"Comfortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the rain, hungry, cold, and comfortless, thousands of miles from their native land, almost beyond expectation of human succor, hope nearly annihilated,—the shipwrecked voyagers retired to their tents. In the morning the wreck had gone to pieces; and planks, and spars, and whatever had floated ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... and comfortless striving,—years of rigorous self-denial, of reproach and humiliation,—Wesley had steadfastly adhered to his one purpose of seeking God. Now he had found Him; and he found that the grace which he had toiled to win ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... "there are no such things as ghosts; at any rate I'm resolved to face them, for if we don't get some sticks the fire will go out and leave us very comfortless. Come, I'll ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the beggar to him. "My friend," said he, "I grieve sadly for the story you told me last night. But maybe, after all, your luck is not all gone. And now, if you will choose as you should choose, you shall not go away from here comfortless. In the pantry yonder are two great pies—one is for you and one for me. Go in and take whichever ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... and I, my faithful comrade, are together still. Next to my heart I have carried you many a weary league; many a dreary and, but for you, comfortless night we have bivouacked together. Time and roughing it have made their marks on both of us. Scars mar your polished face, now changed from spotless white to rich autumnal russet; and mine, too, the sun, and wind, and other smoke than that of Orinoko have darkened. You have lost your ornamental ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... his long and comfortless land journey, so after an early dinner he went immediately to his room and to bed. How long he slept he did not know, but some time during the night he was awakened by the sound of voices apparently close to ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wandered along, A cheerless and comfortless elf, He sought for relief in a song, Or complainingly talked ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... teaching the child to read, or instructing her in sewing and knitting. Upon inquiry he had learnt that the little girl was a poor orphan whom his fair maiden had charitably taken into the house to educate her. Emilius's friends could not conceive why he lived in this narrow street, in this comfortless lodging, why he was so little to be seen in society, or how he employed himself. Without employment, in solitude he was happy: only he felt angry with himself and his own timidity and shyness, which kept him ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... chest of drawers, and over it the enlarged photograph of her mother, in an oxydized frame, with a bunch of dyed grasses at the back. Now these and all other tokens of her presence had vanished and the room looked as bare and comfortless as when Zeena had shown her into it on the day of her arrival. In the middle of the floor stood her trunk, and on the trunk she sat in her Sunday dress, her back turned to the door and her face in her hands. She had not heard Ethan's ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... answer. While he sat, with knitted brows, turning over some of the papers in front of him. Singleton looked about. Hitherto his life had been spent in comfortless and shabby English lodgings, in the sour steam of tropic swamps, and in galvanized iron factories that were filled all day with an intolerable heat. As a result of this, his host's library impressed him. It was ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... seized upon Althea, and the mother love which had slept in her bosom was reawakened. Too late, also, the folk of Calydon remembered who it was that had saved them from slavery and death. Down into the comfortless halls of Hades, Althea hastened to seek her son's forgiveness. The loving heart of Cleopatra, surcharged with grief, was broken; and her gentle spirit fled to the world of shades to meet that of her hero-husband. Meleager's sisters ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... fade and wither and perish, Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of the giver." So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand; Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean, Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind; Saw the new-built house and people at work in a meadow; Heard, as he drew near the door, the musical voice of Priscilla Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old Puritan anthem, Music that Luther sang to the sacred words ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... with mud, and utterly miserable, the party turned out of their comfortless bivouac, and, after a hasty meal of cold provisions, resumed their march up ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... bare west wing of the house, comfortless though the neglect of its master had made it, there was one corner where she was unafraid. Her first charges, Mistress Barbara and Mistress Anne, were young ladies of gentle spirit. Their sister had said of them that their spirit was as poor as their looks. It could not be said ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... This long, narrow, comfortless strip of a room was Dick's armoury, den, and refuge. It was furnished with extreme simplicity. At the further end two rusty leather arm-chairs flanked a cast-iron stove in the corner, and were balanced in the other and darker corner ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... imbark't. How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold 750 The end of all thy Ofspring, end so sad, Depopulation; thee another Floud, Of tears and sorrow a Floud thee also drown'd, And sunk thee as thy Sons; till gently reard By th' Angel, on thy feet thou stoodst at last, Though comfortless, as when a Father mourns His Childern, all in view destroyd at once; And scarce to th' Angel utterdst thus thy plaint. O Visions ill foreseen! better had I Liv'd ignorant of future, so had borne 760 My part of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... said, 'though this isn't just the kind of war I would have picked myself. It's a comfortless, bloody business. But we've got the measure of the old Boche now, and it's dogged as does it. I count on getting back to the front in a ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... abbey, and sheltered from the storm, shared the all-pervading despondency. The refectory looked dull and comfortless, and the logs on the hearth hissed and sputtered, and would not burn. Green wood had been brought instead of dry fuel by the drowsy henchman. The viands on the board provoked not the appetite, and the men emptied their cups of ale, yawned and stretched their arms, as ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... want to fire up Anderson who already was so unsettled, so comfortless, on the subject. But Kirtley was reasoning out how this animus gave a solidity, a solidarity, to the German household—a satisfied contentment—because it was working toward a definite racial goal. Any such incentive was almost absent in the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Through hidden perils round about me placed; Yet hope I well that, when this storm is past, My Helice, the lodestar of my life, Will shine again, and look on me at last, With lovely light to clear my cloudy grief: Till then I wander care-full, comfortless, In secret ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... generosity of M. Puiseaux, who lived not far distant, at a place called St. Michel. This devout and most hospitable person made room for them all in his rough, but capacious dwelling. Their neighbors were the hospital nuns, then living at the mission of Sillery, in a substantial, but comfortless house of stone; where, amidst destitution, sickness, and irrepressible disgust at the filth of the savages whom they had in charge, they were laboring day and night with devoted assiduity. Among the minor ills which beset them were the eccentricities of one of their lay ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... and besought her to stay, for a while at least, in the now desolate Burgundian castle. And Gernot and Giselher, her true and loving brothers, added their words of entreaty also. And so, though heart-sick, and with many misgivings, she agreed to abide for a season in this cheerless and comfortless place. Many days, even months, dragged by, and still she remained; for she found it still harder and harder to tear herself away from her mother, and all that her heart held dear. Yet never, for three years and more, did she even speak to Gunther, or by any ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... and my heart! dear Poet that feelest and thinkest! 