"Pathetically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head and looked intently at them without moving. Then they saw it was a bird, very large in size, but so forlorn, old, and broken that it could only flutter piteously its little flippers of wings and patiently and pathetically waggle ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... love for Greane, but greater far His love for Agathar Born of his pain, A strange dependence tinged pathetically The proud possession of his trust as guard Of her reft life and lonely widowhood. He waited for her coming in the morn With flowers he had gathered ere she woke; At night he led her to her chamber door, With boyish homage touched with stately grace, ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... people waiting for him—they are very much attached to him and he to them—it is hard for him to give them up. One man met him at church last Sunday, took off his hat, rolled up his eyes, and remarked pathetically, "I goes to sleep ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... the hereditary prince, notwithstanding the treaty which his brother had signed, and the injunctions which he had laid upon his son to quit the army, and make a tour to Holland, The duke wrote an expostulatory letter to prince Ferdinand, pathetically complaining that he had seduced his troops, decoyed his son, and disgraced his family; insisting upon the prince's pursuing his journey, as well as upon the return of the troops; and threatening, in case of non-compliance, to use other means that should be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... well uttered there was a sound of an altercation in the hall—one of the tall footmen pathetically protesting, and a shrill female voice refusing to listen to those plaintive protests. Then ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... school treatment of heads and throats and teeth and all manner of personal care. It is not easy to get what children require in these particulars in the crowded tenement. It may be impossible in the congested quarters of a great city. But the need thus pathetically shown in the children of many social strata in the United States indicates that not only should there be own mothers or substitute-mothers for every little child to start each aright along the way of life but every own mother or substitute-mother should have a decent ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Dr. Coles, in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, declared that the God of evolution is not the Christian's God. Burgon, Dean of Chichester, in a sermon preached before the University of Oxford, pathetically warned the students that "those who refuse to accept the history of the creation of our first parents according to its obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the modern dream of evolution in its place, cause ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in a word—are now, as always, rather pathetically hungry for "vital" themes, such themes as appeal directly to our everyday observation and prejudices. Did the decision rest with us all novelists would be put under bond to confine themselves forevermore to ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... cross over to Mr. Preston, and give it to him, or not? While she was still undecided, shrinking always just at the moment when she thought she had got her courage up for action, Miss Phoebe, having finished her purchase, turned round, and after looking a little pathetically at Mr. Preston's back, said to Molly in a whisper,—'I think we'll go to Johnson's now, and come back for the books in a little while.' So across the street to Johnson's they went; but no sooner had they entered the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... question I wish to heaven I could answer," groaned the Squire, quite mildly and pathetically—"What on earth has come to us all? Ask Stirn:" (then bursting out) "Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't you hear?—what on earth ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... to go. Immediately he married an old woman, in the last stages of leprosy, and began petitioning the Board of Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife. There was no one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his poor wife as well as he could. But they saw through his game, and he was deported on the steamer and given the freedom of the world. But he preferred Molokai. Landing on the leeward side of Molokai, he sneaked down ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... me to be trembling a little. Her eyes sought mine almost pathetically. She was afraid of something. In the half-lights she appeared to me then so frail and girlish that a great wave of tenderness swept in upon me. I longed to take her into my arms—even to hold her hands and try to comfort her. Surely to do these things ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... careless or forgetful of the commission, for a little later Lady Mary was writing pathetically: "I wish you would think of my lutestring, for I am ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Conciergerie, the most dismal prison in Paris, where those doomed to die awaited their execution. The queen listened, unmoved, to the order, for her heart had now become callous even to woe. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at the feet of the officers, and most pathetically, but unavailingly, implored them not to deprive them of their only remaining solace. The queen was compelled to rise and dress in the presence of the wretches who exulted over her abasement. She clasped her daughter for one frantic ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Haines, gnawing at his lower lip, and scowling blackly—to Barlow, obviously uncomfortable, who was uneasily tracing patterns with his forefinger on the top of the table—and back to the old lawyer, whose shoulders now, as though carrying a load too heavy for their strength, had drooped pathetically, and into whose face, in spite of a brave effort at self-control, had crept a ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the insanity and recklessness displayed by his nephew—the handsome martial George—induced poor Horace to take affairs in his own hands. His reflections, on his paying a visit to Houghton to look after the property there, are pathetically expressed:— ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... pathetically of the groping of man's heart after God. But the groping is in the pitch dark, and amid a mass of foul, filthy cobwebs that blind the eyes with their dust, and grime all the life. I have no doubt that untold numbers of true hearts in heathen lands are feeling after ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... any man had been illegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries were quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to have been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress, it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents however made a considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... spite of the magical moonlight the broken branch, with its scanty supply of fruit, looked pathetically poor, and one pair of eyes filled slowly with tears, while the other pair lost their happy look, as if a cloud had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the snowy street, almost exhausted by the weight of the hand-bag; and she wondered pathetically if it might not be best to follow her mother's example, and seek refuge from life's woes by ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... in my magnum opus, when I unfortunately showed my notes to Colonel—well, I will not mention his name, but he is the greatest authority on the birds and beasts of Kashmir. He besought me to spare him, pathetically remarking that I should cut the ground from under his feet, and take the bread out of his mouth, and the wind out of his sails, if I went any further with my monograph on the Hoopoe. He saw at a glance ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... attractive beyond description. Fire-irons glittered, fenders gleamed, and there was a lawn-mower which gaped so pathetically that I was all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... rifle slung jauntily over his shoulder, and munched army biscuit with all the relish of an old campaigner. Several days later he said good-bye to us, and made the journey back the same road, this time in a motor ambulance; and as I write, he is hobbling about a London hospital ward, one trouser leg pathetically empty. ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... At one aspect, and one only, of this vast and complex theme we may, however, be permitted to glance for a moment before we pass on. If God dwells in us, it is frequently asked, whence comes what Paul so pathetically calls "the law of sin which is in our members"—whence come the wrongful desires and harmful passions of whose power we are so painfully conscious? That is an entirely legitimate and even inevitable query, but the solution of the enigma is not past finding out, though we ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Lily Cardew. She went about the house, pathetically reminiscent of Elinor Doyle in those days when she had sought sanctuary there; but where Elinor had seen those days only as interludes in her stormy life, Lily was finding a strange new peace. She was very tender, very thoughtful, insistently ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... short, for a letter came from Aunt Hannah, announcing that Mr Deering was coming down, and adding rather pathetically that she wished ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... excitedly. "You've got it in one. The place is so pathetically grateful for every stock and stone you set straight, that you just can't hold your hand. And all the time the work's so fascinating that you don't deserve any thanks. You seem to get deeper in debt every day. You're credited with every cheque you draw. If I stopped, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... of dish-washing had increased her desire to go. She pictured herself looking at Emerson's manse, bathing in a surf of jade and ivory, wearing a trottoir and a summer fur, meeting an aristocratic Stranger. In the spring Kennicott had pathetically volunteered, "S'pose you'd like to get in a good long tour this summer, but with Gould and Mac away and so many patients depending on me, don't see how I can make it. By golly, I feel like a tightwad ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... sister-in-law. Duchemia could not have been guilty of the offence of ignoring her; but the truth is that, save when courtesy demanded that he pay her some attention, he hardly saw her. She was pretty enough, but very quiet and self-absorbed, a slender, nervous creature with that pathetically eager look peculiar to her age and caste in France, starving for the life she might not live till marriage should set her free. A pale and ineffective wraith beside Eve, whose beauty, relieved in candleglow against the background of melting darkness, burned like some ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... VERULAM profoundly felt the retardment of his fame; for he has pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. BRUCE sunk into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... thought of these things?—He answered, That he was of the same mind with what he had formerly heard—and did much regret that he had been so sparing in public against these woeful resolutions, speaking so pathetically of their sinfulness and the calamities they would procure, that Mr. Durham, contrary to his former practice, durst never after speak ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... him. But I must bear testimony at the same time to the fact which does not emerge in the Diary, namely, the extraordinary gallantry and patience of his conduct and demeanour. He struggled visibly and pathetically, from hour to hour, against his depression. He never complained; he never showed, at least in my presence, the smallest touch of irritability. Indeed to myself, who had known him as the most equable and good-humoured of men, he seemed to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... consisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran: "No Man knows where he shall die."—This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally—and when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed—so pathetically told by Captain Cook—not by Doctor Hawkworth—in his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, "Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... heart—and to Susan in those days of aloneness, of uncertainty, of the feeling of hopelessness, goodness of heart seemed the supreme charm. Such a woman as a landlady, and a landlady in New York, was pathetically absurd. Even to still rather simple-minded Susan she seemed an invitation to the swindler, to the sponger with the hard-luck story, to the sinking who clutch about desperately and drag down with them everyone who permits them to get ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... display of grief for the dead, the less I have always found of the reality. I heard two young ladies, who had recently lost a mother, not more than sixteen years older than the eldest of the twain, lamenting most pathetically that they could not go to a public ball, because they were in mourning for ma'! Oh, what a pitiful farce is this, of wearing mourning for the dead! But as I have a good deal to say to sensible people on that subject, I will defer my long lecture ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... his haunt to Saul. The king receives the intelligence with a burst of thanks, in which furious jealousy and perverted religion, and a sense of utter loneliness and misery, and a strange self-pity, are mingled most pathetically and terribly: "Blessed be ye of the Lord, for ye have compassion