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Luckless   Listen
adjective
Luckless  adj.  Being without luck; unpropitious; unfortunate; unlucky; meeting with ill success or bad fortune; as, a luckless gamester; a luckless maid. "Prayers made and granted in a luckless hour."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Luckless" Quotes from Famous Books



... 5th of July that S. and I took our seats in the coupe of the diligence. Now, this coupe is low and narrow enough, so that our condition reminded me slightly of the luckless fowls which I have sometimes seen riding to the Cincinnati market in coupes of about equal convenience. Nevertheless, it might be considered a peaceable and satisfactory style of accommodation in an ordinary country. But to ride among the wonders of the Alps ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... found that Jacky had not deviated from the truth—the alligators did eat the ducks, the tiger and carpet-snakes and iguanas did crawl about the place at night-time and seize any luckless fowl not strong enough to fly up to roost in the branch of a tree, the hawks did prefer live poultry to long-deceased bullock, and those hens physically capable of laying eggs laid them on an ironstone ridge about a mile away from the house. He went there one day, found ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... possession of the Hindu mind. Gautama was compelled therefore to bridge a most illogical chasm as best he could. Kharma without a soul to cling to is something in the air. It alights like some winged seed upon a new-born set of Skandas with its luckless boon of ill desert, and it involves the fatal inconsistency of investing with permanent character that ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... I ought to say," went on the luckless Walt. "I really did think you were the crowd I should join, but something has come up and I ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... manipulated so as to fall high or low, according to the betting, irrespective of the person who holds it, so long as he does not know the secret. There is a board with a dial face and a pointer on a print. The luckless "punters" cannot tell that it is controlled by a magnetic ring. Into these mysteries the ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... tormenting him, playing tricks on him, and of giving him a lively recollection of his reception at the chateau. Then this gentleman, who had secret relations with his wife's maid, sent this girl, who was called Perrotte, to put an end to his ill-will towards the luckless Amador. As soon as the plot had been arranged between them, the wench, who hated monks, in order to please her master, went to the monk, who was standing under the pigsty, assuming a courteous demeanour in order the better to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... reached out from fortress to fortress, until each group was welded into one mighty unit by twenty-one such bands of force. The unit formed, a ray from each of its seven component structures seized upon a designated sphere, and under the combined power of those seven tractors, the luckless globe was literally snapped into the center of mass of the Vorkulian unit There seven dully gleaming red pressor rays leaped upon it, backed by all the power of seven gigantic fortresses, held rigidly in formation by the unimaginable mass of the structures and by their ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... black as the raven's back, And her face—what a queenly one; And her voice ripples out like the trembling shout Of a Lark when he sings to the sun; But her form is filled with a soul self-willed That would lord o'er a luckless he; Pride reigns in her breast, like snow in a nest, And—her love's not the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... rued the luckless mishap which cost me Sunnyside, and learned—alas! not for the first time—the true value of lessons taught by experience. For knowing how much depends upon their horses, in expeditions of this kind, the Indians take the greatest care in running no unnecessary ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... of Preventive Detention a system of communication between the luckless prisoners carried on by means of tapping on the wall. Sigismund, being a clever fellow, had become a great adept at this telegraphic system, and had struck up a friendship with a young student in the next cell; this poor fellow had been imprisoned ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... of gold, what time The sleek Etruscan at the altar blows His ivory pipe, and on the curved dish We lay the reeking entrails. If to rear Cattle delight thee rather, steers, or lambs, Or goats that kill the tender plants, then seek Full-fed Tarentum's glades and distant fields, Or such a plain as luckless Mantua lost Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan: There nor clear springs nor grass the flocks will fail, And all the day-long browsing of thy herds Shall the cool dews of one brief night ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... The luckless beast struggled to rise, got half to his feet, screamed, and fell over. Something about his hindquarters had been wrenched or torn or broken. Slade swore furiously and jerked out his revolver to fire repeatedly into the body of the struggling beast. The fourth ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... the look in her big, gray eyes and the mysterious summoning of help, the luckless seven were marched silently through the outer door, around the house, through the coal shed and so into the back bedroom, without being observed by the merrymakers, who shook the house to its foundation to the cheerful ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... the stock, furniture, and clothes of many hundred poor families, servants, and others, who have been ruined by the lottery. If he wish for further satisfaction, let him attend at the next Old Bailey Sessions, and hear the death-warrant of many a luckless gambler in lotteries, who has been guilty of subsequent theft and forgery; or if he seek more proof, let him attend to the numerous and horrid scenes of self-murder, which are known to accompany the closing of the wheels of fortune each year:(149) and then let him determine on ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... whilst the sun shining full into their dazzled eyes rendered ineffectual any farther attempt on their part to shoot straight at the foe. The hired archers turned and fled, and throwing into confusion the horsemen behind who were eager to charge and break the ranks of the English archers, the luckless men were mown down ruthlessly by their infuriated allies, whose wrath was burning against them now that they had proved not only useless ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... uprears: [i] Plac'd on his chair of state, he seems a God, While Sophs [2] and Freshmen tremble at his nod; As all around sit wrapt in speechless gloom, [ii] His voice, in thunder, shakes the sounding dome; Denouncing dire reproach to luckless fools, Unskill'd ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... times left an ugly changeling in place of the babe she had stolen. But it was more as an enchantress that she was dreaded. By a stroke of her magic wand she could transform the leafy fastnesses in which she dwelt into the semblance of a lordly hall, which the luckless traveller whom she lured thither would regard as a paradise after the dark thickets in which he had been wandering. This seeming castle or palace she furnished with everything that could delight the eye, and as the doomed wretch sat ravished by her beauty ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... The churchwarden shouted and waved his hat and with the soft grey dawn gradually growing brighter, and a speck or two of orange appearing high up in the east, the line went slowly onward towards Lenby, pausing from time to time for pools to be examined and for the more luckless of the party to ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... a broken spar anywhere, not a fragment of wood, nor a bit of rigging. On all sides emptiness ... only he and I, and in the distance the sounding sea. I looked back; the same emptiness there: a ridge of lifeless downs on the horizon ... that was all! My heart revolted against leaving this luckless wretch in this solitude, on the briny sand of the seashore, to be devoured by fishes and birds; an inner voice told me I ought to find people, call them, if not to help—what help could there be now!—at least to lift him ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... might be after facing the Old Man's tirade, and when I took the spokes from his nerveless grasp he had not sufficient wit left to give me the course. Indeed, he had not much chance to speak, for Captain Swope had followed me aft, and as soon as I had the wheel he commenced on the luckless youth. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... of his dreams. Four other sleepers were despatched in like manner, without time given them to utter a syllable. After them went another, who had entrenched himself between two horses; then the luckless Grill, who had made himself a pillow of a barrel which he had emptied. He was dreaming of opening a second barrel, but, alas, was tapped himself. A Greek and a German followed, who had been playing late at dice; fortunate, if they had continued to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... the British Empire or indeed of any country. If "all the Jewish women in Palestine are hysterical," presumably many of their menkind suffer from the same disability, which certainly does not promise well for the luckless Arab who is to live beneath their sway. How much of the trouble that has occurred already in Palestine may be attributed to this cause it is impossible to know. The increasing number of Jews in positions of authority in England presents, however, a far greater subject ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... correspondent, who had taken Bernard's fifty pounds into the Kursaal and left them there. Bernard, on learning his misfortune, lent him another fifty, with which he performed a second series of unsuccessful experiments; and our hero was not at his ease until he had passed over to his luckless friend the whole amount of his own winnings, every penny of which found its way through Captain Lovelock's fingers back into the bank. When this operation was completed, Bernard left Baden, the Captain gloomily accompanying ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... his demeanour, but willing and cheerful. His name, so he told Barry, was Velo, and he was a native of Manono, in the Samoan Group. For the past four or five years he had been wandering to and fro among the islands of the Pacific, his last voyage being made in a luckless Hobart Town whaleship, which he had left at Sydney in disgust and without a penny in his pocket. Like Barry, he had been attracted to the Mahina by the fact of her being engaged in the island trade, and indeed had ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... machine that, when someone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself.... Is this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?... I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man. For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face.... The rolling ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... thousand Indians in Espanola in 1492, and that in 1548 there were barely five hundred survivors. The same decrease had taken place in the other islands. But the work of Las Casas came in time to save the Indians on the mainland from the fate of the luckless islanders. ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... well by sight. And they say, "Our test is the best by far; For a Glug is a Glug; so there you are! And they climb the trees when it drizzles or hails To get electricity into their nails; And the Glug that fails Is a luckless Glug, ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis

... very long continuance, for in nine or ten days they were all apprehended and brought to condign punishment. Hughs had been a soldier as well as Sefton, and had quitted the Army to go upon the highway, which was a very luckless occasion for him. Being quickly apprehended he was charged with five several capital indictments, to all of which, when he came to be arraigned, he resolutely pleaded guilty; and when admonished by the Court that the crimes with which he was charged were felonies without benefit ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... touches, the sturgeon gives a startled leap and comes into contact with half a dozen more hooks. Then it threshes about wildly, until it receives hook after hook in its soft flesh; and the hooks, straining from many different angles, hold the luckless fish fast until it is drowned. Because no sturgeon can pass through a Chinese line, the device is called a trap in the fish laws; and because it bids fair to exterminate the sturgeon, it is branded by the fish laws as illegal. And such a line, we were confident, Big Alec intended ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... 'twas all for thy locks so bright, And 'twas all for thine eyes so blue, 270 That on the night of our luckless flight, Thy brother ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the whole Colony is its fisheries—the ever-recurrent pursuit of the luckless cod, salmon, herring, halibut, and lobster in summer, and the seal fishery in the month of March. It is increasingly difficult to overestimate the importance, not merely to the British Empire, but to the entire world, of ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... think, Miss Jane," he replied, passing the matter of railroads, "that I really could turn to you for help sometimes. If there's a fellow in all the world who needs it, and who abominably hates to let people see he needs it, it's the luckless ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... the pitiful remains of another human being, botched by Nature in the flesh, no less lamentably than Melrose in the spirit. The legal inquiry into Brand's flight and death was short and mostly formal; but the actual evidence—as compared with current gossip—of his luckless mother, now left sonless and husbandless, and as to the relations of the family with Faversham, hastened the melting process in the public mind. It showed a man in bondage indeed to a tyrant; but doing what he could to lighten the hand of the tyrant ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Ah luckless speech, and bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For, while he spake, a braying ass Did sing ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... Vicky Van—poor little Vicky. She had interested me—did interest me, but in only a friendly way. Indeed, my interest in her was prompted by sympathy for her luckless position and the trust she had reposed in me, I would hold her trust sacred. I would never play false to Vicky Van. But henceforth and forever my heart and soul belonged to my ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... the "feather corner," at the other end, generally conceded to be luxurious, but silently avoided, as having given, on more than one occasion, a sharp suggestion of quills. Over the whole, depressions and excrescences, was stretched a faded chintz cover. But woe to the luckless wight who thought to find repose by throwing himself carelessly down on this hitherto untried structure! It was reserved only to the knowing few to find a ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... Clairvoyancy That knows not what It knows, yet works therewith.— The cognizance ye mourn, Life's doom to feel, If I report it meetly, came unmeant, Emerging with blind gropes from impercipience By listless sequence—luckless, tragic Chance, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... at the ragged gap of Israel's "on'y fittin' way," was visible, to prove his word, another man's head, white-turbaned like his own, and two dark limy hands passing in a pail of mortar. Welcome distraction. True, Greenleaf's luckless question still stood unanswered, but just then an orderly summoned him to the busy generals and spoke aside to ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... character which probably suggested the name to this part of the great American chain, projected from, and were scattered all round, the cliffs. Over these the Indians, whose numbers increased every moment, strove to drive the luckless herd of buffaloes that had chanced to fall in their way. The task was easy. The unsuspecting animals, of which there were hundreds, rushed in a dense mass upon the cape referred to. On they came with irresistible impetuosity, bellowing furiously, while their hoofs thundered on the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... he'd be senator, then knight, and then In an hour's time a senator again; Flit from a palace to a crib so mean, A decent freedman scarce would there be seen; Now with Athenian wits he'd make his home, Now live with scamps and profligates at Rome; Born in a luckless hour, when every face Vertumnus wears was pulling a grimace. Shark Volanerius tried to disappoint The gout that left his fingers ne'er a joint By hiring some one at so much per day To shake the dicebox while he sat at play; Consistent in his faults, so less a goose Than your ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... be! I wish him to know exactly what I think of his conduct." She whirled upon the luckless erstwhile haberdasher's clerk; but he held out his hand for silence. He ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... so briefly with the flowers. They make collectively their tragic trio: J. J. the elder, most loved, most beautiful, most sacrificed of the Albany uncles; J. J. the younger—they were young together, they were luckless together, and the combination was as strange as the disaster was sweeping; and the daughter and sister, amplest of the "natural," easiest of the idle, who lived on to dress their memory with every thread and patch of her own perfect temper and then confirm the tradition, after all, by ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... Scottish Highlands bears such a charm as that of Flora Macdonald. Her praise is frequently sung, sketches of her life published, and her portrait adorns thousands of homes. While her distinction mainly rests on her efforts in behalf of the luckless prince Charles, after the disastrous battle of Culloden; yet, in reality, her character was strong, and she was a noble type of womanhood in her ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... of recognised ability, he was tried almost beyond endurance. For the next two or three days the newspapers printed caustic contributions from fellow architects and builders, in each of which the luckless Medcroft was taken to task for advocating an impractical and fatuous New York hobby in the way of construction,—something that staid old London would not even tolerate or discuss. The social chroniclings of the Medcrofts in Vienna, as despatched by the correspondents, offset this unhappy ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... should so have destroyed the fair fabric of his own fame? We are not so rich in heroes that we can afford to lose even the least of the kingly band; and we have felt that we have sustained an irreparable loss ever since the luckless day when we took up the first of the intensely interesting but most painful books relating ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... beards, or bathe, or take the air: For he, no doubt, must be a bard renown'd, That head with deathless laurel must be crown'd, Tho' past the pow'r of Hellebore insane, Which no vile Cutberd's razor'd hands profane. Ah luckless I, each spring that purge the bile! Or who'd write better? but 'tis scarce worth while: Nil tanti est: ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi. Munus et officium, nil scribens ipse, docebo; Unde parentur opes; quid alat ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... historic house for the meeting of the lovers, on Christmas Eve 1748. Here Le Gardeur de Repentigny, the loyal and devoted cavalier was to meet the fascinating, but luckless Cleopatra of St Louis street a century ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... innocence distressed; Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn: 330 Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, 335 She left her wheel and robes of ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... numerous sharks showed their dark triangular fins above the water, and turtles of several species floated on the surface; while ospreys and other sea-birds flew above our heads, darting down ever and anon to pick up a luckless fish which came within their ken. As the breeze fell light, our skipper determined to obtain a supply of turtle to feed us and his crew, and to dispose of at the first port we might touch at. He had been a turtle-hunter from his youth, and knew their ways, he ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... boy's agitation, or the luckless mention of the gold-pieces sent a sudden dismayed suspicion into ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter

... Low courtesies are made by each and formal inquiries as to each other's health. There is a short stop and certain formalities before the guest will ascend the steps ahead of the hostess. The same occurs again on entering the reception hall, and taking the seat of honour. The luckless foreigner sometimes makes the mistake of conceding to her guest's modesty and allows her to take a lower seat, which is a grievous offense, and she is only pardoned on the plea that she is an outside barbarian, and does not understand the rules ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... joy. They cheered the ape. They cheered the boy, and they hooted and jeered at the trainer and the manager, which luckless individual had inadvertently shown himself and attempted to assist ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... silent, and stood about, none knowing what was best to do. Dunwody, luckless and unhappy as he was, still remembered something of his place as host, and would have led them, friends and enemies, into the dining-room beyond in search of some refreshment. He limped forward, without any support. In the door between the hall and the farther room there lay a mounted rug, ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... is; but everything hinges on the extraordinary fact that the hungry, thin, common, shiftless, luckless man at the very bottom is still a MAN. He will not be a thief, and he will die of hunger and cold, as poor fellows do almost every winter day, rather than take the food that society guarantees ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... families still living there; but though they were little better than idiots, they were, at any rate, free from the taint of cretinism. I determined to go through with my work, and came officially in open day to take the luckless creature from his dwelling. I had no sooner left my house than my intention got abroad. The cretin's friends were there before me, and in front of his hovel I found a crowd of women and children and old people, who hailed my arrival ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... One day, along a little stream, I saw a mink track amid those of the muskrat; following it up, I presently came to blood and other marks of strife upon the snow beside a stone wall. Looking in between the stones, I found the carcass of the luckless rat, with its head and neck eaten away. The mink had made a ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... occupied Loudon Heights, on the Virginia side, and all were waiting now for Jackson to finish the work assigned to him and to occupy Bolivar Heights, thus finishing the cordon around the luckless garrison. The enemy's cavalry under the cover of the darkness crossed the river, hugged its banks close, and escaped. During the night a road was cut to the top of Maryland Heights by our engineer corps and several pieces of small cannon drawn up, mostly by hand, and placed in such position as ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... his stomach an immense fortune. He usually resided at Minturna, a town in Campania, where he ate shrimps at a high price: they were so large, that those of Smyrna, and the prawns of Alexandria, could not be compared with the shrimps of Minturna. However, this luckless epicure was informed that the shrimps in Africa were more monstrous; and he embarks without losing a day. He encounters a great storm, and through imminent danger arrives at the shores of Africa. The fishermen bring him the largest for size their nets could furnish. Apicius shakes his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... and that, in the merry-making on the Fete des Rois—Epiphany—he had recommended that the prayer, "May Christ reign in our hearts!" be substituted for the senseless cry, "The king drinks!" No more ample ground of accusation was needed in a city where the luckless wight who failed to take off his cap before an image, or fall on his knees when the bell rang out at "Ave Maria," was sure to be set ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... the wish of obliging the young ladies, or the desire of seeing her parents, I cannot pretend to say, but in a luckless hour Susan yielded, and the party soon ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... had been a vortex-magnet at the moment when a luckless wight had attempted to abate the nuisance of a "loose" atomic vortex. That wight died, of course—they almost always do—and the vortex, instead of being destroyed, was simply broken up into an indefinite number of widely-scattered ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... by singing a song written by Walter Stanhope for the occasion, and entitled, "A Health to Lord Melville." Each of the eight verses of which it is composed proposes a toast that was staunchly drunk by all present; but perhaps those in honour of the volunteers and of the luckless Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... the luckless man felt in his own home the superiority of his wife. Though she used great tact—we might say velvet softness if the term were admissible—to disguise from her husband this supremacy, which surprised and humiliated herself, Diard ended ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... thee?" she cried. At first the silent lips made no reply, But moved at length by her importunate cry, "Give me," he answered, with imploring tone, "Ser Federigo's falcon for my own!" No answer could the astonished mother make; How could she ask, e'en for her darling's sake, Such favor at a luckless lover's hand, Well knowing that to ask was to command? Well knowing, what all falconers confessed, In all the land that falcon was the best, The master's pride and passion and delight, And the sole pursuivant of this poor knight. But yet, for her child's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... hastily and eagerly walked down the garden path, and for the first time since that luckless letter from the camp had reached her, she could look calmly and clearly at the position of affairs, and reflect on the measures which Ani must take in the immediate future. She told herself that all was well, and that the time for prompt and rapid ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... file of the Confederate column was one of the usual fellows with more daring than discretion, who was mounted on a tall, white horse. Of course, as long as that horse was on its feet, everybody shot at him, or the rider. But that luckless steed soon went down in a cloud of dust, and that was the end of old Whitey. The effect of our fire on the enemy was marked and instantaneous. The head of their column crumpled up instanter, the road was full of dead and wounded horses, while ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... own zone, with its fruits fresh or dried, there are the abounding tropics always at the door: Pine-apples, which, if unwholesome, are yet charmingly convenient to help a luckless housekeeper, and which, by the way, made a better entree in London than pie-plant, being so popular that their salesmen floated flags from the top of their stalls; bananas, those foreign muskmelons of spring; oranges, gilding every street-corner; dates, which do not go meanly with bread ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... stumbled in the darkness, close on their captain's heels. And the lady walked beside him and stood beside him without a word, in the falling rain. The boat went backwards and forwards twice; before the hour had run out, the luckless cargo was all once more landed, and the captain heard with infinite relief the last oar-strokes dwindling away in the distance, and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... what came to pass, Because the luckless carles Belonging to the Am. Dram. Ass. Cast the Hunky ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... 'tis to him I owe That here I stand, and breath the common air, And 'tis my pride to tell it to the world. One luckless day as in the eager chace My Courser wildly bore me from the rest, A monst'rous Leopard from a bosky fen Rush'd forth, and foaming lash'd the ground, And fiercely ey'd me as his destin'd quarry. My jav'lin swift ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... over crags and through stone-paved and rock-lined ravines to the Moyenne Corniche, and then on to the higher mountain-slopes, and you can imagine how difficult it was to get away from raiders, and why the Barbary pirates took a full bag of luckless Riverains on every raid. You comprehend the raison d'etre of the fortified hill towns, and Eze, perched on her cliff, has a new meaning as you look down on Villefranche. This fastness was held by the Saracens long after the crescent yielded elsewhere ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... to compress the story of a cold and luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or more impressive ones; at least, we found them impressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the inscription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced letters. The grave was on the shady and damp side of the church, endwise towards it, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... much. Meg had a touch of Hal, too. 'Twas ill turning her down one road an' she took the bit betwixt her teeth, and had a mind to go the other. There was less of it in Mall, I grant you. And as to yon poor luckless loon, Mall's heir,—if he wit his own mind, I reckon 'tis as much as a man may bargain for. England ne'er loveth such at her helm—mark you that, Robin. She may bear with them, but she layeth no affiance ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... up with the message: "The gun is loaded, and pointed at the town." Almost simultaneously a panting little bell, not much louder than a London muffin-bell, but heard distinctly all over the town in the clear atmosphere, would give tongue, and luckless folk who were promenading the streets had about three seconds to seek shelter, the alarm being sounded as the flash was seen by the look-out. One afternoon they gave us three shots in six minutes, but, of course, this rapid ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... necessity of things, from what we see of the improvements they make, that all human improvement should proceed by the co-operation of human means. But what blinker into the night of next week,—what luckless prophet of the impossibilities of steam-boats and steam-carriages,—shall presume to say how far those improvements are to extend? Let no man faint in the co-operation with ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... by a herd gaun by the Thrieve, Crying, "Lang, lang now may I greet an' grieve; For alas! I hae gotten baith fee an' leave, O luckless Aiken-drum!" ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... When luckless Eph came to his senses he found himself lying, bound hand and foot, on a pile of rags. The darkness ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... altogether palatable to those who had to take it. In discipline he was something of a martinet. He established a school of instruction in his tent, where the officers assembled nightly to recite tactics, and no mercy was shown the luckless one who failed in his "lessons." Many a young fellow went away from the "school" smarting under the irony of the impatient colonel. Some of his remarks had a piquant humor, others were characterized by the most ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... luckless is the sailor When sick and like to die, He sees no tender mother, No sweetheart standing by. Only the captain speaks to him,— Stand up, stand up, young man, And steer the ship to haven, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... faster as it saw the straight, clear track beyond. He waited until the tail end whisked itself out of sight in the cut below the city walls, and then trudged slowly, dejectedly in the opposite direction, his heart in his boots. He was thinking of the luckless pair in the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... virtue hath been vanquished by vice. The low have risen, and the high have fallen. I have been offended again by Sarmishtha, the daughter of Vrishaparvan. Three sons have been begotten upon her by this king Yayati. But, O father, being luckless I have got only two sons! O son of Bhrigu, this king is renowned for his knowledge of the precepts of religion. But, O Kavya, I tell thee that he hath deviated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... Muse, in mirthful mood, Indulging gay the frolic vein of youth; But, oh! ye gods, avert th' impending stroke 170 This luckless omen threatens! Hark! methinks I hear my better angel cry, 'Retreat, Rash youth! in time retreat; let those poor bards, Who slighted all, all! for the flattering Muse, Yet cursed with pining want, as landmarks stand, To warn thee from the service ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... view of the Elbe approached under the wings of peace ready for flight away from the luckless shores of Europe. Our visual impressions remain with us so persistently that I find it extremely difficult to hold fast to the rational belief that now everything is dark over there, that the Elbe lightship ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... bushes she spoke a low word in his backlaid ears, raised him quickly with the bit, leaning forward as he rose in air. Like a bird that animal took the bushes and the gully beyond, while close behind him crashed the two luckless troopers. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Marjorie had suffered, and was suffering. She was contrasting Tom with Hugh, and Hugh with Tom, and it made her heart ache and made her angry with herself for her own previous blindness. And, womanlike, being in a very bad temper with herself, she snapped at the luckless Tom like an ill-conditioned terrier, and he never approached her but that she, metaphorically, bared her pretty white teeth, ready to ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... have thought his conduct singular. The Bishop, always ready to take the worst advice, got ready for his task, and on Easter Eve embarked upon the river, leaving his Vicar-General under orders to proclaim the general ban. This was done, and the edict so contrived as to catch the luckless Governor in every church. The practical effect was to close all the churches, for to whatever church the Governor went the priest refused to celebrate the Mass. Several other persons were mentioned in the ban, which ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... cloaks, and round, soup-plate bonnets. However, if we are not ornamental, we are useful. We pelt each other with a hearty vigour, and discharge volleys of confetti at every window where a fair English face appears. The poor luckless nosegay or sugar-plum boys look upon us as their best friends, and follow our carriages with importunate pertinacity. Fancy dresses of any kind are few. There are one or two very young men—English, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... this course probably by the persuasions of the ambitious and disappointed Ranee, he collected a few followers, and crossed the southern frontier of Nepaul. Jung, however, had received timely notice of his intention, and the luckless King had no sooner encamped in the Nepaul dominions, than he was surprised at night by the troops of the minister, and his small forces utterly routed, four or five hundred remaining killed or wounded upon the field. The Rajah himself was taken prisoner, and placed in confinement ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... once a beauteous youth, But, luckless, in the wave his face beholding, Himself he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... successive purchases by which the Government freed Iowa soil from Indian domination would be wearisome. The Treaty of 1842 with the Sauks and Foxes is typical. After a sojourn of hardly more than a decade in the Iowa country, these luckless folk were now persuaded to yield all their lands to the United States and retire to a reservation in Kansas. The negotiations were carried out with all due regard for Indian susceptibilities. Governor Chambers, ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... made an arrangement with one of the creditors of the luckless notary, pledging himself to deliver up the debtor on payment to himself of half the debt. Out of the ten thousand francs promised to Claparon, the victim of this trap was obliged, in order to obtain his liberty, to pay six thousand down, the amount ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... luckless King now must we tell, Who sat devising means to 'scape that shame, Until the frightened people thronging came About the palace, and drove back the guards, Making their way past all the gates and wards; And, putting chamberlains and marshals by, Surged round ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris

... the man apparently destined to be his heir, grew uneasy at the thought of benefitting a person he had learned to hate; and suddenly resolving to cut off at once the presumptuous expectations which the luckless exile might have cherished, exerted the influence procured by his wealth to form an alliance with the most peerless beauty which the city boasted. A new source of anguish added to the misery already sustained by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... And the old lady would explain what a hard and dangerous life was lived by lion-tamers, how their safety depended upon life-long distrustfulness of the creatures over whom they ruled. She would tell stories of the rending and maiming of luckless ones, who had forgotten for a brief moment the nature of the male animal! "Yes, my dear," she would say, "believe in love; but let the man believe first!" Her maxims never sinned ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... O LUCKLESS bark! new waves will force you back To sea. O, haste to make the haven yours! E'en now, a helpless wrack, You drift, despoil'd of oars; The Afric gale has dealt your mast a wound; Your sailyards groan, nor can your keel sustain, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... the deed drove off, leaving the luckless postboy to protest, loudly and vainly, to "the dull, cold ear of death," against the loathsome companionship. When the first market-gardener's cart passed by, most lustily did he call for help; but every effort to get free only tended to prolong his suspense. What could the carters and other ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... which Hamilton and Mansel were beginning to introduce. At Cambridge the young gentlemen are content with Locke and Mill; and at most know something of Coleridge and Maurice. Mr. Watson compares these meetings to those at Newman's rooms in Oxford as described by Mark Pattison. There a luckless advocate of ill-judged theories might be crushed for the evening by the polite sentence, Very likely. At the Cambridge meetings, the trial to the nerves, as Mr. Watson thinks, was even more severe. There was not the spell of common reverence for a great man, in ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... pacify distempered spirits. No; no one railed at you. They wrapped them up, O Heaven! in such oppressive, solemn silence! Here is no every-day misunderstanding, No transient pique, no cloud that passes over; Something most luckless, most unhealable, Has taken place. The Queen of Hungary Used formerly to call me her dear aunt, And ever at departure ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... length she learned how he espied The Ass in that small meadow-ground; And that her Husband now lay dead, Beside that luckless river's bed In which he had been ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... ample front sublime uprears; Plac'd on his chair of state, he seems a God, While Sophs and Freshmen, tremble at his nod. Whilst all around sit wrapt in speechless gloom, His voice in thunder shakes the sounding dome; Denouncing dire reproach, to luckless fools, Unskill'd to plod ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron

... I should be here," thought she, "to prevent some luckless accident, than leave that poor man at the ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... over them, unless you stop and walk, is to jump boldly into the middle like the man in the nursery rhyme, and then jump out again: horses that have been in the country for a while soon learn to do this. But some luckless ensign who has lately joined his regiment at Aldershot comes down bodily, and horse and man roll and struggle in the deep ruts which William the Conqueror's pack-horses helped to tread out as they came from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... was half of success. Poor Peter actually flushed with pain as he recognised that this was not success, the production of gelid prose which his editor could do nothing with on the one side and he himself could do nothing with on the other. The truth about his luckless tale was now the more bitter from his having managed, for some days, to taste it ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James

... Light Divisions—men (as he put it) who could show other troops how to mount a breach. It may be guessed with what stomach the Fifth Division digested this; and among them not a man was angrier than their old general, Leith, who now, after a luckless absence, resumed command. The Fifth Division, he swore, could hold their own with any soldiers in the Peninsula. He was furious with the seven hundred and fifty volunteers, and, evading the Marquis's order, which was implicit rather than direct, he added an oath that these interlopers ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... you villain!' roared the luckless artist, pale with consternation. 'My splendid sign! A painting worth thirty-five francs! I am ruined and undone!' And he continued shaking the ladder, and pouring out a torrent of abuse upon David, who, caring neither for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... the Jotun's luckless sister, for a bride-gift she dared to ask: "Give me from thy hands the ruddy rings, if thou wouldst gain my love, my love ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... lost were the two unfortunate young ladies I have named. I looked at the corpses of the luckless victims brought in during the two days I remained in Johnstown, but the bodies of the two passengers were ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... luckless knight's very virtues (as, no doubt, my respected readers know,) made him enemies amongst the men—nor was Ivanhoe liked by the women frequenting the camp of the gay King Richard. His young Queen, and a brilliant court of ladies, attended the pleasure-loving monarch. His Majesty would transact ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... her glory shineth! There comes a luckless night That will dim all her light; —And this ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... should her favors share; For still your heart Othello's plan approves, Nor keeps a corner in the thing it loves For others uses; those who madly brave Attack the rights you have, or think you have, Shall weep their rashness, that in luckless hour, Oppos'd th' omnipotence of lordly pow'r. When SEYMOUR insolently dar'd invade, Manors by your possession sacred made, From feasts you deign'd to grace, you wip'd his name, And gave him o'er to infamy ...
— An Heroic Epistle to the Right Honourable the Lord Craven (3rd Ed.) • William Combe

... dispose of what was left. 'I have swallowed all I can, I cannot swallow more, it is a physical impossibility,' he seemed to say; and his stern officer reiterated her commands with secret imperative signals. Luckless dog! but in mere humanity we came to the rescue and removed ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... occurred to him that there was no reason why he should not go down to the rectory and see Miss Eversleigh again under pretense of inquiring after the luckless baronet, whose title and fortune had, nevertheless, been so strangely preserved. He began at once his preparations for the journey, and was nearly ready when a servant entered with a telegram. Randolph's heart leaped. The captain ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... feeds on living creatures, greatly relishing the larvae of the May flies, or any other luckless ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... window of the opposite turret, where the tiring-women slept, and outside of which was hung a luckless lark ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt

... careless, noisy children there will be constant losing of thimbles and needles and scissors; but Aunt Esther was always ready, without reproach, to help the careless and the luckless. Her things, so well kept and so treasured, she was willing to lend, with many a caution and injunction, it is true, but also with a relish of right good will. And, to do us justice, we generally felt the sacredness of the trust, and were more careful of ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... softly-muttered word, the luckless steward bent, picked up the pieces of glass and beat a hasty retreat, followed by a heavy frown from the ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... say in censure or ridicule of the luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... when the two lovers are alone she knows no rest. Although her husband asks her to trust him, she fears that he may once leave her as mysteriously, as he came, and at last she cannot refrain from asking the luckless question. From this moment all happiness is lost to her. Telramund enters to slay his enemy, but Lohengrin, taking his sword, kills him with one stroke. Then he leads Elsa before the King and loudly announces his secret. He ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... is the world's eccentric round of joy complete When happy tourist-traveler, no more to roam, His fascinating, thrilling story shall repeat To impecunious, luckless multitudes who greet The ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... of simple Bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard. And ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway

... to each thing God hath given Its appointed time; No perplexing change permits He In His plan sublime. So who quits the order due Shall a luckless issue rue. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... or other no traces of it exist in any of our laws so far as I have discovered, was in accordance with the 'good old plan,' pursued probably ever since the origin of universities. I refer—'horresco referens'—to the punishment of boxing or cuffing. It was applied before the Faculty to the luckless offender by the President, towards whom the culprit, in a standing position, inclined his head, while blows fell in quick succession upon either ear. No one seems to have been served in this way except Freshmen and commencing 'Sophimores.'[12] I ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... long, long drive, relatives of hers were indeed going into fits; at least, so Florence would have described their gestures and incoherences of comment. Moreover, after the movies, straight into such a fitful scene did the luckless Herbert walk when urged homeward by thoughts of food, at about six that evening. Henry Rooter had strongly advised him against entering ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... was silent for a moment. Hasty speech has been the downfall of many; ill-considered silence was the undoing of the luckless ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... some of the logs were a foot, and others a foot and a half through. They were slippery from the rain, and the men, heavily laden with knapsacks, guns and cartridges, tumbled headlong, many of them going off at the side, and rolling far down the steep embankments. A laugh from the comrades of the luckless ones, while some one would call out, "Have you a pass to go down there?" was the only notice taken of such accidents; and the dark column hurried on, until at three o'clock in the morning, we halted at Potomac creek, where we slept soundly upon ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... of his past. He told me of Hungerford's kindness to him on the 'Dancing Kate', of his luckless days at Port Darwin, of his search for his wife, his writing to her, and her refusal to see him. He did not rail against her. He apologised for her, and reproached himself. "She is most singular," he continued, "and different from most women. She never said she loved me, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... volcano, with its summit torn in triple tops. 'Tis said that villas and villages, towns and cities, lie buried beneath the vineyards and palaces which crowd its base. The ancient and unhappy city of Pompeii stood on that luckless plain, which, following the shores of the bay, comes next; and then we take up the line of the mountain promontory, which forms the Sorrentine side ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... flaunt a titled trail Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail, And mine as brief appendix wear As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare; To-day, old friend, remember still That I am Joe ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... to dine (Unless to praise your rascal wine) Yet never ask some luckless sinner Who needs, as I do ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... obliged to drive from what, Hibernice speaking, is called the perch,—no ill-applied denomination to a piece of wood which, about the thickness of one's arm, is hung between the two fore-springs, and serves as a resting-place in which the luckless wight, weary of the saddle, is not sorry to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... sleep o' nights." His wife, if he has one, has an undoubted right to advertise him as a deserter of "bed and board." His ideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of his heart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his luckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth, earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only delicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... occur, it is likely that the men are oftener to blame than their wives. Too often I have seen some woman or other of the village getting her drunken and abusive husband home, and never once have I seen it the other way about. Nevertheless, in some luckless households the faults are on the woman's side, and it is the man who has the heartache. I knew one man—a most steady and industrious fellow, in constant work which kept him from home all day—whose ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... on the subject, both by his father and the nation, but Draga held him in a firm grip. Enmeshed as he knew he was in hostile intrigues, surrounded by spies and traitors, and himself a fool at best, maybe the luckless youth regarded her indeed as the one human creature for whom he had any affection or trust. Be that as it may Alexander, under her influence, promised his father and Vladan Georgevitch that he would marry if a suitable ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... sorrow overcast, With downward look, and gait subdued and slow: I saw the brothers shun them as they passed." Melissa heard the dame with signs of woe, And thus, with streaming eyes, exclaim'd at last: "Ah! luckless youths, with vain illusions fed, Whither by wicked ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... this new actor on the disordered scene of my adventures.—Know, then, he is that most incongruous of all monsters—a Scotch Buck—how far from being buck of the season you may easily judge. Every point of national character is opposed to the pretensions of this luckless race, when they attempt to take on them a personage which is assumed with so much facility by their brethren of the Isle of Saints. They are a shrewd people, indeed, but so destitute of ease, grace, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... Miss Priscilla, in an awful tone, pointing to where the luckless Terence is crawling home in the fond belief that he is defying all detection; whereupon Kit, with much presence of mind, looks scrutinizingly in just the opposite direction. "It is somebody carrying a gun. Good gracious! it is remarkably ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... surmise on our part, and putting altogether on one side the natural reluctance to shed blood, an aggressive policy would have been an unwise one, engendering, as it infallibly would, a bad feeling against any other luckless mariners whom the winds and the waves might in time to come cast upon the inhospitable ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... remorselessly logical and improving course. Having got his wish, the luckless Henry found that his only moments of pleasure were those during which he was enduring the tawse, getting out of bed on a cold morning, or doing something equally unpleasant. On the other hand, his comfortable bed had become so painful that he could only obtain rest by filling ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... Therefore, for the luckless Montalvo, when the case had been proved to the hilt against him by the evidence of the priest who brought the letter, of the wife's letters, and of the truculent Black Meg, who now found an opportunity of paying back "hot water for cold," there ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... sunken coal-barge, and surrounded, by a large force of rebels with an abundant supply of artillery, but wisely keeping their main force out of range of the admiral's guns. Every tree and stump covered a sharp-shooter, ready to pick off any luckless marine who showed his head above-decks, and entirely preventing the working-parties from ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... And my spirit white with anguish. Better had it been for Aino Had she never seen the sunlight, Or if born had died an infant, Had not lived to be a maiden In these days of sin and sorrow, Underneath a star so luckless. Better had it been for Aino, Had she died upon the eighth day After seven nights had vanished; Needed then but little linen, Needed but a little coffin, And a grave of smallest measure; Mother would have mourned a little, Father too perhaps a trifle, Sister would have wept the day through, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... bravely. In the autumn of 1318 he led a foray southwards, and met his fate in a skirmish near Dundalk on October 14, when his force was scattered in confusion by John of Bermingham, one of the neighbouring lords. The four quarters of the luckless King of Ireland were exposed in the four chief towns of the island as a trophy of victory, and Bermingham was rewarded by the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... would, probably, thanks to that training of which Vesalius may be almost called the father, have had little difficulty in finding out what was the matter with the luckless lad, and little difficulty in removing the evil, if it had not gone too far. But the Spanish physicians were then, as many of them are said to be still, as far behind the world in surgery as in other things; and indeed surgery itself was then in its infancy, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... good verses in the discharge of it, as might defy ridicule, and render neglect impossible. Instead of this, however, he has allowed himself to write rather worse than any Laureate before him, and has betaken himself to the luckless and vulgar expedient of endeavouring to face out the thing by an air of prodigious confidence and assumption:—and has had the usual fortune of such undertakers, by becoming only more conspicuously ridiculous. The badness of his official ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... safe return, and those who had remained behind prepared for rough weather. Once, at a marriage feast, when all the little village was making merry, the whisper had gone about that "the Count was walking;" and immediately they had all departed for their homes in fear and silence, and the luckless bride and bridegroom had hastened to the priest and besought him to unloose the knot, that they might celebrate their wedding on some ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... wife and family to remain some time longer in Sydney; and from this period may be dated her extraordinary efforts for meliorating the condition of poor female emigrants. What fell under her notice in connection with these luckless individuals was truly appalling. Huddled into a barrack on arrival; no trouble taken to put girls in the way of earning an honest livelihood; moral pollution all around; the government authorities and everybody else too busy to mind ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... me also!' responds the luckless youth, the tears flowing from his eagle eyes onto his ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... "um" like the French nasal "on," which gave the name of the Assyrian king the same sound as that of Ninon de l'Enclos, the terrible bete noir of the jealous Marquise. This was enough to set her off into a spasm of fury against the luckless tutor, who could not understand why he should be so berated over a simple question and its correct answer. The Marquise not understanding Latin, and guided only by the sound of the answer, which was similar ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.



Words linked to "Luckless" :   jinxed, hexed, unfortunate, unlucky



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