15 Dorothy, eager of soul, my most affectionate sister! Many a mile, O! many a wearisome mile are ye distant, Long, long comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know us. O! it is all too far to send you mockeries idle: Yea, and I feel it not right! But O! my friends, my beloved! 20 Feverish and wakeful I lie,—I am weary of feeling and thinking. Every thought is worn ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, And Shame that skulks behind; Or pining Love shall waste their youth, Or Jealousy with rankling tooth That inly gnaws the secret heart, And Envy wan, and faded Care, Grim-visaged comfortless ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... kindly treated along with the hopelessly idiotic and the hydrocephalous. Of the majority it is certainly true that they have some vague but profound emotions, also it is certain that only in formal expression can they realise them. To caper and shout is to express oneself, yet is it comfortless; but introduce the idea of formality, and in dance and song you may find satisfying delight. Form is the talisman. By form the vague, uneasy, and unearthly emotions are transmuted into something ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... a unique man. There is no one like him. Under no institutions but ours could such a character be formed. From a log hut, more comfortless than the wigwam of the savage, and without being able either to read or write, he enters legislative halls, takes his seat in Congress, and makes the tour of our great cities, attracting crowds to hear him speak. His life is a ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... shawl over her head and shoulders. She seemed quite pleased to see us—was not at all put out at being caught in such very simple attire—begged us to come in and ushered us through a long, narrow hall and several cold, comfortless rooms, the shutters not open and no fire anywhere, into her bedroom. All the furniture—chairs, tables and bed—was covered with linen. She explained that it was her "lessive" (general wash) she had just made, that all the linen was dry, but she had ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... is from this very year of misfortune that the power of modern England must take its date. "Adversity," said El Hakim to the Knight of the Leopard, "is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate." In the summer of 1757 was formed that ministry which succeeded in carrying England's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... channel, in summer, of every scorching blast diverted by them; in winter, every icy draught. Pestilential place, goal of whirlwinds and dust-devils, ankle-deep in desert drift—prototype of Berber in a sandstorm—as comfortless by night as day. But as in nature, so in the handiwork of men, even in the most repulsive shapes it is possible to find some saving feature. De Aar has one—one only. Its saving feature is where a slatternly Jew boy plays host behind the bar ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... strong, bleak, north-east wind ushers in the New Year. It began yesterday, and is likely to continue for some time. Most comfortless and disagreeable weather is this for the caravan. The people do not like to move, and show a decided tendency to hibernation. Some camels are also lost—escaped from the numbed fingers of their drivers. I, too, feel it cold; and yet there is so much of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... "you must be patient with me. Try and imagine what it is to have believed for ten years that you were dead; to have mourned you as dead; to have spent ten whole years of weary, comfortless days; and then to find suddenly that you have been all this time living,—voluntarily hiding yourself from me; needlessly torturing me! Why, Hetty! Hetty! you must have been mad. You must be mad now, I think, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... he meant the miserable De Vallance, whom, as he had served in prosperity, he would not desert in his utmost need, though he alike detested his private and despised his public character. He described him as alone, pennyless, comfortless, without resources in himself, or help from others. His worthy son had not yet discovered the place of his confinement; he knew not what was become of his son, and among all the crimes which tortured his conscience, the supposed death of Eustace was most insupportable. Hopeless of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... sit down here upon this bad and comfortless bed, and keep yourself quiet for a little. Maybe you'll get better soon. Oh, why did you drink, and us in ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thy eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first, all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light." This light, the production ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... moments did I count! Bless'd was I then all bliss above! Now, for this consecrated Fount Of murmuring, sparkling, living love, What have I? shall I dare to tell? A comfortless, and ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... caused both to officers and men. It was the big, obvious "damper" on the very threshold of Christianity—"see how these Christians hate one another." Officers would throw the taunt up again and again in the Mess, and the men lying down to talk themselves to sleep in their comfortless barns would begin to talk about religion with at heart a wistful longing to understand it and know its help and power. At once, someone would bring up the picture of squabbling denominations, and the wistfulness and hope would be slain by scorn. Next day and every ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... "hard" is meant that no change can be expected till it dies naturally away. Another child is dead of the measles. Mr. Grindrod and I engaged in reading together "The Refugee." No fish to be seen. The day has been very cold and comfortless, very unfavourable for the poor ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 'Il y a des impressions que ni le temps ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux temps de majeunesse ne pent renatre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... have passed. Let us visit the home of Mr. Warren and look at him among his children. No; we will not enter this pleasant house—he moved away long ago. Can this be the home of Mr. Warren! Yes. Small, poor, and comfortless as it is! Ah! ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... a sufficiently enlivening character to banish the little maidens' despondency, the fire in the drawing-room grate having died out long since from inattention, making them feel cold and comfortless, and it had got so dark within that they could not distinguish the various articles of furniture, even papa's armchair in the chimney-corner; while, outside, in the gloaming, the snow-flakes were falling slowly and steadily from a ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... slight wooden walls of the old meeting-house, and the snow lay in little heaps here and there. There was no stove in the building, as every one knows. Some of the women had hot bricks and little foot-stoves, and that was all. Ann did not care for either. She sat up straight in the comfortless, high-backed pew. Her cheeks were as red as her crimson cloak, her black eyes shone like stars. She let Mrs. Polly and Nabby have the hot stones, but her own agile little feet were as warm as toast. Little Hannah French, over across the meeting-house, looked chilled and blue, ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Before them stretched bare, comfortless, and vast, With gibbets, bones, and carcasses ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... barrel washed on shore, was kindled. A kind of tent was next made, with pieces of old canvass, boards, and such things as could be got about the wreck, and the people were thus enabled to dry the few clothes they had saved. But they passed a long and comfortless night, though partly consoled with the hope of their fire being descried in the dark, and taken for a signal of distress. Nor was this ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Mr. Arthur, it is a state of hope. Not but that I shall leave some regrets behind me. My wife will be lone and comfortless, and must trust to her own exertions only. And ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... As bare and comfortless the room, so was Miss Sophie's lonely life. She rented these four walls from an unkempt little Creole woman, whose progeny seemed like the promised offspring of Abraham,—multitudinous. The flickering life in the pale little body ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and fascinating with his intent eyes, his serious brow, or his devil-may-care gallantry, the compelling presence of him that breathes of his sacrifice, of his near departure to privation, to squalid, comfortless trenches, to the fire and hell of war, to blood and agony and death—in a word to fight, fight, fight for women!... So through this beautiful emotion women lose their balance and many are misunderstood. Those who would not and could not be bold are susceptible to advances that in an ordinary ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Assommoir nightly—for her husband, she said—and remained there. When Nana saw her mother sometimes as she passed the window, seated among a crowd of men, she turned livid with rage, because youth has little patience with the vice of intemperance. It was a dreary life for her—a comfortless home and a drunken father and mother. A saint on earth could not have remained there; that she knew very well, and she said she would make her escape some fine day, and then perhaps her parents would be sorry and would admit that they had pushed ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... very long since that a young Russian noble lost in one evening a sum equal to a hundred thousand pounds. The Vienna Club is good in its own stiff German way; but, generally speaking, German Clubs are very ill arranged, dirty, and comfortless. The Italian are better. Turin, Naples, and Florence have reasonably good Clubs. Home has nothing but the thing called the English Club, a poorly-got-up establishment of small whist-players and ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... it any great importance. Cotton was the product which fed, clothed, sheltered, and regaled the people. Even with the immense profits they received from its culture, they did not appear to understand the art of enjoyment. They generally lived on large and comfortless tracts of land, and had very few cities away from the sea-coast. They thought less of personal comfort than of the acquisition of more land, mules, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... looking within and asking oneself whereto things are tending. Full of life and restless impulses to activity, all that could properly be required of him as yet was that the action into which he rushed should be innocent, and if conventionally mischievous, yet actually harmless. Annie, comfortless at home, gazing all about her to see if there was a rest anywhere for her, had been driven by the outward desolation away from the window of the world to that other window that opens on the regions of silent being where God is, and into which when his creatures enter, or even look, the fountain of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... comfortless rooms, with but few articles of furniture. It was with the deft fingers of long practice that the girl spread the faded table-cloth, laid the dishes, ground the coffee, peeled the potatoes, and cut the bread. Then presently she called her father to the meal. He ate in silence, having relapsed ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... not have given? But it never came. The trend of my thought made all such hopes impossible. I have grown charier of the word 'impossible' now. We know so infinitesimally little. I had to learn to live on comfortless. All that was strongly personal in me died. All care about myself went out suddenly, as in other cases I think it goes out slowly, beaten down by the continued buffetings of life. I gave myself to my work, and then a curious decentralizing process ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... consequently she will feel her comfortless room and poverty all the more after it. Give her the ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... and comfortless appearance of every object in this wretched receptacle, the bit of butter on a piece of paper, the candle in a bottle, the basin upon a chair, the punch-bowl and comb upon the table, and the tobacco-pipes, &c. strewed upon the unswept ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... sad heart. But she was constant. Her parents approved of my passion, and consigned her to my arms." "Has sickness then overtaken her, or has untimely death put a period to thy prospects, just as they began to bloom?" "Oh, no," said the disconsolate shepherd, "I have encountered a disaster more comfortless and wasteful than sickness. I had a thousand times rather have received her last sigh, and closed her eyes ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... courage not to be daunted, which are in every city—mixing itself with these as the light and air of heaven do, and with effects doubtless as unexpected and as fine; and ready also to be a help to the helpless, a guide to the rash and straying, a comfort to the comfortless, a reproach to the reckless, and a warning to the wicked. Perhaps an ambitious stranger, passing through the city, would hear the chime, and pause to listen, and in the pause a flash of recollection would show him the weary ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the prince's agitated soul— He felt a power, from whence he could not tell, Drawing away, he knew not where it led. He knew the dreaded separation near, Yet half its pain and bitterness was passed. He need not leave his loved ones comfortless— His loving people still would have their prince, The king in young Rahula have his son, And sweet Yasodhara, his very life, Would have that nearest, dearest comforter To soothe her cares and drive ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... Ireland, ever waiting the To-morrow, Lift up thy widowed, venerable head, Exultingly, through thy maternal sorrow, Not comfortless, like Rachel, for ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... breakfast was set on a narrow corner of the kitchen table (and had turned cold); and the whole house was in an amazing state of dust and litter and unseasonable confusion—the rugs lifted, the tables and chairs awry, the maids wielding brooms with utmost vigour: a comfortless prospect, indeed, but not foreign to my sister's way at troublous times, as I knew. So I ate my breakfast, and that heartily (being a boy); and then sought my sister, whom I found tenderly dusting in my ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... I, in as cheerful a tone as I could assume. "Cold bricks and night-airs are comfortless attendants for one in your condition. Rise, I pray you, and come into the house. We will try to supply you with accommodations ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... interpreter; and the services of a very clever Malay boy, whom we had brought with us from the ship, were brought into requisition. The hall, in which we were first received, might have been about fifty feet square, bleak, unfurnished, and comfortless, with an uncovered mud floor. It was so feebly lighted by a few windows almost hid by Venetian blinds, that we could only discover that the roof had been left bare and unfinished. After sitting for about ten minutes, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... a moment Death, Shamed by the presence of that living Might, Blushed to annihilation, and the breath Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light 220 Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. 'Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night! Leave me not!' cried Urania: her distress Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... no other passengers for the train, which was a through south-bound express. Tom was meaning to sit up all night and think; and the most comfortless seat in the smoking-car would answer. There would be the meeting with his father and mother in the morning, and he thought he should not dare to let sleep come between. He had a firm grip of himself now, and it must not be relaxed until that meeting ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... field of operations. The transports were all sailing vessels. The passage was a tedious one, and many of the troops were on shipboard over thirty days from the embarkation at the mouth of the Rio Grande to the time of debarkation south of Vera Cruz. The trip was a comfortless one for officers and men. The transports used were built for carrying freight and possessed but limited accommodations for passengers, and the climate added ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... tree and every bush could understand my mute inquiries and respond to them." It was this rage for fresh air and fields which made him such a bad stay-at-home bird, whether he was sheltered amid the palatial surroundings of some princely patron, or whether sojourning in the less luxurious and comfortless atmosphere of some one of his frequently changed lodgings. He disliked any control, and truly meant it when, at intervals, growing impatient with the constant requests for his company, he complained outright that he was forced too much into society. His favourite places for ruralising ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... ceased At last to move, and yet I could not rest, Around me spread the Limitless, and Vast. My cheerless, conscious spirit,—fixed and fast In some lone spot in space was moveless, stark! An atom chained by forces stern and dark, With naught around me. Comfortless I lived In my dread loneliness! Oh, how I grieved! And thus, man's fate in Life and Death is solved With naught but consciousness, and thus involved All men in hopes that no fruition have? And this alone was ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... often meet Mr. Lincoln in the streets. Poor man! He looks exhausted, care-worn, spiritless, extinct. I pity him! Mr. Lincoln's looks are those of a man whose nights are sleepless, and whose days are comfortless. That is the price for a greatness to which he is not equal. Yet Mr. Lincoln, they say, wishes ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the smoke and flame outward, and then fleeing out of it when the stifling column was driven inward; but finding no peace nor rest anywhere, among those shifts and commotions of the battling elements,—they wore away the long and comfortless hours of that dreary night, till the return of morning light, which, after many a vain prayer for its speedier appearance, at length gradually ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... for her own reasons, she would trust to no hands but her own,—conscious incapacity to be what all the women about her were, stirring, active, hardy housekeepers,—a vague sense of shame, and a great dread of the future,—her comfortless and motherless condition,—slowly, but surely, like frost, and wind, and rain, and snow, beat on this frail blossom, and it went with the rest. June roses were laid against her dark hair and in her fair hands, when she was carried to the lonely graveyard of Greenfield, where mulleins and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... sad-hearted, some giver of treasure, Some one to cherish me friendless—some chief Able to guide me with wisdom of counsel, Willing to greet me and comfort my grief. He who hath tried it, and he alone, knoweth How harsh a comrade is comfortless Care Unto the man who hath no dear protector, Gold wrought with fingers nor treasure so fair. Chill is his heart as he roameth in exile— Thinketh of banquets his boyhood saw spread; Friends and companions partook ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... little ingenuity; there is a lack of labor-saving devices; indeed, the only thing of the kind I saw was a wash-house, through which the hot water from the boiler of the mill is led; but the house itself was badly arranged and comfortless. The young people have a band of music, but no other amusement that I could hear of. Tobacco they use freely, and strong drink is allowed; but they ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... the Birthday of the Christian Church, and as such it has been commemorated for nearly two thousand years by Christian people and observed by them with holy joy and deep thanksgiving for the fulfilment of our Lord's promise to send the Comforter to His comfortless ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... the thousands fatherless, The thousands childless like thyself, nay more, The thousands friendless, helpless, comfortless - Such thou wilt make them, little thinking so, Who now perhaps, round their first winter fire, Banish, to talk of thee, the tales of old, Shedding true honest tears for thee unknown: Precious be these, and sacred in thy sight, Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind. If only ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... instanced, a gleam of armor or fold of temple curtain would have been utterly valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we cut down hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless and undesired, so long as we cleave not a way of escape forward; and however narrow and thorny and difficult the nearer path, it matters not, so only that the clouds open for us at its close. Neither will any amount ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... more, after many months of waiting we rejoice in the gleam of its waters. The broad valley, which has so long been paved with white, is bottomed with amethyst now, the fainter reflection of the azure sky above. The trees which have so long stood comfortless again see their doubles in the waters below. The huge gray trunks of the water elms and the silver maples, the red rags of the birches and the delicate tracery of their spray, the ruby gold of the willows, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... how he fumbles about the domains Which this comfortless oven environ! He cannot find out in what track he must crawl, Now back to the tiles, then in search of the wall, [6] And now on the brink ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... confused she had become. She no longer knew which way to go, and in despair threw herself into the grass and wept. All her ambition was gone; she let the squirrel run away, and gave herself up to her own comfortless feelings. She thought now of the uneasiness and anxiety of her mother, and wept all the more at the thought of her own folly. But, however, consoling thoughts, before long, chased away these desponding ones. She dried her eyes with her ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... passed through a similar experience, who have been driven from the comparatively comfortable middle-class life to the precarious and comfortless existence of the vast majority of the toiling masses, will readily realise that under such circumstances Winstanley's mind would naturally be full of questionings such as might not have forced themselves on his attention under more prosperous conditions. ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... three-quarters of the 300 houses were inns. Now two-thirds of the houses have become uninhabitable, or have been sold, taken down and rebuilt elsewhere. The Shinto shrines are neglected and some are unroofed, the Zen temple is impoverished, the school is comfortless and a thousand tombstones in the ancient burying ground among the trees are half hidden in moss ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... grand consolation of believers that they have this presence assured to them by promise, that the Spirit is fixed here by an irrevocable and unchangeable covenant or donation, and will not wholly depart from them, though he may withdraw and leave you comfortless for ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of study and of artistic enjoyment. If at any moment, however, the notion of condemning them passes through the mind, — if we have visions of the balustrade against the sky, — we revert to our homely image with kindly loyalty, when we remember the long months of rain and snow, and the comfortless leaks to be avoided. The thought of a glaring, practical unfitness is enough to spoil our pleasure in any form, however beautiful intrinsically, while the sense of practical fitness is enough to reconcile us to the ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... not alone the hardships of camp life that caused them. But as yet he had not received a single letter from his friends, and his longing to get news from them was such as only those boys can understand who have never been away from home until they have suddenly gone upon a long and comfortless journey, and who then begin to realize, as never before, all the loving care of their parents, the kindness of brothers and sisters, and the blessedness of the dear old nest from which ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... this a miserable thing, dearest Franz? I had been looking forward to your letter as to a Christmas present, and now it brings me nothing but sad and comfortless news. That you are once more confined to your bed is ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the earth, the desolate wilds, the miserable and scattered habitations, "few and far between," with a population half savage and half civilized, of various bloods and colours, and scarcely able to support a pinched and comfortless existence, by excessive toil and a constant ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... was a carrying of the cross, but it was also a happy wayfaring. It was a hard journey but not comfortless. Many of the pilgrims walked thousands of miles in Russia before finally embarking on the pilgrim boat. They walked solitarily, not in great bands, and they were poor. From village to village, from the Far North, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... is that of sovereign grace and beauty. When I am near thee, nothing can harm me. Thou art an angel of light, shadowing me with thy softness. But when I let go thy hand, I stagger on a precipice: out of thy sight the world is dark to me and comfortless. There is no breathing out of this house: the air of Italy will stifle me. Go with me and lighten it. I can know no pleasure ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... thee for the pain, for the Patience; but pity of the rest of them! Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the Comfortless unconfessed of them— No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence Finger of a tender of, O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of the Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... first arrived the hut was comfortless enough. Wilson and Meares and Gran had been there some days; they had found some old bricks and a grid, and there was an open blubber fire in the middle of the floor. There was no outlet for the smoke and smuts ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... again in Bologna, of which we had not seen the gloomy arcades for two years. It must be a dreary town at all times: in a rain it is horrible; and I think the whole race of arcaded cities, Treviso, Padua, and Bologna, are dull, blind, and comfortless. The effect of the buildings vaulted above the sidewalks is that of a continuous cellarway; your view of the street is constantly interrupted by the heavy brick pillars that support the arches; the arcades are not even picturesque. Liking always to leave Bologna as quickly as ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... compunction. The sight of the new wheat troubled him—Langside had laboriously sown that crop, which somebody else would reap. Watching the battered domestic utensils and furniture being carried out for sale had the same disturbing effect. Poor and comfortless as the shack was, it had, until rude hands had desecrated it, been a home. George felt that he was consenting to the ruin of a defenseless man, assisting to drive him forth, a wanderer and an outcast. He wondered how far the terrors of ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... scanty living by painting Christmas cards, or teaching at a kindergarten. Her finger-nails dug into her flesh. It was the bitterest moment of her life. She flung herself back into the bare little room, cold, empty, comfortless. In a momentary fury she seized and tore in pieces the study which remained upon the easel. The pieces fell to the ground in a little white shower. It was the end, she told herself, fiercely. And then, ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could not close his eyes. He had never slept in a strange house, and the change was great from his own little room at home, dimly lighted by a night-lamp, and littered with his favorite playthings, to the strange and comfortless place where he ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... while with his father, then he had gone, just as aimlessly, with a party of men who were emigrating to America. He had taken some money, had drifted about, living in the most comfortless, wretched fashion, then he had found a place somewhere in Pennsylvania, in a dry goods store. This was when he was ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... during July, August and September, the heat at times is well-nigh intolerable both by day and night. You arise in the morning played out after a comfortless night under a punkah, which, hung over your bed in the limited space of a mosquito house, is pulled with a rope passing through the wall by a coolie stationed on the verandah outside. With the thermometer standing at ninety degrees in your ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... It was cold in the morning, there was no one to heat the stove, the watchman disappeared; the children came in as soon as it was light, bringing in snow and mud and making a noise: it was all so inconvenient, so comfortless. Her abode consisted of one little room and the kitchen close by. Her head ached every day after her work, and after dinner she had heart-burn. She had to collect money from the school-children for wood and for the watchman, and to give it to the school guardian, and then to ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... pass into the interior court. This hotel was the finest in Poitiers, where all the rich and noble travellers were in the habit of alighting, and there was an air of gaiety and prosperity about it very pleasing to our comedians, in contrast with all the comfortless, miserable lodgings they had been obliged to put up with for a long time past. The landlord, whose double, or rather triple chin testified to bountiful fare, and the ruddy tints of his face to the excellence of his wines, seemed to be ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the room, and suppressed a sigh. It was, indeed, a miserable dwelling, scarcely better than a hut. Very few of you who read this have ever seen a place so comfortless or so poor. The roof let in rain. Through the cracked, uneven floor the ground could be distinctly seen. A broken window-pane was stopped by an old hat thrust into the hole. For furniture was only a rusty stove, a table, three chairs, a few battered utensils for cooking, and a bed laid ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... crushed through Cigarette's tight-pressed, bright-red lips, with an irony sadder than tears. She was sitting on the edge of a grabat, hard as wood, comfortless as a truss of straw, and looking down the long hospital room, with its endless rows of beds and its hot sun shining blindingly ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... exceedingly plain room with rows of very poor beds; mere wooden frames with canvas stretched on them, in which any miserable beggars who choose to submit to the rules may sleep for a night after eating a bit of bread and a basin of gruel— for all which they pay nothing. It is a very poor and comfortless place—at least you would think it so—and is meant to save poor people from sleeping, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... radiant, holy June day had been suddenly red-branded like Cain, to be henceforth an occasion of hideous reminiscences; and with a blanched face and trembling limbs the child followed a narrow, beaten path, which soon terminated at the gate of a rude, unwhitewashed paling. A low, comfortless looking three-roomed house stood within, and on the steps sat an elderly man, smoking a pipe, and busily engaged in mending a bridle. The creaking of the gate attracted his attention, and he looked up wonderingly at the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... appears now as a third, now as a fifth or seventh. This picture of the world is certainly not attractive; in it all change and becoming, all life and all activity is offered up on the altar of monotonous being. Happily Herbart is inconsistent enough to enliven this comfortless waste of changeless being by the relatively real or ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... numerous nor were they well qualified for their work. School houses were at a great distance from most of the homes. They were both comfortless and cheerless. The snows were deep in winter and the weather was inclement. In summer, even little hands ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... informed the leader how things stood, made over to him the landlord and the remainder of the supper, and desired him to stop at once, and keep guard over the house until he should return. Then he ordered the wagoners to harness the horses, and led the travelers out into the gray dawn of a comfortless-looking day. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... to her affairs from a stranger. On no other subject was it possible that he should now speak to the daily visitor and the only visitor at Orley Farm. All this Mrs. Orme understood, and saw that the young man was alone and comfortless. He passed his hours below, in his own room, and twice a day his mother found him in the parlour, and then they sat through their silent, miserable meals. She would then leave him, always saying some soft words of motherly love, and putting ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... luxuriously comfortable, and a deeper oblivion stole over him. It was not likely that the fragrant cigar he then lighted as the crowning blessing of the evening, would recall to his mind the fireless, supperless, comfortless culprit he had left in such "durance vile." Combing his hair suddenly with the fingers of his left hand, and leaning back in a floating position, he watched the smoke-rings, curling above his head, and fell into a reverie on Natural Philosophy. He was interrupted by the entrance ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... dead arose no doubt from the [20] combined efforts of some malignant students, expelled from my College for immorality, to kill me: of their mental design to do this I have proof, but no fear. My heavenly Father will never leave me comfortless, in the amplitude of His love; coming nearer in my need, more tenderly to [25] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... dinner came, spread over half an acre. Maurice was among the last who seated himself; and when he did so it was in an awkward comfortless corner, behind Mr. Pomken's back, and far away from the laughter and mirth of the day. But yet from his comfortless corner he could see Marian as she sat in her pride of power, with her friend Julia Davis near her, a flirt as bad as herself, and her satellites ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... of Moussul." "Then," exclaimed Hyjauje, "thou art of an unnatural and adulterous race, whose youths are catamites, and whose old men are obstinate as asses." "But I am from Yemen," said the boy. "If so," answered the tyrant, "thou belongest to a comfortless region, where the most honourable profession is robbery, where the middling ranks tan hides, and where a wretched poor spin wool and weave coarse mantles." "But I am from Mecca," said the boy. "Then," replied Hyjauje, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Josephine was comfortless. She had hoped the son would retain the father, but he left her alone, alone with the child, and with all the ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... six in the morning, having no need to be called twice, so heartily was I weary of my comfortless couch. Breakfasted at Abbeville; then pushed on to Boulogne, expecting to find the packet ready to start next morning, and so to have had the advantage of the easterly tide. But, lo ye! the packet was not to sail till next day. So after shrugging our shoulders—being ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... if I carried the lamp of Gideon, or wielded the sword of the Maccabee.—I must stop again; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment, complaining of the chill, in one of the finest days of summer. She says that this villa has grown sunless, airless, and comfortless. Finding that I am writing to you, she sends her best wishes; and bids me ask, what is the fashionable colour for mantles in Paris, and also what is become of that 'wandering creature,' Lafontaine, if you should happen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... it is which enables him to bear up against the general immorality, and while he cries, 'Help me, Lord, for there is not one godly man left, for the faithful fail from among the children of men'—to make answer to himself in words of noble hope and consolation, 'Now for the comfortless troubles' sake of the needy, and because of the deep sighing of the poor, I will up, saith the Lord, and will help every one from him that swelleth against him, and will set ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... ranchers' implements and sacks of grain and bales of hay. Florence called these last alfalfa. The house itself appeared strong and well preserved, and it was very picturesque. But in the living-rooms were only the barest necessities, and these were worn out and comfortless. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... deep grass flat, beats down branches, and turns every hollow into a lake, was more than they had provided for, I fear. My heart went out to the dozens of bobolink and song-sparrow babies buried under the matted grass, the little tawny thrushes wandering around cold and comfortless on the soaked ground in the woods, the warbler infants,—redstart and chestnut-sided—that I knew were sitting humped up and miserable in some watery place under the berry bushes, the young tanager only just out of the nest, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good government in ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... curtains and greet the warm inhabited room with a little gasp of reassurance. Strangest of all, he found himself often in the old nursery at the top of the house. Very seldom did any one come there now, and it had the pathos of a room grown cold and comfortless. Most of the toys were put away or given to hospitals, but the rocking-horse with his Christmas-tree tail was there, and the doll's-house, and a ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... been made, as possessing in the place of cellars, an ingenious system of small rivers to thoroughly irrigate its foundation - a hydropathic treatment which may (or may not) be agreeable in Venice, but strikes one as being decidedly cold and comfortless when applied to Oxford, - at any rate, in the month of November. Walking on the lawn which stretched from this house towards the river, our hero espied two extremely pretty young ladies, whose hearts he endeavoured at once to take ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... quiet and rest for you at last!" cried Dr. Bryant, as they drove into the village of Washington, and, by dint of much trouble and exertion, procured a small and comfortless house. But a bright fire soon blazed in the broad, deep, old-fashioned chimney—the windows and doors closed—their small stock of furniture and provisions unpacked, and a couch prepared for Mary, now far too feeble to sit up. The members of the safe and happy ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... tranquil boat life; I will send you my Christmas Salaam from Siout. While Alick was with me I had as much to do as I was able and could not write for there was much to see and talk about. I think he was amused but I fear he felt the Eastern life to be very poor and comfortless. I have got so used to having nothing that I had quite forgotten how it would seem ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... charity, and for other proper purposes. Not a cent of it ever went to the keeper of a grog-shop, billiard-saloon, or other place which a young man should avoid; but not a little of it, in one way and another, found its way into the comfortless abode of ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... Bride perform her part? Like any bride who is cold at heart. Mere snow with the ice's glitter; What but a life of winter for her! Bright but chilly, alive without stir, So splendidly comfortless,—just like a Fir When the frost is ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... of the tent, which is also the broadest, and occupying about one third of the whole apartment, their skins are laid as a bed, having under them some of the andromeda tetragona when the ground is hard, but in this case placed on the bare dry shingle. Comfortless as these simple habitations appeared to us in a snowstorm, they are, in general, not deficient in warmth as summer residences; and, being easily removed from place to place, they are certainly well suited to the wants ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... these fifteen hours of woe? An act was passed, during this time, in obedience to the demands of the mob, dethroning the king. The hour of midnight had now come and gone, and still the royal sufferers were in their comfortless imprisonment, half dead with excitement and exhaustion. The young dauphin had fallen asleep in his mother's arms. Madame Elizabeth and the princess, entirely unnerved, were sobbing with uncontrollable grief. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... door, pay something, and be admitted. It looked a dreadful refuge, but she was at least under cover, and shelter, in such a climate as ours in winter, must be the first rudimentary notion of salvation. No longer haunted with the idea of her wandering all night about the comfortless streets, "like a ghost awake in Memphis," Donal said, they went home. But it was long before they got to sleep, and in the morning their first words were about ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... a heart to guile unknown, By melting languors the soft wish betray'd; If chaste desires, with temper'd warmth display'd; If weary wanderings, comfortless and lone; If every thought in every feature shown, Or in faint tones and broken sounds convey'd, As fear or shame my pallid cheek array'd In violet hues, with Love's thick blushes strown; If more than self another to hold dear; If still to weep and heave incessant sighs, To feed on passion, or ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... clad, and shelterless, How little cheer in health we know! When wounds and illness lay us low, How comfortless our sore distress! ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... But the agony of those last few hours, and the gloomy words of the priest who leant over his bedside, had found their way in between the joints of the dying man's armour of secrecy. Word by word, the story had been wrested from him. In the cold and comfortless hour of death, the strong, worldly man felt his physical weakness loosen the iron bands of his will, and he became for a time almost like a child in the hands of the keen, swiftly-questioning priest. He had not ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of feverish sleep I was awakened by a strange murmur, which, mixing with my dreams, had given me the comfortless idea of hearing the roar of the multitude at some of the horrid displays of the guillotine; and as I half opened my unwilling eyes, still heavy with sleep, I saw a long procession of figures, in flowing mantles and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... sundown when they reached the picturesque and well-appointed hotel that lifted itself above the little fishing-village which fronted Kelpie Island. The hotel was in as strong contrast to the narrow, curving street of dull, comfortless-looking stone cottages below it, as were the smart tourists who had just landed from the steamer to the hard-visaged, roughly clad villagers who watched them with a certain mingling of critical independence ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to confront poverty in this bare and comfortless-looking abode of decayed gentility. But I did not expect quite so many evidences of it as met my eyes as the door swung slowly open some time after my persistent knock, and I beheld Miss Charity's meager figure outlined ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... over the place, and explained all the processes of preparing coffee for the market. In one corner of a large, unpainted building was what he called the infirmary, and a comfortless looking place it was. He said there was no doctor employed, and that he dealt out medicine to the slaves himself. After being served with coffee we thanked him for our entertainment and returned to Rio by an ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... cousin, resided for a time with Mrs. Lieder, of the Church Missionary Society. But in order to open a school she had to engage a house for herself; and after great difficulties one was secured in a suitable position. It was but a comfortless abode, and only rude furniture and inefficient domestic help were obtainable. But Miss Whately held outward comforts in light regard. Even in later days, when she had built for herself a capacious and comfortable house, it was furnished in the simplest, even ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... exemplary districts in Scotland, and passed, at two several periods, a considerable time among its hills; we are not unacquainted with it now, nor with its melancholy and dejected people, that wear out life in their comfortless cottages on the sea-shore. The problem solved in this remote district of the kingdom is not at all unworthy the attention which it seems but beginning to draw, but which is already not restricted to one kingdom, or ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... peril and dangers of this service at best, even in peace times, seamanship is a comfortless and cheerless calling. But in war, to the ordinary perils of the sea are added unusual hardships which reach their maximum in the dangers and perils of the war zone—the attack without warning of the invisible foe whose presence is too frequently known ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... again; they revived forgotten sayings and doings in the English circle at Zurich; they veered away to the old man's death-bed at Brighton; they moved from Brighton to London; they entered the bare, comfortless room at Vauxhall Walk; they set the Aquarium back in its place on the kitchen table, and put the false Miss Garth in the chair by the side of it, shading her inflamed eyes from the light; they placed the anonymous letter, the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of light maintained its independence, nor yielded to the invasion which had swallowed up all around it. Here was our Camp of Refuge, and here we felt snug, and secure, and at home; whilst all without our magic circle was comfortless and desolate. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... their health and makin' 'em spilin' for fights and bloodshed. The rich man can stay all night at his club, or if he goes home the decorous butler or vally can tend to him and protect his family if need be; he won't stagger in at midnight to a comfortless room, where his wife and little ones are herded in cold and starvation and are alone and at his mercy, and the rich man's carouse at his club won't keep his wife and children hungry ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... "slump" in foreign goods, the "Assembly Rooms," as a mere building had for some time been shut up, and given over to dust and decay, till the owners of the property decided to let it out for popular concerts, meetings and dances, and so make some little money out of its bare whitewashed walls and comfortless ugliness. The plan had succeeded fairly well, and the place was beginning to be known as a convenient centre where thousands were wont to congregate, to enjoy cheap music and cheap entertainment generally. It was a favourite vantage ground ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... silence they crossed the courtyard where Leslie's Scottish archers lurked in every shadow, in silence passed the many guards grouped at the gateway to the King's lodgings, in silence traversed the great square hall, gaunt and comfortless, but brighter than daylight from its many lamps—the King was afraid of gloom—and in silence mounted the stone stairway. At its head they turned along the right-hand corridor, entering a silent ante-room with sentinels at its ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Broncho, "Bob's about the gamest man I ever see along the Rio Bravo. Great Sam Houston! If she gets any hotter she'll sizzle!" Broncho whacked at a scorpion with his four-pound Stetson felt, and the three watchers relapsed into comfortless silence. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... scenes in strong remembrance set! Scenes never, never to return! Scenes, if in stupor I forget, Again I feel, again I burn! From ev'ry joy and pleasure torn, Life's weary vale I'll wander thro'; And hopeless, comfortless, I'll mourn A faithless ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... antitypical Isaac, the Lord Jesus, the Bridegroom. Before Jesus departed from the earth he said to his disciples: "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, ... even the spirit of truth.... I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also," (John 14:15-19) Eliezer here pictures the comforter, the holy spirit, ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... was nowhere near her! She tried to call him, but the storm choked every sound in her very throat. He would never have left her to save himself! He who makes the dogs must be at least as faithful as they! So she was not left comfortless! ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... to his honour or disregard of his affections and suddenly "amok"? The wise adviser would be the first victim, no doubt, and death would be his reward. And underlying the horror of this situation there was the danger of those meddlesome fools, the white men. A vision of comfortless exile in far-off Madura rose up before Babalatchi. Wouldn't that be worse than death itself? And there was that half-white woman with threatening eyes. How could he tell what an incomprehensible creature of ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... preservation, and returned to our former post, first burying our dead companion in one of the subterraneous houses, which was filled up and levelled, that his body might not be discovered by the enemy. We passed the ensuing night in a most comfortless situation, not being able to procure even oil and salt, and exposed to excessive cold winds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... and ability have stepped out and become strong helpers in building up new institutions. But away from these institutions and out of touch with the life of the towns, we find a class of people whose condition in itself is a Macedonian cry. Their windowless, stoveless, comfortless log cabins; their so-called schools, in which on the roughest benches conceivable, and without a desk, a slate, or a blackboard, with a teacher with unkempt hair, ragged and dirty clothes, possibly bare feet, who perhaps can scarcely read, the children study at the top of their voices—blab ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 11, November, 1889 • Various
... Mrs. Hoyt, cheerfully laid aside her bonnet, and took a seat near the sufferer, while the infirm mother retired to rest. The family were very poor, and almost entirely dependent on Kate's salary for a support. The house was small arid comfortless; the scanty furniture of the plainest kind. About dusk Beulah left her charge in a sound sleep, and, cautiously opening the blinds, seated herself on the window sill. The solitary candle on the table gave but a dim light, and she sat for a long time looking ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown him into this fever. You say his sports were disturbed by your brawls; being debarred from the enjoyment of society and recreation, what could ensue but dull melancholy and comfortless despair? The consequence is then, that your jealous kits have made your ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... weapon-clang, 20 While drums, with rolling note, foretell Relief to weary sentinel. Through narrow loop and casement barred, The sunbeams sought the Court of Guard, And, struggling with the smoky air, 25 Deadened the torches' yellow glare. In comfortless alliance shone The lights through arch of blackened stone, And showed wild shapes in garb of war, Faces deformed with beard and scar, 30 All haggard from the midnight watch, And fevered with the stern debauch; For the oak table's massive board, Flooded with wine, with fragments ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... way, at last, to a comfortless day—May 7th—gloomy, lowering, and raining, off and on, till late in the evening. During the morning, a little desultory firing was heard in front, and then all was quiet and still. We knew enough to know that Grant's ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... most comfortless repast. There was a stiffness, a restraint over all, that would not be shaken off—with one exception. Rose, who latterly had been all in the downs, took heart of grace amid the general gloom, and rattled away like the Rose of other days. To her the idea of her father's marriage ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... shabby 'Bridge of Sighs,' A gutter runs down the middle, interrupted occasionally by heaps of stable-litter; and the perspective is damaged by rows of linen suspended across the street at uncertain intervals. The houses in this agreeable thoroughfare are dingy, dilapidated, and comfortless, and all which are not in use as stables, are occupied by artists. However, it was a very jolly place, and I never was happier anywhere in my life. I had but just touched my little patrimony, and I was acquainted with plenty ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... looked even more comfortless and bleak than on the preceding evening. On the table was a plate of ham and eggs. John Girdlestone served out a portion, and pushed it in her direction. She sat down on one of the rough wooden chairs and ate listlessly, wondering how all ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and with pleasure; but, pray, don't raise your voice that way. Why, now, if you go through life gritting your teeth in that fashion, what a comfortless time you will have." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... birds in one corner.'[889] In Ripon Cathedral, some of the old tabernacle work of the stalls was converted into pews.[890] Everywhere the pew system remained uncontrolled, pampering self-indulgence, fostering jealousies, and too often thrusting back the poor into mean, comfortless sittings, in whatever part of the church was coldest, darkest, and most distant from sight and hearing. Towards the end of the century its evils began to be here and there acknowledged. The population was rapidly increasing in the larger towns; and the new proprietary ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... inexplicable quirk, stands before Christian in laced hat, embroidered waistcoat, and trunk-hose. But above all examples of this artist's intrepidity, commend me to the print entitled "Christian Finds it Deep." "A great darkness and horror," says the text, have fallen on the pilgrim; it is the comfortless deathbed with which Bunyan so strikingly concludes the sorrows and conflicts of his hero. How to represent this worthily the artist knew not; and yet he was determined to represent it somehow. This was how he did: Hopeful is still shown to his neck above the water ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... never to confide my religious feelings to any one in the world. I went on my toilsome, comfortless way quite by myself. But when at the end of this long, gloomy way, I saw and knew and rejoiced in Christ, then I forgot myself and my pride and my reserve, and was glad if a little child would hear me say "I love Him!"—glad if the most ignorant, the most hitherto despised, would ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... not, however, libel even the Sandy Desert, by producing the impression that it is all barren and comfortless. Though far more difficult to travel over than the Hamadah, it possesses the inestimable advantage of having water every day once at least. A little after noon, indeed, we passed two lakes; one ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... consumption takes place. Therefore priestly vestments are notoriously expensive, ornate, and inconvenient; and in the cults where the priestly servitor of the divinity is not conceived to serve him in the capacity of consort, they are of an austere, comfortless fashion. And such it is felt ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations, That are little of might, that are molded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations, Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of shadows fast fleeing, Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being; Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts are eternal: That ye may from henceforth, having heard of us all things ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a trifle as he recalled the agony of the march back through the snowy wilderness, and the weeks he had afterward spent, unable to set his foot to the ground, in the comfortless log hotel ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... laughed; and Paragot bidding me sit on the wreck of a cane-bottomed chair, gave me my first lesson in Greek Mythology. He talked for nearly an hour, and I, ragged urchin of the London streets, my wits sharpened by hunger and ill-usage, sat spell-bound on my comfortless perch, while he unfolded the tale of Gods and Goddesses, and unveiled Olympus before ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... few minutes Flora was seated in the boat, uncheered by any parting blessing but the cold farewell, and for ever, of old Captain Kitson, who could scarcely conceal the joy he felt at their departure. The morning was wet and misty, and altogether comfortless, and Flora was glad when the bustle of getting on board the steamer was over, and they were ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie |
