"Mourner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... offerings to his relative at the annual feast the chief mourner begins saving up his skins, frozen meat, and other delicacies prized by the Eskimo, until, in the course of years, he has accumulated an enormous amount of food and clothing. Then he is prepared to give the great feast in honor of his ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,— The punctual stars will vigil keep,— Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... of the mourners, being my wife's friend—well, that gal, though I hedn't, perhaps, oughter say—lying in that casket, fetched all the way from some A1 establishment in Chicago, filled with flowers and furbelows—didn't really seem to be of much account. Well, although my wife's friend, and me a mourner—well, now, I was—disappointed ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and some people said the Captain "felt it very much." I don't think he did. But he was not very well just then, and looked the part of mourner and penitent to admiration—being seedy and sick. He drank a great deal of brandy and water that night, and called in Farmer Dobbs, for want of better company, to drink with him; and told him all his grievances, and how happy ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... forgot all 'bout dat when Brother Thomas got in de pulpit and preached dem old time sermons 'bout how de devil gwine to git you if you don't repent and be washed in de blood of de Lamb. De call to come up to de mourner's bench brought dem Negroes jus' rollin' over one another in de 'citement. Soon dey got happy and dere was shoutin' all over de place. Some of 'em jus' fell out. When de 'tracted meetin' closed and de baptizin' dey come, dat was de happiest time of all. Most of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... happy he who, after a survey Of the good company, can win a corner, A door that's in or boudoir out of the way, Where he may fix himself like small "Jack Horner," And let the Babel round run as it may, And look on as a mourner, or a scorner, Or an approver, or a mere spectator, Yawning a little ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to love. The latter is not often accounted a passion, yet it creates necessities which are peremptory as those of any passion. One of the incidents of the curse he was suffering was that he knew the certainty of the coming of a day when he must be a mourner for whomsoever he should take into his heart, and in this way expiate whatever happiness the indulgence might bring him. Nevertheless the craving endured, at times a positive hunger. In other words, his was still ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... earthquake and whipped into flaming foam by the force of the storm. The Sun already was receding from them, already growing smaller. Soon the storm seemed but a cloud of light sweeping over the empty plain, like a murderous mourner rushing swiftly away from the grave of ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... real misfortune as far as I was concerned. For only then did I come to realize how much I was attached to the girl. I felt an utter emptiness in my heart; I began to feel myself a total stranger in the house. When everybody was talking merrily, I kept quiet, as if I were a mourner. I was always looking for Marusya, I was always trying to catch her eye. I hoped that our eyes would meet, that she would at least look at me. But she kept on avoiding me. No, she did not avoid me: she simply did not seem to know that I ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... kindly, up in the corner; Bird, beast, and goldfish are sepulchred there Bid the black kitten march as chief mourner, Waving her tail like a plume in ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... did see such a fellow for necktie parties as you are, Yorky. Not three weeks ago, you was invitin' me to be chief mourner at one of your little affairs, and your friend Johnson was to be master of ceremonies. Now you've got the parts reversed. No, I reckon we'll have ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... out of the way, they prepared for a grand cooking-time. They were handy girls, though they had never heard of a cooking-school, never touched a piano, and knew nothing of embroidery beyond the samplers which hung framed in the parlor; one ornamented with a pink mourner under a blue weeping-willow, the other with this pleasing verse, each word being done in a different color, which gave the effect ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... quitted, and over whose expiring attributes thou art a mourner, was a savage forest while the cedars of Lebanon, for countless ages, had built the palaces of mighty kings. Yet in that forest brooded infinite races that were to spread over the globe, and give a new impulse to its ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... sloth of decrepit age. Next week you will not know him for the same boy. His feet will be hardened, he will dance over the macadam mixed streets with the callosity of a stone-crusher, and the fugacious cat will be lucky if it gets its tail through the fence in time. The mourner's bench humility of today will have changed to the noisy glee of the hardened criminal. His baseball practice will pervade the middle of every street, and his large and assorted stock of general trouble and annoyance will be displayed under all our noses with the ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... after preliminary skill-tests, the two thieves rob the king. The Mexican thief is caught; the Spanish thief cuts off his head. The corpse, by order of the king, is carried through town, and the house of the mourner is marked with blood. The Spanish thief escapes by marking all the houses with blood. (For the bibliography of marking all the house-doors with chalk to prevent discovery, see Bolte-Polivka, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... and low the murmurs spread Round Owain's stately walls, While he, a mourner o'er the dead, Sate lonely in his halls; And not the hardiest warrior there, Unpitying, might blame The reckless frenzy of despair Which shook that iron frame; Eyes that had coldly gazed on woman's grief, Wept o'er the anguish of ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... then—not thirty yet—I took myself and my troubles very seriously. The old mate, who had acted as chief mourner at the captain's funeral, was not particularly pleased at my coming. But the fact is the fellow was not legally qualified for command, and the Consul was bound, if at all possible, to put a properly certificated ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... pacified his savage mood. But passions in the human frame Oft put the lion's rage to shame: And jealousy, by dark intrigue, With sordid avarice in league, Had practised with their bowl and knife Against the mourner's harmless life. This crime was charged 'gainst those who lay ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... to every mourner's heart The wintry wind seemed whispering round her bier; And when the tomb-door opened, with a start We heard it echoed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... being in the hands of a strong ruler, Egypt breathed freely after centuries of distress, and her sovereign might in all sincerity congratulate himself on having restored peace to his country. "I caused the mourner to mourn no longer, and his lamentation was no longer heard,—perpetual fighting was no longer witnessed,—while before my coming they fought together as bulls unmindful of yesterday,—and no man's welfare was assured, whether he was ignorant or learned."—"I tilled the land as far ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... tell you by-and-by My own poetic worth and claims; but first of all I'll try To show how this portentous quack beguiled the silly fools Whose tastes were nurtured, ere he came, in Phrynichus's schools. He'd bring some single mourner on, seated and veiled, 'twould be Achilles, say, or Niobe—the face you could not see— An empty show of tragic woe, who ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... roof of her mother's devoted and faithful mourner that the unhappy young orphan had found a home when she came to hide herself away from all ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a square deal to list her with the U.B.'s as soon as we did; for all this time she was doing the chief mourner act she was engaged to young Durgin. First off it was understood that she was waitin' for him to settle on whether he was goin' to be a minister or a doctor, him fiddlin' round at college, now takin' one course and then another; ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... are sonsie, leal dogs. Auld Jock will have ane true mourner at his funeral. I would no' ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... to the solitary mourner, "I must beg leave to remove the body a bit, and have the goodness to ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the poor girl, with the view of soothing her sorrows and helping her out of her difficulties; but Miss Day, candid upon all other topics, was strangely reserved upon this subject, and Capitola, with all her eccentricity, was too delicate to seek to intrude upon the young mourner's ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth, See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, And feed with varied fools th' eternal jest: Thou, who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece; Where wealth, unlov'd, without a mourner died; And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; Where change of fav'rites made no change of laws, And senates heard, before they ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... are of scenes in Scotland, as is this one, "Highland Shepherd's Chief Mourner." When Sir Edwin Landseer went to visit Scotland one of his fellow travelers was Sir Walter Scott, the great novelist. The two became close friends. Sir Walter Scott tells us: "Landseer's dogs ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter
... had no legal ones; they were of his blood, and it could not be decorous to treat them as common clay. So he laid them with their majestic kin in the Cholmondeley church, with imposing state and ceremony, and added the supreme touch by officiating as chief mourner himself. But he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... die, it is my only comfort; Death is the privilege of human nature, And life without it were not worth the taking. Thither the poor, the prisoner, and the mourner Fly for relief, and lay ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... brothers, Sir Robert—now Lord of Penshurst—chief mourner, and behind, poor Mr Thomas Sidney, who was so bowed down with grief that he could ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... more from the fire, and fell to hacking off suitable morsels, each for himself. In a few minutes every one who could get hold of a long arrow, or a spear, or a pointed stick, was busy learning to cook. Even the wailing old mourner, finding the excitement irresistible, forsook the body of her slain mate and came forward to take her share. Only the dead man, lying outstretched in the sun by the cave-door, and the crippled giant Ook-ootsk, away in the green hollow nursing his honorable wounds, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is illustrated at the death of a chronic invalid who has suffered much. With tears streaming down the cheeks, the mourner will say, "I am so thankful he is at rest." No selfish, rebellious side of grief is exhibited by those tears; only human sorrow, blending in loving harmony with ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... come; but oh, how lonely To the mourner did that night appear! Peace nor rest it brought, but sorrow only, Vain repinings and unwonted fear. Dimly burned the lamp— Chill the air and damp— And the winds ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Selina, whose story was well known. She followed the corpse as the only mourner, Clark having been without relations in this part of the country, and a communication with his regiment having brought none from a distance. She sat in a little shabby brown-black mourning carriage, squeezing herself up in a corner to be as much as possible out ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... of an old cemetery stands the theatre known as the Gymnase Dramatique. A suggestive fact for the moralist. Death replaced by Momus; the mourner's tears succeeded by the quips and cranks of an Achard, by the wreathed smiles of a Rose Cheri. Where the funeral once took its slow and solemn way, rouged processions pass, tinsel heroes strut, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the deceased is a woman, her petticoat is hung upon a stick. No doubt the weapons and the garment are intended for the use of the ghost, when he or she revisits the upper air. On the ninth day after the burial a feast is prepared, the drum is beaten, the conch shell blown, and the chief mourner declares that no more fires need be lighted and no more food placed on ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... nature is even in the worst of men occasionally kind, it is still, and before all things, greedy; and they soon turned from the mourner to their own concerns. The cache of the treasure being hard by, although yet unidentified, it was concluded not to break camp; and the day passed, on the part of the voyagers, in unavailing exploration of the woods, Secundra ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yours, Senor Conway," Don Mike interrupted. "Our friends here haven't listened to anything else since I got home last night. Mr. Parker, being quite ignorant of the real issue, has, of course, fallen under the popular delusion; and I've been trying my best to lead him to the mourner's bench, to convince him that when he acquires the Rancho Palomar—which, by the way, will not be for at least a year, now that I've turned up to nullify his judgment of foreclosure—that it will be a far more patriotic action on his part, even if less profitable, to colonize the San ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... such surpassing grace, Poor, blind, and naked, what canst thou impart? Canst thou no offering on his altar place? Yes, lowly mourner; give him all thy heart: That simple offering he will not disown,— That living incense may approach ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... soliloquized, the nearest relatives of the deceased victims issued from the church, seeking the carriages in waiting for them. Among those who came next was a handsome, spirited-looking girl of twenty-five, who, though not of the family group, was a sincere mourner. As she stepped forward with the elasticity of youth, glad of the fresh air on her tear-stained cheeks, it happened that she also observed the presence of the reporter, and she paused, plainly appalled. Her nostrils quivered with horrified distress, and she turned her head as though seeking some ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Charleston light, "the pale, star-like beacon, set by the guardian civilization on the edges of the great deep." Lying on the shore he watched "the swarthy beauty, Night, enveloped in dark mantle, passing with all her train of starry servitors; even as some queenly mourner, followed by legions of gay and brilliant courtiers, glides slowly and mournfully in sad state and solemnity on a duteous pilgrimage to some holy shrine." He saw "over the watery waste that sad, sweet, doubtful light, such as Spenser describes in the cathedral wood: 'A little glooming light, ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... on this side life, By which the mourner came and stood, And laid down, ne'er to be renewed, All glittering ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... kind old lady, and she called them all her "boys," watching over the wild brood as a hen does over her chickens. She fed them and comforted them, nursed them and buried them, always new ones coming to take the places of those who were gone. Chief mourner at over threescore funerals, nevertheless was Mother Daly's voice always for peace and decorum; and what good she did may one day be discovered when the spurred and booted ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... but, in truth, herself.[9] Then the Achaian Chiefs gather'd around Achilles, wooing him to eat, but he 370 Groan'd and still resolute, their suit refused— If I have here a friend on whom by prayers I may prevail, I pray that ye desist, Nor longer press me, mourner as I am, To eat or drink, for till the sun go down 375 I am inflexible, and will abstain. So saying, the other princes he dismiss'd Impatient, but the sons of Atreus both, Ulysses, Nestor and Idomeneus, With Phoenix, hoary warrior, in his tent 380 Abiding still, with cheerful ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... himself from saying, 'trust a Scot again;' but his manner had vexed and pained James, who returned to Malcolm, and left him no more till called by necessity to his post as King Henry's chief mourner, when the care of him was left to Patrick Drummond and old Bairdsbrae; and Malcolm was a very tranquil patient, who seemed to need nothing but the pleasure of looking at the ring on his finger. The weapon had evidently touched no vital part, and he was decidedly on the way to ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have you told me? Stay me with an immediate account of the recovery and calmness of my adorable weeping Sylvia, or I shall enter Bellfont with my sword drawn, bearing down all before me, 'till I make my way to my charming mourner: O God! Sylvia in a rage! Sylvia in any passion but that of love? I cannot bear it, no, by heaven I cannot; I shall do some outrage either on myself or at Bellfont. Oh thou dear advocate of my tenderest ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... sunlight on the shimmering waters, and far across, where one of the wooded headlands looked down into the sea, the green trees made such a picture on the water that, in watching this perfect bit of landscape, I found myself forgetting the solemn occasion, and the sorrowing heart of the solitary mourner, while I planned to come there the very next day with my sketch book, and secure this gem to send to my favorite teacher as a specimen of my new surroundings. And then fancy got painting her own pictures as to what my work ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... long at the seat of this Earl, before, being seized with the small pox, he died December 9, 1683, in the 30th year of his age, and was interred with the utmost decency, his lordship attending as chief mourner, in the church there, where the earl soon after erected a monument to his memory.—Mr. Oldham's works were printed at London 1722, in two volumes 12mo. They chiefly consist of Satires, Odes, Translations, Paraphrases of Horace, and other authors; Elegiac Verses, Imitations, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... had given Mr. Dutton time to turn from a mourner to a consoler, and when Nuttie came towards him with her hand outstretched, and 'Oh, Mr. Dutton, Mr. Dutton!' he took it in both his, and with a calm broken voice said, 'God has been very good to us in letting us know ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dream of the humiliation in store for me. The next day I found that Matches was to have a funeral after school, and that I—I, who hated her—was to take the part of chief mourner. The boys took off my spangled jacket and dressed me up in some clothes that belonged to Elsie's big Paris doll. They left my own little cap on my head, but covered it and me all over with a long crape veil that dragged on the ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... peculiar to the North American aborigines. Thus, the London Times of Oct. 25, 1885, describing the funeral rites of Lord Palmerston, says: "And as the words, 'Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,' were pronounced, the chief mourner, as a last precious offering to the dead, threw into the grave several diamond and gold rings." ] But as the spirits of the old and of children are too feeble for the march, they are forced to stay behind, lingering near ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... a funeral, and the cashier looked as though he might be taken for the chief mourner; as for Mr. Graylock, he sat there apparently wrought up to a high pitch of excitement, and drumming with ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... answered, with her chief-mourner expression, and her death-chamber tone: "Yes, she has left us for a season. I trust it may not be her destruction. I had hoped in former years that she would become a missionary, but I have given up all expectation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the funeral comes life again,—hard, cold, inexorable life, knocking with business-like sound at the mourner's door, obtruding its common-place pertinacity on the dull ear of sorrow. The world cannot wait for us; the world knows no leisure for tears; it moves onward, and drags along with its motion the weary and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... The Jewish spirit is on the alert. It is ever purging and tempering itself in the furnace of suffering. The people which justly bears the name of the veteran of history withdraws and falls into a revery. It is not a narrow-minded fanatic's flight from the world, but the concentrated thought of a mourner. Jewry is absorbed in contemplation of its great, unparalleled past. More than ever it is now in need of the teachings of its past, of the moral support and the prudent counsels of its history, its four thousand years of life crowded ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... noble suggestions of the future, in heart-soothing and heart-chastening thoughts of what the dead was and of what he is, and of what one who has been, and therefore still is, in near contact with him is bound to be. The whole movement of the poem is between the mourner and the mourned: it may be called one long soliloquy; but it has this mark of greatness, that, though the singer is himself a large part of the subject, it never degenerates into egotism— for he speaks typically on behalf of humanity at large, and in his own name, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... these relics. But where was the deepest mourner? No one had even seen these two before, or could give any account ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Prince knows as well as I do, and you also, Diwan-ji, how much depends upon the funeral ceremony. It was the will of Partab Singh Rajah that his son Kharrak Singh should set light to the pyre as chief mourner, and as his successor on ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... of mild advances to his second cousin, Virginia Ambler—and her early death before their polite vows were plighted had, in the eyes of his friends, doomed the morose Mr. Bill to the position of a perpetual mourner. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... guide to the tomb of Lazarus, and more than that, the sincere mourner with the afflicted sisters, he is yet more the disciple of Jesus, receiving new and lasting impressions of divine truth and of his Master, which ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... redeem them! And how bright the closing scene of Revelation—the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness—yes, he can appreciate that attribute—the curse gone, death abolished, and all tears wiped from the mourner's eye! ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Mount Vernon to-day with the Garfield boys. Yesterday poor Peter Rabbit died and his funeral was held with proper state. Archie, in his overalls, dragged the wagon with the little black coffin in which poor Peter Rabbit lay. Mother walked behind as chief mourner, she and Archie solemnly exchanging tributes to the worth and good qualities of the departed. Then he was buried, with a fuchsia ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... crackling straw beneath in due proportion strew'd. The fabric seem'd a wood of rising green, With sulphur and bitumen cast between, To feed the flames: the trees were unctuous fir, And mountain-ash, the mother of the spear; 960 The mourner-yew, and builder oak were there; The beech, the swimming alder, and the plane, Hard box, and linden of a softer grain, And laurels, which the gods for conquering chiefs ordain. How they were rank'd, shall rest untold by me, With nameless Nymphs that lived in every tree; Nor how ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... for the mourner—spring succeeded winter, and summer spring, but no change of season lightened May MacLeod's burden! Fifty years! year by year passing away only brought changes to those who lived under her gentle sway, and among the dependents of her home; youth passed into age, young ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... lowered to his last resting place, Pettifoggism, being his chief mourner, will be so overwhelmed with grief that he will tumble into the same grave. How then to hasten the demise of this venerable Humbug is the question. Some are for letting him die a natural death, others ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... girl, borne out of herself into a strange, unimagined experience of beauty and harmony and power, into a newly awakened sympathy, too, with each dreamer and lover and mourner whose lay she sang, it was as if old things had passed away and all things were become new. And presently, as they drifted on in the flooding moonlight, leaving the lights of the city behind them, she could see the small, low glimmer of a gondola-lamp gliding from out the mysterious ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... wound. So I left the house; so I never returned to the law; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed taken from my being; so I went back into books. And so a moping, despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days, but that Heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my path; and day and night I bless God and her, for I have been, and am—oh, indeed, I am ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The tokens of mourning, so far as ships' ensigns were concerned, continued till sunset, when the ceremonial procedure was closed by a simple form, impressive in its significance and appropriateness. Following the motions of the American flag-ship, the chief mourner, the flags of all the vessels, as by one impulse, were rounded up to the peaks, as in the activities of every-day life; that of the dead admiral being at the same time mast-headed to its usual place. By this mute gesture, vessels and crews ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... those in which she managed to convince herself that Evelina was dead. She thought of her then, mournfully but more calmly, as thrust away under the neglected mound of some unknown cemetery, where no headstone marked her name, no mourner with flowers for another grave paused in pity to lay a blossom on hers. But this vision did not often give Ann Eliza its negative relief; and always, beneath its hazy lines, lurked the dark conviction that Evelina was alive, in misery and ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... the loves, the jealousies, the delusions, the concealments, the faithlessness, the desertion, the parting! And now,—now the chief actress in this drama that had touched him so nearly lay buried in a New England grave, with his own Adele her solitary mourner! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... my mind to run down here and have a look round; and here I am. My surroundings I will describe later. I told you I had decided not to go to poor old Major Lessing's funeral for various reasons. I have a horror of humbug; and to pose as sole and chief mourner at the funeral of a man who had made me his heir by a fluke, and if he had lived an hour longer would have altered his will, seemed humbugging, to my mind. Also the funeral service, beautiful as it appears to those who can believe in it, means ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... foregoing allusion, into a positively lachrymose state, will be readily conceived of, without proclaiming specially, the fact. He will maintain a mien, which shall consist eminently with the atmosphere of the house of mourning; in truth, as an efficient mourner, the Indian may ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... unfortunate captain of the Active. Accordingly, snatching a hasty breakfast of dry bread and milk—for that was all the food the present low state of our finances would allow us to indulge in—we sallied forth, taking poor little Williams with us, whom we intended should act as chief mourner. When we arrived at the house, and went into the room where Delisle had last seen the body, it was no longer there. We searched about, but nowhere could we see it. In another room we found Captain Stott, late of the Minerva. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... at night, tone and words and gestures all fitting into harmony with the movement of his body. So came the chants and songs of work and of triumph. For the dead warrior the moan of lamentation fitted itself to the slower moving to and fro of the mourner, and hence came the elegy. In its first expression this was but inarticulate, half action, half music, dumbly voicing the emotion through the senses; its rhythms were all for the ear and it had little meaning beyond the crude representation of some simple human ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... to speak lightly of any thing immediately connected with the unfortunate captain. Nor, on the other hand, would I resemble the inconsolable mourner, who among other tokens of affliction, bound in funereal crape his deceased friend's copy of Joe Miller. Is there not a fitness ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... now but for me to carry them out. Unobserved of any one I took my way again to the vault. I carried with me a small lantern, a hammer, and some strong nails. Arrived at the cemetery I looked carefully everywhere about me, lest some stray mourner or curious stranger might possibly be in the neighborhood. Not a soul was in sight. Making use of the secret passage, I soon found myself on the scene of my recent terrors and sufferings, all of which seemed now so slight in comparison with, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... distinctions—remain in the heart, then sorrow lacks the earnestness which makes it holy and reverend. It loses its reality and becomes a miserable shadow. On this ground we have an opportunity to assign over multitudes who would willingly claim places here to other parts of the procession. If the mourner have anything dearer than his grief he must seek his true position elsewhere. There are so many unsubstantial sorrows which the necessity of our mortal state begets on idleness, that an observer, casting aside sentiment, is sometimes led to question whether there ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... trunk, shows its great antiquity. At present it measures ten feet in diameter at the base, with a height exceeding forty feet. Although broken and decayed in many of its parts, it is sufficiently alive to bear foliage. The gray, drooping moss hangs from its decaying branches, like a mourner's veil shrouding face and neck, emblematic of the tears which the daring adventurer is said to have wept in its shadow. An iron railing protects the tree from careless usage and from the knives of ruthless relic hunters. A party of so-called ladies and gentlemen—we ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... red roses, maidens, Leave the lilies in their dew— Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens, Dusk, oh, dusk the hall with yew! —Shall I seek, that I may scorn her, Her I loved at eventide? Shall I ask, what faded mourner Stands, at daybreak, weeping by my side? Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens! Dusk the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Broken-hearted, the fair young mourner spent her days in tears, and at last prevailed upon her father to allow her to enter the convent on the island of Nonnenworth, in the middle of the river, and within view of the gigantic crag where the castle ruins can ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... we live. Yet, we only do honour to them by avoiding to eat the bread of dependence, while we can labour for ourselves." Those words, few as they were, were uttered with many a pause, and in the low tone of a true mourner. She then called a beautiful girl towards her. The girl rose, hesitated, and sank again. "Clotilde, my love, here are none but friends; we must forget every thing but patience and our country." As she spoke, the duchess took her contribution ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... undertaking establishments ever known, and as soon as my means permitted, purchased a wide tract of land and made it into a cemetery. I owned also some very profitable marble works on one side of the gateway to the cemetery, and on the other an extensive flower garden. My Mourner's Emporium was patronized by the beauty, fashion and sorrow of the city. In short, I was in a very prosperous way of business, and within a year was able to send for my parents and establish my old father very comfortably as a receiver of stolen goods—an act which I ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... confessions, invocations. The first fifteen chapters, which make a connected whole, are headed, "Here begins the Sections of the Glorification in the Light of Osiris." It is illustrated by a picture of a procession, in which the deceased soul follows his own corpse as chief mourner, offering prayers to the Sun-God. Another part of the book is headed, "The Book of Deliverance, in the Hall of twofold Justice," and contains the divine judgments on the deceased. Forty-two gods occupy the judgment-seat. Osiris, their president, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the same colour, though from so inferior an incitement, were the looks and attention of the Grattans, particularly of the father, to the black mourner whom Lady Crewe called amongst them. My garb, or the newspapers, or both, explained the dejection I attempted not to repress, though I carefully forbade it any vent - and the finely speaking face of Mr. Grattan ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... her previously raised arm fell powerless by her side; her head, like a broken rose, sank upon her breast; her other hand convulsively grasped the urn, and in this position she in fact resembled an abandoned mourner, weeping over the ashes of her lost happiness. She was now the repudiated and forsaken one who, ready to resign her life, was brooding upon thoughts of death. And while her face took this expression, and she, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... heard Jud, with no more tune than a tom-tom, bellowing the doxology to a great audience of Polled-Angus muleys on the verge of a stampede. And I have sung myself, many a time, like a circuit rider with a crowded mourner's bench. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... and his mournful eyes pierced you with a sudden sorrow. He was too low-spirited to chase butterflies, weave daisy-chains, and dance with Goldilocks among the flowers. He liked better to play at a mimic funeral, and deck himself as chief mourner, in a friar's robe with sable plumes. He could never understand why laughing Goldilocks should object to making believe die, and be buried in the large jewel-coffer, ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... bearing to heaven the men of God who fell fighting for right and liberty. I hear the voice of God, O ye that weep, knighting your dear ones. The freedom of the press is their patent of nobility, our hearts, their monuments. Every one of us, every German, is a mourner, and you, survivors, are ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... pinions,—War's and Storm's,—he soared Flight how majestic! up! His dirge was roared Not warbled, and his pall was smoke and cloud; Flowers of red shot, red lightnings strewed his bier, And night, black night, the mourner. ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... conceded that these are half-views of half-men. The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... those moments of forlornness and desertion to which the poor Matilda imagines herself reduced. At these times my friendship has been most unwearied in its exertions. I have answered sigh with sigh, and mingled my tears with those of the lovely mourner. Believe me, Ferdinand, this has not been entirely affectation and hypocrisy. There is a vein of sensibility in the human heart, that will not permit us to behold an artless and an innocent distress, at least when surrounded ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... to the humble dwelling of Mary Mathews. As he drew near the hawthorn hedge that separated the little garden from the road, his attention was arrested by some one weeping passionately behind its almost impervious screen. He instantly recognised Mary in the mourner; and from a conversation that followed, he found that ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... is not a requiem in its sentiment, nor in any sense a religious service. The poem is full of consolation for the mourner, of assurances of joy hereafter, of warnings against the pomps and vanities of the world, and closes with the victory of the saints over death and the grave. It might with more propriety be called "a sacred cantata." The work has seven numbers,—two baritone ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... joy nor woe Can make or mar my fate; I gaze around, above, below, And all is desolate. Go, bid the shattered pine to bloom; The mourner to be merry; But bid no ray to cheer the tomb In which ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... stood beside an infant's couch, When light had left its eye— I saw the mother's bitter tears, I heard her woful cry— I saw her kiss its fair pale face, And smooth its yellow hair; And oh, I loved the mourner's home, For ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... crier; 2, the ie'kiye'(Omaha and Ponka i'eki'ce. In 1882, Sansile (a woman) was hereditary wadji'panyin of the Kansa, having succeeded her father, Pezihi, the last male crier. At the time of an issue (about 1882) Sansile's son-in-law died, so she, being a mourner, could not act as crier; hence her office devolved on K'axe of the Taqtci subgens. In that year one of the Ta yatcaji subgens (of the Taqtci or Deer gens) was iekiye number 1. Iekiye number 2 belonged to the ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... what's the good of all this jaw? Get out of my Way, master Harlequin, and go aft: noble Captain, shall us lay 'em aboard?" So saying he turned his eye upon a young man near the hearse who had been pointed out to Bertram as young le Harnois and chief mourner. His hat was slouched over his eyes, and his side face only presented to Bertram,—who in this however fancied again that he saw enough to recognize the stranger who had so much impressed him in the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... cries, and gives his little hand, "Eliza sleeps upon the dew-cold sand; "Poor weeping Babe with bloody fingers press'd, "And tried with pouting lips her milkless breast; 315 "Alas! we both with cold and hunger quake— "Why do you weep?—Mama will soon awake." —"She'll wake no more!" the hopeless mourner cried Upturn'd his eyes, and clasp'd his hands, and sigh'd; Stretch'd on the ground awhile entranc'd he lay, 320 And press'd warm kisses on the lifeless clay; And then unsprung with wild convulsive start, And all the Father kindled in his heart; "Oh, Heavens!" he cried, "my first ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... mourning, when the servants move about on tiptoe, wearing faces of funereal solemnity, and the afternoon tea-tray is carried in in state, like the corpse of a domestic usage on its way to the cemetery, with the silver spirit-kettle bubbling behind it as chief mourner. But, as the elder son, there was plenty to occupy Captain Saxham. There was business to be transacted with the Squire's solicitor, with his bailiff, with one or two of the principal tenants. There ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... superstition hinted at in this ballad should perhaps be stated more fully. It is obvious that excessive mourning is fatal to the peace of the dead; but it is also to be noticed that it is almost equally fatal to the mourner. The mourner in The Unquiet Grave is refused the kiss demanded, as it will be fatal. Clerk Sanders, on the other hand, has lost—if ever it possessed—any trace of this doctrine. For Margret does not die; though she would have ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... for Christmas, Lady Dasher," hazarded I. She evidently did not agree with me, for she looked about her mournfully, with a down-drawn visage, just as if we were all attending a funeral, of which she was the chief mourner. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... entertain grief—to lose his second wife; but to find that the first wife had been discovered, and by her daughter, possessed the additional character of insult. That the occurrence was accidental did not alter matters. Words would not content the aggrieved mourner: his hand sought the hilt of his sword, and Sir Richard, thinking discretion the better part of valour, made his way, as quickly as the laws of matter and space allowed him, out of the terrible presence whereinto he had rashly ventured. Feeling himself ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... after the occurrence of the sorrowful event, and, while brief, should not be cold and formal; neither should they touch the opposite extreme, and, by dwelling with maddening iteration upon the fresh sorrow, harrow anew the stricken soul of the mourner. The occasion should never be seized upon as a text for a sermon on resignation, nor should frequent reference be made to various like bereavements suffered by the writer. These comparisons only wound, for "there is no sorrow like unto my sorrow," has ever been the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... afflicted to be present at the ceremony; and as he had no near relative, Sir Willmott Burrell of Burrell, the knight to whom his daughter's hand was plighted, was expected to take his station as chief mourner. The people waited for some hours with untiring patience; the old steward paced backwards and forwards from the great gate, and at last took his stand there, looking out from between its bars, hoping that, wild and reckless as Burrell ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... aim wert thou In heathen schools of philosophic lore; Heart-stricken by stern destiny of yore, The Tragic Muse thee serv'd with thoughtful vow; And what of hope Elysium could allow Was fondly seiz'd by Sculpture, to restore Peace to the Mourner. But when He who wore The crown of thorns around His bleeding brow Warm'd our sad being with celestial light, Then Arts which still had drawn a softening grace From shadowy fountains of the Infinite, Commun'd with that Idea face to face; And move around it now ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... this time too we catch a characteristic glimpse of Harriet in one of her sister Catherine's letters. She says: "Last week we interred Tom junior with funeral honors by the side of old Tom of happy memory. Our Harriet is chief mourner always at their funerals. She asked for what she called an epithet for the gravestone of Tom junior, which ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... And wherefore have I delayed the proof; wherefore concealed, but from tenderness to you,—dread, too—a selfish but human dread—to lose in you the sole esteem that I covet; the only mourner who would have shed one tear over the stone inscribed with some lying epitaph, in which it will suit a party purpose to proclaim the gratitude of a nation. Vain hope. I resign it! But you spoke of a son. Alas, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The first step in her downward ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... gentlemen, and relieve the pressure on Miss Hildebrand? She is, I may say, the principal mourner, poor lady." ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... and brown-handed farmer, Alonzo Granger, and an old lady, of seventy or thereabouts— Miss Nancy Carter, a sister of the deceased. For years she had lived on a small pension from her brother, increased somewhat by knitting stockings for the neighbors. She, indeed, was the only real mourner. The rest were speculating about how far they were likely to be benefited by the death of the deceased, of whom they had seen but little in life. Even Herbert, though impressed by the presence of death, could hardly be expected to feel deep ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... every saying to the full moon, "Rise that I may seat myself in thy stead!"[FN185] All held instruments of mirth and merriment and they tuned the same and deftly moved their finger-tips and smote the strings into song most musical, most melodious, which expanded the mourner's heart. Hereby the Sultan was gladdened and time was good to him and for high enjoyment he exclaimed, "In very sooth the thing is beyond the compass of King and Kaysar." Then they fell to eating and drinking; and the cup went round ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... could not but be remembered by one so impressionable. As soon as the sunshine of favour was withdrawn, Lucan's ardent mind turned with enthusiasm towards them. The Pharsalia, and especially the closing books of it, show us Lucan as the poet of liberty, the mourner for the lost Republic. The expression of feeling may be exaggerated, and little consistent with the flattery with which the poem opens; yet even this flattery, when carefully read, seems fuller of satire than ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... grave, on which, in a rude manner, the number of scalps and prisoners he has taken in war, is represented by red paint. Upon the death of an adult, his property is usually distributed among his relatives, and his widow returns to her own family or nearest kinfolks. The widow is the principal mourner for the deceased and her grief seems to be sincere. Her countenance becomes dejected—she seldom smiles—clothes herself in rags, and with disheveled hair and spots of black paint on her cheeks, wanders about in a pensive mood, seldom shedding ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... evening of the double funeral—which Philip did not feel equal to attending, and at which George, in a most egregious hatband and with many sobs and tears, officiated as chief mourner—Mr. Fraser thought it would be a kind act on his part to go and offer such consolation to the bereaved man as lay within his power, if indeed he would accept it. Somewhat contrary to his expectation, he was, on arrival at the Abbey House, asked ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... reproved of sin; he will, on due occasions, indicate, in his kindling look, the rousing gesture, the mood of him who is empowered and commanded to summon forth all the energies of the human soul; his subdued and chastened address will carry the sympathy of his spirit into the bosom of the mourner; his moistening eye and his gentle action will manifest his tenderness for the suffering: his whole soul will, in a word, become legible in his features, in his attitude, in the expressive eloquence of his hand; his whole style will be felt to be that of ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... help it, indeed I can't," sobbed the little mourner, "he is so much like my dear, darling mother;" and she ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... remarked that up to date he had succeeded in keeping out of the cattlemen-lumbermen trouble, and that he was going to keep right along keeping out. He suggested that if there was going to be any funeral in the immediate vicinity he wasn't hankering to take any more prominent part than that of a mourner, and that the title-role of such a performance wasn't any matter of envy with him. However, I succeeded in persuading him to come part of the way with me, and secured his promise that he would listen for any shooting, and if I should happen to resign involuntarily from the Service by the argument ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... sale. The mortgage on the big house is to be foreclosed, also on the mill I believe. I declare to you, Darcy, it makes my heart ache to see those dumb spindles, and the great silent engine standing like a mourner at a funeral. Come now, why should Hope Mills go to ruin, and Yerbury fall to pieces, while you and Maverick go and build up Florida? Wouldn't the money and the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Weeping mourner! Jesus dries thy tears with the encouraging assurance, "Thy dead shall live; together with My body they shall arise." Let thy Lazarus "sleep on now and take his rest;" the time will come when My voice shall be heard proclaiming, "Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in dust." ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... power of the gospel. One man sixty-one years of age surrendered to the overtures of God's love and received Christ as his Saviour. Another of seventy-five years was pointed out to me as a hardened sinner. When approached he was full of self and reason, "I don't believe in mourner's benches and such like; do you think my going there will make me a Christian or do me any good?" "No, but it will show the people you are intending to make a start for Heaven, and it will enlist their sympathy and ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... Thaddeus, at the first beat of the drum, rose from his pallet, and, almost unassisted, put on his clothes. His uniform being black, he needed no other index than his pale and mournful countenance to announce that he was chief mourner. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... got purty mellow an' told me some o' the steps down which he had stumbled, an' how slippery the'd been when he'd tried to climb back. I confided to him a lot o' my own mishaps, an' he got purty near up to the mourner's bench, when all of a sudden he gets bitter. "You're just like all the rest," sez he, "you make all kinds of allowance for a good lookin', proud sort, like Silver Dick; but a feller like me—you allus give the verdict again a feller like me, an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... mourner, and dispel thy fears. Thy grief, thy tender duty to thy father, Has touch'd me nearly. In his lone retreat, Respect, attendance, every lenient care To sooth affliction, and extend his life, Evander ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... pulpit were placed the mourner's benches facing the three sides of the space left for the free movement of the mourners under ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... lost; the anguish of the mourner, And bitter tears that fall like solemn rain, Are safely stored within the heavenly garner, Till Christ shall come unto his ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... laid beside the Americans. Teresa, a shivering, sobbing little figure in the garb of an insurgent soldier, was supported by big Graydon Bansemer. There was no service except the short army ritual; there was no priest or pastor; there was but one real mourner—a pretty, heart-broken girl who lay for hours beside the rude mound on ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon |
