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More "Piteous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there time. She looked again; she saw what was going to happen. Then with frenzy she began to beat against the window-sashes and to moan and try to stifle her own moans. And then shrill startled screams and piteous cries came up to her, and crazed now and no longer knowing what she did, she struck the window-panes in her agony until they were shattered and she thrust her arms out through them with a last blind instinct to wave to ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... Mrs. Palling. Notice the beehives. They are looking decidedly rakish adorned with black streamers in honour of the occasion. I have written to London to-day for a fresh supply of black ribbon, for the last was torn from my Sunday hat. I had no heart to refuse Mrs. Palling's piteous appeal, but the demand is becoming so constant that, as she does not seem inclined to keep a supply herself, I feel ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... cure my case: See ye not what befel me from your fell disdain? * Debased am I before the low and high no less. I hid my love of you but longing laid it bare, * And burns my heart wi' fire of passion's sorest stress: Ah! deign have pity on my piteous case, for I * Have kept our troth in secresy and patent place! Would Heaven I wot shall Time e'er deign us twain rejoin! * You are my heart's desire, my sprite's sole happiness: My vitals bear the Severance-wound: would Heaven that you ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the rocking boat, and stretched out her arms,—calling his name, "Brian! Brian! Brian!" Then the impact of the boat against a larger wave of the rapids brought her to her knees, and she clung to the thwarts with piteous cries. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... in themselves, living tragedies. Sergeant McGillicuddy, too, had a tragic aspect. In spite of all the Colonel could say, the Sergeant still accused himself of being the cause of Lawrence's desertion. McGillicuddy's bronzed face, like a hickory nut, grew so haggard, his self-reproaches so piteous, that Colonel Fortescue thought it well to give him a positive order to say nothing of the circumstances that led up to Lawrence's striking him. The Sergeant begged to be allowed to tell the chaplain about it; to this Colonel Fortescue consented, and ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... in alabaster and painted. There are seven monuments in all; one is immense, in marble, cherubim'd and seraphim'd, crusted with bas-reliefs and titles, for the first Duke of Bedford and his Duchess.(80) All these are in a chapel of the church at Cheneys, the seat of the first Earls. There are but piteous fragments of the house remaining, now a farm, built round three sides of a court. It is dropping down, in several places without a roof, but in half the windows are beautiful arms in painted glass. As these are so ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... piteous; absolutely mad with terror and pain, she was rushing about on the path, Max, yelling with sympathy, tearing after her. Lynn, at the first frantic moment when she saw her sister's high white socks turned ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... child's future shall shape out some darling purpose or plan, and fulfill some long unfulfilled expectation of the parent. And thus, though the wind of every generation sweeps its hopes and plans like forest-leaves, none are whirled and tossed with more piteous moans than those which come out green and fresh to shade the happy spring-time of the cradle. For the temperaments of children are often as oddly unsuited to parents as if capricious fairies had been filling ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... look at Michael with piteous violet eyes out of which all the defiance had gone. Her slender figure swayed a little, and ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... moments of weakness, even the most irreproachable Philistine among us; and as Bertram said those words in rather a piteous voice, it occurred to Philip Christy that the loan of a portmanteau would be a Christian act which might perhaps simplify matters for the handsome and engaging stranger. Besides, he was sure, after all—mystery ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... on her father. His childishness had increased upon him so much of late that he was in truth, at this moment, more like a boy under correction than a father in presence of his children. He buried his face in his hands, and Lettice heard a piteous groan. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that wonderful prince on the earth. And those men of wicked deeds sank in an unimaginable and awful hell. Seeing that son of his, obtained through the Rishi's boon thus slain, that great ascetic, viz., king Srinjaya, afflicted with deep sorrow, began to lament in piteous accents. Beholding the king afflicted with grief on account of his son, and thus weeping, the celestial Rishi Narada showed himself in his presence. Listen, O Yudhishthira, to what Narada said unto Srinjaya, having approached that king, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... occurred to me it would be in my dungeon! No such good fortune! They passed my door. At any rate, my chum should know where I was, so I proceeded to make a demonstration against my door and beseech, in the most piteous way, to be released. Of course, it was no use, but that did not matter; I never ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... leaves, when they were starved to death: Pooh, says George Graceless and Tom Tiger, what signifies talking such stuff as that, and down they pulled the poor Robin's eggs, nest and all, and left the pretty little bird making such piteous moans, as would have melted a heart of stone; but they turned a deaf ear to his tender cries, and went on destroying every nest they could find, without paying any distinction to the most innocent of the feathered race: at last they came to a turtle ...
— The History of Little King Pippin • Thomas Bewick
... scuttled out of the sweet fern and bounded away, displaying the piteous flag of truce, and Gordon smiled to himself when his perfectly trained dogs crossed the alluring trail without a tremor, swerving not an inch ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... it is of piteous distress, If, carrying a secret grief about, We wish to bury it in a recess, And find another there, who ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... house and gone some distance along the road in the direction of the Barradine Arms. Even if Norah had not said that he need not be there at the moment of departure, he would have been unable to remain. He could not stand by and see her piteous face, her slender figure, her forlorn gestures, while they carried her off—the poor little weak thing sent away from hearth and home, cast out among strangers because any spot on the earth, however bare or hard, had become a better shelter for her than ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... listen to this! At the time when I was behaving so badly to you, your terror, every time I approached you, was so piteous that it was always before my eyes and rang in my ears like a cry of agony from a wounded heart. It is true! It filled me with terror, too. Do you call that weakness, to feel things so intensely that another person is influenced by your feelings ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... after his arrival in the colony, our susceptible ensign first saw Joanna, a slave-girl of fifteen, at the house of an intimate friend. Her extreme beauty and modesty first fascinated him, and then her piteous narrative,—for she was the daughter of a planter, who had just gone mad and died in despair from the discovery that he could not legally emancipate his own children from slavery. Soon after, Stedman was dangerously ill, was neglected and alone; fruits and cordials were anonymously sent to him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... her desire by sending her also to execution; and Plutarch, their contemporary, expressed the general feeling in Rome, when he adds: "In all the long reign of this Emperor there was no deed done so cruel, and so piteous to look upon; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a brief time all ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... your doors a great multitude of men and women, flesh of your flesh, live lives that are one agony from birth to death? Listen! their dwellings are so near that if you hush your laughter you will hear their grievous voices, the piteous crying of the little ones that suckle poverty, the hoarse curses of men sodden in misery, turned half-way back to brutes, the chaffering of an army of women selling themselves for bread. With what have you stopped ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... gull has found her place on shore; The sun gone down again to rest; And all is still but ocean's roar; There stands the man unbless'd. But see, he moves—he turns, as asking where His mates? Why looks he with that piteous stare? ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonniere yielded, released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were fast bound in the boats. Ottigny ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... madden'd into flight; And steed and beast in plunging speed pursued The desperate struggle of the multitude, The faithful dogs yet knew their owners' face. And cringing follow'd with a fearful pace, Joining the piteous yell with panting breath, While blasting lightnings follow'd fast with death; Then, as Destruction stopt the vain retreat, They dropp'd, and dying lick'd ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... rest Jack picked out the weazened-up face of the old man. He would never so long as he lived forget that, there was such a world of apprehension, of piteous appeal in the look old Philip Adkins was bending upon him; as though all his remaining hopes of a little happiness in this world centered now upon the gallant boy who had undertaken to save ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... by Germany's piteous lamentations over the brutality of the blockade. In these appeals to America optimists detect signs of cracking. Cooler observers explain them as evidence of her ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... from above Tidings about my love; If that some envious wave Made his untimely grave, Or if, so softening half my wild regrets, Some coverlid of bluest violets Was softly put aside, What time he died! Nay, come not, piteous maids, Out of the murmurous shades; But keep your tresses crowned as you may With eglantine and daffodillies gay, And with the dews of myrtles wash your cheek, When flamy streaks, Uprunning the gray orient, tell of morn— While I, forlorn, Pour all my heart in tears and plaints, instead, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... He threw a piteous glance after Mamie, who was now, as he saw, through the open door, out upon the lawn and beyond easy hailing distance. When he turned again to look at Ariel he discovered that she had shifted the position of her chair slightly, and was gazing out of the window ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look fixed in one direction—watching—watching; and, while the howling wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to shudder in the ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... is a cottage standing on the edge of the common. The most good-natured woman in the world lives here. She is our laundress—married to a stupid young fellow named Molly, and blessed with a plump baby as sweet-tempered at herself. Thinking it likely that the piteous voice which had disturbed me might be the voice of Mrs. Molly, I was astonished to hear her appealing to anybody (perhaps to me?) to "let her in." So I passed through the shrubbery, wondering whether the gate had ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... answer for the same piteous quivering of the chin, but her lips formed "Au revoir"; and then she turned Fatima and rode slowly under the leafy arch that led through a long tunnel ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... sure there is no hope for Don Carlos," said Myra provocatively; but Tony's look of piteous dismay caused her to relent almost instantly, and she ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... forward and a flush coming into her face. "I know that— that is what it is for. To pay back worthily— to give back a thousandfold what you have received. Those girls can't be idle, can they?" she added in a gentle, piteous ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... my cloak and hood, and had my hand on the bar of the back door, when a piteous mew from the bedroom reminded me of the existence of poor Pussy. I ran in, and huddled the creature up in my apron. Before I was out in the passage again, the first shock from the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... for the Swedes? I hate them as I hate the pit of hell, And under Providence I trust right soon To chase them to their homes across their Baltic. My cares are only for the whole: I have A heart—it bleeds within me for the miseries And piteous groanings of my fellow-Germans. Ye are but common men, but yet ye think With minds not common; ye appear to me Worthy before all others, that I whisper thee A little word or two in confidence! See now! already for full fifteen years, The war-torch has continued burning, yet No rest, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... oath Detchard skipped back, and, before I knew what he was doing, had turned his sword against the King. He made one fierce cut at the King, and the King, with a piteous cry, dropped where he stood. The stout ruffian turned to face me again. But his own hand had prepared his destruction: for in turning he trod in the pool of blood that flowed from the dead physician. He slipped; ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... upon the mystery of life. I thought it must be a dream such as a man has lying in strange beds, for my spirit floated and cried upon that black and ugly air, lost and seeking as the soul of a man struggling under sleep. I had been there before, I felt, in just such piteous case among friends in the gable of a dwelling, yet all alone, waiting for visitors I had no welcome for. And then again ( I would think), is not all life a dream, the sun and night of it, the seasons, the faces of friends, the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... affection that throbbed through her with every heart-beat. As she gazed upon the features, faintly suggestive of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her girlhood. When she peered into those piteous, blighted eyes, mighty sobs of pity shook her, but she felt that she must be silent, and she forced back the tears. Outside, a spring bunting ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... Thrill when a maiden body shrinks, defiled, Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! Contagiously through my linked pair it flies Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied. For as I leaned to stifle in the hair Of one my passionate laughter (taking care With a stretched finger, that her innocence Might ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... about The Ring and the Book which must arise from the presence of some other fine compensating or equivalent quality. Perhaps one may say that this equivalent for grandeur is a certain simple touching of our sense of human kinship, of the large identity of the conditions of the human lot, of the piteous fatalities which bring the lives of the great multitude of men to be little more than "grains of sand to be blown by the wind." This old woe, the poet says, now in the fulness of the days ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... friend's heroic spirit the poor fellow did as he was bidden, but followed the brave resolve with a piteous look into the other's ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... song ceased, she turned her heavy eyes With such a piteous glance upon my face; It pierced my heart, and fast the gathering tears Blinded my sight. Alas! poor maniac; For thee no hope shall dawn—no tender thought Wake in thy blighted heart a thrill of joy. The immortal mind is levelled with the dust, Ere the tenacious cords of life give way. Hers ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... with the world, but with itself; a hopeless, miserable bearing-down; a sense of utter unworthiness and self-contempt. At times, when the inner life, the soul's lamp, burns dimly, there rises the piteous moan, 'Fool, fool! why strivest thou in vain? Thou hast deceived thyself: thou art no better than any brainless ass that plods through life.' And then the world grows so dull, and one's life seems so worthless, that one would fain ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... very piteous case of a poor woman in the last stage of consumption. The poor creature was worn to a skeleton lying on a most miserable looking bed with nothing to cover her but a ragged strip of black funereal-looking cloth. Although so very ill, she was able to answer the questions ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... shriek. The continuance of these shrieks proved that the stroke had not been instantly fatal. I waited to hear it repeated, but the sounds that now arose were like those produced by dragging somewhat along the ground. The shrieks, meanwhile, were incessant and piteous. My heart faltered, and I saw that mighty efforts must be made to preserve my joints and my nerves steadfast. All depended on the strenuous exertions and the ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... paid for what she had so freely given hurt Jane. Without realizing its coldness and emptiness, her life had been truly void of human warmth before the little, lonely girl stole in to fill it with her piteous, proud presence. A happier child, with more childish ways, might not so fully have compassed Jane's awakening; for this had been in proportion to the needs of the one who so forlornly made plea for entrance. Having once thrown wide the door of her heart, Jane had ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... 27th of July, and before the day had come, men and women had become so hardy in the combat that personal applications were made with unflinching importunity; and letters were written to Lady Glencora putting forward this claim and that claim with a piteous clamour. "No, that is too bad," Lady Glencora said to her particular friend, Mrs. Grey, when a letter came from Mrs. Bonteen, stating all that her husband had ever done towards supporting Mr. Palliser in Parliament,—and all that he ever would do. "She shan't have it, even though she ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Henrietta seized his hand and pressed it so warmly and looked at him with her lovely, piteous, imploring eyes—a very lunatic might have been healed by ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... has placed her piteous case in my hands. It is the Lady Eva Blackwell, the most beautiful debutante of last season. She is to be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt. This fiend has several imprudent letters—imprudent, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... drapery. Rowland thought with horror of the sinister compulsion to which the young girl was to be subjected. In this ethereal flight of hers there was a certain painful effort and tension of wing; but it was none the less piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked down to the base earth she was doing her adventurous utmost to spurn. She would need all her magnanimity for her own trial, and it seemed gross to make further demands upon it on ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... quickened by seclusion and fed by solitary books. She read with keen eyes the miserable secret of her father's strange guest in the poverty-stricken walls, in the mute evidences of menial handicraft performed in loneliness and privation, in this piteous adaptation of an accident to save the conscious shame of premeditated toil. She knew now why he had stammeringly refused to receive her father's offer to buy back the goods he had given him; she knew now how hardly gained was the pittance that paid his rent ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... still lives and does not name himself, Would I regard, to see if I may know him And make him piteous unto this burden. ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... "the spectacle of able, and we doubt not conscientious writers engaging in attempting the impossible,—painful and humiliating." He says, "they evidently do not breathe freely over their work; but shuffle and stumble over their difficulties in a piteous manner." (p. 250.) He asserts dogmatically that "the interpretation proposed by Buckland to be given to the Mosaic description, will not bear a moment's serious discussion:" (p. 230:) while Hugh Miller "proposes to give an entirely ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... to hurt a dog in like degree, the yelping of the animal would alarm the entire neighbourhood, and be almost certain to call forth a strong remonstrance from some lover of animals whose sympathy had been excited by hearing such piteous cries. People who are unacquainted with the inner life of stables, have no idea of the brutality which many grooms and strappers inflict on the animals in their charge. When we find a horse which is difficult to bridle, owing to the objection he has to allowing his muzzle or ears to be approached ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... her hands together, the fingers interlaced so tightly that the flesh was as white as her cheeks. "'Your rabble!' Stewart! Oh! Oh!" In spite of her thinly veiled threat of a few moments ago, there was piteous protest in her ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... another terrible bound against the massive stone forced it a few inches into the cave. For an hour he struggled, till the jaguar, itself tired, and not hearing the mewings of her cubs, retired with a piteous howl. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... hand. 'Ashley, Ashley! You don't mean it—that I must lose my pretty darling—the only one I have?' She met his gaze with her piteous mouth and wet eyes so painfully strained, that he ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... stared at them in piteous dismay. Mr. Traill had believed him to be so ill that he "wouldna be oot the morn." It was a ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... suffered materially from defection in its ranks, and, discouraged by failures and worn out by hardships, had at the time of the surrender only 7,892 men under arms, and this little army was almost surrounded by one of 100,000. They might, the General said with an air piteous to behold, have cut their way out as they had done before, but, looking upon the struggle as hopeless, I was not surprised to hear him say that he thought it cruel to prolong it. In two other battles he named (Sharpsburg and Chancellorsville, I think he said), the Confederates ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... grieved that I am going away for one whole day?" he asked. But she looked so piteous and so startled that he waited for no reply. "I shall continue to see you," he resumed. "I could not let any day ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... his course through the windings of Little Britain and entered Duck-lane. He was now in a quarter fearfully assailed by the pestilence. Most of the houses had the fatal sign upon their doors—a red cross, of a foot long, with the piteous words above it, "Lord have mercy upon us," in characters so legible that they could be easily distinguished by the moonlight, while a watchman, with a halberd in his hand, kept ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... moss-grown boulder sitting, Watching the graceful swallows flitting, Hearing the cuckoo's note. Sheep on the hills around me feeding, While in their piteous accents pleading, The lambkins' bleatings float. —Oh, dear! a fly gone down ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... The half-piteous doubt and compunction had something childish, which made her smile as she answered: 'You had better have done as ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dairy are the subjects of a congenital antipathy. Montaigne says there are persons who dread the smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed to a fire of musketry. The readers of the charming story "A Week in a French Country-House" will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in the night: "Ursula, art thou asleep? Oh, Ursula, thou sleepest, but I cannot close my eyes. Dearest Ursula, there is such a dreadful smell! Oh, Ursula, it is such a smell! I do so wish thou couldst smell it! Good-night, my angel!——Dearest! I have found them! They are apples!" The ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... going, then, to try to assure ourselves of this fact, and you—you will also assure yourselves by an attentive examination of the patient." And, with a rapid movement, Dr. Griffon, throwing the bed-clothes back, almost entirely uncovered Jeanne. It is repugnant to our feelings to depict the piteous struggles of this poor creature, who wept bitterly from shame, imploring the doctor and his auditory ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee; O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free: In rigorous chains, in piteous pains, I am longing for Thee! In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling, I pray, I beseech Thee, O ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... accompanied by a half dozen prisoners; one was a slim, dark young man with a nervous, expressive look, and a great tangle of curling black hair. The face was haggard and drawn; the eyes were frightened; the whole manner of the man had a piteous appeal. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... than they can possibly swallow, and are not satisfied with one victim at a time. One which was killed in my fowl-house had three half grown chickens compressed in its folds and held one in its jaws. A short time since I was roused in the middle of the night by the piteous cries of a young kangaroo dog, and on running out found it rolling on the ground in the coils of a large carpet snake. The dog was severely bitten in the loin, but in the morning was quite well, proving that the bite of this reptile ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... From the moment I leave my bed, men of power, the most illustrious in the city, await me at the bar of the tribunal; the moment I am seen from the greatest distance, they come forward to offer me a gentle hand,—that has pilfered the public funds; they entreat me, bowing right low and with a piteous voice, "Oh! father," they say, "pity me, I adjure you by the profit you were able to make in the public service or in the army, when dealing with the victuals." Why, the man who thus speaks would not know of my existence, had I not let ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... That's piteous—so much being done, (He'll think some day, your lover) so little to do! Such infinite days to wear out, once begun! Since the hand its glove holds, and the footsole its shoe— Overhead too there's always ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Mrs. Beale's agitation subsided. Some shocks stun, and some strengthen and steady us. The piteous appeal in Edith's eyes, the puzzle and the pain of her face as she made an effort to recall her words and understand them, had the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... with a lace border appearing on their under garment: no stockings, and dirty white satin shoes, rather shorter than their small brown feet; gentlemen on horseback with their Mexican saddles and sarapes; lounging leperos, moving bundles of rags, coming to the windows and begging with a most piteous but false sounding whine, or lying under the arches and lazily inhaling the air and the sunshine, or sitting at the door for hours basking in the sun or under the shadow of the wall: Indian women, with their tight petticoat of dark stuff and tangled hair, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin! not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee. The bee awak'd—with anger wild The bee awak'd, and stung the child. Loud and piteous are his cries; To Venus quick he runs, he flies; "Oh mother! I am wounded through— "I die with pain—in sooth I do! "Stung by some little angry thing. "Some serpent on a tiny wing, "A bee it was—for once, I know, "I heard ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... almost to acknowledge the independence of the Rebel States. Thus far the Free States had waited with commendable patience for some symptom of vitality in the new Administration, something that should distinguish it from the piteous helplessness of its predecessor. But now their pride was too deeply outraged for endurance; indignant remonstrances were heard from all quarters, and the Government seemed for the first time fairly to comprehend ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... these artful customers, one occasionally comes across small colonies of lepers, who, being compelled to isolate themselves from their fellows, have taken up their abode in rude hovels or caves by the road-side, and sally forth in all their hideousness to beset the traveller with piteous cries for assistance. Some of these poor lepers are loathsome in appearance to the last degree; their scanty coverings of rags and tatters conceals nothing of the ravages of their dread disease; some sit at the entrance to their hovels, stretching out their hands and piteously appealing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the trial; Baard in his good clothes, Anders in his patched ones. Baard looked at his brother as he entered, and his eyes wore so piteous an expression of entreaty that Anders felt it in the inmost depths of his heart. "He does not want me to say anything," thought Anders, and when he was asked if he suspected his brother of the deed, he ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... going abroad for the day, told her kid to keep at home, and not to open the door to strangers. She had not been gone long when up came a fox, with head bound from "headache," and foot bound from "gout," and carrying a ped of trinkets. The fox told the kid a most piteous tale, and showed her a little mirror. The kid, out of pity and vanity, opened the door; but while stooping over the ped to pick up a little bell, the fox clapped down the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... eyes, sunken in his head, protruded and rolled in their orbit like two globes of fire, and threw such varied and continual light that they sufficed to light up our feast, while the wretched man stood immovable as a marble statue, saying in a piteous voice, 'My head furnishes fuel for the lamps of my eyes!' It was well that the poor man could not see the fire," said the buccaneer, bursting into laughter at this cruel jest. "And when the supply of oil in the lamp failed, the madame's husband went to join ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the patients' convulsive movements. Sardonic laughter, piteous moans and torrents of tears burst forth on all sides. The bodies were thrown back in spasmodic jerks, the respirations sounded like death rattles, the most terrifying symptoms were exhibited. Then suddenly the actors of this strange scene would frantically ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... heart they go! 390 Hark! the hymn is singing— The song for the dead below, Or the living who shortly shall be so! For a departed being's soul[rc] The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll:[426] He is near his mortal goal; Kneeling at the Friar's knee, Sad to hear, and piteous to see— Kneeling on the bare cold ground. With the block before and the guards around; 400 And the headsman with his bare arm ready, That the blow may be both swift and steady, Feels if the axe be sharp and true ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... pretty Genevieve, his sister, with her husband, Crispin Eyre. And there were the comrades of his boyhood, and the prating monk, and the unhappy lady with her white face framed in rich velvets and furs, and her piteous beseeching hands that were never still. Those faces, in the glow of the fire and the shine of tall candles in their silver sconces, were to be with him often in the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... proper that one should grieve over the misfortunes of Jamaica with a stronger grief because her savannahs are so lovely, her forests so rich, her mountains so green, and he rivers so rapid; but it is so. It is piteous that a land so beautiful should be one which fate has marked for misfortune. Had Guiana, with its flat, level, unlovely soil, become poverty-stricken, one would hardly sorrow over it as one does sorrow ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... at him with a rather piteous attempt to laugh. "I wonder I knew you at all," she said, "with that hideous embryo beard. I'm sure ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... at Commemoration—to which festival "lions" from all quarters of the earth resorted in vast droves—when one of this class was hard hit by the charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of expressing his admiration otherwise than by piteous looks, directed at her from an immense distance, out of shot for an opera-glass; when in her immediate vicinity his motto was that of the Breton baron—mourir muet. Claret-cup flowed and Champagne sparkled, powerless ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to write and reduce in veritie Historiall, the great siege, cruel oppugnation, and piteous taking of the noble and renowmed citie of Rhodes, the key of Christendome, the hope of many poore Christian men, withholden in Turkie to saue and keepe them in their faith: the rest and yeerely solace of noble pilgrimes ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... and, seizing Roederer by the arm, he said: "On the 20th of June I was there," pointing with his finger to the terrace by the water, "behind the third linden. Through the open window I could see the poor king, with the red cap on his head. It was a piteous sight; I pitied him." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... her hands like a child and laid them against his breast. She answered him with piteous entreaty in which passion ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... was remonstrating with his father, and trying to lead him on, but that the count would not move, and still cried out, "Come! come!" in a voice of piteous entreaty. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... in her dreams. The mantel-piece held a row of shells, their delicate pink linings showing, and on either end china vases filled with sprays of plumy grass. Above was the marriage certificate, neatly framed. On the centre-table were sundry piteous ornaments, deeply rooted in her affections. The chairs and the single sofa, angular and sombre, were set about with proud precision. They had been the result of years of careful hoarding of egg-money, and were, to Elizabeth, the achievement ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... as I pulled the envelope through that the next moment might bring a piteous outcry from within, as if I had drawn upon the vital nerves of an organism. Yet none came; I found myself erect once more with the envelope in my hand, reading the writing on its face. It was scrawled in ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... pocket-handkerchief. Our labours were scarcely over when I heard Earnshaw's tread in the passage; my assistant tucked in his tail, and pressed to the wall; I stole into the nearest doorway. The dog's endeavour to avoid him was unsuccessful; as I guessed by a scutter down- stairs, and a prolonged, piteous yelping. I had better luck: he passed on, entered his chamber, and shut the door. Directly after Joseph came up with Hareton, to put him to bed. I had found shelter in Hareton's room, and the old man, on seeing me, said,—'They's ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... came. A wet and shivering body was pressed against mine, and I felt rather than heard a piteous whine in my ear. It was my companion in misery, a little outcast black-and-tan, afflicted with fits, that had shared the shelter of a friendly doorway with me one cold night and had clung to me ever since with a loyal affection that was the one bright ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... any one to speak for a moment or two; the sisters felt their own uprooted condition afresh, and their guests for the first time really comprehended the piteous contrast between that neat little village house, which now seemed a palace of comfort, and this cold, unpainted upper room in the remote Janes farmhouse. It was an unwelcome thought to Mrs. Trimble that the well-to-do town of Hampden ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... November an official belonging to the Duc d'Elbeuf's household came to my establishment to buy a wedding dress for his daughter. I was dazzled with her beauty. She chose a fine satin, and her pretty face lighted up when she heard her father say he did not think it was too much; but she looked quite piteous when she heard the clerk tell her father that he would have to buy the whole piece, as they could not cut it. I felt that I must give in, and to avoid making an exception in her favour I beat a hasty retreat ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lecher with a fair woman nor a moneyless man with money nor fire with fuel.' Neither cloth it behove me to entrust myself to thee; and 'tis said, 'Enmity of kind, as the enemy himself groweth weaker groweth stronger.' " The Cat made answer in the faintest voice, as she were in most piteous case, saying, "What thou advancest of admonitory instances is the truth and I deny not my offenses against thee; but I beseech thee to pardon that which is past of the enmity of kind between me and thee, for 'tis said, 'Whoso forgiveth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... habits of the Indians to think such a thing possible. Just at this moment Dash, who had followed them unnoticed during their ride, and who had been ranging about uneasily while they had been occupied by the search, set up a piteous howling. All started and looked round. The dog was standing by the edge of the ditch which had been dug outside the fence. His head was raised high in air, and he was giving vent to prolonged ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... child!" Mr. Leland began in piteous tones; but she had already sprung to her feet and was flying toward the house with the fleetness ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... expostulation, could inspire with courage to adventure the descent from his painful elevation, where, like an unskilful and obnoxious minister of state, unable to escape from the eminence to which he had presumptuously ascended, he continued to pour forth piteous prayers for mercy, which no one heard, and to skip to and fro, writhing his body into all possible antic shapes to avoid the balls which he conceived to be ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a little shaking of mine arm And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He raised a sigh so piteous and profound As it did seem to shatter all his bulk And ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... son of Zeus Scored him with swift exchange of left and right, And checked the onrush of the sea-god's child Parlous albeit: till, reeling with his wounds, He stood, and from his lips spat crimson blood. Cheered yet again the princes, when they saw The lips and jowl all seamed with piteous scars, And the swoln visage and the half-closed eyes. Still the prince teased him, feinting here or there A thrust; and when he saw him helpless all, Let drive beneath his eyelids at his nose, And laid ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Even the sailors, who are generally stolid enough, were deeply affected by the sight of him as he roamed bareheaded and dishevelled about the deck, searching with feverish anxiety the most impossible places, and returning to them again and again with a piteous pertinacity. The last time she was seen was about seven o'clock, when she took Doddy on to the poop to give him a breath of fresh air before putting him to bed. There was no one there at the time except the black seaman at the wheel, who denies having seen her at all. The whole ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... poor people? No more than I have to a sick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water, because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... never admitted him to her conversation, nor suffered him to enter her house. She indeed often relieved him with such donations as spoke her generous disposition. But this was on the solicitation of friends, who frequently set his calamities before her in the most piteous light; and, from a principle of humanity, she became not a little instrumental in saving his life.—CIBBER'S ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Andrew P. Hill, with her forty-five shares clutched in her resolute hand, and saying, "I demand to be heard; I demand to have a voice in this momentous matter; I demand a fair and even chance for my nephew-in-law-to-be." Once more, she was wringing her hands and asking Virgilia in tones of piteous protest, "Why, oh why, didn't you take Richard Morrell when you could have got him?—a fine, promising, pushing fellow, with his million or more already, and barely thirty-five, just the right age for you!" Yet again, she was saying to that ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the young man, who had studied in the schools of philosophy; 'but, all the same, put the fish in that vessel full of water, and we will take it back to show my father that we have done what we could.' But when he drew near the fish it looked up at him with such piteous eyes that he could not make up his mind to condemn it to death. For he knew well that, though the doctors of his own country were ignorant of the secret of the ointment, they would do all in their power to extract something ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... much difficulty, arrived a few days later, to find a piteous Cecilia, white-faced, stunned and bewildered. She pleaded desperately against leaving France; amidst all the horror and chaos that had fallen upon her, it seemed unthinkable that she should put the sea between herself and Bob. But to remain was impossible. Aunt Margaret's ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... loosened her without looking at her, and she stood chafing her hands, hating his indifference, though she knew it was assumed, uncertain how to regain her supremacy. Then she let instinct guide her, and she looked a little piteous. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... and her boy stood by the window while the doctor and his assistant, bending over the bedside, conversed together in a low tone. There was no danger of disturbing the patient. He appeared like one blind and deaf. Only his faint, piteous moans showed him to be a living man. Hans was talking earnestly, and in a low voice, for he did not wish his ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God saue the marke, here on his manly brest, A pitteous Coarse, a bloody piteous Coarse: Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb'd in blood, All in gore blood I sounded at ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the fragment above quoted the condition of the dead was truly piteous; they had no food but dust and mud; their dwelling is sometimes called bit-edi, the "house of solitude," because in the life of misery and privation they lead no one takes any thought for others, his only care is to relieve ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... and noble countenance as at the moment when having despatched my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened to him with my manuscript—that look of humourous despondency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme—which broke up in a laugh: and the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... twice over.[40] At these times he was so entirely absorbed in God, the eternal Wisdom, that he would not speak of it. Sometimes he would converse with God as with a friend, not with the mouth, but mentally; at other times he would utter piteous sighs to Him; at other times he would weep copiously, or smile silently. He often seemed to himself to be flying in the air, and swimming between time and eternity in the depth of the Divine wonders, which no ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... he had appointed, and they walked lovingly together till they came to the cave. It was now dark, and they saw the basket waiting below; the fox assisted the poor cat into it. "There is only room for one," said he, "you must go first!" Up rose the basket; the fox heard a piteous mew, and no more. ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... towards Caroline, as she came softly to his side, and looked at her with a piteous gaze. The stroke that had shattered the form had spared the face; and illness and compulsory abstinence from habitual stimulants had taken from the aspect much of the coarseness—whether of shape or colour—that of late years ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... contributed to it! No, Madam, (replyed he) my Friendship is now likely to be the only Cause of my greatest Misery; for To-morrow I must be guilty of an unpardonable Crime, in betraying the generous Confidence which your noble Father has plac'd in me: To-morrow (added he, with a piteous Sigh) I must deliver you into the Hands of one whom your Father hates even to Death, instead of doing myself the Honour of becoming his Son-in-law within a few Days more.—But—I will consider and remind myself, that I give you into the Hands ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... John in his loud cheery voice, and the horse made a step forward, while the children round cried "Hurrah!" and waved their hands. But suddenly there was a loud piteous cry which made John give the horse a sudden push back and drop his whip, and then, from where they sat, Milly and Tiza heard a sound of crying and screaming, while everybody in the field ran toward the hay-cart. They ran ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... coming from him embarrassed the girl. But when the blood began to return to her cheek, she heaved a sigh so piteous and profound as to move every spring of ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the whole field, grooms and all, if they did you a great service, as that dear lady has," said Bella. The words were brave, but the accent piteous. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... only voices—which they can distinguish as those of the house-Servants—male and female—all negroes or mulattoes. There are shrieks, intermingled with speeches, the last in accent of piteous appealing; there is moaning and groaning. But where are the shouts of the assailants? Where the Indian yell—the dread slogan of the savage? Not a stave of it is heard—nought that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... awoke with hot cheeks and bloodshot eyes, moaning and restless, and would only be quiet when pillowed in the arms of his new-found friend. A physician who was called pronounced his ailment to be scarlet-fever. He soon became delirious, and his fretful moans for his "new grandma" were so piteous that Miss Ainslie could not make up her mind to leave him. She stayed by his bed-side all day, saying nothing of returning to Red Wing, until late in the afternoon a messenger came from there to inquire after her, having traced her by inquiry among several ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... that sentence in my brain. In the morning, I rose and dressed, dreaming. As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears. It was so piteous to think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow anguish, his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint. I saw him, I still ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... say, fifteen miles, without seeing a single shed: at last, one or two miserable cottages appeared, darkened by heath, and stuck in a sand-pit; from whence issued a half-starved generation, that pursued us a long while with their piteous wailings. The heavy roads and ugly prospects, together with the petulant clamours of my petitioners, made me quite uncharitable. I was in a dark, remorseless mood, which lasted me till we reached Bree, a shabby decayed town, encompassed by walls and ruined turrets. Having ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... day four officers of the 5th Lancers (including the Colonel) and one sergeant were wounded—a most disastrous day. A little later it was again the turn of the Devons, who lost one officer killed and ten wounded. Christmas set in amid misery, hunger, and disease, the more piteous for the grim attempts to amuse the children and live up to the joyous season, when the present of Santa Claus was too often a 96-pound shell. On the top of all other troubles it was now known that the heavy ammunition was running short ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... handkerchiefs. A few were reading and spelling. One poor blind girl sat amongst them, with melancholy arms folded, and learned nothing,—they told us, nothing; for the instruction of the blind is not thought of in these parts. This seemed piteous to us, and made us reflect how happy are our blinds, to say nothing of our deafs and dumbs. Idiocy is not uncommon here, and is the result of continual intermarriage between near relations; but it will be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... girl said a few consolatory words and jumped down from the wheel. She was torn both ways. Bella's plight was piteous, but to make her father rise in his present state of health and attend such a case, hours long, in the chill, night breath of the open—it might kill him! She turned toward the camp, vaguely conscious of the men standing ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... of the public will be extended to the sufferers in these actions: some are piteous objects; indeed, no less than three brave men with the loss ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... but his ears took in at once a sad and piteous moan,—a sweet, sad moan for his hungry ear, of the voice of her he sought. And there upon the cold, dank, dismal floor he could dimly see his bleeding, dying love. Quickly clasping and soothing her, he lifted her up to bear her to the upper air; but the moans of his poor weak Kaala told ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... piercing, piteous eyes behold The very soul that over England flamed! Deep, pure, intense; consuming shame and ill; Convicting men of sin; making faith live; And,—this the mightiest miracle of all,— Creating God again ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... craving to be a Border chieftain of the sixteenth century instead of an Edinburgh lawyer of the nineteenth, and his preference for the distinction of a petty landholder to that of the foremost genius of his age. Mr. Combe, in speaking of this feudal insanity of Scott and the piteous havoc it made of his life, told me that at one time he and Ballantyne, with whom he had entered into partnership, were staving off imminent ruin by indorsing and accepting each other's bills, and carried on that process to the extremest verge compatible ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... eagle came down upon Gwydion's knee. And Gwydion struck him with his magic wand, so that he returned to his own form. No one ever saw a more piteous sight, for he was nothing ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get strength to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, "Am I awake, or do I dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to someone in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... thousand persons suffered death through the fury of the avengers. Agnes, one of the daughters of Albert, endeavored with her own hands to strangle the infant child of the Lord of Eschenback, when the soldiers, moved by its piteous cries, with difficulty ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... women arrived with the evident object of possessing themselves of it, and only ran away when they saw that it was guarded. As we were making ready the canoe those unhappy slaves appeared in a body and throwing themselves upon their faces with piteous words, or those of them who could not speak, by signs, implored the Mother not to desert them, till both she and Hope began to cry. But there was no help for it, so we pushed off as quickly as we could, leaving the albinos weeping and wailing upon ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... in that hour rejoice, since only thus Can thy proud heart grow wholly piteous. Thus only to the world thy speech can flow Charged with the sad authority of woe. Since no man nurtured in the shade can sing To a true note one psalm of conquering; Warriors must chant it whom our own eyes see Red from the battle and more bruised ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... Lolita in safety, what had seemed bizarre and piteous became obscured, and another aspect of the adventure was presented to Laura. The sufferings of the arrogant are not wholly depressing to the spectator; and of arrogance Hedrick had ever been a master. She began ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... go anywhere. Oh, M'sieu Ralph," and now her tone was piteous, "I wish you would send him away. I liked him very well at first, but now he wants me to love him, and I cannot, the kind of love that impels one to marry, and I do not want ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the blanket as though seeking support. Then it slid down, its movement visible in the bulging of the drenched cloth. This was followed by a heavy, squelching flop. The body, whatever it was, had fallen into the streaming water pouring from within the hut. Then came a long-drawn, piteous moan that held the men gazing silently and stupidly at ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... fixed serenely on some invisible quarter of the evening, they, one and all, shook him, likewise, as heartily by the hand—a dumb but eloquent expression of their grateful sense of the humanity he had shown their little friend in his hour of helpless peril and piteous need. The young brave received the demonstration with dignified composure; not, though, as if he had expected it, for, at the first greeting, he did lose his self-possessed reserve so far as to betray a little sign ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... his haste to follow him, slid directly into an air-hole. This was probably the first time he had enjoyed so extensive a cold bath; and as he was not a water-dog, it is not surprising that he was terribly frightened. His piteous cries brought Oscar to his relief, who could not help laughing at the sorry plight in which he found his half-drowned canine friend. He was floundering and paddling about in the water, now lifting himself almost out, upon the edge of the ice, and now slipping off again, and plumping over-head ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... rhythm of the chorus, even giving an occasional metronomic signal to that chorus, was equally powerless to suppress it. The fact that the lack of power was in himself, not in circumstance: this only made it the more piteous. And Olive, listening, did pity Brenton, pity him increasingly, albeit with the pity which is not at all akin to love. It was not his own fault entirely that his virile strength was crossed by the wavering, widening line of weakness that ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... was not a pleasant task to superintend his lessons' learning. Yet he was not without a queer kind of perseverance of his own—he could not bear to go to bed leaving any of his lessons unfinished, and he would go on working at them with a sort of dull, hopeless resolution that was rather piteous, till one reflected that, after all, he might just as well look cheerful about it. But to look cheerful in the face of difficulties was not Basil's "way." With the first difficulty vanished all his brightness and good temper, and all he could ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the midst of all the roar the piteous bellowing of cattle, penned up in the cars. He saw a dark form stealing around the end of a car; in a moment a light spurted out as if a match had been touched to kerosene; there was a gleam of light, and the stock-car with its load of cattle was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... can, they are striking, not for themselves, but for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. And are we, who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to stand by and coldly condemn these piteous victims of the Furies and Fates? Are we to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic self-devotion, sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject submission ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... to gaze at Ripton. That exhausted debauchee and youth without a destiny slept a dead sleep. A handkerchief was bound about his forehead, and his helpless sunken chin and snoring nose projected up the pillow, made him look absurdly piteous. The baronet remembered how often he had compared his boy with this one: his own bright boy! And where was the difference ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when he and some of his schoolfellows had gone for a walk into the country one half-holiday; and he began to relate how they had caught a pigeon sitting on its nest up a tree, and how, regardless of its fluttering and piteous cries, they had carried it off, and its nest also. Then he told with much laughter how they had unearthed a mole, and how they had tied it to a stick and made it a target to fling stones at, till it had died by ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... in a pleading sort of way. I wouldn't swear that her eyes were wet with unshed tears, but I rather think they were, certainly she clasped her hands in piteous appeal. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the acts he had remained numbed and dazed, only gathering to himself a grain of sympathy from the piteous look in Helen's face. Her demeanour confirmed his intuition, that she must know everything. She had sat rigid and mournfully attentive in contrast to Mrs. Blackstone, who had laughed with decorous unrestraint the whole evening. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... though doubting his own vision, and the ring of agony in his voice was almost piteous. "Edith! My God! You here, at midnight, alone with ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... "I wouldn't take this from any one else, Jarvis," he said, almost in a piteous whine. "You have got me down. I'm in no shape ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... lying with its mouth open, waiting for his prey. Smaller and smaller were the circles the bird made, and weaker and weaker were its efforts to escape the fascination, until it finally fluttered to a limb just above the snake. It seemed to turn its piteous glance for help on me, but not I! I was enjoying it. At length it could no longer resist its fate and it fluttered into its enemy's jaws. Now other men would have let sentiment get the better of them and have shot that snake; but I looked up to it with respect, ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... Perfect as husband; if He had not limited Himself by His own will to show out what husband should be to wife, how could He in the forest, when Sita had been reft away by Ravana, have shown the grief, have uttered the piteous lamentations, which have drawn tears from thousands of eyes, as He calls on plants and on trees, on animals and birds, on Gods and men, to tell Him where His wife, His other self, the life of His life, had gone? ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... in the expression of her face—something so terrible and piteous in the meaning of her words, in that smile, that quick glance which she cast over the court-room—that the justiciary hung his head, and for a ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... left on the wreck saw themselves thus deprived of the last chance of escape, they raised the most piteous cries for assistance, although they knew that their comrades had no means of affording it. It has been said that 'man is a bundle of inconsistencies,' and here was a proof of the assertion. These were in all probability the very men who had betaken themselves to their hammocks a short ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... better than life itself; that we can aid them by our prayers and good works, and especially by, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Thus may we shorten their time of banishment, assuage their pains, and continue to storm Heaven itself with our piteous appeals until the Lord deign to look down in mercy, open their prison doors, and admit them to the full light of His holy presence, and to the everlasting embrace of their Redeemer and ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... He drew one piteous, gasping breath. Every vestige of sunlight seemed to leave the room. Slowly he fumbled among his belongings as he gathered them into his arms and, half-way up the aisle, stood aside to let his divinity pass. Longingly ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... hand him the sword-gory, That great king his thane, the good beyond measure, 2720 His friend-lord with water washed full well, The sated of battle, and unspanned his war-helm. Forth then spake Beowulf, and over his wound said, His wound piteous deadly; wist he full well, That now of his day-whiles all had he dreed, Of the joy of the earth; all was shaken asunder The tale of his days; death without measure nigh: Unto my son now should I be giving My gear of the battle, ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... Heaven with frantic prayers, and in vain, till at length, amidst a roar of laughter, he, the false prophet and the liar, was led out to his doom. He saw the piteous wondering look of the believer whom he had betrayed to death; he saw the fierce faces and the spears on high. Seeing all this his spirit broke, and, just as the little clock in the room behind him struck the first stroke ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... Indians to think such a thing possible. Just at this moment, Dash, who had followed them unnoticed during their ride, and who had been ranging about uneasily while they had been occupied by the search, set up a piteous howling. All started and looked round. The dog was standing by the edge of the ditch which had been dug outside the fence. Its head was raised high in air, and he was giving vent to prolonged and ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... that softened her, that compelled her to judge him from the most merciful point of view. There was something piteous about him, something that silenced reproaches, that disarmed severity. She had come up-stairs staggered, incredulous—incredulous and yet convinced—outraged, terrified; but now the appeal of that fagged face and those ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... then took place defies every attempt at description. No pen could adequately place before the reader the awful incidents that succeeded. He must, if he can, imagine the howling of the wolves, the piteous cries of the lacerated and dying youth, the imprecations of the men, the neighing of the horses and roaring of the bulls in the stables; and, more than all, the crying and lamentations of the women and children in the house—a ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... a piteous sight just then. Do you think the haughtiest of the pure, fair women in yonder treasured homes could have loathed her as she loathed ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... all the spirit and wrath of the old woman: her cries of distress as she darted from one to the other, striking to the right and left with her feeble arms, her form trembling with passion, were at once ludicrous and piteous; and these were responded to by the shrill exclamations of the fierce tymbesteres, as they retorted scratch for scratch, and blow for blow. The spectators grew animated by the sight of actual outrage and resistance; the humpbacked tinker, whose unwholesome fancy one of the aggrieved ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to him that he would have said anything in the world to soothe her. It was so piteous, so intolerable to him ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and he pitied her more when she came into the private office in the wake of the orderly and threw back her veil. Her beautiful face showed the sorrow under which she labored. Suffering had thrown a blight upon it. The freshness and youth seemed to have departed from it. She was a piteous ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... knew the world and mankind too well to think for a moment that any man might hope to live down such charges as those which had been brought against himself. Ruth must know sooner or later, and, knowing, would she still love him? There came now a sort of piteous appeal in the touch of his unsteady hand on her hair. The slightest suspicion must blast the exquisite flower of her tender love. With his quick, full appreciation of everything truly noble he had often noted the firm principles, which lay under her sweet gentleness like fine white ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... deck, the scene presented to our gaze was piteous beyond all description, the ship appearing to have been first run into by some other craft and then left to drift about at ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... said, "Lo! hear is a tokin that I forgeve thee: My harte, do thyn office." And then by and by, he was putt upoun the gibbet, and hanged, and there brynt to poulder.[433] When that the people beheld the great tormenting of that innocent, thei mycht not withhold frome piteous morning and complaining of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... alone, She hears in her anguish his piteous moan, As he eagerly listens—but listens in vain, To catch the loved tones of his mother again! The curse of the broken in spirit shall fall On the wretch who hath mingled this wormwood and gall, And his gain like a mildew shall blight and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... the sky— Above its piteous shield, And, suddenly, the dream went by, And there—was heaven revealed! I stooped to pluck it; but my hand ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... back and the face upraised—and it was the face that made her pause, for it was the most pathetic sight she had ever looked upon. It was the face of a lad of two or three and twenty, but drawn in lines so painful, so hollowed, so piteous, that fear melted into compassion at the sight. The dark eyes that stared upwards had a frightened look mingled with a certain defiance. He stood barefooted on the edge of the cliff, clenching and unclenching his bony hands, with the air of ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... sobs itself out in a plaint like the crying of a little child. The ghastliness of the performance is chiefly—though not entirely—in the goblin mockery of the laughing tones as contrasted with the piteous agony of the wailing ones: an incongruity that makes you think of madness. And I imagine a corresponding incongruity in the soul of the creature. I know that she loves me,—that she would throw away her poor life for me at an instant's ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... to soak the earth and turn the roads into water-courses and clog the enemy transport, something above all to blind the enemy's eyes ... For I remembered what a preposterous bluff it all had been, and what a piteous broken handful stood between the Germans and their goal. If they knew, if they only knew, they would brush us ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... good. Now I do not need to keep dividing things and people and thoughts into His and not-His. That was what it came to before. You may say it didn't, but it did. And all we know about Jesus—don't you see." (Bart raised his face with piteous, hunted look)—"don't you see that what His life and death meant was—just what I have told you? God doesn't hold back His robe, telling people what they ought to do, and then judge them. He does not ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... empty grave, which to the child, who knew nothing of its history, seemed a bier; and at the feet of Theodoric, who alone of them all looked young and merciful, poor little desperate Findelkind fell with a piteous sob, and cried: "I am not mad! Indeed, indeed, ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... breeding. In better days he had been a friend of Don Jose. While he is relating the story of his downward career to the minister, Lazarillo, a forlorn young lad who has just attempted to destroy himself, accosts Don Caesar, and tells him a piteous tale of his wrongs. Don Caesar befriends him, and in consequence becomes involved in a duel, which leads to his arrest; for it is Holy Week, and duelling during that time has been forbidden on pain of death. While Don Caesar is on his way to prison, Don Jose delights Maritana ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... substitution of his sister Perdita for the boy who died of "thoughts high for one so tender." Even the beautiful suggestion that Shakespeare as he wrote had in mind his own dead little son still fresh and living at his heart can hardly add more than a touch of additional tenderness to our perfect and piteous delight in him. And even in her daughter's embrace it seems hard if his mother should have utterly forgotten the little voice that had only time to tell her just eight words of that ghost story which neither she nor we were ever to hear ended. Any one but Shakespeare would have sought ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... oak-trees answer, Woe for Adonis. And the rivers bewail the sorrows of Aphrodite, and the wells are weeping Adonis on the mountains. The flowers flush red for anguish, and Cytherea through all the mountain-knees, through every dell doth shrill the piteous dirge. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... and relatives, and of the sick and wounded who were unable to accompany their march and had to be left to their fate, while they themselves had a presentiment that their present sufferings were nothing in comparison with those which awaited them. Among all these piteous sights, Nikias himself offered a glorious example. Worn out by disease, compelled by the exigencies of the retreat to forego the medicines and treatment which his condition required, he nevertheless, weak as he was, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... manner to death at the hands of man. Claudio Gay, in his Natural History of Chili, says, "When attacked by man its energy and daring at once forsake it, and it becomes a weak, inoffensive animal, and trembling, and uttering piteous moans, and shedding abundant tears, it seems to implore compassion from a generous enemy." The enemy is not often generous; but many gauchos have assured me, when speaking on this subject, that although they kill the puma readily to protect their domestic animals, they consider ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... trembling in his arms better than he loved his pride; and had she told him then who and what she was, he would not have deemed it a disgrace to love a child of Hagar Warren. But Margaret did not know him, and when he said again, "Will Maggie answer me?" there came from her lips a piteous, wailing cry, and turning her face away she answered mournfully: "No, Mr. Carrollton, no, I cannot be your wife. It breaks my heart to tell you so; but if you knew what I know, you would never have spoken to me words ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Francais, occupied by the Comedie Francaise since 1799, on the site of the old Varietes Amusantes or Palais Varietes built in 1787, a little to the W. of Richelieu's Theatre of the Palais Cardinal. This latter was the scene of Moliere's triumphs and of his piteous death, and the original home of the French Opera whose position is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honore. It was at the Theatre des Varietes, when the staid old Comedie Francaise was rent by rival factions that Chenier's patriotic tragedy, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... cottage, never sat beside a sick bed, nor smoothed a dying pillow. Edna would have been horrified at such a suggestion. What had her bright youth to do with disease, dirt and misery? "Don't tell me about it," was her usual cry, when any one volunteered to relate some piteous story. That such things should be allowed in a world governed by a merciful Providence was incredible, terrible, but that she should be brought into contact with it was an offence to her ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... does not rise in piteous haste To put on convict-clothes, While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes Each new and nerve-twitched pose, Fingering a watch whose little ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... strain, "Valiant squire, thy boon is granted, provided it doth not contravene the laws of the land, and the constitution of chivalry." "Then I crave leave," answered Crabshaw, "to challenge and defy to mortal combat that caitiff barber who hath left me in this piteous condition; and I vow by the peacock, that I will not shave my beard, until I have shaved his head from his shoulders. So may I thrive in the occupation of ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... laughter that followed this sally, and Hilda said thoughtfully, "If you boys are intent on this meeting, I'll hurry dinner, for they probably begin early." As she rose to go, Frank caught her hand with the piteous entreaty, "Oh, please make my big brother take his marbles and go home. He wasn't asked to this party. Miss Holland didn't say a thing to him. I don't see why he has to have first show with all the pretty girls ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... sit up in bed. It was piteous to see him lying with his door open, listening. He is full of warm sound feeling, poor fellow. You would like to have heard the fervour with which he begged me to tell his father to have no fears for the younger ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to me infinitely pathetic, and I said so. "We have much that is bitter and hard in our life at home," I told her, "but this seems to me piteous beyond words—a ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... John endeavored to persuade the princess Blanche to accompany him into France, under the pretext of forming an alliance for her with Louis's brother, the duke of Berri. The unfortunate lady, comprehending too well her father's real purpose, besought him with the most piteous entreaties not to deliver her into the hands of her enemies; but, closing his heart against all natural affection, he caused her to be torn from her residence at Olit, in the heart of her own dominions, and forcibly transported across the mountains into ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... with a screen shading the light, near the stove in the middle ward, until the next were due. One night I heard a cat mewing. It seemed to be almost under my chair, I got up and looked everywhere. Yes, there it was again, but this time coming from under one of the men's beds. It was a piteous mew, and I was determined to find it. I spent a quarter of an hour on tiptoe looking everywhere. It was not till I heard a stifled chuckle from the bed next the Dutchman's that I suspected anything, and then, determined they should get no ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... terror, mortal agonies which scare Thy heart in man, to brutes thou wilt not spare. Are these less sad and real? Pain in man Bears the high mission of the flail and fear; In brutes 'tis purely piteous. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... words he stretched forth his hands to clasp him, but could not; for, like a smoke, the spirit vanished earthward with a wailing cry. Amazed, Achilles sprang up, and smote his hands together, and spake a piteous word:— ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... back. "My God, sir," he said, "take care. Don't, as you value your life, go within length of his chain." But at that moment the handsome head was raised from the pillow, and my eyes met George Hawker's. Oh, Lord! such a piteous wild look. I could not see the fierce desperate villain who had kept our country-side in terror so long. No, thank God, I could only see the handsome curly-headed boy who used to play with James Stockbridge and myself among the gravestones in Drumston churchyard. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water, because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity into a famine. And ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... then over, and the House permitted to settle down to the business of the day. But there intervened a riotous scene, arising on a question of a breach of privilege. This extended over an hour, and throughout it Lord Randolph sat in a state of almost piteous nervousness. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the Book of Common Prayer writ by grim males, so entranced her, that time flew by unheeded, and Christopher Staines came back from her father. His step was heavy; he looked pale, and deeply distressed; then stood like a statue, and did not come close to her, but cast a piteous look, and gasped out one word, that ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... mother fell at her son's feet and bowed her head to the ground, and he swept her up into his arms, raining kisses upon the piteous face. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... "the zecchins and gold florins are certainly no trifle. Much can be bought with them. But Schorlin Castle razed to the ground, my master's lady mother and Fraulein Maria held as half captives in the convent, to say nothing of the light-hearted Prince Hartmann and Sir Heinz's piteous grief—if all these things could be undone, child, I should not think the bag of gold, and another into the bargain, too high a price to pay for it. What is the use of a house filled with fine furniture when the heart is so full of sorrow? At home we all ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Craigdallie, I wonder that you, of all men, ask the question. I would have you pass like true men from this very place to the King's Grace's presence, raise him from his royal rest, and presenting to him the piteous case of our being called forth from our beds at this season, with little better covering than these shirts, I would show him this bloody token, and know from his Grace's own royal lips whether it is just and honest that his loving lieges should be thus treated by the knights and nobles of his ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... tribune. Slowly the flock was forced along by the shepherd dogs; and as the way cleared, forth from the dim tunnel of Las Sierpes marched, with arms reversed, a squad of civil guards; then a company of mounted soldiers, their bugles still wailing that sad warning of some piteous spectacle ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the matter very lucidly in his short but comprehensive introduction to the poem: "As long as Job, solicitous for his understanding, demanded an explanation of his unutterable suffering, whereby the mysterious, piteous condition of mankind is shadowed forth, his seeking was vain, and he ran the risk of loosing himself in the problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the existence of God; for an unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no God. But by ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... on hearing that his brother had not returned was piteous to see. He begged to be allowed to go and look for him, and only the Doctor's authoritative command could put him from this purpose. But nothing would induce him to return to bed; so Wraysford fetched him an ulster to keep ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... described who hoped to go after death to their forefathers in an under ground elysium whose glory consisted in eternal drunkenness, that being their highest conception of bliss and glory. What can be more piteous than the contemplation of those barbarians whose existence here is so wretched that even their imagination and faith have lost all rebound, and who conceive of the land of souls only as poorer and harder ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... years, all her life, since she was a baby, not a day, not a night, Evelyn, and now—so sweet, so dear—why Mrs. Mavick!" And the Scotch woman, dazed, with a piteous appeal in her eyes, trying in vain to control her face, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... subterranean shock was felt; and long before five the agonized earth was still. Long before five, the stupefied survivors stood slowly recovering their faculties of speech and motion. Long before five, a piteous wail ascended to heaven from fathers and husbands and wives and mothers, desolately mourning the dead in the streets of Caracas, La Guayra, Merida, San Felipe, and Valencia. In this manner the Holy ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... was something a great deal more than the physical shrinking from physical death in that piteous cry, Jesus Christ did not die nearly as bravely as many a poor, trembling woman who, at the stake or the block, has owed her fortitude to Him. Many a blood-stained criminal has gone out of life with less tremor than that which, unless you take the explanation that Scripture suggests ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... neck to foot. She joined the conversation as the others did, and indeed more flowingly than Adela, whose visage was soured. It was Cornelia to whom Merthyr explained his temporary subjection to the piteous appeals of Mrs. Chump. She smiled humorously to reassure him of her perfect comprehension of the apology for his visit, and of his welcome: and they talked, argued a little, differed, until the terrible thought that he talked, and even looked like some ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him. To-day he came back, and was brought to me. By signs and tears he at last made me understand he wished to return to his cell, and I so ordered. As they were leading him off, he broke away and kissed my feet, and, by piteous dumb imploration, insisted I should go with him; and I went. The mystery of the three men stayed in my mind. I was not satisfied about it. Now I am glad I yielded ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... in his hand was walking up and down before an adjoining house, bearing the ominous red cross and piteous inscription: ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... on, a piteous little shape of quaking terror, Ham let the glance of militant tenderness flash once more into his eyes, and his voice came ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and rolled a look as of piteous supplication to spare a lady's nerves, addressed to a ferocious brigand. Harriet answered: 'It means that I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... child so ungracious as this I never yet saw; no, never! All the day long he idleth away his time with the sons of the quarter, vagabonds like himself, and his father (O regret of me!) died not save of dolour for him. And I also am now in piteous plight: I spin cotton and toil at my distaff, night and day, that I may earn a couple of scones of bread which we eat together. This is his condition, O my brother-in-law; and, by the life of thee, he cometh not near me save at meal-times and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... in the darkness and, gleaming, came down in a swoop, piercing the old woman. She gave a quick, shrill cry—and fell back dead. The Jew, terrified, ran away, filling the night air with his piteous wails. The children began to whimper. The hooligans ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... to this! At the time when I was behaving so badly to you, your terror, every time I approached you, was so piteous that it was always before my eyes and rang in my ears like a cry of agony from a wounded heart. It is true! It filled me with terror, too. Do you call that weakness, to feel things so intensely that another person is influenced by your feelings ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... to speak quietly and naturally of this and that, of what they should do when the day broke, of Regulus's wound, of the storm, of the great sea and its perils. He told her something of these latter, for he knew the sea; piteous tales of forlorn wrecks, brave tales of dangers faced and overcome, of heroic endurance and heroic rescue. He told her tales of a wild, rockbound Devonshire coast with its scattered fisher villages; of a hidden cave, the resort of a band of desperadoes, half smugglers, half pirates, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... upon which flags are placed; the grave is then inclosed by pickets driven in the ground. The funeral ceremonies now begin, the widow being the chief mourner. At night and morning she will go to the grave and pour forth the most piteous cries and wailings. It is not important that any other member of the family should take any very active part in the "cry," though they do ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... up the Montagues.—Some others; search:— We see the ground whereon these woes do lie; But the true ground of all these piteous woes We cannot without ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... panic which led to the headlong flight of our little army. Yes, Aleck, they piled up his sins upon my unlucky shoulders, and I was driven out into the wilderness—hounded out of society, a dishonoured, disgraced coward. Aleck, boy," he continued, with his voice growing appealing and piteous, "I was engaged to be married to the young and beautiful girl I loved as soon as the war was over, and I was looking forward to happiness on my return. But for ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... to herself, the skeleton was bending over her anxiously, but its face was no longer frightful; it was white and anxious, and the eyes that met hers were piteous with distress. ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... cross the court, which was now one tossing chaos of cutting and slashing fiends in human form, rushing here and there, and stumbling over the frightened sheep, which plunged and leaped wildly, adding greatly to the din by their piteous bleating, many to fall, wounded, dying, and struggling madly, beneath the sword-cuts intended for the garrison. These were flying unarmed seeking for refuge, and often finding none, but turning in their despair upon their assailants, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... maiden body shrinks, defiled, Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! Contagiously through my linked pair it flies Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied. For as I leaned to stifle in the hair Of one my passionate laughter (taking care With a stretched finger, ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... Ireland corpses were burned on large piles of firewood in an open space of the village. A number of images curiously carved out of wood or chalk were set round the blazing pyre, but the meaning of these strange figures is uncertain. Men and women uttered the most piteous wailings, threw themselves on the top of the corpse, and pulled at the arms and legs. This they did not merely to express their grief, but because they thought that if they saw and handled the dead body while it was burning, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... estate, Shunn'd my abhorr'd society; but then, finding Who 'twas that so endur'd, with his strong arms He fastened on my neck, and bellow'd out As he'd burst heaven; threw him on my father; Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him That ever ear receiv'd: which in recounting His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life Began to crack: twice then the trumpets sounded, And ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and be induced to change His mind about the method of dealing with them, or be softened in His judgments concerning His children. Now if God is all-wise and all-powerful, why need we so carefully instruct Him? If He is all Love why need we ask Him with piteous tears to bless our sick and afflicted? If He is everywhere present, and no respecter of persons, why need we ask Him to do for one more than for another? As God is omniscient, is He not all the knowledge ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... and his many conjugal sins. And now the chasm, which she thought to have spanned by the religious ceremony on the eve of the coronation, yawned at her feet. The woman and the Empress in her shrank back from the black void of the future; and with piteous reproaches she flung back the orders of the Emperor and the soothings of the husband. Napoleon, it would seem, had nerved himself against such an outbreak. In vain did Josephine sink down at his feet with heart-rending cries that she would never survive the disgrace: failing to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... come!" said the poor lady under her breath, and put out a hand as if feeling for some stick of furniture to lean against. "It has come!" she repeated aloud, but still hoarsely; and with that she turned to the lass with a most piteous look, and "Oh, Kirstie, girl," she cried, "you won't leave me? I have been kind to you—say you ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the piteous fight, and curs'd the hour When FOLLY first assum'd her fatal power: And much I sorrow'd that she dare maintain The shameful show of her fantastic reign. But as I wip'd away the silent tears, With rout and revelry ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... almost piteous look in her face, and with a sudden burst of confidence, born, doubtless, of a dawning faith in the man's evident sincerity and esteem, she said ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... commiseration, and to tax the bounty of one person, by relating some cruel theft of this kind that had, as they said, been practised upon them by another. One day, after I had bought a knife of Togolat, she told Captain Lyon, in a most piteous tone, that Parree had stolen her last ooloo, that she did not know what to do without one, and at length, coming to the point, begged him to give her one. Presently after this, her husband coming in and asking ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... horseback, scampered off, but were pursued and overtaken by the better-mounted dragoons; others crept into houses and stables, or flung themselves into ditches; and the majority, seeing no possibility of escape, threw themselves on their knees, and, in piteous accents, implored mercy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... she drew back her arm for the first blow, and the whip hissed through the air. He winced slightly under the blow. Then she let blow after blow rain upon him, with her mouth half-opened and her teeth flashing between her red lips, until he finally seemed to ask for mercy with his piteous, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... torture a horse, but if he tried to hurt a dog in like degree, the yelping of the animal would alarm the entire neighbourhood, and be almost certain to call forth a strong remonstrance from some lover of animals whose sympathy had been excited by hearing such piteous cries. People who are unacquainted with the inner life of stables, have no idea of the brutality which many grooms and strappers inflict on the animals in their charge. When we find a horse which is difficult to bridle, owing to the objection he has to allowing his muzzle or ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... entreaty, nor command, nor expostulation, could inspire with courage to adventure the descent from his painful elevation, where, like an unskilful and obnoxious minister of state, unable to escape from the eminence to which he had presumptuously ascended, he continued to pour forth piteous prayers for mercy, which no one heard, and to skip to and fro, writhing his body into all possible antic shapes to avoid the balls which he conceived to ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of malignity. Many times that day she had prayed in her heart that God would help them. Apparently detached from earth, she was seeking nearness to heaven. Her look at this moment was so awe-struck and piteous, that the soul of the man who loved her yearned to give ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... It is piteous late, and I must go to bed, only telling you a bon-mot of Lady Bell Finch.(567) Lord Bath owed her half a crown; he sent it next day, with a wish that he could give her a crown. She replied, that though he could not give her a crown, he could give her a coronet, and she was very ready to accept ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of morning came shining in through the window. Antonio announced to the old gentleman that it was now time to take him to his own house in the Via Ripetta. Signor Pasquale's reply was a deep and piteous sigh. Salvator and Antonio lifted him out of bed and wrapped him in a wide mantle which had belonged to Dame Caterina's husband, and which she lent them for this purpose. The old gentleman implored them by all the saints to take off the villainous cold bandages in which his bald head ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... him back that smile but there was something so wan and piteous in the curve of her soft lips, something so hurt and sick in the shadows of her dark eyes, that Barry Elder felt ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... in it, no wild, passionate pleading that Jesus would hasten to come. Its few words told of the quietness and confidence of trusting hearts. We get a lesson concerning the way we should pray when we are in distress. "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of," and there is no need for piteous clamor. Far better is the prayer of faith, which lays the burden upon the divine heart, and leaves it there without anxiety. It is enough, when a beloved one is lying low, to say, "Lord, he whom thou lovest ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... of the preceding remarks. At page 168, ante, the reader will find a slight mention of the subject: he is here presented with a more copious illustration of it. "In likewise there is none that may declare the piteous and horrible cries and howlings the which that is made in hell, as well of devils as of other damned. And if that a man demand what they say in crying; the answer: All the damned curseth the Creator. Also they ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... was to see the panic in the town as the poor folk knew that the Danes were on them. They filled the road down which I must go, thronging in wild terror to the gates, and I will not remember the faces of that crowd, for they were too piteous. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... themselves conquered, they cried for quarter. Had they known the peculiar temperament of the Dagombas and the soldiers of Mo, they would never thus have implored mercy. But they cried out, and some even sank on their knees in the blood of their dead comrades, uttering piteous appeals. But the Arabs of Samory had never shown mercy to the Dagombas or the people of Mo, and consequently our army, in the first flush of their victory, filled with the awful lust for blood, treated their cries with jeers, and as they advanced into ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... least use in trying to ameliorate the condition of the Gipsy while he remains a traveller. He will tell you piteous stories, but he will take care ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... himself after his exertions, and he was beginning to think the animal had been scared away, when another terrible bound against the massive stone forced it a few inches into the cave. For an hour he struggled, till the jaguar, itself tired, and not hearing the mewings of her cubs, retired with a piteous howl. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... hands, looking at him in a half-piteous way that went straight to his heart. What he had told Mrs. Branston was quite true. It was not in him to be angry with this girl. Whatever bitterness there might have been in his mind until this moment fled away at sight of her. His heart had no room for any feeling but ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Provisions were almost impossible to procure. Kosciuszko's men went half starved. Burning villages, set on fire by Denisov's soldiers, a countryside laid waste, were the sight the Poles beheld each day, while the homeless peasants crowded into Kosciuszko's camp to tell him their piteous stories. Then Denisov retreated so swiftly towards the Prussian frontier that Kosciuszko, either through the enemy's rapidity, or because he was detained by the civil affairs of the government with which his hands were just then full, and by the no less arduous ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... or Terror's icy hand Smites their distorted limbs and horrent hair; While every mother closer to her breast 700 Catches her child, and pointing where the waves Foam through the shatter'd vessel, shrieks aloud As one poor wretch that spreads his piteous arms For succour, swallow'd by the roaring surge, As now another, dash'd against the rock, Drops lifeless down: Oh! deemest thou indeed No kind endearment here by Nature given To mutual terror and compassion's tears? No sweetly melting softness which attracts, O'er ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... no piteous cry or agonized entreaty, would make them even look at me. They resolutely turned away. The leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick rope. These were evidently empty by the ease with which the Slovaks handled them, and by their resonance as ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... her white arms from about her father's neck, and turned her white, anguished face toward him, and the awful despair that lay in the dark eyes that met his was more piteous than any ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... And being in this piteous case, And all be-slurred head and face, On runs he in this wild-goose chase, As here and there he rambles; Half blind, against a mole-hill hit, And for a mountain taking it, For all he was out of his wit Yet to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... men-of-war, an English merchantman had to risk attack by any one who was either passionately Roman or determined to use religion as a cloak. Raids and reprisals grew apace. The English were by no means always lambs in piteous contrast to the Papal wolves. Rather, it might be said, they took a motto from this true Russian proverb: 'Make yourself a sheep and you'll find no lack of wolves.' But, rightly or wrongly, the general English view was that the Papal attitude was one ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... should have heard the tales that went about, the quiet affirmations, the expressions of absolute certainty which were exchanged whenever a delirious patient cried out that she was cured. Another! Yet another! However, a piteous voice would at times exclaim: "Ah! she's cured; that one; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... fellow begged us with his piteous eyes to save him; then spoke, and said he had a wife and little children at home. Think how it wrung our heartstrings. But what could we do? The Burgundian was within his right. We could only beg and plead for the prisoner. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... much purpose. Then this made him suspect he was drunk. Then he tried to be sober; but he found he could not. He sat in a sort of stupid agony, with Love and Drink battling for his brain. It was piteous to see the poor fool's struggles to regain the reason he had so madly parted with. He could not do it; and when he found that, he took up a finger-glass, and gravely poured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and shadows across the opening of Miriam's wigwam. When the light flooded the tent a solitary, white-faced form appeared in dark, sharp outline. The bare arms were tied at the wrists, and beat aimlessly through the darkness. And there was a sound of piteous weeping. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... aspect. To Aubrey, sitting beside his brother, the Nike more than once suggested the recollection of a broken Virgin hanging from a fragment of a ruined church which he remembered on a bit of road near Mametz, at which he had seen passing soldiers look stealthily and long. Her piteous arms, empty of the babe, suggested motherhood to boys fresh from home; and there were moments when this hovering Nike seemed to breathe a mysterious tenderness like hers—became a proud and splendid ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the night he had been unusually restless. When he did at last fall asleep he had a strange dream. He saw the figure of an elderly woman, clad in antique garb, holding by the hand a young man, who wore the habit of his own Order. The woman fixed upon him eyes full of entreaty, and implored him in piteous accents to offer Mass for her soul, for it was in his power to release her from grievous torments. Father Vansome then awoke, the impression made by his dream still vivid. He struck a light and looked at his watch. It was two ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... were dropp'd despairing—all, save one, One man was faithful to his pipe, and kept Despair and deeper misery at bay, By seeking ever for a "topper," dropped From some spurned pipe, but that he could not find; So, with a piteous and perpetual glare, And a quick dissolute word, sucking the pipe, Which answer'd never with a whiff, he slept; The crowd dispersed by slow degrees, but two Of all the dreary company remain'd, And they kept 'bacca shops; they sat upon The scanted lid of a tobacco ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... you might protect me. Now, therefore, I say battle with your pride and beat it; cherish not your anger for ever; the might and majesty of heaven are more than ours, but even heaven may be appeased; and if a man has sinned he prays the gods, and reconciles them to himself by his piteous cries and by frankincense, with drink-offerings and the savour of burnt sacrifice. For prayers are as daughters to great Jove; halt, wrinkled, with eyes askance, they follow in the footsteps of sin, who, being fierce and fleet of foot, leaves them far behind ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... products of the dairy are the subjects of a congenital antipathy. Montaigne says there are persons who dread the smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed to a fire of musketry. The readers of the charming story "A Week in a French Country-House" will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in the night: "Ursula, art thou asleep? Oh, Ursula, thou sleepest, but I cannot close my eyes. Dearest Ursula, there is such a dreadful smell! Oh, Ursula, it is such a smell! I do so wish thou couldst smell it! Good-night, my angel!——Dearest! I have found them! They are ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... voice, as of one crying aloud for help; so I turned me round to see where he was that uttered it, and by the side of the King's path I could see one striving to mount the bank, and slipping back again as often as he tried. He was trying in right earnest: his cries were piteous to hear, and he laboured as if he would carry his point by storm. But it was all in vain; the more he struggled, the worse his case grew; for the bank, and all the path up to it, got so quagged and miry with his ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... unhappy sufferer, listened with horror to the rustle of steps on the stairs, the piteous weeping ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Athens was in a piteous state from the sickness, which had cut off hosts of people of all ranks. It lasted seven or nine days in each, and seems to have been a malignant fever. Pericles lost his eldest son, his sister, and almost all his dearest friends in it; but still ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wicked wit—by the austere Empress. She procured Rohan's recall, and so worked on her daughter, Marie Antoinette, the young Queen of France, that the prelate, though Grand Almoner, was socially boycotted by the Court, his letters of piteous appeal to the Queen were not even opened, and his ambitions to sway politics, like a Tencin or ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... preparing. Nor was it a time for the idle indulgence of sorrow. Want and sickness were turning Rome into a charnel-house. Wild voices were screaming for bread on every side. The streets were encumbered by the victims of contagious disease; their frantic cries and piteous moanings re-echoed in each piazza and under every portico. Old men were dying surrounded by the corpses of their children; mothers pressed to their milkless bosoms their starving infants. Others crept about bereft of all their family, and haunting like pale ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... last winter, a kitten with a broken leg and almost frozen hopped into the hall door of a gentleman's house in Brooklyn, New York, and set up a most piteous mewing. ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... indiscriminately from whatever was put into their hands,—from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and from Mulready as carefully as from Raphael. They filled the windows of print-sellers, the pages of gift books, with elaborate rubbish, and piteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, and cheaper,—smoothly, and more smoothly,—they got armies of assistants, and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters, learning their stale tricks with blundering ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... party was to take place on Wednesday, the 27th of July, and before the day had come, men and women had become so hardy in the combat that personal applications were made with unflinching importunity; and letters were written to Lady Glencora putting forward this claim and that claim with a piteous clamour. "No, that is too bad," Lady Glencora said to her particular friend, Mrs. Grey, when a letter came from Mrs. Bonteen, stating all that her husband had ever done towards supporting Mr. Palliser in Parliament,—and all that he ever would ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... limbs, deformed children, repulsive and festering sores, and other diseases too foul for description were proudly exhibited at every step. A cap was placed invitingly in front of each, and partly filled with alms already given. In piteous agony diseased hands and quavering voices besought us in the name of God and their saint to alleviate their sufferings with the gift of a kreutzer. It was not a sight that ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Rataplan presented a piteous sight. His poor ankles were swollen enormously; his eyes were so inflamed that he was quite blind, and, to make matters worse, the mahouts saw that he was suffering now from ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... her lovely color, and sighed, and turned away. As she pulled down her veil, I saw the tears in her eyes. Did that piteous spectacle partially deprive me of my senses? I actually entreated her to let me be of some use—as if I had been an old friend, with money enough in my pocket to discount the note myself. She brought me back to my senses with the ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
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