; and it was not uncommon to hear screams, sometimes of a most piercing and terrific kind, from nuns ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... she rejected Bruce-Brice of the British Legation with the sad and hopeless kindness of one who almost contemplates taking the veil, and to whom the things of this world outside of tenements are hollow and unprofitable. She found a cruel disappointment at first, for the women of the College Settlement had rules and ideas of their own, and had seen enthusiasts like herself come into Rivington Street before, and depart again. She had thought she would nurse the sick and visit the prisoners on the Island, ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... answered; "first, because the gods are gods, and their servants know them; and secondly, because Nam has of late stood in danger of losing his authority. Of all the chief priests that have been told of, Nam is the most cruel and the most greedy. For three years he has doubled the tale of sacrifices, and though the people love these sights of death, they murmur, for none know upon whom the knife shall fall. Therefore he was glad to greet the gods come back, since he thought ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... been since the days of Kamehameha the Great. Nor do the foreign residents, especially the Americans, feel so safe as formerly, without the presence of a man-of-war in the harbour, since the people of Oahu have so unexpectedly developed one of the prominent arts of civilized democracy, cruel, reckless, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... when rehearsing a conversation he had just had with some Mussulman friend, to whom he had opened the Scriptures, and talked of the kingdom yet to fill the whole earth,—the brotherhood of all races,—the one flock and the one shepherd; his silent patience, in a land of cruel wrong, under heavy burdens, borne uncomplainingly for many years; his wonderful spirituality, all things earthly being but the types of the heavenly,—the one, by resemblance or contrast, constantly suggesting the other, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... too occupied with his enemy to hear or feel the presence of a fellow-creature. He was solitary with his unseen enemy, and if the room had been full of ministering angels he would still have been alone and unsuccoured. He might have been sealed up in a cell with his enemy who, incredibly cruel, withheld from him his breath; and Edwin outside the cell trying foolishly to get in. He asked for little; he would have been content with very little; but it was refused him until despair had reached the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... she said, wrenching herself free. "Don't touch me, you cruel and wicked and heartless—! Go to Magsie! Tell her that I sent you to her! Take your ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... appearance goes. See here, let me describe myself, feature by feature. Oh, here's a clear pool. I can get a glimpse of myself in it. You come and look in too, Nora. Now, then, we can see ourselves. Oh, holy poker! it's cruel the difference between us. Here's my forehead low and bumpy, and my little nose, scarcely any of it, and what there is turned right up to the sky; and my wide mouth, and my little eyes, and my hair just standing straight up as rakish as you please. ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... very distracted condition, and in more likelihood to perish every man than escape the bloodiness of that day. Now we found the words of Captain Sharp to bear a true prophecy, being all very sensible that we had had a day too hot for us, after that cruel heat in killing and murdering in cold blood the old Mestizo Indian whom we had taken prisoner at Yqueque." In fact they were beaten and broken, and the fear of death was on them, and the Spaniards were ringing them round, and the firing was roaring from every point. They were a bloody, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the Ottoman chiefs and the renegade Bulgarian nobles. The Christian population was subjected to heavy imposts, the principal being the haratch, or capitation-tax, paid to the imperial treasury, and the tithe on agricultural produce, which was collected by the feudal lord. Among the most cruel forms of oppression was the requisitioning of young boys between the ages of ten and twelve, who were sent to Constantinople as recruits for the corps of janissaries. Notwithstanding the horrors which attended ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... have no effect on my dark-mirrored scales.' I replied, 'Dread this, that I and the father of these children will gird up the waist of vengeance, and will exert ourselves to the utmost for thy destruction.' The Snake laughed on hearing me, and that cruel oppressor has devoured my young and has also taken ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... are some delightful modes of making money open to the fortunate few. But if one earns all one spends,—which is the meaning of earning a living,—there will always be hardships to meet. It is not best to anticipate trouble, but it is cruel to let any girl try to make her way in the world with the fancy that it will be easy. Yet most must make their own way, and perhaps most of these have a fair share of happiness, for there are compensations in all work ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... was the cruel persecution of the Jews. Not only were they compelled to live within the Pale of Settlement, but this was so reduced that abominable congestion and poverty resulted. Intolerable restrictions were placed upon the facilities for education in the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... said Billy Jack. "I didn't think it was in you." And Thomas felt more than repaid for all his cruel beating. It was something to win the approval of Billy Jack in an ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the land for him. Earl Thorfin was ripe in all ways as soon as he was grown up: he was stout and strong, but ugly; and as soon as he was a grown man it was easy to see that he was a severe and cruel but a very clever man. So says Arnor, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... of indeed happy emotions agitated the mind of Thaddeus, until, recollecting with a bitter pang the shameless ingratitude of Pembroke, when all those glories were departed from him, and the cruel possibility of being recognized by the Earl of Tinemouth as his son, he exclaimed, "My dearest madam, I entreat that what I have revealed to you may never be divulged. Miss Beaufort's friendship would indeed be happiness; but I cannot ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... results—and perhaps he will bring forward his children, and mount them upon the platform. But, gentlemen of the jury, when you see the children of Aeschines, remember that the children of many of your allies and friends are now vagabonds, wandering in beggary, owing to the cruel treatment they have suffered in consequence of his conduct, and that these deserve your compassion far more than those whose father is a criminal and a traitor. Remember that your own children have been robbed even of their ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... doubt 't is more of his masked generosity. Never will I believe that loving you as I know he does, he could be hard-hearted or cruel to you." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... that's positively cruel!" Joan Drake said earnestly. "Subjecting an innocent animal to what ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... criminal case. Ha! ha! if peradventure a Cacti be rejected, because he had seen the accused commit the crime for which he is arraigned. Then, his mind would be biased: no impartiality from him! Or your testy accused might object to another, because of his tomahawk nose, or a cruel ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... fellow, to ride along so comfortably while your poor boy there can hardly keep pace by the side of you!" And so the good-natured miller took his boy up behind him and both of them rode. As they came to the town a citizen said to them, "Why, you cruel fellows! You two are better able to carry the poor little donkey than he is to carry you." "Very well," said the miller, "we will try." So both of them jumped to the ground, got some ropes, tied the donkey's legs to a pole and tried to carry him. But as they crossed ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... "Cruel miss," said Mr. Guppy, "hear but another word! I think you must have seen that I was struck with those charms on the day when I waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I could not forbear a tribute ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... only, our imperfect sanctification and obedience to the law; the nature, number, and use of the holy sacraments; his five bastard sacraments, with all his rites, ceremonies, and false doctrine, added to the ministration of the true sacraments without the word of God; his cruel judgment against infants departing without the sacrament; his absolute necessity of baptism; his blasphemous opinion of transubstantiation, or real presence of Christ's body in the elements, and receiving of the same by the wicked, or bodies ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... so-called widows were never really wives, their husbands (so-called) having died in childhood. Widows are subjected to treatment which they deem worse than death; and yet their number, it is calculated, amounts to about twenty-one millions! More cruel and demoralizing customs than exist in India in regard to women can hardly be found among the lowest barbarians. We are glad to escape from dwelling on points so ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... seventy-fifth birthday pass without a word of affection and congratulation. I am alive and well—Time has dealt leniently with me in that respect, if not in money matters. I do not say this in the hope of reconciling you to me. I know that is impossible after all these cruel years. But I do wish that I could see you again. Remember, I am your only child and even if you still think I have been a foolish one, please let me come to see you once before it is too late. We are constantly traveling from place to place, but shall be ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... straight lines, enclosing a sombre and rectangular pool. Brick walls rose high above the water!—soulless walls, staring through hundreds of windows as troubled and dull as the eyes of over-fed brutes. At their base monstrous iron cranes crouched, with chains hanging from their long necks, balancing cruel-looking hooks over the decks of lifeless ships. A noise of wheels rolling over stones, the thump of heavy things falling, the racket of feverish winches, the grinding of strained chains, floated on the air. Between high ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad |
