"Gaunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who had kept his eyes on O'Day as he peered into the dark, an undersized, gaunt-looking man, sidled toward Felix and pulled at his coat sleeve. "I ain't too early, am I? You said ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of Laughter looked a little deserted standing alone in the shadow of the hillside, gaunt branches creaking over its low roof, the ends of the trailing vines whipping restlessly against the gray clapboards. But Robin and Mrs. Lynch saw it as they wanted it to be—neatly painted, its windows curtained, its yard trimmed, its doorstep dignified by a broad ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... man of whom she was speaking—gaunt and olive-skinned, with deep-set eyes and worn face. He had still some share of his sister's good looks and he held himself as a ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... we found an old trapper also making purchases at the stores. He was tall and gaunt, his countenance weather beaten and sunburnt, of a ruddy brown hue, his hair—which hung over his shoulders—being only slightly grizzled, while his chin and face were smooth shaved. He was dressed ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... blossom and have some foliage which may not be very beautiful, any more than the departures from practical prose in this book are interesting; but, as a leafless plant or bush, laden with fruit, would appear gaunt and naked, so, to the writer, a book about them without any attempt at foliage and flowers would seem unnatural. The modern chronicler has transformed history into a fascinating story. Even science is now taught through the charms of fiction. Shall this ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... on a Sunday evening after service, she had come in here from the rich, warm, scented church, with the music of an august liturgy ringing in her ears, and the chill place had struck like death to all her senses. And this was the atmosphere in which his life was spent—this, and the gaunt streets and the ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... tall, thin, gaunt, withered, domineering man of sixty. When excited or angry he drops into dialect, but otherwise his speech, though flat, is fairly accurate. He sits in an arm-chair by the empty hearth working calculations in a small shiny black notebook, which he carries about with him everywhere, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... more successful; so that, in addition to being starved, there was every possibility of our being reduced to nakedness. This was no pleasant prospect, running out of tropical latitudes towards England, in the month of January. In the course of six weeks, such a ragged, woebegone, gaunt, and famished gang of reefers was never before huddled together in one of his Majesty's vessels of war. The shifts we were obliged to have recourse to were quite amusing, to all but the shiftmakers. The ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the Quai Malaquais; at home on the writing-desk, a page of carefully prepared manuscript, yet sometimes covered by cigarette-ashes; upon the wall, sketches by Jules Lefebvre and Jules Breton; a little in the distance, the gaunt form of his attentive sister and companion, Annette, occupied with household cares, ever fearful of disturbing him. Within this tranquil domicile can be heard the noise of the Parisian faubourg with its thousand ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Maxendorf straightened his gaunt figure and turned around. He stood there motionless, the palm of one hand covering the map at which he had been gazing, the lamplight shining on his gaunt, strangely ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for her brother, the late laird, that the neighbours said she had half-starved herself, in order to keep up some little show of old hospitality. In truth, the poor lady was marvellously thin, and as sallow and gaunt as she was thin. Some old lady who had stood for her at the font, in the reign of Charles the Second, had, at her death, left her all her clothes, and these had been sent to Dymock's tower in several large chests. Mrs. Margaret was accordingly provided for, for life, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... like human visitation. Or I lay concealed and watched the crows in a road-side field. What was it caused them to look up suddenly and flap away on sooty-fringed wings? No bird, beast, or man came. Then the rats, scampering about under a dock like so many gaunt Virginia swine: all at once came a flurry of whisking tails, and they were off! Yet I had not stirred, nor did anything move on the dock above. Nevertheless all seemed to realize a common danger, a noise of some kind,—perhaps a step? ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... with Joe. Deep, heavy and gruff, it had yet revealed a tenderness that had given to Ethel a sudden thrill—which she had forgotten the next moment, for her thoughts kept spinning so. But now as he looked down at her she saw in his gaunt lean face a reflection of that tenderness; and there was a pity in his voice which set her ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... They belong to those unchanging strata of religion which have so largely supplied the soil in which its later and more spiritual growths have flourished. And among these they still emerge, unchanged and unchanging, like the gaunt outcrops of some ancient rock formation amid rich vegetation ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... down-stairs. A light is burning in the hall: the bedroom-door stands half open, and you listen—fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on through the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling. Your mother is in her chair with her head upon her hand—though it is long after midnight. The Doctor is standing with his back toward you, and with Charlie's little wrist in his fingers; and you ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... like the prophet's, where it ought not. No light showed on the side where we stood—the side over the ravine; only one pointed turret stood out against the faint moonlight glow in the upper sky: but feeling our way around the gaunt side of the building, we came to a back court-yard and two windows lit. Our host whistled, and helped me ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... enter into conversation with him, and give him some information about the nature and customs of this horrid place. But the bed nearest him was occupied by two fellows, who, although to judge from their gaunt cheeks, hollow eyes, and ghastly looks, they were apparently recovering from the disease, and just rescued from the jaws of death, were deeply engaged in endeavouring to cheat each other of a few half-pence at a game of cribbage, mixing the terms of the game with oaths not loud but deep; each ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... risen to a gale and she thought nervously of fringed napkins and pillow slips—the wind always gave her the "blues" anyway, and now it reminded her of winter, which was close, with its bitter cold—of snow driven across trackless wastes, of gaunt predatory animals, of cattle and horses starving in draws and gulches, and all the other things which winter meant in that barren country. She slept after a time, to find the next morning that the wind still ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... torn asunder To meet no more. It must be true that under This earth of ours there lies a Purgatory For those who seek to rob grief of the glory That shines through hope of life immortal. In Sin's lexicon this is the vilest sin - Needless and cruel, ugly, gaunt and mean, Without one poor excuse on which to lean, A vandal sin, that with no hope of gain Finds pleasure only in ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... The gaunt, iron-visaged woman knelt down upon her knees, gazing with unshrinking eyes upon the face of her victim, as if curiously marking the effect of a successful ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... passed, seemed to have gathered itself for a serried assault upon the lovely verdure beyond. Outposts of the sage-brush, its unsung heroes, perhaps, showed here and there among ferns and wild roses—leafless, gaunt, and dead; one knotted specimen even had planted its banner of desolation in the shade of a wild lilac and there died. A twittering of birds gladdened our dusty ears, and from afar there came a splashing of water. Our feet, burned by the desert sands, torn by yucca and cactus, trod ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... he stood listening to the long-drawn and savage howl, thinned out by the distance and mist, but he knew that it was coming nearer, and that the animal that was making it was not only hungry, but that it was a master wolf. It was none of the gaunt, half-starved, cowardly brutes that follow in the pack and take what the master wolf leaves of the scraps of the murdered calf or sick cow or sheep which the leaders of the pack ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... flat, treeless road, the grass on either side of which was burnt to hay. Buggy and harness—the latter eked out with bits of string and an old bootlace—were coated with the dust of months; and the gaunt, long-backed horse shuffled through a reddish flour, which accompanied them as a choking cloud. A swarm of small black flies kept pace with the vehicle, settling on nose, eyes, neck and hands of its occupants, crawling over the horse's belly and in and out of its nostrils. The animal made ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... rang, like the music of a sweet new song. We all gave a shout, clapped on our caps, and ran out to the fort gate. There an almost new sensation thrilled us, for we beheld a team of dogs coming up weary and worn out of the wilderness, preceded by a gaunt yet majestic Indian, whose whole aspect—haggard expression of countenance, soiled and somewhat tattered garments, and weary gait—betokened severe exhaustion. On the sled, drawn by four lanky dogs, we ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... three regents and the other men high in the administration of affairs, among them General Braze of the Army, Baron Pultz of the Mines, Roslon of Agriculture. The Duke of Perse was discussing the great loan question. The Prince was watching his gaunt, saturnine face with more than ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... reading in the same room with General Harper that there entered one day a tall, gaunt, square-shouldered, spare, light mulatto, who announced himself as Abel Hurd. He was a Bostonian by birth, and a seaman by profession. In a voyage to the East his vessel had been captured by the Malays, and he alone, if I recollect rightly, escaped death, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... his onset; but as he came nearer, and I beheld his great gaunt form, his gleaming teeth, and his senna-coloured eyes flashing like fire, changed my design; a new thought came suddenly into my ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... opportunities for preaching the Word. At the close of the year, Mr. Trowbridge, having removed from Constantinople to Marash, made a visit to Zeitoon, and remained there laboring freely from Thursday till Monday. His guide homeward was a Zeitoon Protestant,—"a tall, gaunt man, past middle life, who has suffered much there for Christ's sake. At one time the people blackened his face with a coal, put him astride of a donkey with his face towards the tail, and thus paraded him through the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... The gaunt form of a four-footed beast steals across the shadows she has watched so long, that she almost doubts her senses. Can it be a tiger perchance come forth from the jungle to prowl ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... condition of obscure hope—he had been rudely shoved toward pessimism; the converse of the announced purpose of the picture. The audience, for one thing, was so depressingly wrong in the placing of its merriment: it laughed delightedly at a gaunt feminine vindictiveness hurrying through the snow on an errand of destruction. The fact that the girl's maternity was transcendent in a generous and confident heart, made lovely by spiritual passion, escaped everyone. The phrase, spiritual passion, had occurred to him without forethought and ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... beard with his thin hand. His son joined them; not the ruddy, clean-shaven youth that had landed from the wreck twelve days before, but a gaunt man whose hollow cheeks were dark with ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the old man, exultantly, going to the window and looking at the church and the convent nestling at its side. The bells no longer mocked him, and he had ceased to hate them. Once more he stretched his gaunt arm toward the glistening tower. "The Church has not deceived us," he said humbly. Then he turned to his wife, who was waiting for ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... echoing footfalls disturb the solemn nature of the time. The little runnels weep icy tears. The dark pines hang out their funereal plumes, and nod with their weight of snow. The elms have thrown off their green robes of joy, and, standing up in gaunt nakedness, wildly toss to heaven their imploring arms. The old year ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... official-looking document in my hand, up to my uncle's room. He met me at the door, dressed in his trousers and shirt, his shirt-sleeves tucked up in order to perform his ablutions, exhibiting his brawny arms, scarred with many a wound,—his grizzled hair uncombed, his tall figure looking even more gaunt than usual without the military coat in which I was accustomed to see him. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog away, and his eyes turned ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... little house in one of the industrial streets of Camden Town. It was a street made up for the most part of blank walls, pierced at intervals with great gates, through which one could procure at times a view of gaunt factories ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... in December Peter Bines of Montana City dropped in on the family,—came with his gaunt length of limb, his kind, brown old face with eyes sparkling shrewdly far back under his grizzled brows, with his rough, resonant, musical voice, the spring of youth in his step, and the fresh, confident strength of the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... about the strategical position of Metz and the surrounding country as General von Heeringen. Often on stormy, bitter cold winter nights, sentries on outposts stationed and guarding the approaches of Metz are startled to find a gaunt, limping figure, covered in a gray army greatcoat with no distinguishing marks, stalking along. Accompanied by orderlies carrying camp stools and table; night glasses and electric torches, halting repeatedly, hidden men taking down in writing the short, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... paintings, and utensils complete. Up to this, almost every object of value had been removed at once for safety, every fresco even of importance had been cut bodily out of its setting and placed in one of those immense halls on the ground floor of the Museum in Naples. How well do we remember those gaunt chilly chambers, filled from pavement to ceiling with painted fragments of all sizes, a medley of domestic subjects and of classical myths! Torn from the walls they were specially executed to adorn, divorced from ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... her, feeling lonely and miserable. Jenkins came into the stable. I could not bear to look at him. He had killed my mother. There she lay, a little, gaunt, scarred creature, starved and worried to death by him. Her mouth was half open, her eyes were staring. She would never again look kindly at me, or curl up to me at night to keep me warm. Oh, how I hated her murderer! But I sat quietly, even when he went ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... feet. He came a little nearer to Maraton. He stood looking down at him with folded arms—a lank, gaunt figure, the angular lines of his body and limbs accentuated by his ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the dusty trees, At this lank edge of haggard wood, Women with labour-loosened knees, With gaunt backs bowed by servitude, Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare Forth with souls easier for ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... abatement while Madame, standing there in her gaunt Flemish graciousness, murmured names. "Mrs. Rankin—" Mrs. Rankin nodded insolently and turned away. "Miss Bartrum—" Miss Bartrum, the rather charming one, bowed, drawing the shadow of grave eyebrows over sweet ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... characterized the Vienna Congress a hundred years ago. The atmosphere of the Paris Conference was more like that of a convention of traveling salesmen. The Hotel Crillon, home of the American Commission, was gray and gaunt as the State, War, and Navy Building in Washington. Banquets were rare; state balls unheard of. The President who had separate headquarters, first in the Parc Monceau and later on the Place des Etats Unis, avoided the orthodox diversions of diplomacy ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... Post Mistress, "that the Indians tell that yarn, that a cyclone never came to Seth's ranch. It may be a fool notion and it may not.... Look at him," leaning forward and gazing out the window. "See how gaunt and haggard and wistful he looks. I don't believe he gets enough to eat. There ain't a sadder sight on these prairies than Seth Lawson. How many months has she been away from him now? May, June, July, August, September, November," counting on her fingers. "Seven months and one little letter from ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... great diversion was caused. A blind musician came in. At midnight one would have thought no new development in the life of the cafe was likely to take place, but the musician brought into the room such a crush of people that on all sides I felt packed and crammed. A tall, gaunt man, hatless, shaggy-headed, his black locks falling over a strange yellow brow; eyes that saw not, looking through deep purple spectacles; and in his arms, like a baby, a long Armenian guitar—the musician was somewhat to wonder at. Hemmed in by ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... of 1849 smote Ireland with fresh accumulations of suffering. Gaunt famine stalked abroad; pestilence lurked in the hovels of the country, and the cellars and garrets of the great towns; cholera ravaged as fiercely in some places as if no other destroyer visited the unhappy realm; crime lurked ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Thin, gaunt dogs barked and snarled in the narrow staired streets. Came the cry of the donkey-boys. Came the cry of the water-sellers. Came the shouts of the young Syrians over the gammon game. Loped the laden camels. Tramped the French soldiers. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... pinnacles of black lava rock, the sides of the valley once more drew together, low, and broken into ugly cutbanks of dirty grey. Sagebrush and prickly pears furnished the only vegetation, and the rough, broken surface of the country took on a starved, gaunt appearance. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... When thought creates unnumber'd scenes of woe, 50 What if the lion in his rage I meet!— Oft in the dust I view his printed feet: And, fearful! oft, when day's declining light Yields her pale empire to the mourner night, By hunger roused, he scours the groaning plain, 55 Gaunt wolves and sullen tigers in his train: Before them Death with shrieks directs their way, Fills the wild yell, and leads them to their prey. 'Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 'When first from Schiraz' walls ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... approaching winter, and surrounded by huge, knotted, gnarled, old oaks, whose dry leaves still clung to the twisted branches and rustled in the crisp air. A fat, sleek, black Tabby lay asleep on the warm porch-rail; a gaunt, ungainly greyhound lay sunning himself on the door mat, and from inside somewhere came the sound of a canary's riotous song. The whole place breathed of home, and with a deep sigh of content, Peace lifted her great, brown ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Jenkins," the gloomy voice began, "only I don't want you should step off that oilcloth. I ain't going to get that carpet all tracked up. You go right on into the front room"—a gaunt arm pushed her toward a darker space—"and I'll open ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... from his youth, an author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor which floated everything he looked upon. His talk, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... did the hardest labor of the camp. From morning till night she bustled about the lodge, screaming like a screech-owl when anything displeased her. Then there was her brother, a "medicine-man," or magician, equally gaunt and sinewy with herself. His mouth spread from ear to ear, and his appetite, as we had full occasion to learn, was ravenous in proportion. The other inmates of the lodge were a young bride and bridegroom; the latter one of those idle, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a path that was a veritable canyon of snow, he gained his quarters in the barracks. There, he found Peter Rainy, gaunt and with a wrinkled, leathern face, starting to gather the packs for the early start next morning. Donald filled and lit his pipe solemnly, and then sat down ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... tall, gaunt old man, and Robin stared at him for some minutes, wondering where he could have seen somebody very like him. At last he remembered. It was the old gentleman of the ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... had been kindled against the face of a rock. This rock rose perpendicularly a dozen feet above the ground below, where the fire was burning, and where the lad was standing. As he looked up he saw the gaunt figure of a large mountain wolf standing on the very edge of this, looking down upon him, its lank jaws distended, its eyes glaring, and its whole appearance that of a ferocious beast about to leap down upon his head. The suggestion ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... gaunt Jack North, of the One Hundred and Fourteenth Illinois, to me, one day, as we sat contemplating our naked, and sadly attenuated underpinning; "what do our legs and feet most look ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... floor, and opening out of this same chamber, are dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bedrooms: each with a multiplicity of doors and windows. Up-stairs are divers other gaunt chambers, and a kitchen; and down-stairs is another kitchen, which, with all sorts of strange contrivances for burning charcoal, looks like an alchemical laboratory. There are also some half- dozen small sitting-rooms, where the servants in this hot July, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... upon some wide-wasting pestilence which had long been walking in darkness, with Terror going before her and Death following after. Or was it the desolating course of Famine that had been stayed, as it swept, gaunt and hungry, over the land, and consumed its inhabitants from off its face? Peradventure, the prayers of holy men had prevailed, and the heavens which had been as brass were melted, and the earth which had been but ashes revived again, a living ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... calamity had grown till it was a presentiment. Yet his heart rose as, after a long five minutes, there came the sounds of fumbling key and grating lock; and then the door swung open before him, and he stood facing—not the trimly liveried butler, but the gaunt and stooping figure of Ekaterina, the old serf, garbed in a ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... salt-encrusted plains and upon the rocks, were the skeletons and shells of departed life. Fossils of the animal and the vegetable kingdoms greeted one on every hand. Great fronds of palms of the deep, draped with weird remains of marine life long extinct, stood gaunt and desolate and rust-covered in the hollows and on the hills. Long tresses of sea weed and moss, now crisp and dead as desert sands, still clung in wreaths and festoons to rock and tree and plant just as they had done in that far-off age, when washed by the waters of the sea. Great forests ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... a pale, gaunt fellow, with long hair, unshaven face, hollow cheeks, and dark eyes, set deeply in his head and shaded by thick, black brows. His dress consisted of a rough doublet, with lappet sleeves, carried down to a point, tight leggings, broad shoes and the puffed upper hose; the entire raiment frayed ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... single night last year. Oh! it might be worse. As it is, Bev, the case lies thus: unless I win the race some three weeks from now—I've backed myself heavily, you'll understand—unless I win, I am between the deep sea of matrimony and the devil of old Jasper Gaunt." ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... are so varied, that it is impossible to give a general summary of their colour or form; the largest on record (a Suliot, belonging to the king of Naples), measured four feet at the shoulders; the least would probably give a height of as many inches. All the untamed species are lank and gaunt, their muzzles are long and slender, their eyes oblique, and their strength and tenacity of ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... but it seemed to have no effect upon him; and when the lads were not watching him and his energetic action, there was always something to take up their attention. Now a heron would rise out of one of the watery lanes, gaunt, grey, and with his long legs stretched out behind to look like a tail as his great flap wings beat the air and carried him ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... Just at this juncture he was conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition—a very allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded piteously. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... came four on together, whereof one, a gaunt, oldish man, was saying: It is not so much how long we shall be getting there, but what shall betide when we get there. For this is not like lifting a herd of neat, whereof sharing is easy, but with ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... eulogizes; he wants money and a name, and when these seem unattainable, he takes refuge from "the whips and scorns of time," the burning fever of pride, the gnawings of hunger, in suicide. He goes to his little garret room,—refusing, as he goes, a dinner from his landlady, although he is gaunt with famine,—mixes a large dose of arsenic in water, and—"jumps the life to come." He was just seventeen years and nine months old! When his room was forced open, it was found that he had torn ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... misery now, or perfectly numb and, as he sat there a shattered wreck of his former insouciant self, gaunt and haggard and pitifully thin, some of his friends ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... during that harvest season. The harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in the house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heat lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gaunt frame of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was a beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cut grain. The men went down to the barn immediately after ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... on the site of Hatton-garden, died John of Gaunt. Brook House, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brook, the 'friend of Sir Philip Sydney.' In the same street, died, by a voluntary ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... pell-mell out upon the porch. Stewart, dark-browed and somber, was in the lead. Nels hung close to him, and Madeline's quick glance saw that Nels had undergone some indescribable change. The grinning, brilliant-eyed Don Carlos came jostling out beside a gaunt, sharp-featured man wearing a silver shield. This, no doubt, was Pat Hawe. In the background behind Stillwell and Alfred stood Nick Steele, head and shoulders over a number of ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... claims. By abolishing Parliaments, annulling charters, appointing the star chamber, he introduced a reign of terror. In the room of those legislative bulwarks of liberty, which the nation had constructed through the skill and experience of generations, a "grim tyranny," writes Dr. Wylie, "reared its gaunt form, with the terrible accompaniments of star chamber, pillory, and branding irons. It reminded one of sunset in the tropics. There the luminary of the day goes down at a plunge into the dark. So had the day of liberty in England gone down at a stride into the night of tyranny." The ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... front gate before the shop, where the rows of empty posts, from which the mills and vanes had all been removed, stood as gaunt reminders of the vanished summer. Major Grover refused Jed's invitation to come in ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... thawing of the ice on the lake, there was danger that they would be entirely cut off. If the possession of the water were lost, they must yield or starve; and they doubted whether the Prince would be able to organize a fleet. The gaunt spectre of Famine already rose before them with a menace which could not be misunderstood. In their misery they longed for the assaults of the Spaniards, that they might look in the face of a less formidable foe. They paraded the ramparts daily, with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... its long branches over the creek and shaded the pool. It was a grand old tree and must have guarded that sylvan spot for centuries. The gnarled and knotted trunk was scarred and seamed with the ravages of time. The upper part was dead. Long limbs extended skyward, gaunt and bare, like the masts of a storm beaten vessel. The lower branches were white and shining, relieved here and there by brown patches of bark which curled up like old parchment as they shelled away from the inner bark. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... to mortal eyes and disdainful of the company of his fellow creatures, when two monstrous shadows were seen stalking towards them from a turning in the road by which they had come. The child was at first quite terrified by the sight of these gaunt giants—for such they looked as they advanced with lofty strides beneath the shadow of the trees—but Short, telling her there was nothing to fear, blew a blast upon the trumpet, which was answered by ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... stream, with rather a dangerous current; below us it surged and roared over a series of jagged limestone rocks, but higher up its course led across a plateau which extended farther than we could guess, for the mountains faded back into the far distance and reared their gaunt peaks above a bewildering sea of luxurious tropical vegetation. It was these mountains we were anxious to reach now, but how to do it promised to be a question not ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... eyes upon the scene being enacted in the street of the deserted village. He recognized The Sheik the moment his eyes fell upon him. There were two men in the world that Malbihn feared as he feared the devil. One was the Big Bwana and the other The Sheik. A single glance he took at that gaunt, familiar figure and then he turned tail and scurried back to his canoe calling his followers after him. And so it happened that the party was well out in the stream before The Sheik reached the shore, and after a volley and a few ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... table: wherever he looked he missed something; and downstairs was worse—there, everything was gone. His wife had sold all her furniture to pay for doctors, for medicine, for food and rent. And she was changed too: good things had gone from her face; she was gaunt, sharp-featured, miserable—but she was comforted to think he was going ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... to be corpulent, rosy-cheeked, and cheerful. I am gaunt, pale, and morose now. I used to sleep sweetly; but now I toss about upon my bed, terrified by hideous visions, and feelings as of a clammy hand or wet cloth laid on my face. I was wont to walk about our streets after business hours, and on Sundays, with a genuine smile of enjoyment ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... something exhilarating about it, probably because I was new to it, and probably also because I slept like a top in the daytime (when I didn't get up, breathe it quietly, to steal out for rides on the sands!). I liked the walk across the yard with the gaunt old Cathedral showing black against the purple sky, its poor East window now ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... car limped up and stopped in the sandy road before the sagging gate, the trio saw that their refuge was a windowless and abandoned structure that looked as gaunt and ghostly as a ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... and had turned Coaley into the corral before he knew that some one was coming. Even then he did not turn to look. He was staring hard at a half-dozen horses grouped in the farther corner of the corral,—horses with gaunt flanks and the wet imprint of saddles. They were hungrily nosing fresh piles of hay, and scarcely looked up when Coaley trotted eagerly up to join them. Six of them—a little more than half of the outfit that had ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... times alas! am I to visit old England in vain? in the land of Thomas-a-Becket and stout John of Gaunt, not to catch the least glimpse of priory or castle? Is there nothing in all the British empire but these smoky ranges of old shops and warehouses? is Liverpool but a brick-kiln? Why, no buildings here look so ancient ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... There was a tall, gaunt individual at the next table, who apparently heard this last remark of Dick's. Turning towards our hero, he said, "May I inquire, young man, whether you are largely ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... foe in a hug that paralyzed every limb. The knife fell through Leyden's clutching fingers, and the point quivered for a moment in Vandersee's shoulder before it fell to disappear through the broken planks. The next breath brought both men heavily against a gaunt, charred stanchion, and Leyden's terrified ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Gaunt and dreary ran the mountains, With black gorges, up the land; Up to where the lonely Desert Spreads her burning, dreary sand: In the gorges of the mountains, On the plain beside the sea, Dwelt my stern and cruel masters, ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... If they might have come to their intents, they would have destroyed all the noblemen of England, and thereafter all other nations would have followed the same and have taken foot and ensample by them and by them of Gaunt and Flanders, who rebelled against their lord. The same year the Parisians rebelled in like wise and found out the mallets of iron, of whom there were more than twenty thousand, as ye shall hear after in this history; but first we will speak ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... whole of this disrobed Nature, in its unadorned simplicity, has an impress of sincerity that reminds you of the drawings of Holbein. Flat pools of shallow water lie about, carpeted with mosses and mirroring the sky; the smoke of the huts rises upward gaunt and straight. No one is near; there are no passers-by; and there is no sound, except that of a waterfall, fuller in its rush than at any other season. Silence—a silence so fragile that the step of a single wayfarer on the road would be enough to break it—reigns undisturbed, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the evening Geo. Petrie called with "Bible Borrow." He is a man about 60, upwards of six feet in height, and of an athletic though somewhat gaunt frame. His hair is pure white though a little bit thin on the top, his features high and handsome, and his complexion ruddy and healthy. He was dressed in black, his surtout was old, his shoes very muddy. He spoke ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... morning, as he sat down to the table, the doorbell rang, there was a hasty step down the hall, and Strahan, pale and gaunt, with his arm in a sling, burst in upon him, and exclaimed, with his old sang froid and humor: "Just in time. Yes, thanks; I'll stay and take a cup of coffee ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... found that it had been feeding at the carcass and had eaten every scrap, that we discovered traces of its ravages among the livestock. It seemed to attack the animals wholly regardless of their size and strength; its victims including a large bull and a beef steer, as well as cows, yearlings, and gaunt, weak trail "doughgies," which had been brought in very late by a Texas cow-outfit—for that year several herds were driven up from the overstocked, eaten-out, and drought-stricken ranges of the far south. Judging from the signs, the crafty old ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... ignorance, and cruelty ruin nations as surely as they ruin kings. This is the lesson specifically taught in the most eloquent of all the direct avowals of patriotism which are to be found in Shakespeare's plays—in the dying speech of John of Gaunt. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... afterwards Trent rode into Attra, pale, gaunt, and hollow-eyed. The whole history of those days would never be known by another man! Upon Trent they had left their mark for ever. Every hour of his time in this country he reckoned of great value—yet he had devoted fourteen days to saving ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whatever air there might be. Her mother in a blue dressing-gown, dingy with wear and travel, from which one of the ribbon bows hung by a thread, her face turned to the canvas and weeping silently. The gaunt form of her father with his fanatical, saint-like face, pale beneath its tan, his high forehead over which fell one grizzled lock, his thin, set lips and far-away grey eyes, taking off his surplice and folding it up with quick movements of his nervous hands, and herself, a scared, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... standing behind the counter of a little store which Sir Thomas had hired at Berryhill, when a woman came into the place with two children in her arms and followed by four others of different ages. She was a gaunt tall creature, with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, and her clothes hung about her in unintelligible rags. There was a crowd before the counter, for those who had been answered or served stood staring at the three ladies, and could hardly be got to go away; but this woman ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... four gaunt animals were trotting along the ice near the left shore, but no others ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... steep, tortuous canyons dried out and there was neither shade nor moisture in them. The few farms and ranches round about were scattered widely, and life thereon was a grim struggle against heartbreak, by reason of the gaunt, gray, ever-present specter of the drought. Of late this particular region had proven itself to be one of violent extremes, of extreme dryness during which flowers failed to bloom, the grass shriveled and died, and even the trees refused to put forth leaves; or, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... treble the sum," responded the gaunt, grizzled and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. "The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must find another site for your brick block and be content to leave my estate with the present owner. Next summer I intend to put a splendid new mansion over the cellar of the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... approached the men unsteadily, and Madden saw that Caradoc had recovered consciousness and was able to walk. As the tall, gaunt figure approached, the crew eyed him as if he were some ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the French capital is the eccentricity of the English visitors, as it strikes their own countrymen. I cannot find it in me to blame Gallican caricaturists. The statuettes which enliven the bronze shops; the gaunt figures which are in the chocolate establishments; the prints in the windows under the Rivoli colonnade; the monsters with fangs, red hair, and Glengarry caps, of Cham, and Dore, and Bertall, and the female sticks with ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... and the spray from the stem was flashing over me, as it roared through the waste of sparkling and hissing waters. I turned my back to the weather for a moment, to press my hand on my strained eyes. When I opened them again, I saw the gunner's gaunt high—featured visage thrust anxiously forward; his profile looked as if rubbed over with phosphorus, and his whole person as if we had been playing at snap—dragon. "What has come over you, Mr Kennedy?—who is ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... bed lay a gaunt figure, unshaven, with a beard of a week's growth. Two great eyes looked out of caverns, then two arms were stretched out, and Nora was ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... the still warm sand. The moon, lean in its first quarter, hung over the top of the island, silvering the sand and playing with the gaunt shadows of the palm-trees, distorting them into queer shapes and making grotesque patterns under our feet. The breeze, the snoring of the waves, the sense of freedom after the hot, reeking jungle, refreshed me, and I almost forgot the doom that threatened. Thirkle stood a minute ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... added the severity of the weather and the barrenness of the country. Steady downpours of rain changed to blinding storms of sleet and snow. Swollen streams, heaps of abandoned baggage, and huge snow-drifts repeatedly blocked the line of march. The gaunt and desolate country, which the army had ravaged and pillaged during the summer's invasion, now grimly mocked the retreating host. It was a land truly inhospitable and dreary beyond description. Exhaustion ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... his stateroom through the open cabin door, saw a gaunt, dusky face thrust itself from the storeroom and peer wildly round. Other faces joined it, and in an instant a dozen naked black forms were crowding ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... of old? Then, if one wished to forget the world, he drove through a wilderness to Cypress Point. Now 'tis a perpetual picnic ground, and its fastnesses are threaded by a drive which is one of the features of Del Monte Hotel life. It was solemn enough of yore. The gaunt trees were hung with funereal mosses; they had huge elbows and shoulders, and long, thin arms, with skeleton fingers at the ends of them, that bore knots that looked like heads and faces such as Dore portrayed in his fantastic illustrations. They were like giants ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... shrill voice, and fell back on his bed with a thud. In passing away, he uttered a frightful groan, and his convulsed eyes, until the doctors closed them, spoke his regret not to have been able to bequeath to science the key of a mystery whose veil had been tardily torn aside under the gaunt fingers ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... with eager speed they ran, From her bare straw the Woman half upraised 560 Her bony visage—gaunt and deadly wan; No pity asking, on the group she gazed With a dim eye, distracted and amazed; Then sank upon her straw with feeble moan. Fervently cried the housewife—"God be praised, 565 I have a house that I can call my own; Nor shall she perish ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... fully to view; and in the mouths of all three the double rows of teeth were shining like white ivory. These, contrasting with the sombre hue of their skins, and aided by the skeleton form of their heads, and the gaunt prominence of their jaws, produced an appearance that was hideous and ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... mule, and a very large one: for it required a good-sized quadruped of the kind to make an appropriate roadster for the ex-grenadier of the Imperial guard. It was not a very fat mule, however, but raw-boned and gaunt ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... extends the whole width of the room. It was large and dimly lighted, the walls and rafters black with a century's smoke and abundantly festooned with sooty cobwebs; but a large, cheerful fire blazed on the hearth, while before it stood a tall, gaunt woman engaged in cooking the supper and serving mate. This was Ramona, an ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... was an old, worm-eaten chair, in which John of Gaunt had sat; and I remember that while Lady de Brantefield expressed her just indignation against the worms, for having dared to attack this precious relique, I, kneeling to the chair, admired the curious fretwork, the dusty honeycombs, which these ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... corner of the room, on a low divan, was sitting a strange-looking personage. A gaunt, elderly man clothed in a very dingy Greek himation, with shaggy grey hair, and an enormous beard that tumbled far down his breast. This personage was Pisander, Valeria's "house-philosopher," who was expected to be always at her elbow pouring into her ears a rain of learned lore. For this worthy ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... are we, a thing we are prone to forget. For myself, I confess not to see with those who deride the king, nor yet with those who think him statuesque, as if shaped, not out of flesh, but out of marble. He is not incredible, nor is he a shadow, stalking gaunt and battle-clad across the crags that fringe the Cornish sea. Not a few among us approximate perfection in character as blameless as Arthur's. I myself profess to have seen a King Arthur, and to have held high converse with him through many years. Whiteness of life is not ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... banister rail, and got it. After which, lifting his feet as if they were little packets of sand tied to his trouser buttons, he manipulated his way upwards. Aaron was in that pleasant state when he saw what everybody else was doing and was unconscious of what he did himself. Whilst tall, gaunt, erect, like a murdered Hamlet resurrected in khaki, with the terrible black shutter over his eye, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... passion elsewhere characteristic of Catholic devotion. Intricacy was substituted for dignity and poetry for rhetoric; the basilica became an abbey and the hermitage a school. The feudal ages were a wonderful seed-time in a world all gaunt with ruins. Horrors were there mingled with delicacies and confusion with idyllic peace. It was here a poet's childhood passed amid the crash of war, there an alchemist's old age flickering away amid cobwebs and gibberish. Something ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Prince had returned to England with the glory of former achievements sullied by his massacre at Limoges, and the City of London had made him a present of valuable plate.(586) The conduct of the war was transferred to his eldest surviving brother, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. In 1372 the king himself set out with the flower of the English nobility, and accompanied by a band of London archers and crossbow men.(587) The expedition, which had for its object the relief of Rochelle, and ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... than Septimus Searle Lingard has seldom walked the streets of any town. Though not actually much over sixty, you would have said he must be a thousand; his abnormally long, narrow, shaven face was so thin and gaunt and hollowed, and his tall, upright figure was so painfully fragile, that his black broadcloth seemed almost too heavy for the worn frame inside it. And nothing in the world else was ever so piercingly solemn as his keen weary old eyes. With his ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... reaching the river bank they had to pass through a stretch of tall pines, whose dark heads were swaying to and fro until they almost met above the narrow road, making it so dark below that the black horse grew dim in the shadow, while the gaunt trunks creaked and groaned and the leaves hissed and sobbed as the wind swept through them. The resinous fragrance mingled with the clayey breath of the pursuing storm. The ghost-like trunks stood out against the lightning flashes like bars ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... club and chocolate house were removed to Gaunt's coffee house. The removal was thus announced in the Daily Post of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... while it swelled Like overflowing Jordan in its youth: It waxed and colored sensibly to sight, Till out of myriad pregnant waves there welled Young crocodiles, a gaunt blunt-featured crew, Fresh-hatched perhaps and daubed with birthday dew. The rest if I should tell, I fear my friend, My closest friend, would deem the facts untrue; And therefore it were wisely left untold; Yet if you will, why, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Jefferson, in a blue coat, single breasted, with large bright basket-buttons, his vest and small- clothes of crimson. I remember being struck with his animated countenance, of a brick-red hue, his bright eye and foxy hair, as well as by his tall, gaunt, ungainly form and square shoulders. A perfect contrast was presented by the pale reflective face and delicate figure of James Madison, and above all, by the short, burly, bustling form of General ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... kind-hearted merry Smart, who had always looked such a fine handsome specimen of an English gamekeeper, worn down to a shadow, his fine fresh colour gone, his cheeks shrunk and withered, his bright eyes and frank smile vanished, and a care-worn, haggard, gaunt man in his stead. The two dogs were near him, looking famished and subdued. But throughout the whole time, during our greatest danger, he had never forgotten the cow; he remembered how necessary the milk was to the health of his little master, and he had fenced ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... reverberated through the room—to be succeeded by an almost unnatural stillness; a silence punctured by the ticking of the cheap clock on the mantel, by the crackling of the flames in the grate, by the whistling of the wind around the corners of the gaunt gray stone building ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... from the nauseous blots into which Harry Fielding was betrayed by the taste of his age. It is hard to say what scene in Vanity Fair, what part, what character, rests longest in the memory. Is it the home of the Sedleys and the Osbornes, is it Queen's Crawley, or the incidents at Brussels, or at Gaunt House:—is it George Osborne, or Jos, or Miss Crawley, the Major or the Colonel,—is it Lord Steyne or Rebecca? All are excellent, all seem perfect in ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... bare-legged Highlander; figures such as are met in the Levant; school-boys with their books and lunch-boxes, Cockneys fresh from Piccadilly, a student who reminds us of Berlin, an American Indian, in pantaloons; a gaunt Western, a keen Yankee, and a broad Dutch physiognomy alternate; flower-venders, dog-pedlers, diplomates, soldiers, dandies, and vagabonds, pass and disappear; a firemen's procession, fallen horse, dead-lock of vehicles, military halt, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... methodically and steadily, just as she did everything else. When she had dug down as deep as she could and still manage to climb out, and had the hole wide enough and long enough, she got awkwardly to the grassy surface and sat for a long while upon a rock, staring dumbly at the gaunt, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Rosalie clung to me. I think it grew to be a horror to her to see him, gaunt and exhausted, in the west room. He had a good nurse, toward the last, and good food. I had had a small fortune left to me, too late, by a distant relative. I paid for the cook and the nurse, and I sent flowers to Rosalie that she might take them to Perry and let ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... whom I soon discovered to be a party of soldiers, with their wives and children, unbending and diverting themselves at this rate, after the fatigue of a march. I had never before seen such a parcel of scarecrows together, neither could I reconcile their meagre and gaunt looks, their squalid and ragged attire, and every other external symptom of extreme woe, with this appearance of festivity. I saluted them, however, and was received with great politeness; after which they formed a ring, and danced around me. This jollity had ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... against the door frame, watched the gaunt, loose-jointed figure stride out into the sunshine and disappear behind the ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... walnut. Now, the black walnut trees, as we meet them along the roadsides, vary exceedingly in habit of growth. The majority of them have very few main limbs, perhaps not over half a dozen main limbs on a tree, and they will be gaunt, ungainly things, stretched out straight, like great arms reaching out with very little beauty. Now, if you plant seedlings, that is what you are likely to get on your lawn. You may have something that is not pretty except ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... gaunt, sitting on the front step of the colonial portico. He had been invited into the hall, but had refused the invitation. "I had on my workin' duds," he explained later. "A feller that's been handlin' freight all the afternoon ain't fit to set on gold-plated furniture." He looked up ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in—the banshee of the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... shall sit before a table bounteous with the good things of this life. How I will glory in the hams, and potatoes, and good bread! What a deplorable state of mind, is it not? Ah, my friend, wait till you are reduced to a skeleton by gaunt famine and coarse, loathsome food—until you have waded a Makata swamp, and marched 525 miles in thirty-five days through such weather as we have had—then you will think such pabula, food ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... most irreconcilable Boers, who still waged a hopeless guerrilla warfare against all the might of the British Empire. As one English paper dramatically phrases it: "One used to see pictures of Botha in the illustrated papers in those days, a gaunt, bearded, formidable figure, with rifle and bandoliers—the most dangerous of our foes. To-day he is the chief servant of the King in the Federation, the loyal head of the Administration under the Crown, one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the space, in a melancholy way, looking as if their young minds were already "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and unconsciously oppressed with wonder why they should be born to such a miserable share of human life as this. A tall, gaunt woman, with pale face, and thinly clad in a worn and much-patched calico gown, and with a pair of "trashes" upon her stockingless feet, sat on the step of the cottage nearest the lane. The woman rose when she saw my friend. "Come in," said she; and we followed her into the house. It was a wretched ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... minds. We have been giving, and are giving now, of our influence and appeals to minimize the likelihood of war and throw off the crushing burdens of armament. It is all very earnest, with a national soul impelling. But a people unemployed, and gaunt with hunger, face a situation quite as disheartening as war, and our greater obligation to-day is to do the Government's part toward resuming productivity and promoting ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... Stephen descended the wide brick walk which fell gradually, past the steps of the library and the gaunt railing round a motionless fountain, to the broad white slope of the Square with its smoky veil of twilight. Farther away he saw the high iron fence and heard the clanging of passing street cars. On his left the ugly shape ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... is the one thing that renders existence endurable to so many of the waifs and strays of life. He takes existence sadly—too sadly, it may well be; but his drabs and greys provide an atmosphere that is almost inseparable to some of us from our gaunt London streets. In Farringdon Road, for example, I look up instinctively to the expressionless upper windows where Mr. Luckworth Crewe spreads his baits for intending advertisers. A tram ride through Clerkenwell and its leagues of dreary, inhospitable brickwork will take you through the heart of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... carriages and buggies and wagons and carts the history of which went back to the England of the Georges and the Stuarts and the Henrys; to the England of Elizabeth, to the England of Chaucer; back through robuster Saxon times to the gaunt England of Alfred, and on beyond this till they were lost under the forest glooms ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form—all this stretched on for hundreds ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... something set and rigid about it which was shockingly unnatural. So disturbed was I that I determined to see a little more of the new inmates of the cottage. I approached and knocked at the door, which was instantly opened by a tall, gaunt woman ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Unshaven and dirty, gaunt from lack of sleep, the three men dismounted wearily and gladly turned their coffee and bacon over to the herder to whom the mere odor of either was worth any amount of service. As they ate, Jack and Billy quizzed the Mexican as to ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... pushed aside the portiere, and the two entered the library— Mrs. Barnes rotund and smiling, Mr. Linden gaunt and spectral looking, like one risen ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... followed, hand in hand; Heroes un-heroed, most unknightly knights, Wand-broken fairies, disenchanted sprites; Dukes no more ducal, even on the bill, Milk-livered murd'rers too ill-fed to kill; Mild-looking demons that a babe might daunt, Witches and ghosts most naturally gaunt; Lovers made pale by keener pangs than love's, Unspangled princesses with greasy gloves; Wits very witless—grave comedians mute, And silent sons of violin ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... was that of a tall, gaunt man, leaning awkwardly forward in his saddle. He wore an old gray coat, and there was no sign of rank, nor particle of gold lace upon the uniform. He wore on his head a faded cadet cap, with the rim coming down so far ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... difficulty, a certain lady obtained his respite; and after the conquest of the place, and the departure of the troops, the adventurous son was released.... The castle then, once the residence of Pierce Gaveston,—of Hubert III,—and of John of Gaunt, was dismantled and destroyed. It is singular, by the way, that it was twice captured by men of the name of Lilburn, or Lilleburne, once in the reign of Edward II., once as I have related. On looking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... and, what is worse, Full angrily, men listen to thy plaint; Thou gettest many a brush and many a curse, For saying thou art gaunt, and starved, and faint. Even the old beggar, while he asks ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various |