on me!" He sends them away to mark down his prey; and when they have tracked him to his lair, he follows with his force and posts them round the hill where David and his handful lurk. The little band try to escape, but they are surrounded ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... ensconced themselves comfortably on the steps of the cottage when a distressing accent struck upon their ears, and simultaneously they turned in the direction of the sound. There on a tiny verandah, almost hidden behind a large fern growth, a little girl sat on a low chair crying softly and pathetically as though her small heart were broken. The children stood for a moment not knowing just what to do. Then Maizie, the same one, thought Peter satirically (he could see all that went on from his place beyond) who had suggested his losing his ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... providing, as you're the master of the house and not I, and I'm only, so to say, your agent. All the same, all the same, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, all the same, in spirit, I'm independent! Don't take away from me this last possession!" he finished up pathetically. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Christ was sent, it was to shew us upon what terms God was reconcilable to us, viz. By laying 'before us all the parts of that holiness, which is necessary to restore our natures to his own likeness;—and most pathetically, moreover to intreat us to do what lieth in us to put them in practice, that so it may be to eternity well with us.' What these things are, you mention not here; therefore I shall leave them to be spoken to under the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... on his forehead. The man saw it, too, and had him up in a minute; but Tom couldn't stand, and stared about him in a dazed sort of way, as he sat on the curbstone, while Polly held her handkerchief to his forehead, and pathetically begged to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... and old, and work-weary to look on, but with a keen, bright eye in his head, and something of a proud air about his ancient figure. It seemed cruel to think of his old bones having still to go on working, but our two old people, who seemed pathetically fond of each other, were evidently very poor, like the rest of the valley. The old man excused himself for his salutation of us—but there were so many dangerous characters about, and the old folk shook ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... officers under the anonymous call, he himself directed the officers to assemble. He unexpectedly appeared at the meeting and, being no speaker, he had reduced his appeal to writing. As he adjusted his spectacles to read it, he pathetically said: "I have not only grown gray but blind in your service." He then made a touching appeal to them not to increase by example the spreading spirit of revolt. The very sight of their old commander turned the hearts of the revolting element ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... nearly perfect and easily recognized, while that of Lieut.-Colonel M'Donell was in a complete mass of decomposition. One of his regimental companions, Colonel Fitzgibbon, in transmitting a detail of the ceremonies of the day, thus pathetically expressed himself: "Nothing, certainly, could exceed the interest manifested by the people of the province upon the occasion; and numbers from the neighbouring state of New York, by their presence and conduct, proved how highly the Americans revere the memory of our lamented ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... one side a young and pretty woman in a charming dress and hat, more suitable for a past June than a present December, even a Riviera December. Her face, too, which she turned with a gaze of interest on Mary and her costume, was slightly, pathetically faded, like the petals of a white rose gathered while in bud and pressed between the pages of a book. She was like a charming wax doll which had lost its colour by being placed too near ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... saddle and making sure that it sets comfortably. One should be considerate of the feelings of a dumb beast placed at one's mercy. Then I reach for the cinch, pass it twice through the rings, and delicately draw it up the merest trifle. Dandy Jim shudders and moans pathetically. He wishes to convey the impression that his ribs have been sprung. This, of course, is nonsense. I measureably increase the pressure. Dandy Jim again registers consternation, coughs feebly, and rolls his eyes round appealingly, as if wondering whether ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... clinging and weighty like the wet draperies of ancient sculpture. They are beautiful petrifactions, or vivified statues; Mantegna's masterpiece, the sepia "Judith" in Florence, is like an exquisite, pathetically lovely Eurydice, who has stepped unconscious and lifeless out of a Praxitelian bas-relief. And there are stranger works than even the Judith; strange statuesque fancies, like the fight of Marine Monsters and the Bacchanal among Mantegna's ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... is the wife of Private William Tweed—small, dark-eyed, and pretty, with a certain childishness of face which makes her rouged cheeks and blackened eyebrows seem pathetically, innocently wicked. ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... to you that I will not?" cried the princess, reclining again upon her divan. "The duties of an empress are very difficult and wearing. I love quiet and enjoyment; and, moreover, this throne of my father, of which you speak so pathetically, is already occupied, and awaits me not. See you not your sublime Emperor Ivan, whom the regent-mother is rocking in his cradle? That is your emperor, before whom you can bow, and leave me unmolested with your imperial crown. Come, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... neither of the two "additional ones." Bliss's knowledge of editions, as well as his acquisition of them was increased largely in the years that followed the publication of his book. When he had acquired the 1st edition he wrote pathetically in his annotated copy, "I have been more than fifty years looking for this book!" By that time too he knew that what he here calls the 2nd edition of 1629 was really the fifth. (See Arber's Reprint, where a table ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... and problems which appear to be rudely brushed away by the dogmatic arrogance of the principle stated. What, you say, is Man but an affair of his peculiar gland chemistry? But what of mind, soul, consciousness? Still another of these pathetically one-sided and superficial theories of man as a machine pure and simple which would make him the most complicated of mechanisms, a marvel of intricate parts, but would deprive him of his essence as self-conscious unique in the universe. Man, thinking man, at any rate, dreads to lose ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... subadar was hustled hastily forth, and requested in future to stick to soldiering, and to avoid bringing his infernal questions to cause discord amongst the chosen of the Prophet. As Dilawur afterwards pathetically remarked, he "didn't think much of a religion which instead of meeting argument with argument only threw stones at the head of the seeker after knowledge." Indeed the occasion seems to have thoroughly ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... found an outpost, four miles above, but nobody was there, so we could get no help. He was going to land our cargo of a ton and a half of machinery, and place it on the company's territory above the falls. 'You can see for yourself,' Purdy said to me pathetically, 'that I can't deliver the Cygnet there. But I think I am right in making her secure and leaving her here, and reporting it. What else can I do? They ought to give me ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... to empty glasses of various dimensions. That gentleman's corpulence had reached a degree which clearly showed that he must have "lost sight of his knees" some years back, but he was none the less strong and active. There were two daughters, one pathetically ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... serviceable to her. "I fear," continued she, "the poor girl has been basely betrayed; and if I thought you would not blame me, I would pay her a visit, offer her my friendship, and endeavour to restore to her heart that peace she seems to have lost, and so pathetically laments. Who knows, my dear," laying her hand affectionately on his arm, "who knows but she has left some kind, affectionate parents to lament her errors, and would she return, they might with rapture receive the ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... superintended her, following her from place to place, with a longing impatience that showed itself in every word and gesture. She did not dare to do more, poor child. She had never overcome her secret awe of her waiting-woman. In her inexperienced respect for her, she even apologized pathetically and appealingly for the liberty she was taking ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... form; very detached, casual, and uncommonly funny. Lord ROSEBERY apologised by letter for not being able to be in Scotland and London at the same time; and the Wicked Abbe BANCROFT in replying to the toast of the Drama, pathetically represented his hard case of being called upon to make an after-dinner speech, when he hadn't had any dinner. The Actor's lot is evidently, not always a happy one. He wanted a "feeding-part" and didn't get it. The dinner was excellent, and the waiting of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... members of the family called pathetically for some short, ready name that would not tax pen or tongue. After a long silence ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... striking merits and defects, but for our purposes it inheres too deeply in British conditions. American tariff and trust investigations are massive enough in all conscience, but they are so partisan in their origin and so pathetically unattached to any recognized ideal of public policy that it seemed better to look elsewhere. Conservation had the virtue of arising out of a provident statesmanship, but its problems ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... illustration representing the funeral procession of Gambetta, as it wound slowly past the veiled statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. These displays of patriotic feeling are forbidden, but they come to the fore all the same. Here, as elsewhere, the clinging to the old country is pathetically—sometimes comically—apparent. A rough peasant girl, employed as chambermaid in the hotel at which we stayed, amused me not a little by her tirades against the Prussians, spoken in a language that was neither ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... nothing to enter the stomach—wherefore thus miserably he starved to death." Sign. B. iij. rev. Not having at hand John Dee's book of the defence of Roger Bacon, from the charge of astrology and magic (the want of which one laments as pathetically as did Naude, in his "Apologie pour tous les grands personnages, &c., faussement soupconnez de Magic," Haye, 1653, 8vo., p. 488), I am at a loss to say the fine things, which Dee must have said, in commendation ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... seemed to feel that this was something like home to him now, and that his day's march was over. In fact, all the months of winter I had regularly stopped at Disaways on my way to the cavalry at Hicksford. My friends had pathetically remonstrated—"there was not a single picket on the Rowanty in front of me, there, and I would certainly be captured some day,"—but I had persisted in stopping there still, on every tour which I ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... return home, Pixie took the tinted photograph across the road for inspection. She had toiled at it with conscientious effort, but, alas! the result was pathetically bad, the paint being laid on in uncertain daubs, while carmine cheeks and scarlet lips laid the buxom lady under suspicion of sickening for fever or some other deadly complaint. Pixie herself was vaguely disquieted by the general effect, but, as she earnestly ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... enraged when they failed to find even a dollar for their pains, and I assured him I did not have such a thing to my name," the aged man said, almost pathetically, Fred thought. "He would have struck me with the poker, as he threatened to do, only his companions held his arm. I have been in mortal fear that he ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... fact, he immediately concluded to make a clean breast of it, and give him, in as few words as possible, a history of his life, and then leave him to deal with his case. Acting upon this thought, he in a few moments graphically and pathetically told his sad story. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... gesture pathetically dramatic the little maid threw her hands across her heaving breast and gazed at McElroy with big eyes, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... efforts to extricate himself, did for them entirely; and in terrible distress, the poor fellow came back for me to set him up again. I shook my head for a long time, but at last, after he had over and over again urged upon me pathetically that he had two fellows coming to dine with him at six, and nothing in the world in his hut but salt pork, I resigned a plump fowl which I had kept back for my own dinner. Off he started again, but soon came back with, "Oh, mother, I forgot all about the potatoes; they've all rolled out upon ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... the little audience—they were in full sympathy with him, and, knowing no way of expressing it, kept silence. Only the breathing of the old man was audible in the room. He was evidently nearing the end. "I mighty tired of waitin'," he said, pathetically. "Look out dyah and see ef you see anybody," he ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... such butterfly as you think," said the girl, pathetically. "I often am very gay, for that is my spirit, senor; but I ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Captain Stewart. He begins to interest me very much. I had never suspected this side of him, though I remember now that I once saw him coming out of a milliner's shop. He looks rather an ascetic—rather donnish, don't you think? I remember that he talked to me one day quite pathetically about feeling his age and about liking young people round him. He's an odd character. Fancy him mixed up in an affair with Olga Nilssen! Or, rather, fancy her involved in an affair with him! What can she ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... struggled to her feet. With a quick and pathetically humble gesture she drew her ragged, muddy skirts over her ankles and her tattered kerchief ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and distrustful as he is. I don't suppose I can make you understand my feeling, but I'd like to try, and then I'll never speak of it again;" and, carefully controlling voice and face, Christie slowly added, with a look that would have been pathetically eloquent to one who could have understood the instincts of a strong nature for light and freedom: "You say I am discontented, proud and ambitious; that's true, and I'm glad of it. I am discontented, because I can't help feeling that there is a better sort of life than ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... question whether this monument of municipal grandeur will finally be held by Art or resumed by Nature,—who indeed has a perpetual motherly longing for her own, and may be seen in all outlying and suburban places, pathetically striving to steal back any neglected bits of ground and conceal them under her skirts of tattered and shabby verdure. But whatever is the event of this contest, and whatever the other changes wrought in the locality, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the tombs a young lady, evidently a German, who, assisted by her maid, was diligently employed in cleaning a marble statue placed over the grave. It was difficult to refrain from offering to help her in this labour of love, which appealed so pathetically to the heart. I do not think we care to display so much outward proofs of loving reverence for our dead as we often see abroad, in the shape of flowers and immortelles placed upon the graves by affectionate relatives and friends. Still, I believe it is only an ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... the basin of Concord River at Lowell, where they are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack shad, on account of the warmth of the water. Still patiently, almost pathetically, with instinct not to be discouraged, not to be reasoned with, revisiting their old haunts, as if their stern fates would relent, and still met by the Corporation with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... a shameful sight to see a girl of your size, out on a sled with boys." And Hetty hung her head, and said pathetically,— ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... for a rest when he had succeeded. He insinuated that, as he was not busy now, he could do all the buying and get better terms from wholesalers or bankruptcy bargain sales than could Father himself. The Hungarian's best stock in trading with Father was to look young and pathetically threadbare, to smile and shake his head and say playfully, as though he were trying to hide his secret generosity by a pretense of severity, "But of course I'd charge you a commission—you see ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... is true, then! I have escaped! I dreamed that I was back in prison again! (He shudders and helps himself to a large whisky-and-soda, which he swallows at a gulp.) That's better! Now I feel a new man—the man I was three years ago. Three years! It has been a lifetime! (Pathetically to the audience.) ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... the boys' part were useless; and, after being so miraculously preserved from the perils of the deep, they wound up the history of their adventures when "lost at sea," as David pathetically remarked, by being "carried off prisoners to Germany by a lot of cabbage-soup-eating, sourkrout Teutons, who were almost bigger fools than they looked!" It was all Jonathan's little knowledge of the German ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... those in agreement with me. One and all they bear testimony, if indeed such were needed, to how widespread and responsible is the interest on this question, and therefore to the wisdom of its full consideration. Amongst the letters are intimate human documents which pathetically disclose, as does professional experience, how frequently happiness is marred by ignorance of either the principles or the methods which should condition the true conception ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... whether the orders to the Admiral respecting Greek slaves, &c., would, after the settlement of Greece, apply to Candiot Greeks. Then Lord Melbourne's motion for Portuguese papers. He did not speak well—but very bitterly. Goderich spoke pathetically against the Terceira affair—Lord Wharncliffe well with us—Lansdowne wide and loose—the Duke very excellent—Aberdeen worse than usual, and very imprudent, abusing ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... his manner and gave strength to his voice. You will have seen the chief parts of his discourse In the newspapers and you cannot, I think, but grow more and more his friend as you peruse it. He called pathetically and solemnly for instant judgment; but the Lords, after an adjournment decided to hear his defence by evidence, and order, the next sessions. How grievous such continual delay to a man past sixty, and sighing for such a length ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... and fashion of all conquerors." The play is prefaced by a fulsome "Epistle Dedicatory," addressed to the sacred person of the "Right Honourable William, Lord Marquis of Harrington," and showing, almost pathetically, how frequently the literary workers of Queen Anne's "golden age" were wont to beg the influence of some powerful patron. The dedication seems absolutely grovelling when viewed from the present standards, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... thou art hungry too; Thy dim and haggard eye Pleads more pathetically true, Than prayer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... the river Soar. It was richly endowed, and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but its chief fame comes from its being the last residence of Cardinal Wolsey. This great man, once the primate of England, has had his downfall pathetically described by Shakespeare. The king summoned him to London to stand trial for treason, and on his way Wolsey became so ill that he was obliged to rest at Leicester, where he was met at the abbey-gate by the abbot and ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... which suited her coloring. Her black dress was soft and lusterless. She wore no jewelry, not even a ring. There were shadows under her grave, gray-green eyes. Altogether, she looked individual, astonishingly young, and pathetically alone. Mrs. Vandervelde's interest was aroused. Skilfully she tried to draw the girl out, and was relieved to discover that she wasn't talkative; nor was she awkward. She sat with her hands on the arms of her chair, restfully; and while you spoke, you could see that ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... cutting the corn and driving away the cattle, and retreating into East Anglia, or Northumbria, or the peninsula of the Wirrall, whenever they were seriously worsted. "Thanks be to God," says the Chronicle pathetically "the host had not wholly broken up all the English kin;" but the misery of England must have been intense. AElfred, however, introduced two military changes of great importance. He set on foot something like a regular army, with a settled commissariat, dividing his forces into two ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... he was the first funny man I had ever met. What a gift it is! He was always funny when he tried to be, whether one laughed with him or at him, and I loved him for it. Nothing on earth is more pathetically pitiable than the funny man when he still tries and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... finger at him, and sighed pathetically. "Do go on talking, you two. I do so love to hear about these things, and I'm so stupid myself. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... ruled the Concert of Europe. She was planting everywhere the appliances of that new servile machinery which was her secret; the absolute identification of national subordination with business employment; so that Krupp could count on Kaiser and Kaiser on Krupp. Every other commercial traveller was pathetically proud of being both a slave and a spy. The old and the new tyrants had taken hands. The "sack" of the boss was as silent and fatal as the sack of the Bosphorus. And the dream of the citizen ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... can enter with him into the depths of those mysterious truths which he has revealed, and contemplate along with him the riches of the glory of the grace of God, and not esteem this world as dung; or experience some throes of those heavenly desires, which urged him so pathetically to exclaim, "I {011} wish to be dissolved, and to be with Christ?" Who can read the life of the evangelist John, and not feel the impulse of that subdued spirit, of that meek and humble charity, which so eminently distinguished ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... for which they did not exactly see the necessity, and which seemed in conflict with the highest ideals of liberty but surely these courteous, soft-spoken ladies and gentlemen, entirely familiar with local conditions, who descanted so earnestly and at times pathetically upon the grave problems confronting them, must know more about it than people in the distant North, without their means of information. The negroes who waited on them at the hotel seemed happy enough, and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... military forces. That the world is instinctively feeling this is demonstrated by the present attitude of all the combatants in Europe to the United States. The United States relatively to powers like Russia, Britain, and Germany is not a great military power, yet they are all pathetically anxious to secure the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ejectment. Mr. Corscadden said to this man; "You are a bad farmer and you know it. You have about L150 worth of stock; I will give you L40; leave my place and go to America. He took the money," said the old gentleman pathetically, "and did not go to America, but rented another farm. The woman at Glenade whom you went to see I have kept—supported—for years. Her husband did not pay his rent, and I gave him L10 to pay his passage to America. He is a bad man. It is ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the Mollak is certainly very praise-worthy, but it would have been much more so, if after having, with a truly Apostolic Zeal, pathetically represented to the Sovereign the Enormity of his Crimes, the Certainty of his Death, and the Punishments to be dreaded after such a licentious Life, he had stopp'd at bringing him to a due Sense of Things, and strengthening him in such a pious Disposition, ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... 1789, after the destruction of the Bastille, our compassionate countrymen were taught to believe that this tremendous prison was peopled with victims, and that even the dungeons were inhabited; yet the truth is, though it would not have told so pathetically, or have produced so much theatrical effect, there were only seven persons confined in the whole building, and certainly not one in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... yet pinned their faith on this extraordinary man refused to extinguish the last sparks of hope. Denzil had bought the paper and scanned it eagerly, but there was nothing save the vague assurance that the indefatigable Grodman was still almost pathetically expectant of the miracle. Denzil did not share the expectation; ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... the roof as soon as they came in from their long mornings and afternoons of sight-seeing. Years afterward, she would remember with contrition how pathetically glad Amy always was to see her. She would put her little head on Katy's breast and hold her tight for many minutes without saying a word. When she did speak it was always about the house and the garden that she talked. She never asked any questions as to where Katy had been, or what she ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... manor. Erica often thought of the definition of happiness which Charles Osmond had once given her "Perfect harmony with your surroundings." She had never been so happy in her life. Waif, who was slowly recovering, grew pathetically fond of his rescuer. The children were devoted to her, and she to them. She learned to love Gladys very much, and from her she learned a good deal which helped her to understand Donovan's past life. Then, too, it was the first time in her life that she had ever ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... very much. Indeed, instead of reassuring me, she frightened me more than ever by her very silence. I grew to dread the coming of each night. Then—" she hesitated again, looking at me pathetically—"twice I have been awakened by a ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... in Missolonghi, Jan. 22, 1824, that, with the memorandum, "On this day I completed my thirty-sixth year," Byron wrote his latest verses, most pathetically regretting his youth and his unfortunate life, but arousing himself to find in a noble cause ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... position, mental accomplishments, and intellectual gifts, met in a social atmosphere of the highest cultivation and the greatest refinement,—the most perfect civilization could produce nothing more perfect in the way of enjoyment than the intercourse of that delightful mansion. As Lady Tankerville pathetically exclaimed on Lady Holland's death, "Ah! poore, deare Lady 'Olland! what shall we do? It was such a pleasant 'ouse!"—admission to which was, to most of its frequenters, well worth some toleration of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... our classic age ... was removed from a depreciation and rejection of war is shown by the attitude assumed by a spirit so pathetically calm and aloof as Jean Paul, who nevertheless called war the strengthening iron cure of humanity, and maintained, indeed, that this held good more for the side which suffers than for that which wins. The fever caused by the wounds of war ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... dueling is not allowed us." M. de Brissac threatened to cudgel him, and he to kick Brissac. The President, fearing these words would end in blows, got between us. The First President conjured the Prince pathetically, by the blood of Saint Louis, not to defile with blood that temple which he had given for the preservation of peace and the protection of justice; and exhorted me, by my sacred character, not to contribute to the massacre of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... through a thriving little village, nestling in a hollow of the hills, beside a broad bright pond, whose waters keep a dozen manufactories of cotton and of iron—with which mineral these hills abound—in constant operation; and passing by the tavern, the departure of whose owner Harry had so pathetically mourned, we wheeled again round a projecting spur of hill into a narrower defile, and reached another hamlet, far different in its aspect from the busy bustling place we had left some ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... begged pathetically. "Come, Dunny, let's be sociable. After all, you know, it's my last evening; and if you call me such names, you will be sorry when I am gone. By the way, speaking of Huns—it was you, the neutral, who mentioned them,—does it strike ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... soul, the look in his eyes, or his tones of voice. Bethink yourselves of Carlyle, how his abrupt, crabbed, but withal sinewy and picturesque, prose compares with the pure crystalline sentences of Cardinal Newman, and how these again compare with the quaintly and pathetically humorous chat, the idealized talk of Charles Lamb. Think how easy it is to recognize a line of Shakespeare, of Milton, or of Wordsworth, almost by the ear; how audibly they are stamped with the character of ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... often thistles bruised his feet—a trial which seems to have left such a poignant and indelible impression upon his mind that when testifying before a United States Senate investigating committee forty years later he pathetically spoke of it with a reminiscent quivering. His father was, indeed, so poor that he could not afford to let him go to the public school. The lad, however, made an arrangement with a blacksmith by which he received board in return for certain ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... dat, Miss Clorindy, now don't!" he exclaimed pathetically. "You's de light ob too many eyes for sich renumerations—you lights der hearts as de sun ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... tribes, carrying with them the name of their beloved Asia; and whether they wandered north, south, or west, exalting their own emphatic designation of 'Children of the Land of Light' into the title of gods. And to think, (added Mr. Caxton pathetically, gazing upon that speck in the globe on which his forefinger rested,)—to think how little they changed for the better when they got to the Don, or entangled their rafts amidst the icebergs of the Baltic—so ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... pretty with treasures saved from the Moat, and new curtains and cushions and odds and ends like that; but we left the other rooms as they were, and pretended that we liked sitting on crimson satin chairs with gold legs. Father is lost without his nice gunny, sporty sanctum. Mother looks pathetically out of place in the bald, ugly rooms, and I feel a pelican in the wilderness without my belongings but when you have come through great big troubles you are ashamed to fuss over little things ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Winstanley's house and drove away four cows, I not knowing of it. They took away the cows which were my livelihood, and beat them with their clubs that the cows' heads and sides did swell, which grieved tender hearts to see. And yet," he pathetically but somewhat humourously adds, "these cows never were upon George Hill, nor never digged upon that ground, and yet the poor beasts must suffer because they gave milk to feed me. But strangers made rescue of those cows, and drove them astray out of the Bailiffs' hands, so that the Bailiffs ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... this way, that when he found himself forced out of politics by the Caesarians, he whimsically writes to his friend Paetus that he is inclined to give up public life and open a school, and not more than a year before his death he pathetically complains that he has not leisure even to take the waters at the spa, because of the demands which are made upon him for ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... at the gate and Mrs. Harlowe saw through the parlor window a little, dark figure, pathetically plain in its ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... George Gissing pathetically tells how the spirit of dereliction stole into the life of Godwin Peak. It was all owing to the family gipsyings. 'As a result of the family's removal first from London to the farm, and then into Twybridge, Godwin had no friends of old standing. A boy reaps advantage from the half-parental ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... years Thou didst travel far and wide Through a life of smiles and tears,— Rarely absent from his side, As the light of day for him Grew pathetically dim. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Jews, of the Christians, and the Philosophers; the Jews burnt the books of the Christians and the Pagans; and the Christians burnt the books of the Pagans and the Jews. The greater part of the books of Origen and other heretics were continually burnt by the orthodox party. Gibbon pathetically describes the empty library of Alexandria, after the Christians had destroyed it. "The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards the appearance of the empty shelves excited ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... instead of feeling chilled when he had removed his coat, felt a strange glow of warmth spread from the region of the heart over his entire frame. The goblin's continual allusions to his former intention, which he had by this time totally relinquished, hurt him, and he said, rather pathetically,— ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... us,' he sighed; 'even if I were ungenerous enough to ask it, she wouldn't receive me now.' My face spoke my scorn. 'Don't blame her,' he said, pathetically; 'it isn't natural she should, poor little thing! This for what she might have been to me.' Then, he kissed the pictured face, and sorrowfully laid it back again upon his heart. 'I thought to go back to her a colonel ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... not so many friends that I can afford a loss,' she answered pathetically; and then, 'Tell me about yourself. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... future assured, all else fell into the orderly picture which made up her view of life. But she was not quite calm, and it even surprised her to feel so much warmth of love for Jenny. Still holding her sister, she was conscious of a quick impulse that was both exulting and pathetically shy. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... exception. Even the mild, nonresistant Quaker could not escape the bitterest persecution and in one of the dungeons of Colchester Castle young George Fox was immured and suffered death from neglect and starvation. This especially attracted our attention, since the story had been pathetically told by the speaker at the Sunday afternoon meeting which we attended at Jordans and which I refer to in the following chapter. While there is a certain feeling of melancholy that possesses one when he wanders through these mouldering ruins, yet he often can ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... forgiven. Her welcome home was hearty and loving from them all, pathetically so from Billy, who tried in vain to cover his real emotion under a boyish indifference. The last words were still to be said, however; and it was not until Theodora sat alone in the office with her father, that night, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... midst of the wildest outbreaks of their frantic admiration, here and there were heard all sorts of satiric phrases and rhymes—and coarse enough too—aimed at old Falieri and his young wife. Falieri, however, appeared not to notice them, but strode along as pathetically as possible at Annunciata's side, smirking and smiling all over his face, and free on this occasion from all jealousy, although he must have seen the glances full of burning passion which were directed upon his beautiful lady from all sides. Arrived before the principal entrance to the Palace, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 1918, we thought and hoped that the militaristic philosophy of Germany had been crushed; and being full of the milk of human kindness we spent the next twenty years disarming, while the Germans whined so pathetically that the other nations permitted ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... beautiful as the statues of the gallery where we stood at the time,)—* * *, I say, had seized upon me by the button and the heart-strings, and spared neither. W. Spencer, who likes fun, and don't dislike mischief, saw my case, and coming up to us both, took me by the hand, and pathetically bade me farewell; 'for,' said he, 'I see it is all over with you.' * * * then went away. Sic me ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to his father, asking after the borough, and asking after the health of Mr. Morris. And in his letter he told his own story very plainly,—almost pathetically. He perhaps had been wrong to make the attempt which he had made. He began to believe that he had been wrong. But at any rate he had made it so far successfully, and failure now would be doubly bitter. He thought that the party to which he belonged must ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of Alarcos pathetically admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his writings. Henrietta Temple is the boldest attempt ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... taken for granted was doubled, decupled now. This came out when he presently said: "Of course I needn't assure you I hope you'll come with us." Then it was that his implications and expectations loomed up for Strether as almost pathetically gross. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... her powers of intuition, Peggy was far from guessing what her impulsive invitation meant to this ambitious girl whose life had been pathetically bare of pleasure. The girls of Dolittle Cottage would have been vastly surprised had they known how carefree and opulent they seemed to Lucy, whose rapt absorption in the task of realizing her ambition involved the danger that she would forget how to enjoy herself. Had Peggy's ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... the prettiest in the family; but the dictates of fashion are imperious, so her mother put lotions on her face and her grandmother washed it with strong soap, saying: "She is that color by nature—God made her ugly." The little girl asked rather pathetically if they would not change her name to Lily, to which her mother replied: "You are a little tiger lily!" In after years in her many gardens in different parts of the world there were always tiger lilies growing. She was a ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... throughout his whole Poem, that he was most orthodox, both in his religion and loyalty. And I am the more induced to believe he wrote it about that time, because he had then the opportunity to converse with those living characters of rebellion, nonsense, and hypocrisy, which he so livelily and pathetically ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... pursue the colonising enterprises which lay so near to his heart. The Queen, however, could not be induced to encourage him; she shrewdly remarked that Gilbert 'had no good luck at sea,' which was pathetically true. However, Gilbert's six years' charter was about to expire, and his hopes were all bound up in making one more effort. He pleaded, and Raleigh supported him, until Elizabeth finally gave way, merely refusing to allow Raleigh himself to take part in any such 'dangerous sea-fights' as the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... blow. A great big man like him, to strike a tender mite like this—a motherless babe, his precious Lily's bequest to him—aye, indeed! It was the act of a brute, whatever the provocation. The mite was a waif too, alone in the world when his father was at sea, pathetically helpless, with no defence against blows and unkindness. The reflection brought dimness to the man's hard blue eyes, and turned ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge |
