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More "Ominous" Quotes from Famous Books



... across the road, and Nick did not catch sight of it until too late to check the flying mare. The carriage seemed to bound fully a foot into the air, and an ominous wrench told the driver that it had ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... but showing no lanterns, they made to windward and dropped anchor, unless their craft were stanch and their pilot's brains unvexed with liquor. On summer nights, when falls that curious silence which is ominous of tempest, the storm ship is not only seen spinning across the mirror surface of the river, but the voices of the crew are heard as they chant at the braces and halyards in words devoid of meaning ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... had an ominous sense of impending peril; but she was too angry to avoid even the risks she saw. To her surprise Raymond put his arm about her with a smile. "There are many reasons why I have to think about money. One is that YOU don't; and another is that I must ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... succeeding the Conference announcement brought very little in the way of further developments. So still was the insurance stage, indeed, that Mr. Gunterson began to think that there would be no trouble, after all, and Smith to speculate on the ominous stillness and on what new moves would flash from behind ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... prevent them from hearing the first warning of Peggy's approach. The roaring of the logs in the stove, and the monotonous clicking of the buttons and bullets one against the other as Eyelids shook them, and again as he emptied them upon the floor, like the ominous tapping of muffled hammers at work about a coffin, were the only sounds, and these, at last, by reason of their regularity, began to grow nerve-racking. Between the emptying of the moccasin, and the gathering up and re-shaking of the counters, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... with the hens, who are awake all night and uneasy when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kukin was detained in Moscow, and wrote that he would be back at Easter, adding some instructions about the Tivoli. But on the Sunday before Easter, late in the evening, came a sudden ominous knock at the gate; some one was hammering on the gate as though on a barrel— boom, boom, boom! The drowsy cook went flopping with her bare feet through the puddles, as she ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... house of gods, and Dardanian city renowned in war! four times in the very gateway did it come to a stand, and four times armour rang in its womb. Yet we urge it on, mindless and infatuate, and plant the ill-ominous thing in our hallowed citadel. Even then Cassandra opens her lips to the coming doom, lips at a god's bidding never believed by the Trojans. We, the wretched people, to whom that day was our last, hang the shrines of the gods with festal boughs throughout the city. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... chicken feed and wot felt like about four one-bone bills." The highwayman's accent was both ominous and contemptuous. "Say, wotcher mean drillin' round dis town in some kinder funny riggin' wit'out no plunder on you? I gotta right to belt you one ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... in love: Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried; I can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,' an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,' a hard rhyme: for 'school', 'fool,' a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings: No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor cannot woo ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... time they halted. One heard nothing but that indescribable, nameless flutter of falling snow—a sensation rather than a sound, a vague, ominous murmur. A command was given in a low tone and when the troop resumed its march it left in its wake a sort of white phantom standing in the snow. It gradually grew fainter and finally disappeared. It was the echelons who were ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... shook this relation of confidence and obedience. Peace between France and England involved the abandonment on the part of Napoleon of any attack upon Portugal; and Napoleon now began to meet Godoy's inquiries after his Portuguese principality with an ominous silence. The next intelligence received was that the Spanish Balearic Islands had been offered by Napoleon to Great Britain, with the view of providing an indemnity for Ferdinand of Naples, if he should give up Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte (July, 1806.) This contemptuous ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... here but now She dropped her new-yeaned twins on the bare flint, Hope of the flock- an ill, I mind me well, Which many a time, but for my blinded sense, The thunder-stricken oak foretold, oft too From hollow trunk the raven's ominous cry. But who this god ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... you upon whom the duty of regulating my admittedly vagarious mind devolves, what happened officially on the eleventh day of the Month of Gathering-in?" demanded the Mandarin in an ominous tone. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... anxious to show off her newly acquired skill with firearms. Starr had told her that lots of people killed rattlesnakes by shooting their heads off. She wanted to try it, anyway, and show Vic a thing or two. So she rode up as close as she dared, though the pinto shied away from the ominous sound; pulled her pearl-handled six-shooter from its holster, aimed, and fired ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... his grating. He was faint with pain. The blistering cylinders were growing cold; the steel floor beneath was awash. More ominous still, as the ship's head sank, came crackings and groanings from the engines below. They would fall through at the last, ripping out the bulkheads and carrying her down ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... knees a week before, had in one hour been spirited from home and family, and vanished like an image from a mirror, leaving not a print behind. It was terrible, indeed; but so was death, the universal law. And even if the talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries? I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... vicious propensities of human nature," and laws of this sort for the case of Ireland should, he held with unanswerable logic, properly be made in England, not by the travesty of a Parliament in Ireland, which, in so far as it was in any degree Irish, had shown faint but ominous tendencies towards tolerance and the reunion of Irishmen. He never took the trouble to demonstrate the truth of his theory of revenge by a reasoned analysis of Irish symptoms. He took it for granted as part of a universal axiomatic truth, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... look back to 1874 as the last of the really good years, and consider that the palmy days of British agriculture began to dwindle at about that time. The shadow of the approaching depression had already fallen upon the land before the year 1875 had run its course, and the outlook became ominous as the decade of the 'seventies neared its close. One memorable feature was associated with 1877 in that this was the last year in which the dreaded cattle plague (rinderpest) made its appearance in England. The same year, 1877, was the last also ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... high bank a lady, veiled only in her hair, singing to herself. He stood transported, Actaeon in his own despite, then softly withdrew. Roy got back in his time, cooked the dinner, and had no drubbing. Then came the meal, with an ominous innovation. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... another parting snap, and his nose came down over his moustache and his moustache went up under his nose, in an ominous and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... the night with funeral wing The ominous depths o'ershadowing, But she lay a dumb insentient thing— Alone with a heart of stone, With neither tears nor hopes nor fears And the booming swell like a monstrous knell Tolled ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson

... leave of these valiant Frenchmen and cheery Senegalese and pushed on to the advanced observation post of the Artillery where I met General Stockdale, commanding the 15th Brigade, R.F.A., and not only saw how the land lay but heard some interesting opinions. Also, some ominous comments on what armies spend and what ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... Knew he and that man had been confabbin'. She's clean gone," he added. "They've destroyed her. She didn't know me." His face worked, and an ominous fire ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... down to the roadside at this point, and the trees back of the heap of poles moaned and writhed like tortured creatures while great branches lashed over their heads with now and then an ominous crackle, but it was lost in the surge of the winds and the ceaseless crash and roar of the thunder. Jagged forks of lightning played all about them like rapiers of steel, and at last the ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant

... everywhere, and in some nations a religious obligation, against transacting any important business on that day. For on such a day our thoughts are likely to be of misfortune. For a similar reason, any untoward occurrence in commencing an undertaking has been considered ominous of failure; and often, doubtless, has really contributed to it by putting the persons engaged in the enterprise more or less out of spirits; but the belief has equally prevailed where the disagreeable circumstance was, independently ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... the light of this setting sun ominous, but everything about me seemed ominous—the landscape, my father's face, the fret of the babe in my mother's arms that she could not still, the six horses my father drove that had continually to be urged and that were without any ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder! Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earth-work they will swarm! But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is broken, And a bellowing crash has emptied all the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of anger went up, a dull, savage, guttural sound that died away almost at once into silence, a quiet more ominous than an outcry could have been. Terrified by that strange apparition out yonder upon the waters, the Indians saw themselves deserted by the one person to whom they could look for courage and counsel. Only half understanding, they ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs

... and beautiful as moors can be, and by glimpses, now and then in the valleys between, of entirely civilized villages, with even a town or two here and there, prick-up spires and roofs; and, even more ominous, in this direction and that, lie patches of ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... An ominous stillness succeeded this question, the men around following Ching Whang's example and sneaking inside the forecastle and otherwise slily disappearing from view. Presently, only Tim Rooney and Matthews remained before the captain besides ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... was aroused one cold November morning by a direful conglomeration of sounds;—strange, discordant shrieks, ominous groans, a clanking, as of iron chains and fetters, a slow, heavy, elephantine tread gradually growing on the ear, and a deep, continuous rumbling as of earthquakes in the bowels of the earth. Mrs. Salsify Mumbles, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... point of the far-reaching horizon, signalling to his mates the appearance of a spar against the heavens. Then, with course changed and wheel set, and sped on by conspiring winds, they bore down upon the unfortunate vessel, displaying at the proper moment the ominous and fateful black flag and its ghastly emblem ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... not only in this company but in the world at large. But it is that postulate that I dispute. I hold that the good life must either be the privilege of a few, or not exist at all. The good life in my view, is the life of a gentleman. That word, I know, has been degraded; and there is no more ominous sign of the degradation of the English people. But I use it in its true and noble sense. I mean by a gentleman a man of responsibility; one who because he enjoys privileges recognizes duties; a landed proprietor who is also, and therefore, a soldier and a statesman; a man with a natural capacity ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... us both," she whispers. And Golightly tosses up his head with a little whinny of comprehension, and, bracing up every nerve, prepares for a rush through that ominous path blocked as it is ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... feelings, but whether as an omen for good or ill, she would not tell. On all matters connected with her religions notions she was shy and reserved, though occasionally she unconsciously revealed them. Thus the warnings of death or misfortunes were revealed to her by certain ominous sounds in the woods, the appearance of strange birds or animals, or the meanings of others. The screeching of the owl, the bleating of the doe, or barking of the fox, were evil auguries, while the flight of the eagle and the croaking of the raven were omens ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... pay him no rent, and the cattle of his neighbours devoured his meadows. He was troubled with rheums and colds. He met a severe fall when he first came to Chertsey, of which he says, half in jest and half in earnest—'What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging.' Robert Hall said of Bishop Watson that he seemed to have wedded political integrity in early life, and to have spent all the rest of his days in quarrelling with his wife. So Cowley wedded his long- sought-for ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... distance on an unobstructed route, in the then heavy state of the roads, in less than three hours. Long before that time it would be dark, and no doubt stormy, for the sky, which had lowered all the afternoon, every now and then uttered an ominous growl, and seemed ready to fall down upon us. But turning back was out of the question, so, thanking the "native," I was about to proceed, when he ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... Norton with an ominous sternness. "And in your place. . . How long do you think that you can keep out ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... meantime there was dead silence in the Fane-Smiths' carriage, an ominous silence. There was an unmistakable cloud on Mr. Fane-Smith's face; he had been exceedingly annoyed at what had taken place, and with native perversity, attributed it all to Erica. His wife was miserable. She felt that her intended kindness had proved a complete failure; she was afraid of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... I like not this sudden and general heaviness amongst our godheads; 'tis somewhat ominous. Apollo, command us louder music, and let Mercury and Momus contend to please and revive our senses. [Music Herm. Then, in a free and lofty strain. Our broken tunes we thus repair; Cris. And we answer them again, Running division on the panting air; ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... to rattle by; always an ominous sign, for it meant that battle was imminent. It was a remarkable thing that neither infantry nor artillery took much notice of each other as they met. The guns and carriages would thunder and bump and clatter over the pave, the thickset horses straining at their harness, the drivers ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... brackish water made one of us so ill that he could retain no food. A high fever set in on the evening of August 15, and as we pulled into the station of Bay-doon-sah, he was forced to go to bed at once. The other, with the aid of our small medicine supply, endeavored to ward off the ominous symptoms. In his anxiety, however, to do all that was possible he made a serious blunder. Instead of antipyrin he administered the poison, sulphate of zinc, which we carried to relieve our eyes when inflamed by the alkali dust. This was swallowed before the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... subjects from it; it had reached the stages of Madrid and of London (where one critic had called it "a very beautiful composition"), while French approval had been practically unanimous. Nay, a game had been founded thereon, and—crowning, but perhaps rather ominous honour—somebody had actually published ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... this, for, with the ominous sound, one of the horses broke from its traces, and the other was now dragging the old wagon along by the straps that had withstood the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... the tent and backed noiselessly against the front pole. Indeed, not a sound was created by his entrance, not even the rustling whisper of bare feet on dry grass. It seemed very ominous, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... the further side of the hill, overlooking Barrowford and Colne; but Richard knew its position well, and while his gaze was fixed upon the point, he saw a star shoot down from the heavens and apparently alight near the spot. The circumstance alarmed him, for he could not help thinking it ominous of ill to Alizon. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Angie Miller's face, and then the truth dawned upon him. He sank back in his chair so suddenly that the legs gave forth an ominous crack. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... objects that met us on our way. The sullen crocodile basking in the sun, sank noiselessly; a splash would be heard, and a four feet albicore would fling himself madly into the air, striving vainly to elude the ominous black triangle that cut the water like a knife close in his rear. Small chance for the poor fugitive, with the ravenous shark following silent and inexorable. We lay on our oars and watched the result. The hunted fish doubles, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... parliamentary assemblies, which had swept on their course, under various denominations, in rapid and stormy succession, were now followed by one which, like Aaron's rod, was to swallow up the rest. Its approach was regarded by the Queen with ominous reluctance. At length, however, the moment for the meeting of the States General at Versailles arrived. Necker was once more in favour, and a sort of forlorn hope of better times dawned upon the perplexed monarch, in his anticipations from ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... out," was the response, and one of the double-bass players ran down the steps to attend to the order. The men smiled; and some whispered that they were evidently in for a hard morning—all signs were ominous. Again ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... extinguished the holy light of Hymen's torch, and re-lighted it with Lucifer matches in Register offices; and out it soon goes, leaving worse than Egyptian darkness in the dwellings of the poor—the smell of its brimstone indicative of its origin, and ominous of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... something ominous in the knock. It was a short, quick, clear, and decisive knock. It was the knock of a man in authority; of one who felt that although standing on the outside of the door, he had a right to be within. Marguerite and Dumiger both ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurels' mimic'd leaves; Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel-wreath which glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... window. An instant later the submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and vibration, and then ominous quiet. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... It was an ominous sign when Aunt Polly addressed any one as "sir." "But that was before our time. Peter and I cleaned the place out as best we could, but there are times now, even, while I sit here alone in the dark, when I seem to see ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... scenery under my direction. If I had already been impressed by the significance of the fact that my first journey through the German Rhine district, so famous in legend, should have been made on my way home from Paris, it seemed an even more ominous coincidence that my first sight of Wartburg, which was so rich in historical and mythical associations, should come just at this moment. The view so warmed my heart against wind and weather, Jews ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... moment, his laughter sounded harsh and ominous; but I had done no wrong, and so, in ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... sylvan openings, and imagined recesses of primeval shade and virgin wilderness in their dim perspectives. Had he descended, however, and followed one of these diverging paths, he would have come upon some rude wagon track, or "logslide," leading from a clearing on the slope, or the ominous saw-mill, half hidden in the forest it was slowly decimating. The woodland hush might have been broken by the sound of water passing over some unseen dam in the hollow, or the hiss of escaping steam and throb of an invisible engine ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... an ominous pause. Every old student there knew Clifford to be one of the most skillful and dangerous boxers ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... ghastly battle-field, yet to be fought, but foredoomed of old to be bloodier than the one where we had reaped such shame. Of all haunted places, methinks such a destined field should be thickest thronged with ugly phantoms, ominous of mischief ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sinister fog at the wane—at the change of the moon cometh forth Like an ominous ghost in the train of a bitter, black storm of the north! At the head of the gully unknown it hangs like a spirit of bale. And the noise of a shriek and a groan strikes up in the gusts of the gale. In the throat of a feculent pit is the beard of a bloody-red sedge; And a foam like the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... foolish if I ask you to wait here while I go in there"—she pointed to the ominous thicket near ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... denied the immortality of the soul has been the subject of innumerable debates from his own time until now. It is certainly a most ominous fact that his great name has been cited as authority for rejecting the doctrine of a future life ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... they failed to discover any addition to the solitary track they were following. It was curious. It was almost ominous. But its significance was lost in the thought that here at least was shelter for themselves against the real winter ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... a large fire was lighted on the platform of the fortress. My attention being drawn to that point, I perceived, by the now increasing daylight, a wooden scaffolding, on which were erected five black and ominous looking gibbets. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... of ominous calm, with an hour of bright sun, gradually softening into a white shadow, as a fleecy cloud of fairy whiteness rolled over the sun's face, giving a light on the earth like the garish light in a tent at high ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... him as he hurried by. And, now that he thought of it, the first vice-president had smiled pleasantly and had said something that sounded like "good morning, Mr. Bingle," although it certainly couldn't have been that. It was regarded as especially ominous when an official of the bank said good-morning to a clerk or a bookkeeper. It meant, according to tradition, that his days were numbered. It was a sort of preliminary sentence. Later on, there would come a summons ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... ominous shade fell on the tawny Libyan hills, and covered Memphis, the Nile, and the palace gardens with lightning swiftness. Night embraced the earth, and in the heavens appeared a ball as black as coal surrounded ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... had stepped full upon it. He hastened from the spot, and rejoined Oliver in a somewhat shaken state of mind. Common as such an incident was in the woods, where sandy soil warned the hunter to be careful, it seemed ominous that particular morning, and, joined with the discovery of Bushman traces, quite destroyed his sense of ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of murders, violations, false witness, and forged signatures. This fact reveals, with ominous clearness, a movement of thought on the nature of which it is easy ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... was awakened, but not until after the last vessel in that ominous procession had ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... sides and stared into the glass, noting the ghastly pallor that had come over his face—the dull, whitish yellow of muddy marble. He could not turn, his legs were quivering. He knew it was conscience—only that. And yet Corrigan's ominous silence continued. And now he caught his breath with a shuddering gasp, for he saw Corrigan's face reflected in the glass, looking over his shoulder—a mirthless smirk on it, the eyes cold, and dancing with a merciless and cunning purpose. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... hand there with a rope for the boat coming alongside," sung out the captain in a loud voice, which sounded as ominous of evil to the ears of the superstitious crew. "Bring a lantern here to the gangway," he added. Bowse, with his first mate and Colonel Gauntlett, stood near the gangway, which was lighted up with a lantern to receive the strangers, as a small boat containing in all only ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... rang out the tolling of the mysterious bell. To the anxious watcher, its tones no longer rang full and sweet as upon the previous evening, but sounded slow and threatening, as if freighted with an ominous meaning. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... the assassination of Empress Elizabeth, forebodings of an impending catastrophe were prevalent at the Court of Vienna, and so imbued was Emperor Francis-Joseph with ominous presentiments, that he repeatedly exclaimed in the hearing of his entourage: "Oh, if only this ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... feel as if this were my fault," cried Algitha, on one still, ominous night, after she had resigned her post at the bedside to the nurse, who was to fill it for a couple of hours, after which Hadria took her ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... bone. Marian. Now o'er head sat a raven On a sere bough, a grown, great bird, and hoarse, Who, all the while the deer was breaking up, So croaked and cried for 't, as all the huntsmen, Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous.'" ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Stars and Stripes moving to and fro, and we knew the Federals were making preparations for the mighty contest. We could hear but the rumbling sound of heavy guns, and the distant tread of a marching army, as a faint roar of the coming storm, which was soon to break the ominous silence with the sound of conflict, such as was scarcely ever before heard on this earth. It seemed that the archangel of Death stood and looked on with outstretched wings, while all the earth was silent, when all at once a hundred guns from the Federal line opened upon us, and ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... was no longer to be thought of, the advent of a man like Croft, who had been making her acquaintance all summer, and who had now returned to Virginia, no doubt for the sole purpose of seeing her again was, to say the least, exceedingly ominous. One thing only could correct this deplorable state of affairs. The absurd bar to the union of Junius and Roberta should be removed, and they should be allowed to enter upon the happiness ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... which is inevitable amid the circulation of Parisian humanity. Oh, how deeply she feels the value of a minute! Her gait, her toilet, the expression of her face, involve her in a thousand indiscretions, but oh, what a ravishing picture she presents to the idler, and what an ominous page for the eye of a husband to read, is the face of this woman when she returns from the secret place of rendezvous in which her heart ever dwells! Her happiness is impressed even on the unmistakable disarray ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... He would scarcely deign to notice the insolent 'Qui va la!' of the sentry, a summons he at least thought superfluous in a town which had known his ancestry for eight or nine generations. At the repetition of the cry, accompanied by something that sounded ominous, in the sharp click of a gun-lock, he replied, haughtily, 'Je ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... hearing no mention of his ship all this while, began first to murmur, and then to leave him: six of them deserted in one night. In other respects events occurred ominous of evil for the termination of the enterprise. To occupy the attention of his companions, and prevent them from brooding on apprehended ills, as well as to guard them against a surprise by any hostile natives, he set them on erecting a fort upon an eminence, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... "has engrafted the right of regulation onto the First Amendment by placing in the hands of the legislative branch the right to regulate 'within reasonable length' the right of free speech. This to me is an ominous and alarming trend." Ibid. 285. Justices Black, Reed and Jackson also dissented. Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion is characteristically paradoxical: "An Illinois Act, construed by its Supreme Court to be a 'group libel' statute, has been used to punish criminally the author ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... impression which it had made. This way of linking the two anecdotes, as cause and effect, would also bring a third anecdote under the same nexus. We are told that Calpurnia, the last wife of Caesar, dreamed on the same night, and to the same ominous result. The circumstances of her dream are less striking, because less figurative; but on that account its import was less open to doubt: she dreamed, in fact, that after the roof of their mansion had fallen in, her husband was stabbed in her bosom. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... tricks," responded Mrs. McKinstry dolefully from within. "On'y last week he let in a Chinaman, and in the nat'ral hustlin' that follered he managed to help himself outer the pork bar'l. There ain't no shade o' cussedness that or'nary hound ain't up to." Yet notwithstanding this ominous comparison she presently made her appearance with her sleeves turned down, her black woollen dress "tidied," and a smile of fatigued but not unkindly welcome and protection on her face. Dusting a chair ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... throb of leaping guns; Crown in thy streets the deed that never dies, And tell their fathers' fame to all thy sons! Behold! behold! on that unchanging sea Where day behind Trafalgar rises pale, How dread the storm to be Drifts up with ominous breath Cloud after towering cloud of billowy sail Full charged with thunder and the ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... high did angry passion run that there might have been repetition of the famous fisticuffs on floor of House that marked progress of first Home Rule Bill. Ominous sign when Royds of Sleaford, ordinarily mildest-mannered of men, rushed between Front Opposition Bench and Table and shook a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various

... Oriel is safe, but the look on the captain's face is so ominous that their coxswain glances over his shoulder. The bow of St. Ambrose is within two feet of their rudder. It is a moment for desperate expedients. He pulls his left tiller rope suddenly, thereby carrying the stern of his own boat out of the line of the St. Ambrose, and calls on his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... charged those who had seen it not to tell that which had happened to any one, and he considered with himself what to do. And having regard to the words spoken by the Babylonian, who had said at first that when mules should produce young, then the wall would be taken, having regard (I say) to this ominous saying, it seemed to Zopyros that Babylon could be taken: for he thought that both the man had spoken and his mule had produced ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... magnitude of proportions, it was an intellectual nose. It was thin, horny, transparent, and sonorous. Its snuffle was consequential and its sneeze oracular. The very sight of it was impressive; its sound, when blown in school hours, was ominous. But the scholars loved the nose for the warning which it gave: like the rattle of the dreaded snake, which announces its presence, so did the nose indicate to the scholars that they were to be on their guard. The Dominie would attend to this ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of maskers recloses behind the ominous passage; —the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the fantastic mummery ebbs swiftly ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... drew himself up with a certain arrogance, but his narrow black moustache did not hide the fact that his lips were twitching with excitement. His dark eyes shone like the eyes of a beast, green and ominous. "But we have never spoken. I thought not. Now, Mr. Rivington, will you permit me to come ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... about him, that not even the eyes of the gods could endure; but he moved not. There he lay on the horizon; and when the deities sent Tlotli, their messenger, to him, with orders that he should go on upon his way, his ominous answer was that he would never leave that place till he had destroyed and put an end to them all. Then a great fear fell upon some, while others were moved only to anger; and among the others was one Citli, who immediately ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... him and pondered upon the mystic gloom, he began to believe that at any moment the ominous distance might be aflare, and the rolling crashes of an engagement come to his ears. Staring once at the red eyes across the river, he conceived them to be growing larger, as the orbs of a row of dragons advancing. He turned toward the colonel and saw him lift his gigantic arm ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... Deputy Lock, shrugging his shoulders with his hands in his pockets, and shaking his head in a sulkily ominous manner, 'the parish authorities down town will have it out of you, if you go on, you may take your ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... There was an ominous movement among the bystanders, and those in the rear did some excited talking, while several left the building. Presently the sound of heavy blows was heard in the store-room adjoining the shop. Then a rush of feet ensued, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... Blessed relief. I've been looking forward to taking them off for the last half-hour—which is ominous at my time of life. But, as I was saying, we listened and heard The Dowd drawl worse than ever. She drops her final g's like a barmaid or a blue-blooded Aide-de-Camp. 'Look he-ere, you're gettin' too fond 0' me,' she ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... there came a sudden ominous growl from the interior of the cave. It was the growl of a wild beast and caused the youth to leap back in alarm. Then a slinking body came into view and a full-sized mountain lion ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... the blood,—and borne indeed by few who are not,—and whom he desires to see contract an alliance that will bring him enough of riches to enable him to bear his title with becoming dignity." I glanced at Mademoiselle, whose cheeks were growing an ominous red. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... hear General Howard's guns at intervals, away off to our right front, but an ominous silence continued toward our left, where I was expecting at each moment to hear the sound of battle. That night we reached Renfrew's, and had reports from left to right (from General Schofield, about Morrow's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... all at once, as they stared into each other's eyes, Barnabas leaning forward, strong and compelling, Barrymaine upon his knees clinging weakly to the table, sudden and sharp upon the stillness broke a sound—an ominous sound, the stumble of a foot that ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... stairs. As I entered the sitting-room so silent, so peaceful, so undisturbed, it seemed that my alarm was only a part of a dream till the sobbing of my daughters and my wife's voice at the telephone calling for help, convinced me of the frightful reality. I heard, too, the ominous crackling ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... Be thou my magic book, which reading o'er Their counterspells we'll break; or if the King Will not by strong hand fix me in his Throne, But that I must be held Spain's blazing star, Be it an ominous charm ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... answer. So all round the class: all voted for the big sullen-looking blockhead. One or two did not give their votes quite promptly; and I could discern a threatening glance cast at them by the big sullen-looking blockhead, and an ominous clenching of the blockhead's right fist. I went round the class without remark; and the blockhead made sure of the prize. Of course this would not do. The blockhead could not be suffered to get the prize; and it was expedient that he should be made to remember the occasion on which he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... with a cooked up deputyship to the Cortes, that salaried reptile of the Philippine convents, who, with the aid of that tyrant General Weyler, his worthy godfather, the despotic incendiary of the town of Calamba, of ominous memory amongst us, does nothing but vomit rabid foam, insulting us by day and night with calumnies and shrieks, in that paper whose expenses the Procurators ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... even ominous, that in this play, and from the voice of Prospero, issues that magnificent prophecy of the total destruction which should ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... find her own questions, wonderings, reproaches, dying away unuttered in the atmosphere of silentness which always seemed to surround Nathanael Harper. This silentness had from the very beginning of their acquaintance induced in her that faint awe, which is the most ominous yet most delicious feeling that a woman can have towards a man. It seems an instinctive acknowledgment of the much-condemned, much-perverted, yet divine and unalterable law given with the first human marriage—"He shall rule ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... a two story structure built of rough hewn logs, was the most comfortable one in the settlement, and occupied a prominent site on the hillside about one hundred yards from the fort. It was constructed of heavy timber and presented rather a forbidding appearance with its square corners, its ominous looking portholes, and strongly barred doors and windows. There were three rooms on the ground floor, a kitchen, a magazine room for military supplies, and a large room for general use. The several sleeping rooms were on the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... days went on, bright, golden days, cloudless, and full of the zest and snap of the nearing cold, Dorry grew stronger and stronger. So well did he feel that after the first week or so he began to allude to himself as quite recovered, and to show an ominous desire to get back to his work; but this suggestion was promptly scouted by everybody, especially by John, who said she had come for six weeks at least, and six weeks at least she should stay,—and as much longer as she could; and that Dorry as her escort must stay ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... Weeks had started on his ominous mission to Holcroft his wife remarked to her daughter confidentially, "I declare, sis, if we don't get rid of Cynthy soon, I believe Lemuel ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... little while longer alone. Then came a rush and rustle of many feet upon the stairs, many dresses moving, many voices blending in a soft little roar; as ominous as the roar of the sea which one hears in a shell. My four room-mates poured into the room, accompanied by two others; very busy and eager about their affairs that they were discussing. Meanwhile they all began to ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... President figured as "Johnny Molasses" from the rum manufacture of Massachusetts. The New York Time-Piece pronounced him "a person without patriotism, without philosophy, and a mock monarch who had been jostled into the chief magistracy by the ominous combination of old Tories with old opinions and old Whigs with new." Addresses were printed begging aliens not to enlist in the provisional army if any laws should be passed ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... massed ranks. LONDONDERRY has pledged his knightly word to be in the firing line when the trumpet sounds. All the while, to the bewilderment of onlookers from the Continent, who confess they are further off than ever from understanding John Bull, to the creation of ominous restlessness among their own supporters, the Ministry, Brer Rabbit of established Governments, have 'lain low and said nuffin',' much less have they done anything. Suddenly, without word of warning, they take steps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... announced her husband's return. There was a sulken gloom over his countenance as he entered: he threw his gun carelessly on one side, so that it fell, and rattled against the paved floor; and this one act was to her ominous of evil. He sat down without speaking; falling back in the chair, and lifting his eyes up to the rafters above, he appeared to be in deep thought, and ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... break-neck speed, managed to give the House within the space of ten minutes an outline of the Bill which he hopes will maintain for Scotland her primacy in education. The new MUNRO doctrine did not, however, appeal to everybody, and there were ominous cries of dissent when he announced his intention of disestablishing the School Boards and putting the denominational ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... fallen across the road, and Nick did not catch sight of it until too late to check the flying mare. The carriage seemed to bound fully a foot into the air, and an ominous wrench told the driver that ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... aloofness, and its stone walls which shielded it from gaping gaze and gave it privacy. The iron gates were closed, the shutters drawn, and from the place stillness that was oppressive radiated, a stillness that was ominous. ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... sacrifice their lives. They were not assembled for vengeance, but for defence against a ruthless foe. There was no outward expression of rebellion in his speech, yet he enlarged on the grievances of the time. That speech was an ominous indication ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... returned to England at the end of April, 1186, he abandoned all prospect of profiting by the opportunity which still existed, though in diminished degree, of checking in its beginning the ominous growth of Philip's power, an opportunity which we may believe his grandfather would not have overlooked or neglected. By the end of the summer all chance of this was over, and no policy of safety remained to Henry but a trial of strength to the finish with his crafty ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... the Mirror became perfectly blackened, except in some few circular parts, which were tinged with the colour of blood. "The future is a fearful sight," said my Guide; "we are forbidden its contemplation, and can only behold the gloomy appearances before us: they are ominous ones!" ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... charge pointed significantly with a long whip which he carried to a break in the dense growth of trees which clustered close to the water's edge and then, with an ominous flourish of the lash, gave the word for the miserable band to move forward. A toilsome march of some four or five miles along a track of heavy sand then commenced; a march which, fatiguing enough in itself, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... enough though, for there was certain to be something of a swell—and other things; and now that he was in the midst of it, he had grave doubts as to what would happen. But his strange exaltation rose supreme to all fears; no danger seemed too great, no possibility too ominous, to dampen the ardor of this, his first big act of self-sacrifice. The song the Salvation woman sang passed ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... the points of the horse-shoe had been turned toward the east instead of the west they would not have been habitable and the place would have been known to navigators as the Devil's Reef, the Devil's Horse-shoe or by some other term ominous of shipwrecks. The group of islands now form a cosy though not very safe harbor where every evening in the mackerel season a small fleet of fishing-vessels sail in there to ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... coldness common enough on their part throughout the war. July had passed in what Winslow calls "an indolent manner," with prayers every day in the Puritan camp, when, early in August, Monckton sent for him, and made an ominous declaration. "The said Monckton was so free as to acquaint me that it was determined to remove all the French inhabitants out of the province, and that he should send for all the adult males from ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... would be furiously angry. But—Mr. Flint had done it, and behind Mr. Flint were powers perhaps as potent as Inglesby's. One thing more may have influenced the marshal: The hitherto timid and apathetic people had merged into a compact and ominous ring around the Butterfly Man and the doctor. A shrill murmur arose, like the wind in the trees presaging a storm. There would be riot in staid Appleboro if one were so foolish as to lay a detaining hand upon John Flint this day. More yet, the beloved Westmoreland himself would probably begin ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... the queen was the one dark spot; calumny had done its work—the whole country seemed to be saturated with an implacable hatred and prejudice against her whom they considered the source of all evil. Throughout the ceremonies attending the States-General, the queen was received with the same ominous silence; no one lifted his voice to cheer her, but the Duc d'Orleans was always ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... spitefully in the direction M'Fadden has gone, says:—"If only had dat man, old Boss, where 'um could revenge 'um, how a' would make 'um suffer! He don' treat 'e nigger like 'e do 'e dog. If 'twarn't fo'h Buckra I'd cut 'e troat, sartin." This ominous expression, delivered with such emphasis, satisfies Harry that he has got into the hands of a master very unlike ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... every glass vessel on the ships had been broken to splinters by the frost. In the lurid mock suns and mock moons of the frost fog the superstitious sailors fancied that they saw the ominous sign of the Cross, portending disaster. One of the surgeons died of exposure, and within a month all the crew were prostrate with scurvy. With the exception, perhaps, of Bering's voyage a hundred years ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... pretensions. My engagement prevented my remaining to dinner; but I returned time enough in the evening to be present at the conclusion of the day's ceremony. The dinner had passed off without any remarkable occurrence, and considering the ominous quantity of Champagne consumed (a very favourite beverage on all gala days with the middle classes of society at St. Petersburgh), I found the party almost philosophical. Toasts to the bride and bridegroom had been repeatedly drunk, and the night ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... intuitively; for there were novelty and hope to help the Buddhist child, and love to help the English woman. The sad look left her face, her life had found an interest; and very often, on fete days, she was my only pupil;—when suddenly an ominous cloud obscured the sky of her transient gladness. Wanne was poor; and her gifts to me were of the riches of poverty,—fruits and flowers. But she owned some female slaves; and one among them, a woman ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... back into the room which we had just left. As he partly reclosed the door, I heard the clapping of hands. In a condition of most dreadful suspense, we waited; until a new, ominous sound proclaimed itself. Some heavy body was being dragged into the passage. I heard the opening of a trap. Exclamations in guttural voices told of a heavy task in progress; there was a great straining and creaking—whereupon the trap was ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... point where they were incapable of taking note of her surroundings, but the fact remains that as she approached the mouth of a wide coulee that gave into the valley from the eastward, she did not hear the rumble of hundreds of pounding hoofs that each second grew louder and more ominous, until as she reached the mouth of the coulee a rider swept into the valley, his horse straining every muscle to keep ahead of the herd that thundered ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... strange thing happened. From the opposite stupendous cliffs, draped in snow, bejeweled with icicles, frowning and desolate, an ominous black shape flung itself furiously, and made straight for the eagle, barking hoarsely with rage as it came. Another hollow bark followed, and a second evil ebony form hurled down from the tottering cliff-top, and flapped ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... happiest title that could be given it, for it is not a great museum in which all schools are represented. You look in vain for the chain historic that holds together disparate styles; there are omissions, ominous gaps, and the very nation that ought to put its best foot foremost, the Spanish, does not, with the exception of Velasquez. Of him there are over sixty authentic works; of Titian over thirty. Bryan only allows him twenty-three; this is an error. There are fifteen ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... the consequence. Unrighteousness increases causing a confusion of castes. Cold sets in during the summer months, and disappears when its proper season comes. Drought and flood and pestilence afflict the people. Ominous stars arise and awful comets appear on such occasions. Diverse other portents, indicating destruction of the kingdom, make their appearance. If the king does not take measures for his own safety and does not protect his subjects, the latter first ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurels' mimic'd leaves; Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel-wreath which glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies below Whate'er ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... ant-hills in England. They are held in high reverence by the common people in Ireland. A gentleman, who in laying out his lawn had occasion to level one of these hillocks, could not prevail upon any of his labourers to begin the ominous work. He was obliged to take a loy from one of their reluctant hands, and began the attack himself. The labourers agreed, that the vengeance of the fairies would fall upon the head of the presumptuous mortal, who first disturbed them in their ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... I've been waiting for you to come in." There was something ominous about this unexpected summons, or perhaps about the manner of its delivery. At any rate, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... first acquaintance with punkas. They extend throughout the cabin, ominous of hot weather, which I detest; Vandy, on the other hand, revels in it, and it is his turn now. Vandy handed me today a string of Cambodia money, sixty pieces, which cost only two cents, showing ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... antipathy has existed in regard to this plant, and it is recorded how a few mules laden with parsley threw into a complete panic a Greek force on its march against the enemy. But the plant no doubt acquired its ominous significance from its having been largely used to bestrew the tombs of the dead; the Greek term "dehisthai selinou"—to be in need of parsley—was a common phrase employed to denote those on the point ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... arms and feet to move about, mouths to speak with, senses for communication. At the same time a fair picture rose before the youth deep out of the bottom of his heart, at which he smiled longingly. It was the recollection of Rosalinde and her matured beauty. She passed like a burning, ominous dream through his soul and he felt himself drunken, trembling, exultingly united with the proud but now subdued maiden in a love thrilled bridal night. While he was thus lost in thought his look was held chained by a painting, which hung on the wall opposite him. Strange, it was Rosa's portrait ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... dearer to the heart of the housekeeper, the assistant or her late husband, to which she rejoined "Why should I lament Vorkel? He was a bully, who never could learn how to cut out a coat, and always stole his customers' cloth." At that moment there was an ominous crash on the floor, and a powerful odour filled the laboratory; the phial had slipped from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... people, there never was a better daughter to a widowed mother than Nest. There is a picturesque old farm-house under Moel Gwynn, on the road from Tre-Madoc to Criccaeth, called by some Welsh name which I now forget; but its meaning in English is "The End of Time;" a strange, boding, ominous name. Perhaps the builder meant his work to endure till the end of time. I do not know; but there the old house stands, and will stand for many a year. When Nest was young, it belonged to one Edward Williams; his mother was dead, and people said he was on the look-out for a wife. They told Nest ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... here tonight, young folks; I jes' tell ye I was ashamed to come; but I knew I ought to; and now I am ashamed that I didn't want to. I might have known better. Fer I can see right now as I look into your faces, that Brother Cameron is right, and that what I have to tell won't make no difference." An ominous hush fell upon the company. "To-be-sure, we may have to wait a bit, but God will show a way, and we'll conquer this old devil of indifference yet." He paused and drew a long breath. "Well, I found a big house that ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... Mrs. Bronte's possessions, contained in the ship wrecked on the coast of Cornwall)—"and whose pages were stained with salt water; some mad Methodist Magazines full of miracles and apparitions, and preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticisms; and the equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... he deemed her well, And safe secured in distant cell; But, wakened by her favourite lay, And that strange Palmer's boding say, That fell so ominous and drear Full on the object of his fear, To aid remorse's venomed throes Dark tales of convent-vengeance rose; And Constance, late betrayed and scorned, All lovely on his soul returned; Lovely as when, at treacherous call, She left her convent's peaceful ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... the little-sunned aisle of Box Canon it was always cool. There the pines are straight and reach their heads far into the sky, each a many-wired harp to the winds that come down from the high divide. Their music is never still; now a low, ominous rush, soft but mighty, swelling as it nears, the rush of a winged host, rising swiftly to one fearsome crescendo until the listener cowers instinctively as if under the tread of many feet; then dying ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... in the swirling seas, in the uplifted knife. But then, there was always a chance of escape, an open door for the stout heart and ready hand; whereas, under present conditions, there was nothing to be done but pray, or curse, or wait in stoic silence until the first ominous quiver ran through the swift-moving ship. So, all unknowingly, they grouped themselves according to their nationalities, for the Latins knelt and supplicated the saints and the Virgin Mother, the Celts roared insensate threats at the islanders who had thrown them into the very jaws of eternity, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... him justice, what was going to happen next never worried him. He took things as they came. He was not the one to sidestep an issue. The ominous notice signed by his scoutmaster had the effect of directing his ambling course to that officer's presence, on which detour, he might encounter new adventures. To reach his troop's cabin he would have to pass the cooking shack where ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... had plunged over the lip of the rock, thinking he was charging Penrun. Down into the yawning gorge his body hurtled, the sound of his frenzied, dwindling screams floating up eerily out of the black, ominous depths. ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat

... storm spirits had maliciously waited that their onset might be the more effective, for when all was quiet, and everybody in camp asleep, the muttering of the thunder grew louder, lightning began to zigzag across the black cloud masses, and the whistling of the wind deepened to a steady ominous growl. Tent ropes creaked under the strain of the heavy blasts; trees writhed and twisted, and the rain came in gusts, swift, spiteful, and icy cold. In the dining-room Mrs. Royall awoke from a light doze and ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... at every step he took, trembling lest the committee should find that he did not know enough, was not a little taken aback at this greeting from "old Jack Means," who was the first trustee that he lighted on. The impression made by these ominous remarks was emphasized by the glances which he received from Jack Means's two sons. The older one eyed him from the top of his brawny shoulders with that amiable look which a big dog turns on a little one before shaking him. Ralph Hartsook had never thought ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... are dispersed by the rays of the morning sun, which in a few hours melt the snow. The furious tempests in these regions exceed any idea that can be formed of them, and can only be conceived by those who have witnessed them. Some of these mountain districts have acquired an ominous character for storms; Antaichahua is one of the places to which this sort of fearful celebrity belongs. For hours together flash follows flash, painting blood-red cataracts on the naked precipices. The forked lightning darts its zig-zag flashes on the mountain-tops, or, running ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... Millicent, practically between breakfast and lunch, there were no reasons why he should trouble further about them. The American threatened a fresh obstacle. He was winning his way with Helen altogether too rapidly. In the light of those ominous words at the luncheon table his close association with Stampa indicated a definite knowledge of the past. Curse him! ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... America has, however, been brought into undue prominence. It had such an ominous significance in Christian art, and one which chimed so well with the favorite proverb of the early missionaries—"the gods of the heathens are devils"—that wherever they saw a carving or picture of a serpent they at once recognized the sign manual ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... No one was pursuing him. That seemed ominous, too. But if they did pursue he was prepared to elude them. They must never recognize ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... we could hear General Howard's guns at intervals, away off to our right front, but an ominous silence continued toward our left, where I was expecting at each moment to hear the sound of battle. That night we reached Renfrew's, and had reports from left to right (from General Schofield, about Morrow's Mills, to General ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... hasn't married a beast," Kitty said, with a serious face and an ominous shake of the head. "When shall I ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... what seemed like an eternity of seconds. All the time the electric motors ran, almost noiselessly. The slight tremor imparted to the craft by the propeller shafts seemed like an ominous rumbling. Jack's voice had ceased. No one felt like talking. From time to time Skipper Jack glanced at his watch; his face, expressionless, gave no clue to the eagerly watching naval cadets. But at last young Benson's hand reached toward the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham

... really awoke to a full consciousness of where she had drifted. The current had carried her along so far, and she had not been to blame, because she had not comprehended her danger; but now it was different. She was awakening, but she was at the edge of the cataract, and its ominous ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... took morning train for Tacoma, one hundred and forty-seven miles. Swarms of people at the station, and some ominous "good-byes"; the majority talking of Alaska in a superior fashion, which implies that they are through passengers, and they don't care who knows it. Alaska boat left Portland two days ago; we are to catch her at Port Townsend, and it looks as if we should crowd her. Train ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... seen Fillmore's fiancee, she had been impressed by her imperturbable calm. Miss Winch, in Detroit, had seemed a girl whom nothing could ruffle. That she had lapsed now from this serene placidity, struck Sally as ominous. Slightly though she knew her, she felt that it could be no ordinary happening that had so ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... had resumed the offensive. On all sides the ominous roll of the charge and the victorious Marseillaise were heard above the din. Marmont's battery belched fire; Kellermann dashed forward with his cuirassiers and cut his way through both lines of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... military road from Peshawar to Nowshera, the gold-bright sun dazzling in its whiteness—a strange drive through the flat, burned country, with the ominous Kabul River flowing through it. Military preparations everywhere, and the hills looking watchfully down—alive, as it were, with keen, hostile eyes. War was at present about us as behind the lines in France; and when we crossed ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... patted my shoulder with a smile and threw a kiss to Sally. Suddenly her face grew stern. She pointed toward the village and then at Sally. Up went her arm high above her head with one finger extended in that ominous gesture so ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... first entered Moscow, and the Emperor came only after him. This entry was made in the night, and never was there a more depressing scene. There was something truly frightful in this silent march of an army halted at intervals by messages from inside the city, which seemed to be of a most ominous character. No Muscovite figures could be distinguished except those of a few beggars covered with rags, who watched with stupid astonishment the army file past; and as some few of these appeared to be begging alms, our soldiers threw them bread and a few pieces of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... distance, they could hear the muffled roar of rocket motors as the three finalists tuned up their ships, preparing for the greatest space race in history. And it seemed to Strong that with each blast there was a vaguely ominous echo. ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... warlike Sounds (methinks) are very improper in a Marriage-Consort, and give great Offence; they seem to insinuate, that the Joys of this State are short, and that Jars and Discord soon ensue. I fear they have been ominous to many Matches, and sometimes proved a Prelude to a Battel in the Honey-Moon. A Nod from you may hush them; therefore pray, Sir, let them be silenced, that for the future none but soft Airs may usher in the Morning of a Bridal Night, which will be a ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... Ned Nevins' letter. He opened it, having pushed it into his pocket when they entered the workshop, where Mr. Chadwick had placed it before opening the ominous epistle from his brokers. It was a friendly, chatty note from the boy, and enclosed the checks covering the joint dividends of Jack and Tom ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... dejectedly, "from the time of my coming here, madame; and though I know you are too good to dislike me on that account, yet I must, in your eyes, be ever connected with calamity, and look like an ominous thing." ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... side, pounding a cast-iron pillow, I dozed through uneasy intervals, and woke with groans and starts. I could not rid myself of the sense of something ominous hanging over me. The gray car ramped through my dreams; so did Van Blarcom; and between sleeping and waking, I pictured my coming interview with the girl, her probable terror, the force and menaces I should have to ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... "Exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere, 1495." Judith was the type of nationalism, the heroine of a war of independence: and this mark of the Florentine love of liberty has lasted to our own day. No Medici dared to obliterate the ominous words. Donatello was not much in politics: his father had taken too violent a share in the feuds of his day, and narrowly escaped execution. Nor was Donatello's art coloured by politics: the Florentines did not give commissions like the Sienese for allegorical representations ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... this first eleven miles, however, he betrayed his infirmity—which I grieve to say he shared with the whole Pagan Pantheon—only by short stretches. On waking up, he made an apology for himself, which, instead of mending the matter, laid an ominous foundation for coming disasters. The summer assizes were now proceeding at Lancaster: in consequence of which, for three nights and three days, he had not lain down in a bed. During the day, he was waiting for his ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... all others whom he sought—Capt. Jack Scarfield—seemed to evade him like a shadow, to slip through his fingers like magic. Twice he came almost within touch of the famous marauder, both times in the ominous wrecks that the pirate captain had left behind him. The first of these was the water-logged remains of a burned and still smoking wreck that he found adrift in the great Bahama channel. It was the Water Witch, of Salem, but he did not learn her tragic story until, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... his decision, and this he did sotto voce. But even with this precaution it was not safe to say much, and during the little that he did say, the bishop made a very slight, but still a very ominous gesture with his thumb towards the door which opened from his dressing-room to some inner sanctuary. Mr. Slope at once took the hint and said no more, but he perceived that there was to be confidence between ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... considerable extent, and behind the house and the lawns stretching back in a half open shrubbery. On one of the lawns long tables already shewed their note of preparation; on the other there was a somewhat ominous array of benches and chairs; and among them all, round and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... black coffin on trestles; the door open, for we had a fear of cats getting at the body,—we could glimpse the ominous black object as we sat down to breakfast. And I laid my head on the table and wept as much because of that sight as over the loss of my ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... an Army Corps approaching from the southwest.... The air is surcharged with electricity and puts one's nerves on edge.... There is an ominous roar overhead that grows more nerve-racking every second.... Zip, zip, zip, bl-r-r-r-r-oo-ow!... A flock of Foelkers heading east like wild ducks toward a few faint specks zigzagging in the firmament away to the northeast.... Now there are a number of specks ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... the manner in which the clouds have enveloped the sky and the earth itself trembles, this warrior can be none else than Savyasachin. Our weapons do not shine, our steeds are dispirited, and our fires, though fed with fuel, do not blare up. All this is ominous. All our animals are setting up a frightful howl, gazing towards the sun. The crows are perching on our banners. All this is ominous. Yon vultures and kites on our right portend a great danger. That jackal also, running through our ranks, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... old age and death, from corruption and decay, and shall render it eternally living, eternally growing, and master of itself." The fatal conflict shall be protracted, but the champions of Saoshyant shall at length obtain the victory. "Before them shall bow Aeshma of the blood-stained lance and of ominous renown, and Saoshyant shall strike down the she-demon of the unholy light, the daughter of darkness. Akem-mano strikes, but Vohu-mano shall strike him in his turn; the lying word shall strike, but the word of truth shall strike ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... began to fondle him. The Hebrew urchin stretched forth his hand and took the kingly crown from Pharaoh's brow and deliberately placed it upon his own head. To the monarch and his courtiers this action of the child was ominous, and Pharaoh inquired of his counsellors how, in their judgment, the audacious little Hebrew should be punished. Bi'lam, the sooth-sayer, answered: "Do not suppose, O King, that this is necessarily the thoughtless action of a child; recollect thy dream ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... into the burning eyes of Yolara crept a doubt. Closer they drew to the Dweller, and closer, I following them step by step. The Shining One's whirling lessened; its tinklings were faint, almost stilled. It seemed to watch them apprehensively. A silence fell upon us all, a thick silence, brooding, ominous, palpable. Now the pair were face to face with the child of the Three—so near that with one of its misty tentacles it could ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... ill-treatment so silently. It creaked out its remonstrances and entreaties, and at the more difficult spots threatened to go to pieces; but its owner understood its character and capabilities, and paid no attention to its ominous threats. Once, indeed, a wheel came off, but it was soon fished out of the mud and replaced, and no further ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... utterly hopeless. They were confounded by the result of the general election, and dismayed at the accession to power of men whom they knew to be thoroughly acquainted with their true objects and intentions, and resolved to frustrate them, and able to carry their resolutions into effect. The ominous words of Sir Robert Peel—"I think that the connexion of the manufacturers in the north of England with the joint-stock banks, gave an undue and improper impulse to trade in that quarter of the country"—rang in their ears as a knell; and told them that they were found out by a firm ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... family, and friends, the wife he has married the day before, the young mother who sits smiling by the cradle of her first-born, the betrothed who was looking joyfully at her bridal veil. He must go, and stifle all those ominous voices which rise from the depth of his heart, and say to him, "Will you ever return? and, if you return, will you find them all, your dear ones? and, if you find them, will they not have changed? will they have preserved ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... occurred at almost all important points of the eastern front. Only one or two engagements of extremely minor importance between scouting parties were reported. In the light of future events this remarkable condition might well be called ominous, especially if one connects with it a decided increase in Russian aeroplane activity, which resulted in two strong attacks on June 1, 1916, against points on the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... Parliament, the present writer once heard a ludicrous, but illuminating, instance. Among the men sentenced to death after the Jameson Raid was one connected by ties of family with Bedford. For a while his kinsfolk could not believe that he was really in danger; but, when ominous rumours began to thicken, one of his uncles said, with an air of grave resolve: "This is becoming serious about my nephew. If it goes on much longer, I shall have to write ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... The distracted house-steward of Lord de Mowbray had met and impressed upon them, now that the Castle was once more in their possession, of securing the muniment room, for Mr Bentley had witnessed the ominous ascent of Morley and his companions ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... early history of Sparta expresses the prevailing spirit of early Hellenic civilization. Ανα τε εδραμον και ευθενηθησαν {Ana te edramon kai euthenêthêsan}: 'They shot up and throve.' But there is another phrase in Herodotus which announces the second act—an ominous phrase which came so natural to him that one may notice about a dozen instances of it in his history. Εδει γαρ τω δεινι γενεσθαι κακως {Edei gar tô deini genesthai kakôs}: 'Evil had to befall so-and-so, and therefore'—the story of a catastrophe follows in each case. The thought behind the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... cases, at least, the direction has some special qualification—e.g., Hautboys playing loud music; A lofty strain or two to the hautboys; Trumpets and hautboys sounded, and drums beaten all together. In Ant. IV, iii, 12, Hautboys supply the supposed ominous 'music in the air.' ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... they settled themselves down in the vested security of their great fortunes when an ominous situation presented itself to shake the entire propertied class into a violent state of uneasiness. Hitherto the main antagonistic movement perturbing the magnates was that of the obstreperous and still powerful middle class. Dazed and enraged at the certain ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... Even that sound of ominous danger was almost a relief to Leila: "I will go," she said, "and learn what the blast betokens; remain here—be ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... arm to his wife, he hastily left the saloon. The guests, who but now were so merry, silently arose and betook themselves to their chambers, and nothing could be heard save now and then a stolen whisper or a low and anxious inquiry. Soon a deep and ominous silence reigned in the castle of Rheinsberg. All slept, or at least seemed ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... age of eighteen I was a member of the Junior Class at Washington College at Lexington, Virginia, during the session of 1860-61, and with the rest of the students was more interested in the foreshadowings of that ominous period than in the teachings of the professors. Among our number there were a few from the States farther south who seemed to have been born secessionists, while a large majority of the students were decidedly in favor ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... Debate. CHAMBERLAIN, BLAKE, and JOHN MORLEY, each excellent in varied way. Only few Members present to hear BODKIN insert maiden speech in dinner-hour. A remarkable effort, distinguished, among other things, by necessity of SPEAKER twice interposing, second time with ominous threat that BODKIN could not be tolerated much longer. BODKIN, resuming thread of his discourse, humbly apologised, kept his eye (BODKIN'S eye) warily on SPEAKER, and, when he saw him preparing to rise for third time, abruptly resumed his seat,—returned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various

... its magnitude of proportions, it was an intellectual nose. It was thin, horny, transparent, and sonorous. Its snuffle was consequential and its sneeze oracular. The very sight of it was impressive; its sound, when blown in school hours, was ominous. But the scholars loved the nose for the warning which it gave: like the rattle of the dreaded snake, which announces its presence, so did the nose indicate to the scholars that they were to be on their guard. The Dominie would attend to this world ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... ascent. Crossing the ridge she stood at last upon the brink of Kor-ul-gryf—the horror place of the folklore of her race. Dank and mysterious grew the vegetation below; giant trees waved their plumed tops almost level with the summit of the cliff; and over all brooded an ominous silence. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... talk dropped down to the high price of provisions. Bread at 1s. 3d. the quartern loaf, according to the London test. Wheat at 120s. per quarter, as the home-baking northerners viewed the matter; and then the conversation died away to an ominous silence. John looked at Jeremiah, as if asking him to begin. Jeremiah was the host, and had been a married man. Jeremiah returned the look with the same meaning in it. John, though a bachelor, was the elder brother. The great church ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... length one whisper'd his companion, who Whisper'd another, and thus it went round, And then into a hoarser murmur grew, An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound; And when his comrade's thought each sufferer knew, 'T was but his own, suppress'd till now, he found: And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, And who should die to be ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... government and its chosen representatives. This promise is wrung from them by the force of circumstances; they have no intention of keeping it, and they are no sooner released than they utter dark threats of revenge, which fill the people's hearts with ominous fear, and make them regret the clemency ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber

... her for an instant, and his face darkened. The girl's ominous words filled him with vague apprehension. Was it possible that the blind man had any suspicion of what was intended? He held his breath, and made another vicious cast far up ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... imagined I heard voices talking about me in that room next door. It was becoming a disease with me. Either I was being dogged, watched, followed, day and night, indoors and out, or I was the victim of a very ominous hallucination. That night I never closed an eye nor lowered my light. In the morning I took a four-wheel cab and drove straight to Harley Street; and, upon my soul, as I stood on the specialist's door-step, I could have sworn I saw ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter, where the critic might have found a resume of my intentions and the key to this plot—to wit, that ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... understood it but too well, and hence his anxiety. The more he studied his accused, the more he found him in an enigmatic and threatening position, which was ominous of evil. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... table, the two men looked at each other. To Surface, the subject must indeed have been the most unwelcome imaginable, especially when forced upon him with so ominous a directness. Yet his manner was the usual bland mask; his face, rather like a bad Roman senator's in the days of the decline, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... intimately than any other man was privileged to do. Peel went out of office very soon after he had made Mr. Gladstone Under-secretary for the Colonies. Lord John Russell had brought forward a series of motions on the ominous subject of the Irish Church, and Peel was defeated and resigned. It is almost needless to say that Gladstone went with him. Peel came back again in office in 1841, on the fall of the Melbourne administration, and Mr. Gladstone became Vice-president ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... moderate a sea, 't would seem little; in so little depth of water they might warp her off; but the darkness magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this, Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth such intimations as had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... to the hope that Beverly-Jones would forget. But no. In due time his wife wrote to me. They were looking forward so much, she said, to my visit; they felt—she repeated her husband's ominous phrase—that I ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... or in financial condition. The company had fallen upon evil days. The net profits did not increase, and eight years after 1888 they were smaller than in that year, while the debt and interest charges constantly grew. Despite these ominous facts, dividends were paid regularly on the preferred stock and in 1891 they were resumed on the common stock. In the latter year a twenty per cent dividend was declared "to compensate shareholders for expenditures in betterments ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... of the wild Find food and shelter in your tenantless rocks, The eagle on whose wings the dawn hath smiled, The loon, the wild-cat, and the bright-eyed fox; For far away indeed Are all the ominous noises of mankind, The slaughterer's malice and the trader's greed: Your rugged haunts endure no slavery: No treacherous hand is there to crush or ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... of to join the rivers of the Clyde and the Forth, it being thought an impossible thing to be done; and the Adam and Eve pear-tree, in our garden, budded out in an awful manner, and had divers flourishes on it at Yule, which was thought an ominous thing, especially as the second Mrs Balwhidder was at the downlying with my eldest son Gilbert, that is, the merchant in Glasgow; but nothing came o't, and the howdie said she had an easy time when the child came into ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... progressing with this beautiful smoothness that I observed the square form of the Hired Retainer approaching us. Somehow—I cannot say why—I had a feeling that he came with bad news. Perhaps it was his air of quiet satisfaction which struck me as ominous. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... National Association of Manufacturers to every rational and moderate measure for benefiting workingmen, such as measures abolishing child labor, or securing workmen's compensation, caused me real and grave concern; for I felt that it was ominous of evil for the whole country to have men who ought to stand high in wisdom and in guiding force take a course and use language of such reactionary type as directly to incite revolution—for this is what ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... diary a few days ago are not exaggerated. No! they are not! The sensations inspired in me to-day, on again witnessing its convulsions, and the dense clouds of vapor expelled in rapid succession from its crater, amid the jarring of the earth, and the ominous intonations from beneath, were those of mingled dread and wonder. At war with all former experience it was so novel, so unnaturally natural, that I feel while now writing and thinking of it, as if my own senses might have deceived me with a mere figment of the imagination. But it is not so. ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... of nine days each way. By the time that we had finished it was past midnight, and I went to bed and slept soundly, for, to be quite truthful, I had no very profound belief in the threatened rising, despite the ominous departure of the Griquas; such things had happened before—were constantly happening, in fact—and nothing ever came of it, although more or less alarming rumours were continually arising, nobody quite knew how. As a matter of fact I felt quite easy in my mind about it, for I was ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... directly across the great, lonely track, and they only saw two or three small hamlets, dwellings of broom-squires, heath- and furze-cutters, or squatters. As the afternoon wore on the sky began to wear an ominous look. The scouts had seen several signs that rain was near. For one thing, a very sure sign, distant ridges had shown themselves sharply clear in the afternoon sunshine, and had looked far nearer ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... the rear of the moose came a faint sound. It was only the crackling of a twig, yet it served to break the spell under which the beast stood, for in the wilderness the snap of a twig is one of the most ominous of sounds. The animal wheeled sharply just as the hunter pulled the trigger. There was the sharp crack of a rifle which woke the echoes and startled the wilderness into an added alertness, while the ball sped across the water, barely missing the form of the moose. Before the disappointed ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... companion where she leaned to the tiller, her long hair streaming out upon the wind, her lithe body a-sway to the pitching of the boat and steering as well as I myself. From her I gazed to windward where an ominous and ever-growing blackness filled me with no small apprehensions; wherefore I made fast all our loose gear, as oars, spare sail, spars and the like. Now in the bows were stowed her belongings, a leathern trunk and divers bundles, the which I proceeded to secure in their turn. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... here and there, making a demonstration in favor of mirth. There were also youthful members of less innocuous groups, swaggering, consciously ominous members of organizations known as the Maharajas and the Comets and the Toppers. Members of these groups eyed members of other such ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... hands practically, could not strike back at him; the cards were all in favour of the Count. He had already received some ten thousand pounds as a result of his work in London, and he had frantic and ominous letters from Dr. Fall demanding that the "house" share should be forwarded without delay. These demands Poltavo had treated with contempt. He felt master of the situation, inasmuch that he had placed the major portion of the balance of money in hand, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... Wardour's presence. The speculations of the Antiquary were of a more melancholy cast, and were partly indicated by the ejaculation of cito peritura! as he turned away from the prospect. Lovel, roused from his reverie, looked at him as if to inquire the meaning of an exclamation so ominous. The old man shook his head. "Yes, my young friend," said he, "I doubt greatlyand it wrings my heart to say itthis ancient family is going fast ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... old man suddenly stopped, beat the air with both hands, as if seeking some support, then staggered and fell forward, striking his head against the marble mantelpiece, rolled on the carpet, and remained motionless. There was an ominous silence. A stifled cry from M. de Camors broke it. At the same time he threw himself on his knees by the side of the motionless old man, touched first his hand, then his heart. He saw that he was dead. A thin thread of blood trickled down his pale ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... river rises among precipices, gloomy caverns and ravines, and passes through vales full of mysterious echoes amid mist-shrouded hills. There, as Fergus sings, were Ossin and his following hunting, when certain ominous fair women lured them to a cave,—women who were but insubstantial wraiths,—to hold them captive till the seasons ran full circle, summer giving place again to winter and spring. But Ossin, being himself of more than human wisdom, found a way to trick the spirits; for daily he ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... into an azure sky. The roar of traffic turned into booming of the sea. There was a whistling among cordage, and the floor swayed to and fro. He saw a sailor touch his cap and pocket the two-franc piece. The syren hooted—ominous sound that had started him on many a journey of adventure—and the roar of London became mere insignificant clatter of a ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... responded by making a face at him, which brought an ominous sparkle into the boy's eyes. Things hadn't gone very well with him that day and he had waited for Jane for a ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... sick man and the women, but two of the men rebelled, demanding their share. Emil gave up his as an example, and several of the good fellows followed it, with the quiet heroism which so often crops up in rough but manly natures. This shamed the others, and for another day an ominous peace reigned in that little world of suffering and suspense. But during the night, while Emil, worn out with fatigue, left the watch to the most trustworthy sailor, that he might snatch an hour's rest, these two men got at the stores and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... "Palmerston," wrote Lord Clarendon to Lord Granville, "held a great bundle of sticks together. They are now loosened and there is nobody to tie them up." [58] In any case such a Bill would require very careful steering. The first ominous sign of a split occurred when it became necessary to fill the vacancy caused by the retirement of Sir Charles Wood. A place in the Cabinet was offered to Mr. Lowe, but he refused on the ground that he could not support Reform. Lord Russell, with characteristic abruptness and without consulting ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... marries again, and becomes Lady Dungannon. This marriage, by the new scenes, ties, and pleasures it introduces, proves the undoing of poor Orinda's happiness. Lucasia cools towards her, allows her less space in her heart than she craves; and finally we have a reluctant farewell poem, bearing the ominous title, "Orinda to Lucasia. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... politics and most of the other serious articles were beyond the range of her knowledge or of her interest. "I shall wait until we are married," she said, "then he will teach me." And she did not suspect how significant, how ominous ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... if you are not used to it, to occupy a lone prairie at night. You face the absence of the whole human race. The ominous stillness centres upon you with all the weight of Past, Present, and Future. You are sitting up with the universe. And while you sit there, and keep watch, you feel like the last survivor. Night burns her solemn tapers over the living and the dead; there is now room ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... began to understand the nature of the danger to which our guide had alluded. Unless we could stop our sledges before we should reach the mouth of the river we must inevitably be blown off the ice into three or four fathoms of water. Precisely such a disaster had given the river its ominous name, Leet and the Cossack Paderin, who were alone upon their respective sledges, and who did not get so far from the shore in the first place, finally succeeded with the aid of their spiked sticks in getting back; but the old guide and I were together upon ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... dare they bark, though much provoked at her refulgent visage, whether seen in puddle by reflection or in sphere direct; but one surveys the region round, while the other scouts the plain, if haply to discover, at distance from the flock, some carcase half devoured, the refuse of gorged wolves or ominous ravens. So marched this lovely, loving pair of friends, nor with less fear and circumspection, when at a distance they might perceive two shining suits of armour hanging upon an oak, and the owners not far off in a profound sleep. The two friends drew ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... him to jump ever so slightly and to cast a glance of inquiry at Annie, who altered her original course and moved toward the sitting-room door. In the kitchen a perfectly innocent skillet crashed into the sink with a vigour that was more than ominous. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... Mrs. McKinstry dolefully from within. "On'y last week he let in a Chinaman, and in the nat'ral hustlin' that follered he managed to help himself outer the pork bar'l. There ain't no shade o' cussedness that or'nary hound ain't up to." Yet notwithstanding this ominous comparison she presently made her appearance with her sleeves turned down, her black woollen dress "tidied," and a smile of fatigued but not unkindly welcome and protection on her face. Dusting a chair with her apron and placing it before the master, she continued ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... into my room with a portentously solemn air. I felt instinctively that the murder was out. But he only said "Where is Y.?" though the mere coupling of our names was ominous, for our publishing partnership was unknown. I replied, "How should I know? In his ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... Raven spoke, Perched on his crooked tree As hoarse as hoarse could be. Shun him and fear him, Lest the Bridegroom hear him; Scout him and rout him With his ominous eye ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be steadfastly regarded. So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might else have been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous words of Dandie - heard, not heeded, and still remembered - had lent to her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea of Fate - a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure, lawless, and august - moving indissuadably in the affairs of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... parting face a jest—for any anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could betray me who trusted to its protection. But any carriage that we could meet would be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. And I remarked this ominous accident of our situation,—we were on the wrong side of the road. But then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was, might also be on the wrong side; and two wrongs might make a right. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... It was obvious to the surrounding warriors that the words they had heard had an ominous import, and they saw how feeble were the devices of the so-called wise men when pitted against the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay

... often as a father kisseth his child, he should say secretly with himself' (said Epictetus,) 'tomorrow perchance shall he die.' But these words be ominous. No words ominous (said he) that signify anything that is natural: in very truth and deed not more ominous than this, 'to cut down grapes when they are ripe.' Green grapes, ripe grapes, dried grapes, or raisins: so many changes and mutations of one thing, not into that which was not absolutely, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... in modern) times. The war had continued six years, and the Medes had evidently made no serious impression, when a remarkable circumstance brought it suddenly to a termination. The two armies had once more met and were engaged in conflict, when, in the midst of the struggle, an ominous darkness fell upon the combatants and filled them with superstitious awe. The sun was eclipsed, either totally or at any rate considerably, so that the attention of the two armies was attracted to it; and, discontinuing the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... seemed just for a minute or so rather bewildered by Clotilde's vehement sally, but as soon as she recovered herself she replied with ominous coldness and decision, "I can scarcely suppose that mademoiselle could do anything so very silly; but if such should be the case, why there will be another ride in the coach, perhaps a longer one than the last. It will certainly not be to Beaujardin nor to Valricour. ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... a white unused quill, and a vellum scroll on which the names of all the members of the Society were written in ominous red. He handed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... Jombatiste shut the door to his house. The children reported that he would not even let them in, and that they could see him through the window stitching away in ominous silence, muttering ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... can right it. Both Mr. Hawker and Mr. Pickles were flying low at the time of their accidents, and so their machines were smashed; fortunately Mr. Brock was comparatively high up in the air, and though his machine rocked about and banked in an ominous manner, yet he was able to gain control just in ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... Capital. It had not only the supposed natural antagonism of employee to employer, but also the further cause of misunderstanding, and hostility even, which came from the foreignness of its members. Another ominous condition arose. The United States ceased to be the Land of Promise, where any hard-working and thrifty man could better himself and even become rich. The gates of Opportunity were closing. The free lands, which the Nation offered to any one ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... indeed the fruit of youth. As we grow old we crave apples less. It is an ominous sign. When you are ashamed to be seen eating them on the street; when you can carry them in your pocket and your hand not constantly find its way to them; when your neighbor has apples and you have none, and you ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... little shock that at least one part of him, the civilized appetite, had become debased by the plunge into the deck-hand depths, and he fought the suggestion fiercely. It was an article in his creed that environment is always subjective, and when one opens the door to an exception a host of ominous shapes may be ready to crowd in. He was fighting off the evil shapes while he listened; otherwise his interest might ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore Meant ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... most ominous signs of the times is, that good men stand aloof from politics. They do this either because they do not fully appreciate the importance of their influence, or from the false conviction that their votes will ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... cuff, and it trembled Beneath her ominous paw; And while it shook, with a threatening look, She coveted what ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... "It is ominous when the basic relationships are so abused—marriage held so lightly, children disdaining their own parents, as our Isabelle does. Where ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... assent of Duhaut. Their joy, however, was short; for Ruter, the French savage, to whom Joutel had betrayed his intention, when inquiring the way to the Mississippi, told it to Duhaut, who, on this, changed front, and made the ominous declaration that he and his men would also go to Canada. Joutel and his companions were now filled with alarm; for there was no likelihood that the assassins would permit them, the witnesses of their crime, to reach the settlements alive. In the midst of their trouble, the sky was cleared as by the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... overgrown man of authority eyed Julian wistfully and sullenly, as the miser the guinea which he must part with, or the hungry mastiff the food which is carried to another kennel. He growled to himself as he turned the leaves of his ominous register, in order to make the necessary entry respecting the removal of his prisoner. "To the Tower—to the Tower—ay, ay, all must to the Tower—that's the fashion of it—free Britons to a military prison, as if we ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... he had lodged in within three years, and by far the most hopeless of the three. His brother, Sir John of Desmond, through the representations of Ormond, was the same year arrested and consigned to the same ominous dungeon, from which suspected noblemen seldom emerged, except when the hurdle waited ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... beside the district attorney, was sitting very near, just in front of her. The jurymen filed slowly into their accustomed seats, and the judge, who had been resting his head on his hand, straightened himself, and put aside a book. There was an ominous hush pervading the dense crowd, and in that moment of silent expectancy, Beryl shut her eyes and communed with her God. Some mystical exaltation of soul removed her from the realm of nervous dread; ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... clear and cold, with only an occasional puff of wind from the westward; but the temperature was falling fast, and the snow-crust broke under the foot with a sound ominous of biting cold. All around was ice, and even if the light-houses along that coast were lighted in winter, it is doubtful if the party were near enough to land to see any except that of Point Escumenac, which at noon bore north-west ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... she had carefully looked up in the dictionary and learned by heart escaped her fickle memory. She stumbled and floundered hopelessly, getting redder and redder with shame. Miss Huntley preserved an ominous silence, and did not attempt to help ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... war the flat denial and total annihilation of the message and spirit of Jesus, entirely silencing the angels' song that gladdened the earth at his birth? Can it even be heard after many months when angry voices and the crash of falling wreckage still disturb the world? These ominous questions are causing anxiety to many Christian souls and ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden

... musingly, as she continued to peer, with a mystic expression of countenance, into a small and apparently empty teacup, which she turned slowly round and round in her skinny hand, muttering at intervals in an ominous undertone. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... commenced and again stopped at the instance of Octavius.[362] This second disappointment nearly led to open riot. The vast crowd did not immediately disperse; it felt its great physical strength and the utter weakness of the regular organs of government. There were ominous signs of an appeal to force, when two men of consular rank, Manlius and Fulvius,[363] intervened as peacemakers. They threw themselves at the feet of Tiberius, they clasped his hands, they besought him ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... While yet, in false and vain imagining, Thy sister nations would not own their foe, And turned to jest thy warnings, though the low, Deep, awful mutterings, that precede the throe Of earthquakes, burdened all the ominous air; While yet they paused in scorn, Of fatal madness born,— Thou, oh, my Mother! like a priestess bless'd With wondrous vision of the things to come, Thou couldst not calmly rest Secure and dumb— But from thy borders, with the sounds ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... after all scarce more than constructive rebellion, and the German friend Tamasese, for a rebellion which has lasted long enough to threaten us with famine, and was disgraced in its beginning by ominous threats against the whites, has been punished by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from his rocky barriers, Looks on thy ranks of gay-plumed warriors, And sees an ominous sight: The leafy tent for victory graced, Foresnatching fate with impious haste From gods that rule the fight. Thus fools have perish'd; and thus thou, Spurr'd to sheer death, art blinded now. Feeble thy clouds of clattering horse To dash his steady ordered force; From twanging ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various









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