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More "Misfortune" Quotes from Famous Books



... involved in my catastrophe, neither of us had foreseen the end. Miss Collingsby appeared to be the greatest sufferer; and the scream with which she announced my defeat was only the echo of my own feelings. As the battle was really her own, rather than mine, of course my misfortune was ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... The misfortune was that he could not find in himself any of the causes which resolve into insomnia; he had neither meningitis nor brain fever, nor anything that indicated a cerebral tumor; he was not anaemic; he ate well; he did not suffer with neuralgia, nor with any acute or chronic affection ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... terrible disclosure? why harrow my soul with going back over that dark path? Let me try to forget that such sins, such wrongs, such revenges, ever stained a human life. I was so young, so innocent, so ignorant. It was a strange misfortune that I should have had to know that which aged and changed me so. But he was right in saying that I had to know it. My life was bound involuntarily to his by my love, and what concerned him was my fate. Alas! He was in no other way bound to me than by my love: ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... 11 P.M.—A misfortune has occurred so unexpected and so horrible that my little escape of the morning dwindles into insignificance. Mrs. Tibbs and her child have disappeared—utterly and entirely disappeared. I can hardly compose myself to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... always been dangerous. Thirty years ago I met with a misfortune at this same place; oh, when I think ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... happy in their place at Hoxne, and on them at least has fallen no shadow of misfortune from that which came of their passing over the Bridge of the Golden Spurs—the Golden Bridge as our ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... pattern, just as the law is faithfully fulfilled or neglected. Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfortune occurs is guilt wanting. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... nobody could discern; but the people about were aggrieved for her, and Miss Buff confided to a friend, in a semi-audible whisper of intense exasperation, that the rector was the biggest muff and toady that ever it had been her misfortune to know. Miss Buff, it will be perceived, liked strong terms; but, as she justly pleaded in extenuation of a taste for which she was reproached, what was the use of there being strong terms in the language if they were not to be applied ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... place so loathsome. Mr. Jackson's log-house was a palace in comparison. The prison was crowded with colored people of all complexions, and almost every form of human vice and misery was huddled together there with the poor victims of misfortune. Thieves, murderers, and shameless girls, decked out with tawdry bits of finery, were mixed up with modest-looking, heart-broken wives, and mothers mourning for the children that had been torn from their arms in the recent sale. Some were laughing, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... enjoying you and themselves and each other. Strangers have been known to speak to one another under the mellow atmosphere which you have created by singing to them of the universal things: love, food, drink, marriage, birth, death, misfortune, festival, cunning, frivolity and—oh, the thousand things that ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... it was he whistled!" To which Dave answered with reserve:—"A long tune." Probably the whistler's stock was limited, and he repeated the piece, whatever it was, da capo ad libitum. This legend—the thin plot of Dave's story—will not strike some who have the misfortune to own bulls as strange. In some parts of the country boys are always requisitioned to attend on bulls, who especially hate men, perhaps resenting their monopoly of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... There are many striving people among the factory operatives, who help up the family earnings by keeping a little shop in this way. But this family was another of those instances in which working people have been pulled down by misfortune before the present crisis came on. Just previous to the mills beginning to work short time, four of their five children had been lying ill, all at once, for five months; and, before that trouble befell them, one of the lads had two of his fingers taken ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... difficulties in getting his prize-papers or in drawing his pay; but there was no reason why he might not have written. The days were beginning to grow long to Margaret, and vague forebodings of misfortune possessed her. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... went away, but had the misfortune to mistake the police barracks for the rival whisky store, and was promptly arrested for threatening with ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... public. But one of Dr. Haygarth's stories may lead us to conjecture that there was a class of female practitioners who went about doing good with the Tractors in England as well as in Denmark. A certain lady had the misfortune to have a spot as big as a silver penny at the corner of her eye, caused by a bruise, or some such injury. Another lady, who was a friend of hers, and a strong believer in Perkinism, was very anxious to try the effects of tractoration ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... was surprised at that, for both Will and Gethin, ever since their mother's death, had been accustomed to run to Sara for sympathy with every pleasure or misfortune, and after being two months away it was quite natural that he should want to see her; so Morva had scarcely rounded the bend of the Cribserth before Will had caught her up. A little shiver ran through her as she recognised the step and the whistle which called ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... impassively. One youth only, Gilbert Potter, whose name for those few days passed into fame's trumpet, ventured to exclaim, "The Lady Mary has the better title." Gilbert's master, one "Ninian Sanders," denounced the boy to the guard, and he was seized. Yet a misfortune, thought to be providential, in a few hours befell Ninian Sanders. Going home to his house down the river, in the July evening, he was overturned and drowned as he was shooting London Bridge in his wherry; the boatmen, who were the instruments ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... Brown would look on that as less a punishment than a misfortune." Enoch smiled, as ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... flood caused immense loss; it overthrew houses, swept away the cattle, and utterly ruined the crops of the season. The buffaloes, however, proved abundant, and afforded a supply of provisions enough to prevent starvation, and the settlers soon recovered from the effects of this misfortune. Another calamity followed—the caterpillar appeared—at first in small numbers, afterwards in myriads, covering the whole land, and eating up "every green thing," and thus the crops were destroyed a second time; but the consequences were not ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... hoarding little by little...But reflection leads me to higher thoughts. I choke back the tears in my heart, and I congratulate him that Heaven has mercifully spared him this life of trials...My poor child...you will never, like your father, have to struggle against poverty and misfortune; you will never know the bitterness of life, and the difficulties of creating a position at a time when there are so many paths that lead to failure...I weep for you because we have lost you, but I rejoice because you are happy...You are ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... the cause of the misfortune which followed, and bade fair to place me in a position of as great difficulty as I have ever known; for, having in my good humour dismissed the servants, I continued to talk for an hour or more with Vilain and some of my gentlemen; the result being that I so far forgot myself, when I rose, as ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... according to his own ideas, it gave him the utmost pain, when he felt his infirmities increase so fast upon him, that he was obliged to commit the conduct of all his affairs to his ministers. He imputed every misfortune which befell him, and every miscarriage that happened, even when the former was unavoidable or the latter accidental, to his inability to take the inspection of business himself. He complained of his hard fortune in being opposed, in his declining years, to a rival who was in the full vigor of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... to go into town except under pressure of dire necessity, because we thought that the population was greatly perturbed and that it might take revenge on any foreigners which they might consider spiteful onlookers of their misfortune, ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... which caused so much unmerited misfortune to English artists and their like, and which at one moment had threatened to wreck his own successful opening career, had brought to Shirley Sherston a piece of marvelous ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... her head, with a gravity and condescension intended to keep him at his proper distance. Far from being discouraged, he permitted his curiosity to take additional liberties. "Are you to have the misfortune of being one of my pupils?" ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... creatures pityingly because they are dumb. If one of his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy. Even that mere hesitation in speech, known as stammering, he deems a misfortune. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... so long to Owen. Eagerly he and his companions in misfortune looked out for the first streaks of dawn in the eastern horizon. They appeared at last, and a faint cheer burst ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... but such was the man's character that his failure was regarded by many as a public misfortune. Some men differed with him as to the wisdom of promoting a coffee corner, and protested that it was against public policy; but Arnold's personal integrity was never questioned, and his mercantile ability and honorable business dealings won for him an affectionate regard ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... predestination. I have ignored Sabbath-day doctrines and faith-binding dogmas to this end. I could even have held out indefinitely against your "foreknowledge," but when you come, heralded by an unexpected misfortune, asking "peace" of me that you may meet your own difficulties with a steadier courage, I find you invincible. It is as if you had suddenly slipped through the door of my heart and left will, betrayed, on guard outside. I have no defence in ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... should direct, for his stage. This translation, tedious and vapid as most literal translations are, had the peculiar disadvantage of having been put into our language by a German—of course it came to me in broken English. It was no slight misfortune to have an example of bad grammar, false metaphors and similes, with all the usual errors of feminine diction, placed before a female writer. But if, disdaining the construction of sentences,—the precise decorum of the cold grammarian,—she ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald

... so, disaster still threatened. Patty had the misfortune to collide with Evalina Smith in the upper hall, and she dropped her pin-tray, honey-side down, in the middle of the rug. At the same instant, Miss Lord bore down upon her from the end of the corridor. Patty was a young person of resource; the emergency of the moment rarely found ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... disappointed, of course—for the reason that the size of a misfortune is not determinate by an outsider's measurement of it, but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it. The king's lost crown is a vast matter to the king, but of no consequence ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... various forms. In the first place, it appears as that natural enmity between man and man which is often emphasized by skeptical moralists. The argument is: Since there is something not wholly displeasing to us in the misfortune of our best friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance, conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an a priori hostility, to that homo homini lupus, as the frequently veiled, but perhaps ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... place seems to me to be altogether untenable and of no practicable importance, since the enemy may attack both in front and rear. It would seem that some of the jealous functionaries would submit to any misfortune which would destroy Beauregard's popularity. But these are exceptions: they are few and far between, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... it was a dreadful misfortune when some member of a family became insane, but this terrible calamity, which nothing could make one anticipate or avoid, was happily exceptional, like thunderbolts. The other men and even the members of the family presented nothing similar and regarded themselves ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... to buy Silks of one, whom he would not venture to feel his Pulse. Vagellius is careful, studious and obliging, but withal a little thick-skull'd; he has not a single Client, but might have had abundance of Customers. The Misfortune is, that Parents take a Liking to a particular Profession, and therefore desire their Sons may be of it. Whereas, in so great an Affair of Life, they should consider the Genius and Abilities of their Children, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... against the English, you bring news which is painful to us, as we know that our papa will grieve for the misfortune which has happened to him," said the elder of the young ladies. "We are, however, obliged to you for informing us of his safety, and should be glad to do our best to supply ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... passing in her carriage by jocosely calling out at him some abusive epithets. Afterwards, we are told that she often visited Wycherley at the Temple, disguised as a country girl in a straw hat, with pattens on her feet, and a basket on her arm. Later, he had the misfortune to make the acquaintance of the Countess of Drogheda on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells, and by secretly marrying her incurred the King's displeasure. He was finally reduced to great distress, but James II., recognising ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... It was useless to discuss the matter. The upright, courageous old merchant, whose pride was that he had never committed one mean action in the accumulation of his fortune, could never understand this common misfortune. He belonged to a different world from that in which his son was to take his part. They turned to other topics,—the business depression, the strike, the threatened interference of the American ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... prudent and so bounteous. For which the fame out sprang on every side Both of her beauty and her bounte* wide: *goodness That through the land they praised her each one That loved virtue, save envy alone, That sorry is of other manne's weal, And glad is of his sorrow and unheal* — *misfortune The Doctor maketh this descriptioun. — This maiden on a day went in the town Toward a temple, with her mother dear, As is of younge maidens the mannere. Now was there then a justice in that town, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... the sheik said. "I thought it as well not to bring all, for had misfortune happened, the women and children would have been left without protectors; but there is surely no occasion for Hassan to go yet. In three days he might be there, and be back in another three, and though I hope to mend quickly, surely I could not ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... Man, "I hope that if it should be in your power when we get through those Gates, that you will be merciful to Tom. I can't think of much to say for him in this hurry, but there, he is my only son and the truth is that I love him. You know he may live—to be different—if you don't bring some misfortune ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... his way in the midst of wars and burning towns, and provinces ravaged by the plague, with his country invaded, trampled underfoot by the hordes of all Europe, and—worst of all—broken, worn out, degraded by misfortune, making no fight, indifferent to everything, longing only for rest. He thought: "With such as example, what right has any man to complain? They had no audience, they had no future; they wrote for themselves and God. What they wrote one day would perhaps be destroyed by the next. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... when a weir-hatch is drawn, Her tears, penned by terror afore, With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn, Till her power to pour 'em seemed wasted and gone From the heft o' misfortune she bore. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... go like a fish's gills. It is a funny way for a gentleman, and he's a gentleman. Every fool knows the Wylders are gentlemen—all gentlemen in misfortune. He has a brother that is walking about in his coffin. Mark has no coffin; it is all marble steps; and a wicked seraph received him, and blessed him till his hair stood up. Let me ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Gloire-de-Dijon rose. There was a hum of bees close by that seemed like the voice of the hot sunshine. It should have been a pleasant awakening, but Milly awoke from that long sleep of hers with a brooding sense of misfortune. The remembrance of the afternoon when she had so suddenly been snatched away returned to her, but it was not the revelation of Ian's passionate love for her supplanter that came back to her as the thing of most importance. Surely ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... the universal Christian! What but truth could so change our poor human nature into somewhat quite divine and godlike! Think not I shrink myself at the prospect of obstruction and assault. I am a man loose upon the world, weaned by suffering and misfortune from earth, and ready at any hour to depart from it. You know my early story. But I in vain seek to steel myself to the pains of others. From what I have said, I fear lest you should think me over-apprehensive. I wish it were so. But ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... question of Abolition in the years 1795-6 was a public misfortune; for the slaves, despairing of justice from England, turned to France. For the good of the cause they murdered men, women, or children, with equal indifference; and, when hunted down, died with the cry Vive la Republique. Here was our ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... frequent colds will do wisely to fortify their systems by taking a few bottles of the "Golden Medical Discovery" to improve nutrition, purify the blood, and thus aid nature in overcoming such inherited tendency or required weakness as may be their misfortune to possess. Remember frequent attacks of Acute Catarrh prepare fertile soil for the chronic form which oftentimes is so loathsome ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... out of it. His percussion caps, however, were completely destroyed, and even though they had not been, it would have mattered little, for he did not possess more than half a dozen. But this was not so great a misfortune as at first it might seem, for he had the spare flint locks and the little screw-driver necessary for fixing and unfixing them stowed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... taking us to Paris is to leave us stranded there, disembodied spirits, vagrant souls with no familiar haunts to haunt, no place to rest, and nothing before us save perpetual exile in a world that would have no sympathy for us in our misfortune, and no belief in our ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... extent, was due to their eating nothing but salt or smoked provisions—forms of meat or fish. They lived, of course, shut up in the fort, and Cartier's fixed idea was to keep the Hurons from the knowledge of his misfortune, fearing lest, if they realized how the garrison was reduced, they might treacherously attack and massacre the rest; for in spite of the extravagant joy with which their arrival had been greeted, the Amerindians—notably the two interpreters who had been ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... others" consisted of people of all shades of opinion and conviction: the anti-British, anti-French, the pro-German, the anti-war and the merely neutral, some of whom set feverishly to work to make a tradesman's advantage out of Europe's misfortune. A great traffic sprang up in the manufacture of war materials. Almost all of these went to the Allies, owing to the fact that Britain controlled the seas. Whether they would not have been sold just as readily to Germany, had that been possible, is a matter open to question. In any case, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... causing the blood to flow freely, so that he fell and fainted away. At this, one of the men seized a pig and ran after the stranger, who, hearing the pig squealing, looked behind him and saw the man running with it; and as he neared him he dropped it before him, and told him of Lono's misfortune, Kamakanuiahailono then returned, gathering on the way the young popolo seeds and its tender leaves in his garment (kihei). When he arrived at the place where the wounded man was lying he asked ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... very slow in becoming steady. Again you say, you much fear that that Elysium of which you have dreamed so much is never to be realized. Well, if it shall not, I dare swear it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize. Far short of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to realize them than that same black-eyed Fanny. If you could ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... English learned, save by children at a boarding-school, where nothing but English is spoken, is fragmentary and of doubtful import in all except the commonest matters of speech. And at such boarding-schools there is danger of the real misfortune and drawback of natives growing up to live their lives amongst natives, ignorant of the native tongue. There is no quick and easy way of stamping out a language, thank God; there is no quick and easy way of imparting instruction in a foreign language. By and by all the Alaskan ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... of Urbino by Piero della Francesca, and also the two Titian "Venuses" in the Tribuna. Ferdinand II and his Grand Duchess were on bad terms for most of their lives, and she behaved foolishly, and brought up her son Cosimo III foolishly, and altogether was a misfortune to Florence. Sustermans the painter she held in the highest esteem, and in return he painted her not only as herself but in various unlikely characters, among them a Vestal Virgin ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... For his misfortune he had chosen a French translation of what he called "un drame de Williams Shackspire; le faux dieu," he further announced, "de ces sots paiens, les Anglais." How far otherwise he would have characterized him had his temper not been ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... mistaken? She had received him with kindness. And how should she receive one who was the friend and preserver of her only brother, and apparently the intimate and cherished acquaintance of her future husband? Coningsby felt that sickness of the heart that accompanies one's first misfortune. The illusions of life seemed to dissipate and disappear. He was miserable; he had no confidence in himself, in his future. After all, what was he? A dependent on a man of very resolute will and passions. Could he forget the glance with which Lord Monmouth caught ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... the hero who has thrown it, Full misfortune on warriors; A delay of princes, wrathful is the matter, One man has ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown

... occasion. But, after all, Diggle's quarrels were his own concern. That his past life included secrets Desmond had long suspected, but he was not the first man of birth and education who had fallen into misfortune, and at all events he had always treated Desmond with kindness. So the boy put the matter ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... sorrows which are rendered greater by keeping them to ourselves; let us speak freely of our joint distress, and give vent in our conversations to the poignant grief which fills our hearts. We are sisters in misfortune, and your heart and mine have so much in common that we can unite them, and in our just complaints murmur, with a common lament, against the cruelty of our fate. My sister, what secret fatality makes the whole world bow ...
— Psyche • Moliere

... Mr. Parkes, and of how Sankolinsin had laughed to scorn their claim to protection, the soldiers could no longer be restrained. The Englishmen and the natives were dragged from their horses, cruelly bound, and hurried to the rear, whence they followed at no great distance their companions in misfortune. While the greater portion of these events had been in progress, Colonel Walker, Mr. Thompson, and the men of the King's Dragoon Guards, had been steadily pacing up and down on the embankment as ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... reason: Why did God thus punish and reject the Jews while He permitted the condemned heathen to come to the Gospel? Again, Why does He govern on this wise, that wicked and evil men are exalted while the pious are allowed to undergo misfortune and be suppressed? Why does He call Judas to be an apostle and later on reject him while He accepts the murderer and malefactor? By them [his words, Rom. 11] Paul would order such to cease climbing up to the secret Majesty, and to adhere to the revelation which God has given us. For ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... Constantine, benignly. "I am very busy. A courier arrived this morning from Adrianople with report that my august friend, the Sultan Amurath, is sick, and his physicians think him sick unto death. I was not prepared for the responsibilities which are rising; but I have heard of thy great misfortune, and out of sympathy bade my officer bring thee hither. By accounts the child was rarely intelligent and lovely, and I did not believe there was in my capital a man to do her such inhuman wrong. The progress of the search thou didst institute so wisely I have watched with solicitude little less ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... we were on the road twenty hours, reaching Fan Cheng at midnight. Here we found the engineers' party waiting for us with boats hired, but we were obliged to remain twenty-four hours in the most loathsome inn we ever had the misfortune to be in in China. It was an unspeakable relief to get into the houseboats, even though we only had bare boards to lie on, and the ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth

... heart. It has been many years since then, for all this happened along in the fifties, but Birt has never forgotten how staunchly she upheld him in every thought when all the circumstances belied him. Now that misfortune had touched him, every trace of her caustic moods had disappeared; she was all gentleness and tenderness toward him. And day by day as he went to his work, meeting everywhere a short word, or a slighting look, he felt that he ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... for normal people. Probably this second type of a deficient home is more dangerous than the first, for children without sufficient home care often discover a substitute for their loss, but the over-protected children can obtain no antidote for their misfortune. ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves

... much less heavily visited than England. The disease seems to have scarcely reached the mountainous districts of that kingdom; and Scotland, too, would, perhaps, have remained free had not the Scots availed themselves of the misfortune of the English, to make an irruption into their territory, which terminated in the destruction of their army, by the plague and by the sword, and the extension of the pestilence, through those who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... must be counted an unfortunate woman enceinte, who was killed as she was passing the palace gates under the belief that a parley having come from his camp, the firing would be suspended, as in fact it was on our side. This government, informed of the misfortune, sent for the husband of the deceased, and ordered twenty-five dollars to be given him; but the unfortunate man, though plunged in grief, declared that twelve were sufficient to supply his wants. Such was the horror inspired by the atrocious ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... its unfolding from day to day, for it was to them a veritable tale of the Arabian Nights. From the Italian, in which the traveller dictated his story, it was translated into Latin and French, and scattered over Europe for others to enjoy. Thus Marco Polo acquired fame through the misfortune which befell him when fighting for Venice, and long before printing was invented his name became almost a household word in Europe. As one who, though indirectly, stimulated by his Oriental researches the first great ventures into the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... the misfortune of Birmingham to be sacrificed to the disagreements of two rival factions, one calling itself Conservative, and the other Radical, both filling the pockets and doing the work of lawyers at the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... so enraged at his wife and daughter because he could not restore their lost comforts. But this is really a better disposition than a mean subservience to misfortune. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... ex, out, and clamare, to cry), is a figure by which the speaker instead of stating a fact, simply utters an expression of surprise or emotion. For instance when he hears some harrowing tale of woe or misfortune instead of saying,—"It is a sad story" he exclaims "What ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... second misfortune of the French, the English barons hastened every where to make peace with the protector, and, by an early submission, to prevent those attainders to which they were exposed on account of their rebellion. Lewis, whose cause was now totally ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... and though in such cases strictness may be necessary, yet actual punishment is out of place. As a rule, reward answers much better. A penny, or a threepenny-piece every night that the accident does not happen, and a forfeit of a halfpenny or two pence for every night of misfortune, is a very efficacious ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... dangerous, being carried along the steep slope, at an angle, in some places, of 35 degrees; and it was constantly shifting, from the continued downward sliding, and from the action of streams, some of which are large, and cut deep channels. In one I had the misfortune to lose my only sheep, which was carried away by the torrent. These streams were crossed by means of sticks and ricketty bamboos, and the steep sides (sometimes twenty or thirty feet high), were ascended ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... practitioners, for whom barges 'drifted away of their own selves' - they having no hand in it, except first cutting them loose, and afterwards plundering them - innocents, meaning no harm, who had the misfortune to observe those foundlings ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... Elias Lonnrot. Both were practising physicians, and in this capacity came into frequent contact with the people of Finland. Topelius, who collected eighty epical fragments of the Kalevala, spent the last eleven years of his life in bed, afflicted with a fatal disease. This misfortune, however, did not damp his enthusiasm. Mr. Crawford tells us that he used to invite the wandering Finnish merchants to his bedside and induce them to sing their heroic poems which he copied down as soon as they were uttered, and that whenever he heard of a renowned Finnish minstrel he ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... on a desert island. This was the mysterious Justice, loftier than that of man; this was the command of the gods. And similarly do we, when some iniquity seems expedient to us, cry loudly that we do it for the sake of posterity, of humanity, of the fatherland. On the other hand, should a great misfortune befall us, we protest that there is no justice, and that there are no gods; but let the misfortune befall our enemy, and the universe is at once repeopled with invisible judges. If, however, some unexpected, disproportionate stroke ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... things, instances of this kind of noble life remain more or less concealed, (while imprudence and error proclaim themselves by misfortune,) but they are assuredly not unfrequent in our English homes. Let us next observe the political and national result of these arrangements. You leave your marriages to be settled by "supply and demand," instead of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... sleep, (how we wished it was!) like that of Rip Van Winkle, yet it was a very long sleep; and, indeed, neither of us cared how long it lasted, we were so heartbroken about what seemed to be the greatest misfortune that had yet happened to us. If we woke up at any time, we went to sleep again as quickly as possible, not caring at all to come back any sooner than was necessary to the contemplation of our miserable situation,—never reflecting for a moment that the ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... who saw her depart, and turned Old Hickory and Old Henry on a southward track. Zene followed with the wagon; he was on no account to loiter out of speaking distance. The usual order of the march being thus reversed, both vehicles moved along lonesomely. Even Boswell and Johnson scented misfortune in the air. Johnson ran in an undeviating line under the carriage, as if he wished his mistress to know he was right there where she could depend on him. His countenance expressed not only gravity, but real concern. Boswell, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... thy sad, sad misfortune May well make thy sons to remember this day; And all may well sigh and feel strongest emotion, For troubles ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... round upon his new antagonist, "Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... speaking definitely of the afternoon of the day after to-morrow. The fact was, he was moved; she too. She had been right not to tell the story earlier, and equally right to tell it before he departed. Some men, most men, hated to hear any tale of real misfortune, at any moment, from a woman, because, of course, it ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... to live on into weekly instalments—she resolved not to go beyond these. But, alas! Primrose had never reckoned on a certain grave difficulty which here confronted her. Hitherto her dealings had been with honest tradespeople; now it was her misfortune, and her sisters', to get into a house where honesty was far from practised. In a thousand little ways Mrs. Dove could pilfer from the girls—she would not for the world have acknowledged to herself that she would really steal; oh, no—but she did ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... as he spoke, and the smile on it was no longer forced, but clear and brave. Hyacinth knew that he was once again in the presence of that mysterious power which enables men and women to meet and conquer loss and pain, against which every kind of misfortune beats in vain. His eyes filled with tears as he took Mr. Quinn's hand and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... sobbed aloud. My heart was wrung, but I was in no condition to assist him; so I bade him be of good cheer, and look on his misfortune as a gloomy avenue to happier and ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... moment; but I'm sorry that I took even a moment's notice of it. Why should one be ruffled because others are unfeeling and impertinent; it is their misfortune, not ours." ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... he had hurried back to the bench, only to find his fears realized. The book had disappeared! His frenzied search yielded no hint of its probable mode of removal. Overcome by a sickening sense of misfortune, he had sunk upon the bench in despair. But fear again roused him and drove him, slinking like a hunted beast, from the park—fear that the possessor of the book, appreciating its contents, but with no thought of returning it, might be ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... sair misfortune cursed your life That you should weep sae free? Is harm upon your bonny wife, The children at your knee? Is scaith upon your house and hame?' McThirst upraised his head: 'My bairns hae done the deed of shame — 'Twere better ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it. Sadness, whether from bereavement, or disappointment, or misfortune of any kind, may linger on through life. In my case, however, the milder and more enduring feeling of sadness had no sufficient cause for existence. The sights which I had seen inspired horror, and horror only. But when the first rush of this ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... he now learned by experience that he could not stoop to fall. Something that was scarcely pride or strength, that was perhaps only refinement, withheld him from capitulation; but he looked on upon his own misfortune with a growing rage, and sometimes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... wide-mouthed bottle with some spirits, and gave it in charge of the seaman who was to carry a portion of the animal for the dinner of that day. It was placed in a canvas bag, but on crossing a Deep watercourse he had the misfortune to break the bottle, which he never mentioned until the following day. The contents soon dried up and became an uniform mass. The intense heat had rendered it so firm that nothing could be made of it; all the gelatinous ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... with plate, and his shelves with learning; power to adorn his church with chandeliers and painted windows; to make glad the cottages of his poor; to grant a loan, to a tottering farmer; to rescue from want a forlorn patriot, or a thriftless scholar. Whether misfortune, or mismanagement, or folly, or vice, had brought its victim low, his want was a passport to Parr's pity, and the dew of his bounty fell alike upon the evil and the good, upon the just and the unjust. It is told of Boerhaave, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various

... better would it be to restrain popular anger and fury, instead of passing useless laws, which can only be broken by those who love virtue and the liberal arts, thus paring down the state till it is too small to harbor men of talent. What greater misfortune for a state can be conceived than that honorable men should be sent like criminals into exile, because they hold diverse opinions which they cannot disguise? What, I say, can be more hurtful than that men who have committed no crime or wickedness should, simply because they are ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... Mr. Caudle: you've taken advantage of my tenderness, my trust in you as a wife—the more fool I for my pains!—and you've separated a happy couple for ever. No; I'm not talking in the clouds; I'm talking in your bed, the more my misfortune. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... means, my dear sir; a damned bad author generally makes a very good reviewer. Indeed, sir, to be candid with you, I never allow any gentleman to review for me, unless he has met with a misfortune similar to yours. It is one of the necessary qualifications of a good reviewer that he should have failed as an author; for without the exacerbated feelings arising from disappointment, he would not possess gall ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of Serbia's defeat caused no undue grief. One man's misfortune is another's luck. ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... fanciful to say that the greatest misfortune which in a large way man has had to meet in his agriculture arises from this peculiar stress which grain crops put upon the soil. If these grains grew upon perennial plants, in the manner of our larger ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... and, by thinking no longer of dead souls, but only of your only living one, regain, with God's help, the better road? I too am leaving the town to-morrow. Hasten, therefore, lest, bereft of my assistance, you meet with some dire misfortune." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... further, but for the particular esteem I have for Madame DE CHOISEUL, in whose health I take no small interest." This uncommonly-respectable woman will long be quoted and deservedly regretted, because she was modest in greatness, beneficent in prosperity, courageous in misfortune, pure in the vortex of corruption, solid in the midst of frivolity, as simple in her language as she was brilliant in her understanding, and as indulgent to others as she was superior to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... shake the hand of his father, between whom and himself there had been a coolness—glad to see his little sister, whom he remembered so pretty and smiling, and pained at the alteration which time, grief, and misfortune had made in the shattered old man. Emmy had come out to the door in her black clothes and whispered to him of her mother's death, and not to speak of it to their father. There was no need of this caution, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... before the sun his head had reared; The door was opened, and a torch appeared. Misfortune then he fancied full in sight; More pleased he'd been to rise without a light, And clearly thought 'twas over with him now; The flame approached;—the drops ran o'er his brow; With terror he for pardon ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... for that unhappy young man, but it did seem as if the misfortune had happened then, rather than at any other time, in order that cousin Tom might all the sooner have the fit reward of his exemplary conduct,—papa thought so very highly of him. Aunt Tulliver must certainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Tom; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... the friends we dearest love Who were near when sorrow bound us. When no clouds o'ercast our sky, When no evil doth attend us, Then will many gather nigh, Ever ready to befriend us. But when darkness shades our path, When misfortune hath its hour, When we lie beneath its wrath, Some will leave us to its power. Often have we seen at night, When the clouds have gathered o'er us, One lone star send forth its light, Marking out the path before us. Like that star some friendly ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... need waxed sorer and sorer, and how I sent old Ilse with another letter to Pudgla, and how heavy a misfortune this brought upon me. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... his life Saadi took part in the wars of the Saracens against the Crusaders in Palestine, and also in the wars for the faith in India. In the course of his wanderings he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by the Franks, in Syria, and was ransomed by a friend, but only to fall into worse thraldom by marrying a shrewish wife. He has thus related ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... innocence, however, was formally recognized by the king, Louis X, before the end of his short reign of eighteen months, a sum of ten thousand livres was granted to his children, "in consideration of the great misfortune which has befallen them," and his principal accuser, the Comte de Valois, stricken with paralysis ten years later, made amends by a general distribution of alms to the poor of Paris, with the request that they would ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... graciously consent to see me. I found him in his office in the top story of the building, an appropriate place to avoid being run to covert by the public, but inconvenient because of the embarrassment which might result from dropping out of the window if he should have the misfortune to be cornered. To say that I was received might be throwing too much of a glamour over the situation. At least, I was not summarily ejected, nor treated to a dissolving view of Uncle Remus disappearing ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... them? When people's lives are all spoiled by something they have had nothing to do with—by death, or sickness, or accident, or misfortune." ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... professing to depict Snobs, it is only your own ugly mug which you are copying with a Narcissus-like conceit and fatuity.' But I shall pardon this explosion of ill-temper on the part of my constant reader, reflecting upon the misfortune of his birth and country. It is impossible for ANY Briton, perhaps, not to be a Snob in some degree. If people can be convinced of this fact, an immense point is gained, surely. If I have pointed out the disease, let us hope that other scientific ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... does either of these things thereby proves that he ought not to succeed—and he will not succeed. Indeed, how do you know that these fires of misfortune through which you are passing are not heat designed by Fate to temper the steel of your real character. Certainly that ought to be true if you have the stuff in you. And if you have not the stuff in you, Yale, Harvard, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... Nonsuch was loaded down with so fabulously rich a freight, the first consideration of its new owners was to temporarily deposit it in some place of safety while they pursued their quest of the missing Hubert Saint Leger, lest haply misfortune should befall them and, losing their ship, they should lose their treasure also. And now it was that George had his eyes opened, for the first time, to one at least of the disadvantages of so stupendous a stroke of ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... conversation they had exchanged no words, and Eleanor therefore entered school that morning still believing the Phi Sigma Tau to be at the bottom of her misfortune. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... from her country by the rude hands of her rebellious subjects, and driven to implore their aid? No surely,—ten thousand swords would spring from their scabbards to avenge her injuries;—so she hoped, so she reasoned; for merited misfortune had not yet impaired her courage or abated her confidence, nor had the sense of guilt impressed upon her mind one lesson of humility. Her situation, also, admitted of no other alternative than to confide herself to Elizabeth or surrender ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... measures Mr. John Hayes had concerted with his bride, to keep their wedding secret; for finding no redemption from their hands, without the expense of a larger sum of money than he was master of, he was necessitated to let his father know of his misfortune. Mr. Hayes hearing of his son's adventures, as well of his marriage and his being pressed at the same time, his resentment for the one did not extinguish his affection for him as a father, but that ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... assure the ingenuous Reader that in no treatise of the translator's, whether original or translatitious, shall willingly be offered the meanest rub to the reputation of any worthy gentleman, and that, however providence dispose of him, no misfortune shall be able to induce his mind to any complacency in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... world, and he was penniless, too, as he rode down the mountain steeps. But the impulse of work had come to him, and he joyfully welcomed it as something vastly better and worthier of his strong young manhood than any brooding over misfortune could be, or any leading of the old aristocratic, half-idle planter life, if that ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... can as it were be counted on the fingers, will hardly be disposed to allow that it has any plan at all. Banishment and flight have assembled together, in the forest of Arden, a strange band: a Duke dethroned by his brother, who, with the faithful companions of his misfortune, lives in the wilds on the produce of the chase; two disguised Princesses, who love each other with a sisterly affection; a witty court fool; lastly, the native inhabitants of the forest, ideal and natural shepherds and shepherdesses. These lightly- sketched figures form a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... prologue, the curtain rises, and we, as spectators, look in upon a process of interlocution. The scene is the green, sunny garden of Eden, that to which the memory of humanity reverts as to its dim golden age, and which ever expresses the bright dream of our youth, ere the rigor of misfortune or the dulness of experience has spoilt it. The dramatis personae are three individuals, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. There are the mysterious tree, with its wonderful fruit,—the beautiful, but inquisitive woman,—the thoughtful, but too compliant man,—and the insinuating reptile. One speaks, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... although the same blows which overturn the edifice of his opponent are as fatal to his own speculative structures, if such he has wished to rear; he need not feel any sorrow in regard to this seeming misfortune, as he has now before him a fair prospect into the practical region in which he may reasonably hope to find a more secure foundation ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... they had separated them in one place, they began again in another. This lasted the better part of the night. Nevertheless with great labour and endurance at last they were separated. And be it known to you that this was the greatest misfortune that ever befell a host, and little did it lack that the host was not lost utterly. But God would not ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin

... sometimes in the garden if the weather was pleasant. He was much interrupted by friends dropping in to see him; but, however busy, he welcomed whoever came, and would turn aside good-naturedly from his manuscript to entertain a visitor or to hear a story of misfortune. After dinner he retired to his "den" to read; for he read constantly, whatever the distractions about him, and was much given to ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... lost collections, of his precious instruments destroyed, his books torn, burned to ashes. So much that was valuable gone! He gazed with tearful eyes at this vast disaster, thinking not of the future, but of the irreparable misfortune which dealt him so severe a blow. He was immediately joined by Johnson; the old sailor's face bore signs of his recent sufferings; he had been obliged to struggle against his revolted companions, defending the ship which had been intrusted ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... Ferragut. Her meeting was almost an embrace.... "My dear Captain! Such a long time since I have seen you!..." She had heard of him frequently through her young friend, but even so, she could not but consider it a misfortune that the sailor had ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... you would not have found me, Lord Ragnall," I answered, "but as it happens misfortune has kept ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... have had the misfortune to offend Mr. Levi, and he is my sworn enemy. If you really mean to go into this ridiculous affair, allow me to bring witnesses, and I will prove to you he has been threatening vengeance against me these two years—and you know a lie is not much to a Jew. Does this appear ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is ominous, infectious, and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both, and that they have never acknowledged the true universality of that Christian worship which ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... lesson from this, a lesson for the battle of life, which every one of us has to fight from our cradle to our grave—the battle against misery, poverty, misfortune, sickness; the battle against worse enemies even than they—the battle against our own weak hearts, and the sins which so easily beset us against laziness, dishonesty, profligacy, bad tempers, hard-heartedness, deserved disgrace, the contempt of our neighbours, and just punishment ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... resolute nature, however, after all these years, the savage and uncompromising sincerity of purpose shown by her Malay kinsmen seemed at last preferable to the sleek hypocrisy, to the polite disguises, to the virtuous pretences of such white people as she had had the misfortune to come in contact with. After all it was her life; it was going to be her life, and so thinking she fell more and more under the influence of her mother. Seeking, in her ignorance, a better side ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... many praises to the zeal of M. de Vansay, prefect of the department at that time: the misfortune happened on the 15th september, and already on the 26th of the same month, the government having been informed and solicited by that magistrate, ordered M. Alavoine, one of the best architects, to go to Rouen, and confer with the prefect on the means of remedying the havoc ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet

... are stricken dumb by the magnitude of your misfortune, losing everything that made life worth living, as it were. But cheer up, my dear boy, for I am not so selfish as to wish to deprive you of your fortune; and as soon as I heard that Dainty had eloped with another, I began to plan to help you, and I soon saw ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... The Restoration in England that gave Charles II a throne, drove Milton into absolute seclusion, and the last twelve years of his life were passed in enforced isolation. But this blind, deserted, broken-hearted, but illustrious scholar and poet, conquered despair, triumphed over every misfortune, and gave to the world those three great poems which have made his name immortal. Even poverty, which has been a hardship to the individual, has proved a boon to himself and to the cause of humanity. Science teaches us that ordinary mud has in it elements which, arranged according to the ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given

... stay in his cabin, he felt restless and ill at ease. A nervous sense of anxiety hung over him. He seemed to himself to be expecting some misfortune. His nerves, weakened by the lonely life he had been living for the past months, and exhausted by the sleepless hours of the previous night, kept presenting picture after picture of possible ills. He looked over both his revolvers, to ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... king is useless, if the cabinet hate me. Besides, I have had the misfortune to anger Madame de Foucheres, and since then everything ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... the words, this intimacy of his wife with a servant! Jansoulet stopped, his rage suddenly calmed; then, with a gesture of disgust, he flung himself out, slamming the doors, more eager to fly the misfortune and the horror whose presence he divined in his own home, than to seek elsewhere the help he had ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... The morning broke badly. I lashed my hand to my hammock and was forced to call on the P.O. to extricate me. He remarked, with ill-disguised bitterness, that I could think of more ineffectual things to do than any rookie it had been his misfortune to meet. I told him that I didn't have to think of them, they just ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

... invalid she had a surprising color. She was indeed, as Jennings had remarked, like a tropical flower. But there was something sensual and evil about her exuberance. But not a whisper had been heard against her reputation. Everyone, sorry for the misfortune which condemned this lovely woman to a sickbed, treated her with respect. Maraquito, as some people said, may have been wicked, but no anchorite could have led, on the face of it, a more austere life. Her smile was alluring, and she looked like the Lurline drawing men to destruction. Fortunes ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... Sam and Annie admitted misfortune,—admitted it almost cheerfully. Annie and her family did not consider illness or any of its hard facts vulgar or indecent. It had its place in their scheme of life, as it had not in that of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... roof, seem to be regarded by the spectators as a tomasha (show), to be stared at and enjoyed, as they would stare at and enjoy anything not seen every day; on the other hand, the occupants of the house regard their misfortune as kismet. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... him as well as to all who could understand them; for though she hoped to keep all together, and to be able to act for them herself, no one could guess how they might be separated, and she could not shake off that foreboding of misfortune which had haunted her ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is ever drear, For midst its scenes of toil and care There 's aye some joy the heart to cheer— There 's aye some spot that 's green and fair. To gain that spot the aim be ours, For nocht we 'll get unless we try; And when misfortune round us lours, We 'll jouk and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... deliberate doctrines of the Church which have, on the whole, been conspicuously cautious and balanced and sane in these matters. The ideas and practices of the Old Civilization are older and more widespread than and not identifiable with either Christian or Catholic culture, and it will be a great misfortune if the issues between the Old Civilization and the New are allowed to slip into the deep ruts of religious controversies that are ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... up Thornton's Gap, on the coast range, I had the misfortune to lose the top of my third finger on my right hand. We had 36 bullocks on the waggon, and a faulty chain breaking, only six bullocks were left to hold the waggon. The near side ones being lazy, allowed the waggon to drift down towards the steep descent of 500 feet to the bottom. I ran ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... last. Of the incidents and episodes before this actually comes off, the most noteworthy are a curious instance of the punctilio of chivalry (the Count having once promised Melior that no one but herself shall gird on his sword, makes a difficulty when Urraca and Persewis arm him), and a misfortune by which he, rowing carelessly by himself, falls into the power of a felon knight, Armans of Thenodon. This last incident, however, though it alarms his two benefactresses, is not really unlucky. For, in the first place, Armans is not at home, and his ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... been all right if I'd been ass enough to play into his hands and gone blowin' me nose and grizzlin', and whinin' about my misfortune, and let him go gassin' about the sadness of it and all that. But because I kept my end ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... He had not succeeded with life. He lacked the flame or the luck or the tact—something. He had come back to the place he started from. He had renewed old acquaintances, laughed over the ancient jokes, and said he was sorry for those who had had misfortune. When he met Irene Straley he hardly recalled his love, except to smile at it as a boyish whim. He had forgotten the pangs of that as one forgets almost all his yester aches. He had forgotten the pains he had seen others suffer, even more easily ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... not talk like this!" said Mercedes, softly; "the lot which met me I deserved even more than—Broken faithfulness must always revenge itself bitterly. The misfortune which nowadays pulls me down has nothing to do with the past, and therefore I ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... trees'. This is the chief reason why one who, like myself, finds it his main business in life to introduce younger men and women to the study of Philosophy must think indifference to Greek literature about the worst misfortune which could happen to our ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... justly claim more than two thousand inhabitants. There was a crowd on the bank similar to the one at Igoon, most of the women and girls standing with their arms folded in their sleeves. Several were seated close to the water and met the same misfortune as those in similar positions at Igoon. The Korsackoff made a much greater swell than the Ingodah, and those who caught its effects were well moistened. We landed from, the steamer's boat and ascended the bank to the village. Several fat old Manjours eyed us closely and answered with great brevity ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... "Misfortune! well, perhaps it is; at any rate it is very ungenteel to have such a memory. I have heard my wife say that to show you have a long memory looks very vulgar; and that you can't give a greater proof of gentility than by forgetting a thing as soon as possible—more ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... Art's sake". His object in singing appears to have been intensely practical. The world was inhabited by countless hordes of spirits, which were believed to be ever exercising themselves to influence mankind. The spirits caused suffering; they slew victims; they brought misfortune; they were also the source of good or "luck ". Man regarded spirits emotionally; he conjured them with emotion; he warded off their attacks with emotion; and his emotions were given rhythmical expression by ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... Giovanni had expected he would, the latter would have repeated his request that a pretext should be found which should explain the duel to the world. But there was such extraordinary assurance in the Zouave's manner that Sant' Ilario suddenly became exasperated with him and lost his temper, a misfortune which very ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... father had died when Gustave was twelve and his mother found it easy to spoil an only son who was handsome and popular. He suffered the misfortune of a mental brilliancy that learns too readily and of a personal charm that wins its way too easily. He danced well; he was facile at the piano; and he had so pronounced a gift as an amateur actor that a celebrated professional had advised him ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune, his fate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no sympathy. To go back to what is now matter of history, the right honourable Baronet bore a chief part in the restoration of the currency. By a very large proportion of his followers the restoration of the currency is considered ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... much worse the position is now, both for Ellaline and me, and that the little wretch didn't exaggerate when he boasted that I'm more "in his power" than ever. What a misfortune that Ellaline should have come to Scotland—so near where we shall be, too, if we go to the Roman Wall! He has only to tell the whole thing to Sir Lionel, and say: "If you don't believe it, run up to such and such a place, and ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... passed. I stopped reading. Brian seemed inclined for the first time since his misfortune to talk over ways and means, and how we were to arrange our future. I shirked the discussion. Things would adjust themselves, I said evasively. I had some vague plans. Perhaps they would soon materialize. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... who also followed the hounds under disadvantages, namely, on foot (a loose way of hunting which had struck some even frivolous minds as immoral), was naturally also in the rear, and happened to be within sight of Rex's misfortune. He ran to give help which was greatly needed, for Rex was a great deal stunned, and the complete recovery of sensation came in the form of pain. Joel Dagge on this occasion showed himself that most useful of personages, whose knowledge ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... gaiety, Alice Lee had the pleasing feeling that she was restored to the habitation and the haunts of her childhood, from which she had not departed without much pain, the more felt, perhaps, because suppressed, in order to avoid irritating her father's sense of his misfortune. Finally, she enjoyed for the instant the gleam of self-satisfaction by which we see the young and well-disposed so often animated, when they can be, in common phrase, helpful to those whom they love, and perform at the moment of need some of those little domestic tasks, which ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... conscious of his loss. On the morning of her death he asked the servant "whether there was life above stairs?" On being taken to see the corpse, he gazed at it for a moment, uttered one passionate cry of grief, and never spoke of Mrs. Unwin more. He had the misfortune to survive her three years and a half, during which relatives and friends were kind, and Miss Perowne partly filled, the place of Mrs. Unwin. Now and then, there was a gleam of reason and faint revival of literary faculty, but composition was ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... business, and Maurice was preparing at a military college for service in the army, which he was shortly to join, when a certain event occurred at Kensington, trifling enough in itself, but in the sequel pregnant with bitter misfortune to at least two human souls. There came to reside in the house adjoining old Mr Gray's, an elderly widow lady and her orphan niece,—Mrs. Lamertine and Miss Adelais Cameron. They came there principally for the sake of the latter,— ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... said, finally, "if that wasn't so English — and so funny! Still, I suppose that's one reason you Britishers are as big an empire as you are. You think it's sort of funny and a bit of a misfortune, don't you, to be ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston

... to gather anemones, you are wasting your time. Thoughts must come naturally, like wild flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed—even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past—like exotics. And it is the misfortune of men of letters of our day that they cannot afford to wait for this natural flowering of thought, but are driven to the forcing process, with the results which ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... took place that afternoon. We buried him next to Musidora. I had had enough of vaults, regarding them, with reason, as uncertain places of sepulture for the presumably defunct. I had never heard, or read, of cremation. I had had the misfortune to break my slate a few days before, and the biggest fragment made a nice tombstone for Caspar Hauser. With a nail and with infinite toil I produced a ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... this young Dorothy. And to affairs which threatened to result unpleasantly, he had always managed to impart an agreeable turn, since then, by virtue of preserving a cool heart. What if by some misfortune he were to get back his real youth? and were to become again the flustered boy who blundered from stammering rapture to wild misery, and back again, at the least word or gesture of a ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... are toward it is well to carry them through before the enthusiasm has time to cool. But it could not be helped, the wind was dead, and the ship could not be handled now until the sea breeze sprang up; and, after all, the delay was not an unmitigated misfortune, for it ensured to the crew time enough to complete their preparations for the coming fight and take breakfast afterward; and even at that day it was fully recognised that an Englishman fights best when ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... upon the shore at the highest tide. All efforts to float her again were unavailing. The calamity was irretrievable. The Aimable contained all the ammunition, the mechanic tools, and the farming and household utensils. But La Salle, ever rising superior to the blows of misfortune, still retained his firmness. Diligently he engaged in removing the stores from the wrecked ship. One of the shallops had been, as ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... it is generally called, the Court Ministry, will be able to stand its ground; nevertheless a change of Ministry would not alter the aspect of our affair in the least, for if the other or movement party come in, the liberty of the press (a great misfortune for Spain) would be probably granted; at all events, the influence of the English Ambassador would be greater than it is even at present, and upon his assistance I may rely at all ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... sorry to hear you have failed in business, Mr. Fenbrook," Ruth said composedly. "But I am sorrier to see that you consider me in a measure to blame for your misfortune." ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... Misfortune, I have mistook his Worship's Coat for my Gown. [A little Book drops out ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... that this was somewhat rude, she, in her effort to escape, plunged deeper into misfortune by turning to Sinton, with a blushing countenance, and asking him to take another cup of tea—a proposal that was obviously absurd, seeing that she had a moment before filled up his ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... of the disaster are not due to faulty organisation, but to misfortune in all risks which had ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... directly on a small two-story affair with a factory smokestack. It was fenced in, and the fence was covered with drying hides. I will spare you details, but the function of the place was to make glue, soap, and the like of those cattle whose term of life was marked by misfortune rather than by the butcher's knife. The sole workman at this economical and useful occupation did not seem to mind it. The Captain claimed he was as good as a buzzard at ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... brothers of my muchacha, who lived in the same yard and who evidently had convictions about standing by a comrade in misfortune. The elder, a boy of seven, was fairly clean; but the younger, somewhere between three and five, was clad in a single low-necked slip of filthy pink cotton, which draped itself at a coquettish angle ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... for art's sake," also wrote Mr. William Archer, "the play simply does not exist." He added: "but Mr. Zangwill would not dream of appealing to such a standard." Mr. Archer had the misfortune to see the play in New York side by side with his more cynical confrere, and thus his very praise has an air of apologia to Mr. Walkley and the great doctrine of "art for art's sake." It would almost seem as if he even takes a "work of art" and a "work of art ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... be uncertain, and ill success is not always the consequence of bad measures: naval wars are by the nature of the element on which they are to be conducted, more uncertain than any other; so that, though it cannot but be suspected that the common people will murmur at any disappointment, call every misfortune a crime, and think themselves betrayed by the ministry, if Spain is not reduced in a single summer, it might be reasonably hoped, that men enlightened by a long familiarity with the accounts of past, and instructed by personal experience ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... an orphan, like yourself, of father and mother," said Joanna; "and for my great misfortune, Dick, and hitherto for yours, I am a rich marriage. My Lord Foxham had me to ward; yet it appears Sir Daniel bought the marriage of me from the king, and a right dear price he paid for it. So here was I, poor babe, with two great and rich men ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that must inevitably follow present conditions and methods will certainly lead to misfortune and loss, not only to our national credit and prosperity and to financial enterprise, but to those of our people who seek employment as a means of livelihood and to those whose only capital ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... passage for the Americas. He imagined there was the proper sort of island for him somewhere in those waters. He had always had a weakness for "natives and hot weather." Bedient was asked to make his need known in any case of misfortune or extremity. This was the point of the first letter, and ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... titles, as everywhere attested by incurable litigation and strife. They thus undermine the morals of the people, and pave the way for violence and crime. They cripple a great national industry and source of wealth, and insult the principles of American jurisprudence. And the misfortune of this legislation is heightened by the probability of its continuance; for it is not easy to uproot a body of laws once accepted by a people, however mischievous in their character. Custom, and the faculty of adaptation, have a very reconciling influence upon communities as well as ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... my employ." (The old fox had not the slightest idea such a contretemps was possible, but in order to play safe he considered it good policy to hearten Ole for the fray.) "Should he defeat you, captain, I have no hesitancy in saying to you now that such a misfortune would have a most disastrous effect on your future in my employ. You know me. When I order a job done, I want it done, and I want it done well. Understand! I don't want you to maim or kill the man, but just give him ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... the excuse you have made for me, but I cannot use it in this case. My foolish brother must on no account make the charge which will expose his daughter; it would be a serious misfortune were I to arrive too late. What is the use of being the wife of the imperial magistrate, if a Nuremberg drawbridge cannot be raised for me even after sunset? If the petition has already gone, I must see Meister Gottlieb. True, it was not to be sent until to-morrow, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... in trouble, for he is always busy making trouble. His very amusements mean trouble for all who have the misfortune to have any thing to do with him. Julius told me that no man in the 'Cameronians' had a worse name than ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... was the grave of our seamen; and so on: the other, merely answering objections which might be started, and where there might be a difference of opinion. He was however glad that the propositions were likely to be entered upon the journals; since, if from any misfortune the business should be deferred, it might succeed another year. Sure he was that it could not fail to succeed sooner or later. He highly approved of what Mr. Pitt had said, relative to the language it became us to hold ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... again to Jehovah and said, "Jehovah, why hast thou brought misfortune upon this people? Why is it that thou has sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name he has wronged this people, and thou hast done nothing at ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... the war in this theatre had been far from favourable to our arms. In late 1914 our Expeditionary Force failed in their landing at Tanga, a misfortune that was not compensated for by our subsequent reverse at Jassin near the Anglo-German border on the coast. The gallant though unsuccessful defence of the latter town by our Indian troops, however, caused great losses to the enemy, and robbed him of ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... Sealey (born 1747, and married Harriett, daughter of James Pownall, of Wilmslow) gave up their time almost entirely to the invention of paper machinery. This invention was finished in 18O7, [Footnote: Dict. Nat. Biog. Vol. XX.] and then misfortune fell upon them: the misfortune that so often descends like the "black bat night" upon those who have spent all their money, thought, and labour on the effort to launch their self-designed ship upon ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... rage and despair? He was accused of being the husband of the most beautiful woman in Paris. Was that such a horrible thing, such a terrible misfortune? And who was the brother-lawyer, the good brother-lawyer, who had taken pleasure in coming to show him ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy

... young man he applied for a situation under Commodore Wilkes on the Exploring Expedition, but did not succeed in obtaining an appointment. He thought this a great misfortune, as he was fond of travel, and he promised to do all sorts of wonderful things, should he be allowed to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... Down we go, sugar plantations studding either shore; those past, flat dreary banks succeed; ships of all nations are coming up and going down by the aid of tugboats; two large vessels look unpleasantly "fixed"—they are John Bull and Jonathan, brothers in misfortune and ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... your opinions, my man," said he; "and, if you talk of gallantry, I don't think she has stuck to us as she might have done in the gale. Probably, though, she couldn't help this; for she's a wretched tub and has the misfortune of having a ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... but that moment was the bitterest of his whole life. He knew better than anyone else that this was probably the beginning of financial misfortune, for a very important transaction was even now pending that he feared would take his all. As a merchant he had an honorable reputation and position, but this unfortunate speculation would ruin him. Failure seemed inevitable. But he hoped to save enough to pay every debt and still be able to live, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... the favor of Ivan IV. by the present of this new kingdom. He made his way to the Irtish and Obi, opened trade with the rich khanate of Bokhara, south of the desert, and in various ways sought to consolidate the conquest he had made. But misfortune came to the conqueror. One day, being surprised by the Tartars when unprepared, he leaped into the Irtish in full armor and tried to swim its rapid current. The armor he wore had been sent him by the czar, and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... enough between friends, was suddenly succeeded by an ill-dissembled anger, a cold, stinging tone, in presence of which Claire was as perplexed as by a difficult problem. Sometimes, too, a singular presentiment, the ill-defined intuition of a great misfortune, was mingled with her uneasiness; for all women have in some degree a kind of second sight, and, even in the most innocent, ignorance of evil is suddenly illumined ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... Pounds were so called "because vessels have had the misfortune to be pounded against them in gales of wind," which we regard as a doubtful derivation. There are small ponds here, upheld by the clay, which were formerly called the Clay Pits. Perhaps this, or Clay Ponds, is the origin of the name. Water is found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... surely not have been a woman of the world if she had not asked herself this question. Did he think that on seeing her again he would care for her as before? Did he imagine that intervening years, which had brought misfortune to her family, would bring her more within his grasp? Or was his intention in writing still less pleasing to her than this? Had he written, speaking so guardedly of past friendship, with the desire to ward off any hope she might cherish ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... he might, at this day, have been leading the counsels of the State, and helping the onward movements of the world. Then it directly charged Lady Byron with meanly forsaking her husband in a time of worldly misfortune; with fabricating a destructive accusation of crime against him, and confirming this accusation by years of persistent silence ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... While the shack lurched this way and that, Patsy pointed the gun toward the greatest disturbance and fired. He did not think: he hit anybody, but he apologized to Irish for missing and blamed the darkness for the misfortune. Py cosh, he sure tried—witness the bullet holes which he had bored through the four sides of the shack; he besought Irish to count them; which Irish did ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... Remus might graciously consent to see me. I found him in his office in the top story of the building, an appropriate place to avoid being run to covert by the public, but inconvenient because of the embarrassment which might result from dropping out of the window if he should have the misfortune to be cornered. To say that I was received might be throwing too much of a glamour over the situation. At least, I was not summarily ejected, nor treated to a dissolving view of Uncle Remus disappearing in the distance, so I considered myself fortunate. I told ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... var Beautiful eyes. Tulip, Red Declaration of love. Tritoma Fiery temper. Verbena Sensibility. " Purple I weep for you. " White Pray for me. Violet, Blue Faithfulness. " White Purity, candor. Woodbine Fraternal love. Wall Flower Fidelity in misfortune. Wistaria Close friendship. Wax Plant Artificial beauty. Yucca Your looks pierce me. Yew Sadness. Zinnia I ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... him. That love hath grown up with him. When, at fifteen years old, he learnt that she was a nameless stranger, his first cry was that he would wed her and give her his name. Never hath his love faltered; and even when this misfortune of her rank was known, and he lost all hope of gaining her, while her mother bade her renounce him, his purpose was even still to watch over and guard her; and at the end, beyond all our expectations, they have had her mother's ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... tenderness and his head bowed in humility as he read these good, sweet, womanly lines, and for the moment he was ready to go to her and receive pardon kneeling. But as he thought of the wrong he had done her, the misfortune he had brought upon her, a stubborn, unaccountable resolution hardened his heart. "No, I will not go back till I can go as her equal. I am broken and in disgrace now. I will not burden her ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... set upon doing everything in their power to retrieve the misfortune that had come upon them earlier in the day, by means of which they had lost the first deer, Thad meant to try his level best in order to run across another ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... continued, "and should Burgundy suffer any great misfortune or be crippled for an hour, those small states would be upon his back like a pack of wolves, and he would be ruined. Lorraine, Bourbon, and St. Pol do not see that Burgundy alone stands between them and the greedy maw ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... life,—families which shabbily starve for ten months, in order to make a lordly show at "the Springs" for the other two. A most accomplished Russian lady, the Princess D——, said to me,—"The want of an active, intelligent country society is our greatest misfortune. Our estates thus become a sort of exile. The few, here and there, who try to improve the condition of the people, through the improvement of the soil, are not supported by their neighbors, and lose heart. The more we gain in the life of the capital, the more we are oppressed by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... expedition of 1807. During the bombardment of Copenhagen Baird was wounded. Shortly after his return, he was sent out to the Peninsular War in command of a considerable force which was sent to Spain to co-operate with Sir John Moore, to whom he was appointed second in command. It was Baird's misfortune that he was junior by a few days both to Moore and to Lord Cavan, under whom he had served at Alexandria, and thus never had an opportunity of a chief command in the field. At the battle of Corunna he succeeded to the supreme command after Moore's fall, but shortly afterwards ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... A singular misfortune had befallen him. Who could have guessed that one of the few people who knew his real history, Tania, the little street child, would be picked up by the houseboat girls and brought to Cape May for the summer? Tania must not be allowed to betray him. If she ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers

... at Daphne, by Antioch, he had some dreams which clearly foreboded his brother's death; and as he leaped out of his bed in a disturbed manner, there came messengers that acquainted him with that calamity. So when he had lamented this misfortune for a while, he put off the main part of his mourning, and made haste to march against his enemies; and when he had performed a march that was above his strength, and was gone as far as Libanus, he got him eight hundred men of those that lived near to that mountain as his assistants, and ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... has been my misfortune, and the misfortune of my family, to live among those blacks (and they have lived upon us) for twenty-four years. I have employed hundreds of them, and with the exception of one, named Richard Hunter, not one of them has done for us ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... meditation, till at last he broke silence in these words:- 'It is true I have a secret which weighs heavy upon my mind, and which I am still loth to reveal; but I have a presentiment that my end is approaching, and that a heavy misfortune is about to fall upon this city: I will therefore unburden myself, for it were now a sin ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... swarm in the woods, robber-bees appear. You may know them by their saucy, chiding, devil-may-care hum. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and they make the most of the misfortune of their neighbors; and thereby pave the way for their own ruin. The hunter marks their course and the next day looks them up. On this occasion the day was hot and the honey very fragrant, and a line of bees was soon established S. S. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said to him, "Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... be given to her correspondence: that every letter, no matter how inconsequential, should be answered quickly, fully, and courteously, with the questioner always encouraged to come again if any problem of whatever nature came to her. He told his editors that ignorance on any question was a misfortune, not a crime; and he wished their correspondence treated in the most courteous ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... which is disallowed, must not be kneaded in mortar, lest it bring misfortune to others. R. Judah said, "it is worthless." "A cow which drank water of purification?" "Her flesh is unclean for twenty-four hours."(750) R. Judah said, "it becomes ...
— Hebrew Literature

... the strongest reason for suppressing his sobs. Captain Edney was approaching. He was the last person to whom he would have wished to betray his guilt and misfortune. He loved and respected him; and we fear most the disapprobation of those we love and respect. Moreover, through him the heart-breaking intelligence of her son's evil courses might reach Mrs. Manly. But no doubt Frank's chief motive for concealing the cause of ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... he raised his head, "I am of the misfortune to be but young in London, and I am in need of your friendship. I find myself pressed for rapid transportation. Pray you, give me your mount, for I must have speed. I shall not need the service of your seconding. Indulge me now by asking no more, and wait until we meet again. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... that the British Artillery were poor shots. Far from it. Their range was very good, and, as they had plenty of practice every day, shot after shot went home. I ascribe our comparative immunity to a Higher Power, which averted misfortune from us. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... fail to prevent such a misfortune to our people of Missouri, there is one that cannot fail. The Confederates never wanted us, and would not have us. I assume, therefore, that the War will not cease, but will be continued until the Rebellion shall be overcome. It cannot and will not cease, so far as the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... His was not one of those cold spirits of which the fire is put out by the fuel. In council, in debate, in society, he was all life and energy. His measures were strong, prompt, and daring, his oratory animated and glowing. His spirits were constantly high. No misfortune, public or private, could depress him. He was at once the most unlucky and the happiest public man ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... reason," whose aim is the augmentation of our happiness. But there are two other sciences which are much more important for the promotion of happiness—Ethics and Politics—and these, neglected by men of genius, have made little way in the course of two thousand years. It is a grave misfortune that Descartes and Newton did not devote themselves to perfecting these sciences, so incomparably more useful for mankind than those in which they made their great discoveries. They fell into a prevailing ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... of bitter medicine, though minute, may have a salutary force, so words, though few and painful, uttered seasonably, may rouse the prostrate energies of those who meet misfortune ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... melancholy, grizzled man of the name of Tari (Charlie) Coffin. He was a native of Oahu, in the Sandwich Islands; and had gone to sea in his youth in the American whalers; a circumstance to which he owed his name, his English, his down-east twang, and the misfortune of his innocent life. For one captain, sailing out of New Bedford, carried him to Nuka-hiva and marooned him there among the cannibals. The motive for this act was inconceivably small; poor Tari's wages, which were thus economised, would scarce have shook the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could he possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's hesitation, therefore, I ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... si-polan[4] yang sakit kalmarin itu? He has quite recovered his former health— Sudah sihat balik saperti sedia lama. Thanks to the favouring influence of your good fortune, we are free from all misfortune and sickness— Dengan berkat tuah tuah tulong tiada-lah satu apa-apa mara-bahaya deri-pada ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell

... have dreamed of him sometimes? and though he is so kind to me in reality, I always fancy him cruel to me in my dreams. I suppose it is on account of his black eyes and black whiskers," added Miss Halliday, in a meditative tone. "It is certainly a misfortune for a person to have blacker eyes and whiskers than the rest of the world; for there seems something stern and hard, and almost murderous, in such ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... sunk in despondency, his companion in misfortune drew a chair to the opposite side of the chimney-corner, and began to gaze at him with a sort of solemn earnestness, which at length compelled him, though almost in spite of himself, to pay some attention to the singular ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... diminished. Of these movements, however, his superior officers reaped as yet the honour. He was even superseded (Aug. 6, 1794) very shortly after their success. But this, which at the moment seemed a heavy misfortune, was, in truth, one of the luckiest circumstances that ever ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... are the only nation living, as regards religion and military discipline, according to the antique fashion; he would then see that the evil habits of that Court would in no long space of time create more disorders than any other misfortune that could arise there in any period whatever.' In this scientific and deliberate opinion pronounced by the profoundest thinker of the sixteenth century, the Papacy is accused of having caused both the moral depravation and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... moment it seemed as if misfortune had ended in triumph. Congratulations poured in upon both Sir Charles and his wife; the official leaders welcomed the judgment. Mr. Chamberlain sent an express message to Downing Street: 'Case against Dilke dismissed with costs, but the petitioner has got his divorce against his wife.' Mr. Gladstone ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... He had been a young man of rare culture before misfortune struck him. He knew his Homer and his Plato as well as how to swing a sword. "Yet," as he remarked with half jest, half sigh, "all his philosophy did not make him one whit ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... mother country as one means of preventing the colony from aspiring to independence. They admitted the abstract injustice of slavery, and one remarked, that a difference of the color of the skin was a misfortune, not a crime. They were not, however, disposed to entertain a thought of emancipation, without being ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... shot and shell whistled about the Hornet, the enemy came closer, and every American prepared to submit as gracefully as possible to the inevitable. Captain Biddle addressed his men feelingly, telling them to show the same restraint in misfortune that they had in victory, and then the gallant officer coolly awaited the moment when he should be obliged to haul down his flag to save the lives ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... expression, or said what he would prefer not to say, or for a moment lost sight of the precise point at which he was aiming, to hurry on with increasing rapidity, as if to get as far as possible from his misfortune, or cause it to be forgotten in the crowd of new words. But instead of thus escaping the evil, he increases it; he entangles himself more and more; and augments the difficulty of recovering his route. The true mode of recovering himself ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware

... on some of the paragraphs. I have lost the opportunity of hearing those judicious, enlightening and convincing arguments, which have been advanced during the investigation of the system. This is my misfortune, and I must bear it. The paragraph respecting the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, &c., is one of those considered during my absence, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... down her glass and turning paler still. "It's a bad omen. It means that some misfortune will happen ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... face had lost its animation. They stood still for some time, gazing into the peaceful garden plot and the bronzed oaks beyond, as if loath to break the intimacy of the last half hour. In the solitude, the dead silence of the place, there seemed to lurk misfortune and pain. Suddenly from a distance sounded the whirr of an electric car, passing on the avenue behind them. The noise came softened across the open lot—a distant murmur from the big city that was otherwise ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... When misfortune comes it is always best to look it manfully in the face, and not to shrink from or over estimate it. John Miles had a strong, healthy nature, with a good deal of confidence in his own resources, and in an hour or two he was again looking ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... religion, dear?" she asked very softly. "Is it such men as Mr. Forbes, or just the bitterness from misfortune?" ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... grazing in a forest. He had a ring in his nose, as the custom is, and to the ring was tied a string, by which the Camel's master used to lead him about. As the Camel grazed, this leading-string became entangled in a bush, and the Camel could not get it loose. This misfortune so much confused the mind of the Camel that he did not ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... so well prepared for misfortune by the frequent contemplation of its possibility that I believe I can receive any ill news with apparent equanimity and real resignation. Besides, when you said yesterday at breakfast-time that you meant to give up the day to making your drawers tidy, I was aware ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... against the injustice of my lot, when I see that he who seduced and ruined me, after being the cause of my destruction, enjoys honour and power, and is actually seated in the tribunal where they punish my misfortune with rods and with infamy? Who was that barbarous lawgiver who, deciding between the two sexes, kept all his wrath for the weaker; for that luckless sex which pays for a single pleasure by a thousand dangers,"—and so forth. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... understood him. "Ah," she said, "they want more, and, perhaps, they're used to having more than we have; but isn't that in one way their misfortune? Is it what folks want, or what they can do, that makes them ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... at first sight a far more prominent element in the primitive religions than Mana, just as misfortune and crime are more highly coloured and striking than prosperity and decent behaviour. To an early Greek tribe the world of possible action was sharply divided between what was Themis and what was ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... you the greatest misfortune which could befall me has happened: I mean the death of my good sister, the Queen of Scotland, of which I swear by God Himself, my soul and my salvation, that I am perfectly innocent. I had signed the order, it is true; but my counsellors have played ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... they were unable to deal with it, and advised him to apply to the Board of Guardians. This was what Linden had hitherto shrunk from doing, but the situation was desperate. They owed five weeks' rent, and to crown their misfortune his eyesight had become so bad that even if there had been any prospect of obtaining work it was very doubtful if he could have managed to do it. So Linden, feeling utterly crushed and degraded, swallowed all that remained ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... belief. Dr Grantly had been a very successful man in the world, and on all ordinary occasions had been able to show that bold front with which success endows a man. But he still had his moments of weakness, and feared greatly lest anything of misfortune should touch him, and mar the comely roundness of his prosperity. He was very wealthy. The wife of his bosom had been to him all that a wife should be. His reputation in the clerical world stood very high. He had lived all his life on terms of equality with the best of the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... to Mogodover Patana, a city of Paru, in Malabar, where he built a church. When at this place, a heathen, who had struck St Thomas in the king's presence, going to fetch water had his hand bitten off by a tiger; and running to the palace to tell his misfortune, a dog followed him with the hand in his mouth, on which the saint set on his hand again, so that no mark remained. He went afterwards to Calicut, where he converted king Perimal. There is an account that he went to the Moguls country, where Chesitrigal then reigned, whence going into China, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... creature who had fled, driven forth by her first wild impulse to escape from a false and terrible position? With every step she took down the dimly lighted street, the abyss into which she had fallen seemed to grow deeper and darker. She was overwhelmed with the magnitude of her misfortune. She shunned the illumined thoroughfares with a half-crazed sense that every finger would be pointed at her. Her final words, spoken to Ferguson, were the last clear promptings of her womanly nature. After that, everything grew confused, except the impression of remediless disaster and shame. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... Judsean clans—that they had become a homogeneous mass, grouped around the capital and its splendid sanctuary, and actuated with feelings of profound admiration and strong fidelity for the family which had made them what they were. Misfortune had not chilled their zeal: they rallied round Rehoboam and his race with such a persistency that they were enabled to maintain their ground when their richer rivals had squandered their energies and fallen away before their eyes. Jeroboam, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the working people? My dear, because I had misfortune with moneys invested, because I am old and can no longer win the brave young men, because I have outlived the men of my youth and there is no one to go to, because I live here in the ghetto with Barry Higgins and prepare to die—why, my dear, I was born with the masters, and have trod ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... from the date of the unhappy girl's misfortune that the house was disturbed by something supernatural, and that the family sought the aid of the parish priest to abate it, and further that the tapestry room was the scene ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... the vast rental of its lord. He who had succeeded to his father was Altamont Belvidere (named after his mother's family) Fitz-Warene, Lord Fitz-Warene. He was not deficient in abilities, though he had not his father's talents, but he was over-educated for his intellect; a common misfortune. The new Lord Fitz-Warene was the most aristocratic of breathing beings. He most fully, entirely, and absolutely believed in his pedigree; his coat of arms was emblazoned on every window, embroidered on every chair, carved in every corner. Shortly ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... the Fabii was neither approved by the senate, and the barbarians seemed to them to demand what was just: but in the case of men of such station party favour prevented them from decreeing that which they felt to be right. Wherefore lest the blame of any misfortune, which might happen to be received in a war with the Gauls, should lie with them, they refer the consideration of the demands of the Gauls to the people, where influence and wealth were so predominant, that ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... deaf and dumb; he is also blind; likewise he is lame. Penniless he is, and houseless. Finally, he is black, which may or may not be considered a misfortune. No,—finally he was run over by a team and dreadfully bruised. Yet we suppose that John Simons still desires to live, for he consented to be carried to a ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... Queen; "it was thy daughter, then, who followed that unfortunate baron to the field, and died on his body? Alas! how many ways does woman's affection find to work out her own misery! The tale has oft been told and sung in hall and bower—And thou, Roland, art that child of misfortune, who was left among the dead and dying? Henry Seyton, he is thine ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... specifying, it may be said that two or three articles usually ranked as underclothing had this morning partially worked their way up to the top stratum, and that by consequence her person presented more than one example of what geologists call a "fault"—though it is actually rather a misfortune. As for her hat, she had started by putting it on sideways, and then, since it would not "sit," and she had mislaid her hat-pins, had bound it boldly in place with a grey woollen comforter, and knotted the ends under her chin. What gave Mr. Hucks pause was, first, the brusqueness ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... was—such a course was the surest means of securing his co-operation; and even if no help came, and the Confederates maintained their position, they might be so crippled as to be unable to pursue. Defeat would not have been an irreparable misfortune. Washington was secure. Banks, Saxton, and McDowell held the approaches; and if Fremont himself were beaten back, the strategic situation could be in no way affected. In fact a defeat, if it had followed an attack so hotly pressed as to paralyse Jackson for the time being, would ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... they should do to you" was one of his precepts. When Confucius was asked how he had contrived to acquire deep knowledge of so many things, he replied, "Because I was born poor and had to learn." He considered wealth a misfortune and knowledge power. The Chinese reverence his memory, and regard him not as a god but as the wisest ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... see that it is any body's fault, or any body's misfortune, either," said the young fellow, with a not unbecoming pride. "I hope I should not be a bad husband to any girl, when it comes to that. But it has not come; I have never said a single word to her. I wanted to be quite clear of Oxford, and in a way to win my own position first. And really we are ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... suppose ourselves to meet misfortune, the moment of its arrival takes us by surprise. We will not attempt to picture the utter desolation of mind and the despair which filled her heart, when this man arrived at her door, to convey herself, and oh! far worse, her innocent and intelligent child, to that scene of vice and debasement. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... by the Belgians, that they had the wildest hopes. "If the Belgians can keep them back, what will happen when the French and British get at them?" But that time of jubilee hope did not last long, and again the air was full of rumours of disaster and misfortune. The Black Watch ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... house until she chose someone else to share it with her; she is but thirty-two, and is as comely as when I first married her. However, as she is going with us, there will be no need to trouble about her. If misfortune comes upon us and I am killed, it is likely she will be killed also. We shall have no expenses on the journey, as you will pay for food for ourselves and the animals. You will remember, senor, that I make this journey not as a business ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... the English tongue by their writings; whereas Chapelain, Colletet, Cassaigne, Faret, Perrin, Cotin, our first academicians, were a disgrace to their country; and so much ridicule is now attached to their very names, that if an author of some genius in this age had the misfortune to be called Chapelain or Cotin, he would be under a ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... defence was very simple: it was his misfortune to have had two villains for brothers, who had made attempts first upon the honour and then upon the life of a wife whom he loved tenderly; they had destroyed her by a most atrocious death, and to crown his evil fortune, he, the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... downfall of the latter, less worthy of admiration. Deeply as Constable had injured him by the reckless conduct of his business, Murray not only retained no ill-feeling against him, but, anxious simply to help a brother in misfortune, resigned in his favour, in a manner full of the most delicate consideration, his own claim to a valuable copyright. The same warmth of heart and disinterested friendship appears in his efforts to re-establish the affairs of the Robinsons after the failure of that firm. Yet, remarkable ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... each of these took two blazing brands from the fire, which, as they walked, they kept crossed before them, the burning points keeping each other alight. Even with one man there would be little chance of losing the fire, but with two such a misfortune could ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... too much. Having done this, I sent to the rear of the party for the stretcher, when, to my great disappointment and vexation, I found that a short time before something had annoyed one of the horses, which set to and kicked it all to pieces, which is a great misfortune. I continued in the saddle, and proceeded until I was exhausted, which happened at the end of fifteen miles, when I was compelled to stop. Keeping Auld with me, and some water, I sent on the party and all the horses to Mount Hay. If they find water they are to camp and return for me to-morrow; ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... Occasions against the Tartarians, and unless his ill Fate should place him above being commanded, he might in time be a great Man; at present, having all the Fire of a General without the Flegm, his great Misfortune and the only Thing that can ruin him is, That he thinks himself qualifyed to Command, and cannot bear the Lustre of their Merit ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... woman had lived a very, quiet life in the strange city to which fate had brought her, making but few acquaintances, and holding but little intercourse with those few; but now, under the terrible misfortune which had happened, she was stirred up to activity in every way in which activity was possible to her. She went to the Palazzo Castelmare and endeavoured to see the Marchese Lamberto in vain. She was told that the Marchese was ill, and ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... subjects. Several discourses on these topics, addressed to the prince, will be found in the editions of Raleigh's works. Henry repaid these services with sincere friendship and admiration; and we may presume that his adviser looked forward to that friendship, not only for a cessation of misfortune, but for a more brilliant period of favor and power than he had yet enjoyed. Fortunately, however, his patron's death was preceded by that of his arch-enemy, Cecil; and through the mediation of the Duke of Buckingham, Raleigh ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... are becoming poorer and poorer. There are only two of them,—mother and daughter,—and on account of some sort of unwise investment they are getting into a pretty bad way. I used to know Captain Drane, and was slightly acquainted with his family. I heard of their misfortune through a friend in Pennsylvania, and as I knew that La Fleur took such an interest in the family, I mentioned it to her. The result was disastrous; she has been in a doleful mood ever since, and yesterday assured Mrs. Tolbridge that if it should prove that Mrs. Drane ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... we really ought to cut out these words and put them in a frame; long, long we'd search to find a better motto to guide and help us while we play the game. Look pleasant, please, when you have met reverses, when you beneath misfortune's stroke are bent, when all your hopes seem riding round in hearses—a scowling brow won't help you worth a cent. Look pleasant, please, when days are dark and dismal and all the world seems in a hopeless fix; the clouds won't go because your ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... Maximus Eburnus consul in 638 went to Macedonia (C. I. Gr. 1534; Zumpt, Comm. Epigr. ii. 167), he too must have suffered a misfortune there, since Cicero, in Pison. 16, 38, says: -ex (Macedonia) aliquot praetorio imperio, consulari quidem nemo rediit, qui incolumis fuerit, quin triumpharit-; for the triumphal list, which is complete for this epoch, knows only the three Macedonian triumphs of Metellus in 643, of Drusus ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... worship to enjoy none yourselves; Your wives and children suffer pollution, And you are pointed at with the finger. Thus heedlessly you injure eternal principles, Embracing filth and treasuring corruption, To your endless shame And to your everlasting misfortune. Finally, if in life your heads escape the axe, There will await you the excessive injury of the shroud.[$] Judging by the crimes of your lives, Your corpses will be cast to scorpions and snakes. The devils introduce this doctrine, Which grows like plants from seeds; Some one must arise to punish ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... the automobile, leaving the girls surrounded by the gossipy, though kindly, women of the neighborhood and the curious children. Neither of the young fellows had any well defined idea as to how to proceed; but they were not inclined to waste any more time merely canvassing the misfortune of ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... story of "Dodd" just as it is, and I can't tell it at all unless I tell it that way. You may not like Mr. Waughops; you may not like his way of teaching school; you may say that I am cruel to harp on facts to the extent of intimating that the mere misfortune of being a cripple is not reason enough for being a school teacher; but I can't help this either, because it is true, and we all know it is. We lift up our eyes and behold the educational field all white for the harvest and even among the few laborers that are working, ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... visits, whether for procuring food or in consequence of dissatisfaction with his habitat, are feared by the people; but I could not ascertain what was the nature of the injuries by the ghost to themselves of which they were afraid, nor could I hear of any actual instance of a disaster or misfortune which had been attributed to the machinations of such a ghost. When sleeping in their dark enclosed houses, however, the people fill up all openings by which the ghost might enter (this does not apply to the emone, the entrance openings of which are ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... decision entirely in your hands. Every one is good and sympathetic, and the pater has had most kind letters from his friends in town. We have this great comfort that his good name is untarnished, and that there is no shadow of disgrace in our misfortune. God bless you, my darlings! If we are rich in nothing else, we are rich in our love for ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... each of those fellows in his own way has influenced me. The story is my story, a study of myself, nothing more or less. If the reader don't like me he may lay me down in my cloth or paper cover, and have nothing more to do with me. If I'm not a hero, perhaps it's not so much my fault as my misfortune. That people are interested in me, and show it in a thousand different ways, assures me that my story, not the story of those with whom I'm thrown in contact, is what interests them. It's a narrow-gauge, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... at the police bureau of the arrest of the Princess Ornovski some days ago, and I have obtained permission from the chief of police to lodge her Highness and her companion in misfortune—if they are prepared to pay what I shall ask. It has come to be looked upon as a sort of perquisite of diligent officials, and as I have been very diligent here I had no difficulty in getting the permission—which I shall have to pay for in ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... years may be passed over very briefly. In 1834 he married; his wife was subject to attacks of insanity, and all his later life was saddened by the struggle with misfortune and poverty. In 1840 he was called to a newly founded professorship of Slavic literature at the College de France. His lectures as holder of this chair are the only literary work of great importance that he produced during this last period of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... that—on the 29th of May—"C" Company had another gas misfortune while in support in Gorre village. Their house was heavily shelled with mustard, and though all men were taken out as soon as possible 40% of the Company, together with 2nd Lieuts. H. Coxell and O. Darlington had to be evacuated. There was so much gas at this time that ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... from my Club in a state bordering upon distraction. No great misfortune has happened to me, my dearest friend has not been black-balled, the Club bore has not had me in his unrelenting clutches. The waiters have been, as indeed they always are, civil and obliging, the excellent chef catered with his usual skill to my simple ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various

... ever received in my life was to be told, a dozen years afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney, that he was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story of family misfortune to account for his position—but at that time it was necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers in New South Wales, and on enquiry I found that the unfortunate young man had not only been 'sent out,' but had undergone ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... frijoles and some of the good coffee, perhaps? Sundown would, without question. He pressed a dollar into the palm of the reluctant Senora. He was not a tramp. Of that she might be assured. He had met with misfortune, that was all. And would the patron return soon? The patron would return with the setting of the sun. Meanwhile the vaquero of the Concho was to rest and perhaps enjoy his cigarette? And the "vaquero" loafed and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... can I not look on Phyllis as my own daughter, and give to her all the father love I have learned to feel? I do not rob you either of her love or her presence. I merely add a new joy to my life, and know that in caring for you both and in contributing to her happiness, and securing her against misfortune after we are taken away, I am carrying out the pledge, however idle at the time, ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field

... does, meaning by noble, gentilhomme; and it is a great misfortune, since it keeps up distinctions and animosities of caste; but it is incurable—at least, it has not been cured, or perhaps much palliated, by our sixty years of revolution. It is a sort of Freemasonry. When I talk to a gentilhomme, though ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... though, the next minute; for, on hearing my words, my uncle glanced in a troubled way at his wife, who was trying to soothe poor weeping Lilla; while, during the next hour, I learned that I had had the misfortune to strike down the man who was my uncle's creditor to a large amount, as he had been Mrs Landell's, or they would not have ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... too much. I had the misfortune of being carried out of my way, and this exasperating clerk was coolly asking me to pay the company a premium for the result of the conductor's carelessness. It was one of those situations in which words fail to express the extent of your indignation. The fellow's audacity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... her in intellectual ones, and though they would always feel for one another that peculiar tenderness left by the possibilities of a first love, no doubt the quarrel over the blue ribbon had been no real misfortune to either. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... my eye fixed on the fragments, meditating for a moment upon the inconstancy and fallacy of human things I had just before eagerly desired to obtain, that which I now tore with disdain. I had hoped to have found a companion in misfortune, and how I should have valued his friendship! Now I gave him all kinds of hard names, insolent, arrogant, ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... saw that she placed her hand on the latch of the door, when he felt at that gesture that he was to lose her, that he should never have her again, he shouted. He forgot everything. There remained in him only the dazed feeling of a great misfortune accomplished, of an irreparable calamity. And from the depth of his stupor a desire ascended. He desired to possess again the woman who was leaving him and who would never return. He drew her to him. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... I fear. Surely you cannot be acquainted with the cruelties practised upon him. I have not beholden them with mine own eyes; but my knowledge is this—as soon as I heard of Philip's misfortune, in whom, why I feel an interest you now know, I hastened to his prison, and there, with some difficulty learned, that not only is he manacled, and his ancles chained, but also is confined by a band of ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... Meanwhile Hermon saw how her young figure was trembling, and, before he had time to address a soothing-word to her, she sobbed aloud, crying out to Ledscha: "You are not a mother! My child, he rescued it from the flames. I will not, and I can not—I will no longer pray for his misfortune!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... his affairs had summoned him to confer with a tenant who was desirous of becoming a purchaser. Being in the same town with Deena, he decided that he could not well avoid visiting her, to say nothing of Ben. It was his misfortune that every meeting made his self-discipline harder, for, if they lived, he had got to see her under still more trying circumstances—reunited with a husband ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... colonists refused to leave, remained, and thus became British subjects. For those who had remained on the island there was trouble at once. A small vessel, the prize of an English cruiser, bound to Sierra Leone with thirty liberated Africans, put into the roads for water, and had the misfortune to part her cable and come ashore. "The natives claim to a prescriptive right, which interest never fails to enforce to its fullest extent, to seize and appropriate the wrecks and cargoes of vessels stranded, under whatever circumstances, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... name of goodness, said they were living?' cried he. 'It's a misfortune for you that they are dead, isn't it? You pay the tax for them, don't you?—and that'll half-ruin you, you say. Well, I clear you of the tax for these eighteen dead ones—do you understand?—not only clear you of the tax, but give fifteen ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... may Heaven preserve from misfortune the man I should so like to sup with at night, after fighting in the morning! The Swan of Padua [Algarotti, with his big hook-nose and dusky solemnly greedy countenance] is going, I think, to Paris, to profit by my absence; the Philosopher Geometer ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... bad way. A few weeks ago the Czar said to England, 'We have on our hands a sick man, a very sick man. I tell you frankly, it will be a great misfortune if one of these days he should slip away from us, especially if it were before all necessary arrangements were made. The Czar wants Turkey out of his way. He wants Constantinople for his own southern capital, he wants the Black Sea for a Russian ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... admired. Everything might still be open to him,—except the love of another woman. As to that, she did not doubt his truth. Why should he be doomed to drag her with him as a log tied to his foot, seeing that a woman with a misfortune is condemned by the general voice of the world, whereas for a man to have stumbled is considered hardly more than a matter of course? She would consent to take from him the means of buying her bread; ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... blue. On both sides we see houses and villages built on the sloping shores, but the interest heightens when we come close abreast the great town of Messina which, on the 20th of December 1908, suddenly became world-famous owing to the awful misfortune which befell it. All educated people knew Messina by name previously, but it was not until the Italian wires flashed the story of the earthquake which had wrought destruction so swiftly and dramatically that it will always be ranked as among the most appalling ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... the monopoly of land by the care which He took to have a direct interest in the land of Canaan by personal inheritance for every Jew. To guard against the might of greed, to prevent the poor of the land, touched by misfortune or snared by debt, from sinking into farm laborers or serfs of the soil he instituted the year of jubilee when every man returned to ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... fainted away. At this, one of the men seized a pig and ran after the stranger, who, hearing the pig squealing, looked behind him and saw the man running with it; and as he neared him he dropped it before him, and told him of Lono's misfortune, Kamakanuiahailono then returned, gathering on the way the young popolo seeds and its tender leaves in his garment (kihei). When he arrived at the place where the wounded man was lying he asked for some salt, which he took and pounded together with the popolo and placed it with a cocoanut ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... Martin—which was his real name—was far from being unamiable or repellent. That he was cowardly, untruthful, selfish, and lazy, was undoubtedly the fact; perhaps it was his peculiar misfortune that, just then, courage, frankness, generosity, and activity were the dominant factors in the life of Redwood Camp. His submissive gentleness, his unquestioned modesty, his half refinement, and his amiable exterior consequently ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... With your benevolence, your character and connections, you may put in motion a much greater fund of charity than you will yourself possess. It is by searching out the objects of distress or misfortune, and recommending them to their wealthy neighbors in such a manner as to excite their attention. I have often remarked to you (I forget whether you agree with me in it or not) that there is more goodness at the bottom of the human heart than the world will generally allow. Men are as often hindered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... whereas the Pombo and the others had the previous night almost made up their minds to send us back to the frontier. Unfortunately, it appears[36] that the Pombo had seen a vision during the night in which a spirit told him that, if he did not kill us, he and his country would suffer some great misfortune. "You can kill the Plenki," the spirit was reported to have said, "and no one will punish you if you do. The Plenkis are ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... luxury, she came down to an empty purse, and a widow's weeds. Her husband lost all his property at once. Money was all the poor man had ever cared for. He had not the courage to live and look his misfortune boldly in the face, but took his own life, (like a coward,) and left his dainty wife and child to bear alone the cross that his manly ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... truth in the assertion that nobody cared a straw for his colleagues. The Peace party suffered defeat at the polls, and, amongst others, Cobden himself was turned out at Huddersfield, and Bright and Milner Gibson were his companions in misfortune at Manchester. A vigorous attempt was made to overthrow Lord John in the City, and his timid friends in the neighbourhood of Lombard Street and the Exchange implored him not to run the risk of a contested election. He was assured in so many words, states Lady Russell, that he had as much chance ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... When the trees were 3 years old from 2 year transplants they bore 25 pounds. Next year, 1944, they bore 800 pounds or an average of 1 pound per tree. Right then and there we thought that we would have a real story to tell, but we had misfortune in another direction. Three years in a row we have had frosts when 6 inches of new growth were on these trees (the orchard is not as well situated as the parent trees in this respect). So we had no crops worth ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... candor as universal as concealment! Then each one, seeing himself as others see him, would truly know himself. How much misunderstanding might be avoided, how much hidden shame be removed, hopeless because unspoken love made glad, honest admiration cheer its object, uttered sympathy mitigate misfortune,—in short, how much brighter and happier the world would become, if each one expressed, everywhere and at all times, his true and entire feeling! Why, even Evil would ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... without asking any favors of them. We have some wild flowers among us as fair, as blooming, and quite as pure as any they can show. But enough has been said on this subject, which I should not have mentioned at all, but that it has been rung in my ears by almost every white lecturer I ever had the misfortune to meet. ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... the causes of his rise, we shall show that fortuitous commercial events which strong brains dominate, may become irreparable catastrophes for weak ones. Events are never absolute; their results depend on individuals. Misfortune is a stepping-stone for genius, the baptismal font of Christians, a treasure for the skilful man, an abyss for ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... Gen. Anderson informs me in a letter that, 'in order to avoid the very serious misfortune of an encounter between our troops, I demand your immediate withdrawal with your guard from Cavite. One of my men has been killed and three wounded by your people.' This is positive and does not admit of explanation or delay. I ask you to inform ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... are engaged," says Luttrell, his eyes dark with emotion. "But it is months since we have met. I came to London to seek her; but did not dream that here—here—— Misfortune has separated us; but if I lived for a hundred years ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... open-hearted a man as ever lived, and had always been very kind to us; but he was scarcely welcome when my father, finding that he had come up alone to London to see about some repairs to his house, while his family were still in the country, asked him to dine and sleep—our first guest since our misfortune. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and your majesty will see who is friendly to you. What misfortune has happened to your majesty during these three ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the wondrous things of His law. I think, too, that walking in the Spirit means having perfect trust in God—walking with our hand in His. If you see a man fearful about to-morrow, dreading the future, always expecting and anticipating evil, meeting misfortune half-way, be sure he is not walking in the Spirit. Hold fast to God's Hand—trust Him. Do you remember the story of the little Russian boy who trusted in God? He and a younger sister were left utterly destitute on the death of their father. ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... married folk, begged him not to keep a peacock's feather in the house—it would certainly bring misfortune. The superstition was so firmly rooted in their minds that they actually argued with him—argued with Grandfather Iden!—pointing out to him the fearful risk he was running. He puffed and coughed, and grew red in the face—the great grey hat shook and tottered with ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... say to his brother, 'that would be up airly and late at his own business, I would have spirits to work, by rason it would cheer my heart to see our little farm looking as warm and comfortable as anothers; but, fareer gairh (* bitter misfortune) that's not the case, nor likely to be so, for he spinds his time from one place to another, working for them that laughs at him for his pains; but he'd rather go to his neck in wather than lay down a hand for himself, except when he ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... I had the misfortune to marry, and who has ruined me and my aged and unhappy parents, always told me that he was the Hon. Colonel Hope, the next brother to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... Your Royal Highness, it would greatly endear you to your future people, proving to them that you are not the less one of themselves that you had the misfortune to be born of a sun-mother, if you were to command upon yourself the comparatively slight operation which, in a more extended form, you so wisely meditate with regard to ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald

... of the war continued to arrive, and at length the death of Bandoola seemed to be the climax of misfortune. Who could be found to take his place? A government officer, who had for some time been in disgrace with the king, now came forward with a proposal to conquer the English and put an end to the war, provided an army was raised on a ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... be, like some famous ones in history, specially fatal to crowned heads, and to heads that have once been crowned? During the whole twelve months of 1872 the only European sovereign who died was Charles XV. of Sweden, while none suffered irremediable misfortune; and in European royal families the only two losses by death were Archduke Albrecht and the duke of Guise. But within the first six weeks of 1873 no less than three persons died who had at some time ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... which I have learned in my roaming life, my friends, is never to call anything a misfortune until you have seen the end of it. Is not every hour a fresh point of view? In this case I soon perceived that accident had done for me as much as the most profound cunning. My guards naturally commenced their search ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... vowed to misery, and makes him, willy-nilly, laugh and sing. So that, if he do not drown himself in a week and thereby balk the inquiry, it is odds that he will compose himself in a month, and by the end of a year will carry no more marks of his misfortune than (if he be a man of good heart) an added sobriety and tenderness of spirit. Yet all this does not hinder the thing from ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... of Ghent, Bruges, and other large towns is for the good of Flanders, since were it not for that, the country would be but an appanage of Burgundy or France. Heavy imposts would be laid upon the people, their franchises abolished, and the trade greatly injured; and it would therefore be a sore misfortune for the country were the Earl of Flanders to crush Ghent, for did he do so he could work his will in ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... It is the Restoration! The maypole is up again at Maypole Lane, and the milk-maids bedecked with garlands dance to the tunes of the fiddle. Boys no longer serve for heroines at the play, as was the misfortune in Shakespeare's day. The air is ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... a metaphysical puzzle, inside and out, and he has brought him home to us as no sea-writer ever tried to do before. Years ago it seemed natural to fancy that he might write himself out, but he goes on with a freshness which looks inexhaustible. If I cannot read him with the old enjoyment it is my misfortune and not his fault. If his latest book had been his first I should have found in it the charm which caught me years ago. But it is in the nature of things that an individual writer like Clark Russell should be his own most ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... say? She knows only my evil deeds as she has heard them recounted by my father. When chance or misfortune has thrown us two together, it has always been under circumstances which could not dispose her in my favour. I have cost her both trouble and money—nay, I even fear her reputation has been called in question on my account. When I was in trouble she came to my assistance, regardless ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... looke out, zounds a Gentleman cannot come by a misfortune in service or so, but everie foole wil ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... might as well perish in what seemed our only chance of safety, as wait to be overwhelmed by the whole power of the Mexican empire. Before I proceed to narrate the sequel of our transactions in Mexico, I shall give an account of the misfortune which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... and generosity of his sovereign; and with this assurance he had retired to his paternal home, old, sick, and poor, to await as best he might the happy moment in which his claims should be remembered. And then it was, as he emphatically declared, that the last and crowning misfortune of a long life had overtaken him. Then it was that the King conceived that unfortunate attachment for his younger daughter, which deprived him of the greatest solace of his old age and exposed him to the raillery and contempt of his fellow-nobles, coupled with sarcastic congratulations ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... professors of which had been burnt (generally by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They were really very plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really a creditable or even glorious circumstance, that the old monk had been intellectual enough to detect their fallacy; the only misfortune was that nobody in the modern world was intellectual enough even to understand their argument. The old monk, one of whose names was Michael, and the other a name quite impossible to remember or repeat in our Western civilization, ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... heart was quite filled with grief and care, so that his family saw that something annoyed him. At first he would not speak on the matter at all, and put aside the wife's fond queries. Mrs. Lambert thought a great misfortune had happened; that her husband had been ruined; that he had been ordered on a dangerous service; that one of the boys was ill, disgraced, dead; who can resist an anxious woman, or escape the cross-examination of the conjugal ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... I know he has, and there are very few who even suspect his misfortune, but it is true, nevertheless. When he was a boy of nine," Miss Reynolds went on to explain, "his father was showing him, one Fourth of July, how to manage some cannon crackers. By some fatality, the first and only one fired hit a post, glanced off and struck the child in ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... or both of us—such things have happened before, though not often. Or, say, misfortune or death might mistake us for honest, hard-working mugs with big families to keep, and cut us off in the bloom of all our wisdom. You might get into trouble, and, in that case, I'd be bound to leave you there, on principle; or I might get into trouble, and you wouldn't ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... representative of God and should be received with due reverence and honor. Especially is this the case with a Brahmana or a Sannyasin whose life is wholly consecrated to God. Any one who fails to give proper care to a holy guest brings misfortune on himself and his household. When Yama returned, therefore, one of the members of his household anxiously informed him of Nachiketas' presence and begged him to bring water to wash his feet, this being always the first service to an ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda

... instigation of Madame Magloire, whether Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said to him, "Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... some thieves who have entrapped my master. They number six and fierce and sturdy did they seem. I beseech your aid, good masters, for my master is a brave knight who has suffered misfortune." ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe

... and Rose were so deeply affected by Allison's misfortune that they scarcely took note of Isabel's few bruises, greatly to that young woman's disgust. She chose to consider herself in the light of a martyr and had calmly received the announcement that Allison's left hand would probably have to ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... most upright man in the world with whom he had been, before the criminality was known to the world, on terms of intimacy, and whose position in the world was such that he might be on terms of intimacy with reputable gentlemen. It is the misfortune of a man that is approached in that way; it is not his crime, and it is not ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... thought he. She was indeed one of those instances of absolute lack of moral sense. Just as some people have the misfortune to be born without arms or without legs, so others are doomed to live bereft of a moral sense. A sweet disposition, a beautiful body, but no soul; not a stained soul, but no soul at all. And his whole mental attitude toward her changed; or, rather, it was changed by the iron compulsion of his prejudice. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... harder to do now that I am blind," she said, at the last, "for I can't help being a care and a trouble to everybody, everywhere I go now. But godmother says people won't mind that much if I'll only be pleasant and cheerful about my misfortune, and not let it cast its shadow on other lives any more than I can help. I haven't said anything about it yet to her, but if there is enough money in the bank that papa left to educate me with, I want to ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... story, but you may take it from me that all is over. The tie between us is broken. I don't know that it was ever very close. It was an external thing. The true misfortune is that I ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... all. I hinted these things to him as plainly as friendship would allow, and to no purpose; but to have told him the whole, so as to cure him, I must have been his father, which, thank God, I am not. As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and, considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless. You and I form, I believe, an exception to that rule; for, I am persuaded that we would neither of us change our relation, were it in our ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... primitive society in order to ward off evils, or to secure the protection of dreaded powers or spirits, are based primarily on logical considerations. If a certain stone is regarded as sacred, it is probably because it is associated with some misfortune, or some unusual piece of good luck. Someone sitting on the stone may have died; or on sleeping on it may have seen a remarkable vision, which was followed by a signal victory over a dangerous foe.... In all ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... tried, but the blessing of a religious contentment was shed upon her; and I stepped up to her, and asked about her concerns, for, saving as a parishioner, and a decent old woman, I knew little of her. Brief was her story; but it was one of misfortune.—"But I will not complain," she said, "of the measure that has been meted unto me. I was left myself an orphan; when I grew up, and was married to my gude-man, I had known but scant and want. Our days of ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... It is the misfortune of Africa to be surrounded by a cordon of vitiated races, half-caste and mongrel breeds, propagated from adventurers and convicts from the other continents of the world. So that Africa learns nothing but the vices of civilization from its contact with the rest of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... after all, he had struck the end of a cross wall and was working through the length of it instead of through its thickness. The fear of such a misfortune took possession of him, and he laid down his crowbar to examine the wall carefully. There was one way of finding out the truth, if he could only get light enough; no mason that ever lived would lay his bricks in any way except lengthwise ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... the table as soon as they finished their apple pie. Anna sat primly and ate with great elegance. When she spoke at all she spoke to her father, about church matters, and always in a commiserating tone, as if he had met with some misfortune. Mr. Kronborg, quite innocent of her intentions, replied kindly and absent-mindedly. After the dessert he went to take his usual Sunday afternoon nap, and Mrs. Kronborg carried some dinner to a sick neighbor. Thea and Anna ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... Norwich; but, just as she had become acquainted with him, the bank had broke, and he had left Oxford to come home and find himself a ruined man. But he had never said a word to her of the family misfortune. He had been six feet high, with dark hair cut very short, somewhat full of sport of the roughest kind, which, however, he had abandoned instantly. "Things have so turned out," he had once said to Mary, "that I must earn something to eat instead of riding after foxes." She could not boast that he ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... does not lead to anything. It is a stultified wretchedness, amidst which intelligence dies out like a lamp in a place without air, in which the heart grows petrified in a fierce misanthropy, and in which the best natures become the worst. If one has the misfortune to remain too long and to advance too far in this blind alley one can no longer get out, or one emerges by dangerous breaches and only to fall into an adjacent Bohemia, the manners of which belong to another jurisdiction than that ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... and boys like him, it is of course only natural to hold them up as examples to others. No boy can be a scamp and not suffer for it some way or other; and as to saying it's one's misfortune rather than one's fault that it is so, that is as ridiculous as to say, when you choose to walk north, that it is your misfortune you are not ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... with the independence of the other European states, no peace was to be signed by any of the contracting powers; and, during several months, every means was adopted to procure the association of Austria and Prussia. But the latter of these sovereigns had the misfortune at this time to have a strong French party in his council, and, though personally hostile to Napoleon, could not as yet count on being supported in a war against him by the hearty goodwill of an undivided people. Austria, on the other hand, had been ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... for, and a most gruesome object, when we came up with Sher Singh. His manners ain't exactly ingratiating at the best of times, as you have more than once remarked to me, but when he saw my unlucky hair, his language was positively improper. You see, it was my misfortune—and your very good fortune, I'm inclined to think—that I wasn't you. He even sent for water and had some of the blood washed off my face, to make sure, I suppose, that we hadn't exchanged wigs in the hope of deceiving him, and when he was quite sure who I wasn't, I expected ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... of the crew labouring under the misfortune of long, lank, Winnebago locks, carroty bunches of hair, or rebellious bristles of a sandy hue. Ambitious of redundant mops, these still suffered their carrots to grow, spite of all ridicule. They looked like Huns and Scandinavians; and one of them, a young ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... Northumberland had ordered dinner, and the Earl of Salisbury, the Bishop and the two knights, Sir Stephen Scrope and Sir William Feriby, sat with the King at the same table by his order; for since they were all companions in misfortune, he would allow no distinction among them. While he was eating, unknown persons entered the hall, insulting him with sarcasms and threats. As soon as he rose, he was summoned into the court to receive the Duke of Lancaster. Henry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... out fear, because fear hath torment." In this last instance, it is evident that the idea of punishment is not found, but only that of suffering. In the LXX. (Ezek. 14:3, 4, 7) it is translated "stumbling-block," and means, says Schleusner (Lexicon in LXX.), "all that is the source of misfortune or suffering." Donnegan gives as its meaning, "the act of clipping or pruning; generally, restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement; lit. and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... declaring they could not help proceeding to extremities if I were detained any longer in prison. The Prince de Conde declared he would do anything, without exception, which my friends desired, for my liberty, and offered to march all the Spanish forces to their assistance; but the misfortune was that there was nobody to form the proper schemes; and Noirmoutier, who was the most enterprising man of them all, was hindered from action by Madame de Chevreuse and De Laigues, who, the Cardinal said, would be accountable for the actions of their friends, and that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... derived the surest and most plentiful supply of provisions. The first emotions of the nobles and of the people were those of surprise and indignation that a vile Barbarian should dare to insult the capital of the world; but their arrogance was soon humbled by misfortune; and their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent victim. Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected the niece of Theodosius, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... courtesy in the young man's behavior to his senior. Uncle Ezra responded by a less suspicious look at him, but seemed to be considering this new proposition before he spoke. Uncle Ezra was evidently of the opinion that while it might be a misfortune to be an old man, it was a fault to be a young one and good looking where girls were concerned. "Miss Gale's father and mother showed me so much kindness," Tom explained, seizing his moment of advantage, "I should like to be of some use: it may not be convenient ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... should be done, and was ever foremost in doing it He took hold of the helpless and slow-witted colonists as a master carpenter handles blocks of wood, and transformed them into an efficient and harmonious structure, strong enough to withstand the first onsets of misfortune, and to endure until the arrival of recruits from home placed them beyond ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... celebrated commander of Strasbourg, whose name had been given to a street in Paris, was brought under the censure of the court-martial. But the chief blow fell upon the commander-in-chief of Metz, Marshal Bazaine, to whose "treachery" the whole misfortune of France was attributed. For months he was retained a prisoner at Versailles, while preparations were made for the great court-martial spectacle, which, in the following year, took place under the presidency of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... and your sister! Do you think a man is going to come to nearly fifty without knowing something of life? That he hasn't been happy in his matrimonial relations is his misfortune, not ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... on the Bath, Me., barque, Eleanor Jones. They were bound for South America with a cargo of chemicals and assorted canned stuffs. From the first day out misfortune assailed the vessel. She encountered heavy weather and, during a towering climax of the storm, part of her deck load of American lumber fetched away and carried with it three of her crew of ten men. Shortly after that the cook's ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... is affected by the most trifling causes. A word will grieve them like some real misfortune. Their impulses are not lacking in intellectual control, but are followed by action with excessive rapidity. Although of such changeable disposition, they are subject to fixed ideas, to which they cling with a kind of cataleptic intensity. A woman will be dumb or motionless for months, on ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... is lovely an' the goose honks high, it's our great American privilege to fight like bearcats if we feel that way about it. But when misfortune descends on one of us, like a topmast in a typhoon, it's time to stop bickerin'. Me an' Bart, driftin' along the docks for a constitootional this mornin', bears the sorrerful tidin's that your new navigatin' officer an' your new ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... was killed as she was passing the palace gates under the belief that a parley having come from his camp, the firing would be suspended, as in fact it was on our side. This government, informed of the misfortune, sent for the husband of the deceased, and ordered twenty-five dollars to be given him; but the unfortunate man, though plunged in grief, declared that twelve were sufficient to supply his wants. Such was the horror inspired by the atrocious conduct of the ex-government of Bustamante, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... Barton was a little too despondent. Perhaps she ought to have had more trust in Providence; but there had been sorrows in her life which had robbed her of her natural hopefulness, and she was no longer as courageous in the face of threatening misfortune as ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger

... the first to get up, and, instead of trying to assist his companions in misfortune, or to rub the dust off his clothes, he began to collect the cake together; and, as the plate was broken, he very carefully arranged the three-cornered wedges on the top of his straw hat, as though the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... contains two reproaches which have keenly affected me; and I think I have already told you that a few chance expressions would suffice to make me go to Wierzchownia, which would be a misfortune in my present perilous situation; but I would rather lose everything than lose a true friendship. . . . In short, you distrust me at a distance, just as you distrusted me near by, without any reason. I ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... dangerous of the many plots which were directed against the life of my master. The course which I adopted may be blamed by some, but it is enough for me that, after the lapse of years, it is approved by my conscience and by the course of events. For it was ever the misfortune of that great king to treat those with leniency whom no indulgence could win; and I bear with me to this day the bitter assurance that, had the fate which overtook Louis d'Entragues in the wood between Malesherbes and Fontainebleau ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... and had gone to bed. This was some consolation, though but of short continuance. As soon as I was laid down, all the fatal consequences of my adventure presented themselves to my imagination. I could not sleep. I saw all the horrors of my misfortune, without being able to find any remedy; in vain did I rack my brain; it supplied me with no expedient. I feared nothing so much as daybreak; however, it did come, and the cruel Brinon along with it. He was booted up to the middle, and cracking a cursed whip, which he held in his hand, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... service. Opposite him was sitting a young handsome man in the uniform of a captain in the British Army. Froissart was frowning and speaking in savage disrespect of Dawson, his immediate chief. "This English Dawson, with whom it is my misfortune to work, is of all men the most impossible. He is clever, as the Devil, but secretive—my faith! He tells me nothing. He lives in disguise of body and mind. There are twenty men in his face, his figure, and his dress. He ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... Sultan marvelled and said in his mind, "Glory be to God: the words and works of this youth be wonderful. Whatever I bid him do he beginneth with naming the name of the Lord whereas those who forewent him never suffered me hear aught of the sort. However, the fortunate are Fortune's favourites and Misfortune never befalleth them." Now when it was night-tide the Sultan said, "O youth, in very deed this mansion which standeth beside the palace is brand-new and therein are store of wood and timbers of every kind, but it lacketh ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... depends the preservation of their fortune Prevent disorder from organising itself Princes thus accustomed to be treated as divinities Princess at 12 years was not mistress of the whole alphabet Rabble, always ready to insult genius, virtue, and misfortune Saw no other advantage in it than that of saving her own life She often carried her economy to a degree of parsimony Shocking to find so little a man in the son of the Marechal Shun all kinds of confidence Simplicity of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... composure. He now, though suffering from sea sickness, refused to go on shore: for he conceived that, by remaining on board, he should in the most effectual manner notify to Europe that the late misfortune had only delayed for a very short time the execution of his purpose. In two or three days the fleet reassembled. One vessel only had been cast away. Not a single soldier or sailor was missing. Some horses had perished: but this loss the Prince with great expedition repaired; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Anne bears her misfortune gallantly and well, with a natural feeling, no doubt, of the rank and consideration she is about to lose. Lady Scott is incredulous, and persists in cherishing hope where there is no ground for hope. I wish it may not bring ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... that he persuaded the young girl to let him take her to the palace. She did not like to show herself, and asked of what use would be a mirror, only to impress her more deeply with her misfortune; but when he wept, her heart was moved, and she consented, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... and actions of the best men towards the individual women whom they may chance to love and respect. The chivalry and courtesy that the few command through their beauty, wealth and position, are one thing; but justice, equality, liberty for the multitude, are quite another. And when the few, through misfortune, are made to feel the iron teeth of the law, they regret that they had not used their power to secure permanent protection under just laws, rather than to have trusted the transient favors of individuals to shield them in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of the maritime Alps, so that the difficulties of advancing into Italy were greatly diminished. Of these movements, however, his superior officers reaped as yet the honour. He was even superseded (Aug. 6, 1794) very shortly after their success. But this, which at the moment seemed a heavy misfortune, was, in truth, one of the luckiest circumstances that ever ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... came in, but he had the misfortune to lose my assistance almost immediately. I was caught at short leg after a patient innings of ten, slightly marred, however, by about the same number of chances. The Fourth Officer took my place. He began by nearly running out his Captain. If point had not stopped ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... back into the Legation lines, feeling as if an immense misfortune had come. Here I met finally some Japanese cavalry and some Cossacks. After being actually in Peking twenty-four hours, they had at length formed junction with their Legations. The cavalrymen were trotting up and down, and trying to discover their own people. Neither ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... Mankind? this mischief had not then befall'n, And more that shall befall, innumerable Disturbances on Earth through Femal snares, And straight conjunction with this Sex: for either He never shall find out fit Mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake, 900 Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain Through her perverseness, but shall see her gaind By a farr worse, or if she love, withheld By Parents, or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, alreadie linkt and Wedlock-bound To a fell ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... and immediately the princess came to herself, and flung her arms round his neck. Then she told him all her story, and what had happened since the ship had sailed away without him. 'But the worst misfortune of all,' she added, 'was a battle which my father lost because you had vanished with his magic sword; and out of his whole army hardly one man ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... and bolted for his stateroom to be soon followed by his two companions in misfortune. A couple of hours in their bunks with some little attention from their now rather repentant critics, and the steamer having passed again into still water the patients were soon restored to normal health, with, if possible, greatly ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... is a fond father's earnest prayer. Be sure, dear Algernon, that they will be through life your greatest comfort, as well as your best worldly ally; consoling you in misfortune, cheering you in depression, aiding and inspiring you to exertion ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... did Neal make upon the misfortune of having none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive, was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could procure him a single foe. In vain did lie insult, abuse, and malign all his acquaintances. ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... that species seen on this side the mountains besides the one we saw on Pigeon Ponds on the 3rd of August. On returning to the camp I found that the carts had arrived soon after my departure in the morning; but the men had the misfortune to lose two bullocks in crossing the swampy stream where we had been previously encamped. One was suffocated in the mud, and the other having lain down in it could not be made to rise. By observing the stars alpha and beta Centauri ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... earthquakes had occurred, two hundred leguas in the interior, and as far as Canton, which lasted for two months. They were so terrific that they shook the very strong palaces, while other houses and mosques were overthrown. This misfortune and plague has been by the permission of heaven. At another part, the Japanese of Great Corria have revolted, and are warring with these Chinese, so that four hundred thousand of them have banded against the latter, by which the Chinese are receiving great injury. [25] Thus, by ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... I was born, I do not remember such a string of casualties as happened to me and mine, all within the period of one short fortnight. To say nothing connected with the play-acting business, which was immediately before—first came Mungo Glen's misfortune with regard to the blood-soiling of the new nankeen trowsers, the foremost of his transactions, and a bad omen—next, the fire, and all its wonderfuls, the saving of the old bedridden woman's precious life, and the destruction of the poor ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... obliged for the want of means to discontinue manufacturing, and Mr. Hayward left his employment. The inventor now applied himself alone, with unabated ardor and diligence, to detect the cause of his misfortune and if possible to retrieve the lost reputation of his invention. On one occasion he made some experiments to ascertain the effect of heat upon the same compound that had decomposed in the articles previously manufactured, and was surprised to find that the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... Gladstone himself confessed, with much humility it seemed to us, in a pamphlet written many years after the American War, that it "had been his misfortune" on several occasions "not to have perceived the reality and importance of a question until it was at the door." This was very true. His noble enthusiasm for some good and vital cause so engrossed ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... always pleased to oppose herself to lofty beginnings, did not allow L'Ingegno to reach perfection, for a flux of catarrh fell upon his eyes, whence the poor fellow became wholly blind, to the infinite grief of all who knew him. Hearing of this most pitiful misfortune, Pope Sixtus, like a man who ever loved men of talent, ordained that a yearly provision should be paid to Andrea in Assisi during his lifetime by those who managed the revenues there; and this was done until he died ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... sacred ceremony of the marriage. Jeanne listened in half affright. All their lives long, in sickness and health, in misfortune, they must never cease to love, never allow any wavering fancies, but go on to old age, to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... disorder and impiety. And even should he wear the semblance of leading to virtue and practising those things which are praiseworthy and useful to salvation, it would only be to win the confidence of such as would listen to his suggestions, to make them afterward fall into misfortune, and engage them in some sin of presumption or vanity: for as he is a spirit of malice and lies, it little imports to him by what means he surprises us, and establishes his reign ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... reading. Wilde has been discussed in relation to homosexuality by Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901). An instructive document, an unpublished portion of De Profundis, in which Wilde sought to lay the blame for his misfortune on a friend,—his "ancient affection" for whom has, he declares, been turned to "loathing, bitterness, and contempt,"—was published in the Times, 18th April, 1913; it clearly reveals an element ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... which it was designed, and he finally determined to broach the subject to his father. Old Colonel Delany, whose "optics" were so very "keen" to spy out the danger of his son's forming a mesalliance, was stone blind when such a misfortune threatened Alice, liked the young man very much, and could see nothing out of the way in his attentions to his niece, and finally refused to close his doors against him at his son's instance. While ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... in his own mind, "This comes when like marries not like—when a man forms an unnatural union with a sea-maiden." Excusing himself, as we all love to do, he would add: "I did not, in fact, know that she was a maid of the sea. It is my misfortune that my steps are haunted and disturbed by the wild humours of her kindred, but it ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... Mr. Roller, and it sometimes occurred that they conversed across the wall; it could hardly be avoided. A hint or two, an undefinable flying allusion, gave the General to understand that Lady Camper had not been happy in her marriage. He was pained to think of her misfortune; but as she was not over forty, the disaster was, perhaps, not irremediable; that is to say, if she could be taught to extend her forgiveness to men, and abandon her solitude. 'If,' he said to his daughter, 'Lady Camper should by any chance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... In December another misfortune befell Balzac. A fire broke out at the printing office in the Rue du Pot-de-Fer, and burnt the first hundred and sixty pages of the third dizain of the "Contes Drolatiques," as well as five hundred volumes ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... take to itself the aspect of a dissolved dream. This letter, then, will contain cheque for the $100 which you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me—I can't get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet that when the wreckage presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a time I will make ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... write to me that hideous letter which you wrote—that letter, every word of which is still in my memory, and rises up between us to sunder us for evermore. You went beyond yourself. To have spared the living was not needed; but it was the misfortune of your nature that you could not spare the dead. While he was, perhaps, yet lying cold in death near you, you had the heart to write to me bitter sneers against him. Even without that you had done enough to turn me from you always. But when I read that, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... out the bodies of their dead on the roads, and if they were promptly devoured by wild beasts it was esteemed a great honor, a misfortune if not. Sometimes they interred, always wrapping the dead in a wax cloth ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... thou'rt ta'en with anger and despite And patient, if there fall misfortune on thy head. Indeed, the nights are quick and great with child by time And of all wond'rous things are ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... pure, lily face had moved him to it; and simultaneously had come the thought of the relation in which she stood to that man at La Rochette whose life he now sought to save for her, and it had stabbed him with a bitterness no misfortune, no failure yet had ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... grandson of the Berry historian, a young land-owner, the dandy of Sancerre. While present in Madame de la Baudraye's parlor, he had the misfortune to yawn during an exposition which she was giving, for the fourth time, of Kant's philosophy; he was henceforth looked upon as a man completely lacking in understanding and in soul. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... has taken cognizance of the misfortune which precipitate deflation brought to American agriculture. Your measures of relief and the reduction of the Federal reserve discount rate undoubtedly saved the country from widespread disaster. The very proof of helpfulness ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding

... way to a sensation of joy. Here was another companion in misfortune, alive and ready to share the terrible trouble with ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... Ministry, will be able to stand its ground; nevertheless a change of Ministry would not alter the aspect of our affair in the least, for if the other or movement party come in, the liberty of the press (a great misfortune for Spain) would be probably granted; at all events, the influence of the English Ambassador would be greater than it is even at present, and upon his assistance I may rely at ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... pretty stiff, I confess, heavy and solemn and rather pompous. My mother who was a Moore, as no doubt you have heard, had a strong sense of humor, and didn't bring me up in very great awe of the family. She was thankful I didn't take after them, and so have I always been. I often think, what a misfortune had I had to have a Pritchard as a bedfellow and roommate all these years, as I must have had if I had taken after my father—who was, I believe, however, the mildest of the Pritchards, and very much altered by my mother's influence. And girls are usually like ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... of a most merciful but sometimes severe God, simultaneously abuse both mercy and justice; that, full of indulgence for the indifferent, for their friends, and for themselves, they treat with extreme rigour whoever has had the misfortune to become obnoxious to power; that they more readily pardon the wretch who cuts a man's throat, than the imprudent citizen ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... very materially and to outlive all the other eighteenth-century schools. It was founded by Christian Samuel Friedrich Hahnemann (1755-1843), a most remarkable man, who, after propounding a theory in his younger days which was at least as reasonable as most of the existing theories, had the misfortune to outlive his usefulness and lay his doctrine open to ridicule by the unreasonable teachings of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... his story and told of spending the night with Tom Linton, then of his return to Sheep Camp to learn that he had been robbed of all his savings. Corroboration of this misfortune he left to the oral testimony of the two brothers McCaskey and to the circumstantial evidence of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... was; also some coasting vessels laden with corn from Lynn and Wells, and bound for Holland, were with the same unhappy luck just come out to begin their voyage, and some of them lay at anchor; these also met with the same misfortune, so that, in the whole, above 200 sail of ships, and above a thousand people, perished in the disaster of that one miserable night, very ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe

... it. They regarded her genius (the thing which had been tacked on to her) more as a crime than a misfortune. It was a power in the highest degree destructive and malign, a power utterly disintegrating to its possessor, and yet a power entirely within her own control. They refused to recognize in it any divine element of destiny, while they remained imperturbably ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... these traitors intended to deliver him up to Isfundiyar khan, the Nawab of Puraniya. By this time Indu Bidhata, the infant who had been made Raja of Marang, had grown up, and, hearing of his uncle’s misfortune, led an army against the Nawab and the traitors, and was accompanied by his brother Budha Sen. Having obtained a victory, he restored his uncle; but, while they were still in the midst of their joy, Kalu Upadhyaya, a relation of the treacherous Brahman, contrived ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... for more than a year," replied the young man, "that I have the misfortune not to be able to die. So reassure ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... the cauld blast, On yonder lea, My plaidie to the angry airt, I'd shelter thee. Or did misfortune's bitter storms Around thee blaw, Thy bield should be my bosom, To share it a'. Or were I in the wildest waste, She bleak and bare, The desert were a paradise, If thou wert there, Or were I monarch o' the globe, Wi' thee to reign, The brightest ...
— Old Ballads • Various

... him as an old white man, not flesh-colour white, but chalk white. There is another important point here, but it wants a volume to itself, so I must pass it. O Mbuiri's appearance in a corporeal form denotes ill luck, not death to the seer, but misfortune of a severe and diffused character. The ruin of a trading enterprise, the destruction of a village or a family, are put down to O Mbuiri's action. Yet he is not regarded as a malevolent god, a devil, but as an avenger, or punisher of sin; and the M'pongwe ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... perhaps you would not have found me, Lord Ragnall," I answered, "but as it happens misfortune has kept me here." ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... before the enthusiasm has time to cool. But it could not be helped, the wind was dead, and the ship could not be handled now until the sea breeze sprang up; and, after all, the delay was not an unmitigated misfortune, for it ensured to the crew time enough to complete their preparations for the coming fight and take breakfast afterward; and even at that day it was fully recognised that an Englishman fights best when his hunger ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... not in mind, Mrs. O'Keefe. You are right in thinking that it is Curtis that is the cause of my misfortune." ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... II. succeeded King William, whose death was joy to France, but a great misfortune to England. Anne was born Feb. 6, 1664, and married George Prince of Denmark, who was High Admiral of England, and a happy assistant to her in steering the ship of state. She was crowned Queen of Great-Britain April 23, 1702. On the 4th of May following ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... departure arrived, the first misfortune of my life occurred—an omen of my future misery. My mother attended Elizabeth in an attack of scarlet fever. Elizabeth was saved, but my mother sickened and died. On her deathbed she joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself:—"My ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... of her action was this: on opening her drawer after returning to her room, she found, with a sense of dismay—as if a misfortune had occurred instead of an incident that gave a chance for better thought—that in taking the opiate the night before, she had replaced the cork in the phial insecurely, and that nearly all its contents had oozed away. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... citizens? It is Antonius, again, who has deprived you of them. The authority of this order is overthrown; it is Antonius who has overthrown it. Everything, in short, which we have seen since that time, (and what misfortune is there that we have not seen?) we shall, if we argue rightly, attribute wholly to Antonius. As Helen was to the Trojans, so has that man been to this republic,—the cause of war, the cause of mischief, the cause of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... the reforms made by Cleomenes, he began to fear that Sparta would win back her former power, and again try to lord it over the rest of Greece. To prevent such a misfortune, he decided to attack the Spartan king while he was too young to excel in the art ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber









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