"Cheerless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It was a cheerless journey, harassed by thoughts and speculations that could be hardly considered illuminating. Curiously enough he had no thought of making a run for it to a district where he was still unknown. Why should he? There was not a guilty thought in his mind, unless it were ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... anything till this fog lifts,' he answered, with a good deal of resignation. Breakfast was a cheerless meal. The damp penetrated to the very cabin, whose roof and walls wept a fine dew. I had dreaded a bathe, and yet missed it, and the ghastly light made the tablecloth look dirtier than it naturally was, and all the accessories more sordid. Something ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... sentiment, most of us who are assembled here to-day drew our first breath, and sighed away the years of our youth. No hope cheered us; no noble object looming in the dim and distant future kindled our ambition. Oppression—cold, cheerless oppression, like the dreary region of eternal winter,—chilled every noble passion and fettered and paralyzed every arm. And if among the oppressed millions there were found here and there one in whose bosom the last glimmer of a generous passion was not yet extinguished—one, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... finale. From the portal of a house, as cheerless and dreary as can be imagined, in the month of January, with a black silk petticoat stretched on a white curtain thrown over her coffin for a pall, and an half-day Irish dragoon to act as chaplain over the grave, which was in a timber-yard, were the remains of Nelson's much-adored ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had been turned on for the express purpose of illuminating my disgrace. I was longing to go away, but Gitelson fell to questioning me about my affairs once more, and this time he did so with such unfeigned concern that I told him the whole cheerless story of my sixteen months' life ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... ailments, but they were nothing compared to my mental trials. Grief, hatred, jealousy, and revenge had well-nigh bereft me of reason. I had lost a home of plenty, been reduced to almost abject poverty, and had become a cheerless woman,—could not smile without ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... his grim presence that Myles was introduced by Gascoyne. Sir James was in his office, a room bare of ornament or adornment or superfluous comfort of any sort—without even so much as a mat of rushes upon the cold stone pavement to make it less cheerless. The old one-eyed knight sat gnawing his bristling mustaches. To anyone who knew him it would have been apparent that, as the castle phrase went, "the devil sat astride of his neck," which meant that some one of his blind wounds was ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... guide to this caravan; for I carry my own antidotes within myself, which are resolution and patience. Apprehension, which is particularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, if being alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless and more remote departure; 'tis a kind of death that I do not think of the worst sort; 'tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled by the public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without a crowd. But ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... scholar, but Father Olever did not come for us until four o'clock. He was a small, nervous gentleman, and lamps were already lighted in the smoky city when we started to drive twelve miles through spring mud, on a cloudy, cheerless afternoon. We knew he had no confidence in his power to manage those horses, though we also knew he would do his best to save us from harm; but as darkness closed around us, I think we felt like babes in the ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... But at the very bottom, in this carpet of slime, there are no weeds, or as we might call them sea-vegetables, for they cannot live altogether without light, so the creatures which have their home in what to us would seem this cheerless, miserable retreat, must live on one another. They are differently built from surface fish, because they have always resting upon them the weight of an enormous pile of water. Picture a pyramid of water two ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... to do honor to His death. Not by ointments and spices, however precious, nor at the rock-hewn tomb, could they best remember their Lord; but out in the world, which that morning had seemed so cold and cheerless, and in their lives, which then had seemed ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... the keeping of his uncle, Padre Juan, a grim priest who, having lost all happiness in life himself, saw little reason why he should seek to make the lives of others glad. Dismally the boy grew up in this narrow, cheerless home. The Padre fain would have made of him a priest also; but against this fate Pedro rebelled, and accepted, while yet a boy, the alternative means of livelihood that his uncle offered him in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Yellow | leaves the | woodlands | strewing, By a | river | hoarsely | roaring, Isa | -bella | strayed de | -ploring. 'Farewell | hours that | late did | measure Sunshine | days of | joy and | pleasure; Hail, thou | gloomy | night of | sorrow, Cheerless | night that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hospital hut at the police headquarters at Reindeer. A cheerless, primitive place of healing, severe but adequate, as were most things which concerned the lives of the riders of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... lane. The drunken man was not a very attractive object. Then it was a dark, lowery, and rainy day in the latter part of November. The streets were muddy, fences damp and clammy to the touch. Over the river hung a gray, cheerless fog. To such a day a staggering drunkard could not be said to contribute a cheering feature, and it was no wonder that Aunt Stanshy cared little to see him. Soon after this, Charlie went out into the barn. It had a deserted look, especially up ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... of the fence, his gaze roved over the sweep of valley, dull and cheerless in the early dawn, with a misty film rising up out of it to meet and mingle and evaporate in the far-flung colors of the slow-rising sun. Once his gaze concentrated on a spot in the distance. He detected movement, and watched, motionless, until he was certain. Half a mile it was to ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... started on their hike back to Bridgeboro, a cheerless group. Before going out between the old gateposts they turned for a last glimpse of the scene of their pleasant camping and working adventure. Only a few uprights of one shack remained. The accident had done the work of a day in ten seconds. There was ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... bluff behind the cabin; the rain and sleet, freezing as they fell, rattled harshly upon the bark roof over our heads; and the whole aspect of nature, as I caught a momentary glimpse of it when I went out to gather our evening's supply of fire-wood, was cheerless and desolate in the extreme. Our party consisted of three (or I should say four, for the Elam Storm whose name has so often been mentioned was to have shown up two days before)—Uncle Ezra Norton, who was a sheep-herder ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... and curtsying to her master she went away, leaving Avendano by her departure in a state of feeling like that of the tired wayfarer when the sun sets and he finds himself wrapt in cheerless darkness. He went, however, to give an account of what he had seen and done to Carriazo, who very soon perceived that his friend had been smitten in the heart; but he would not say a word about the matter then, until he should see whether there ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... has thy sullen stream Been doomed the cheerless shores to lave; Long has the Suttee's baneful gleam Pale glimmered o'er ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... hours of cheerless gloom, How glowing is the dye Of the crimson robe thou dost assume, Though it only be to die; Like the red men who, long years ago, Reposed beneath thy shade, And wore a smiling lip and brow On the pyre ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... performance was stiff and cold. Not for an instant did it suggest the full and passionate life which is the theme and the background of the play. Nor is this strange. A Midsummer Night's Dream is plainly beyond the powers of our theatre. Individual scenes were well done, but the whole was a cheerless ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... may not have supposed it, Proserpina found it impossible to take leave of poor King Pluto without some regrets, and a good deal of compunction for not telling him about the pomegranate. She even shed a tear or two, thinking how lonely and cheerless the great palace would seem to him, with all its ugly glare of artificial light, after she herself—his one little ray of natural sunshine, whom he had stolen, to be sure, but only because he valued her so much—after ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cheerless is the morn Unaccompanied by thee: Joyless is the day's return Till thy mercy's beams I see: Till thou inward light impart, Glad my eyes ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... perception of the intensity of the mental torture experienced by these unfortunate victims may, however, be conjectured from the fact that their senses at such junctures become so completely absorbed and overpowered by the cheerless prospect before them, that they oftentimes wander about in a state of temporary lunacy, without the power of exercising the slightest volition of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... stood gazing at her with an abashed air. In a moment or two the shovelling ceased, and they could hear the old man, totally unconscious of the witnesses to his good deed, slowly ascending to his cheerless rooms again. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... his companion, and slipped one arm about her waist beneath it; but she was conscious that she rather suffered this than derived any satisfaction from it. She strove to assure herself that she was jaded with the journey, which was, in fact, the case, and that the lowering sky, and the cheerless waste they were crossing, had occasioned the dejection she felt, which was also possible. There was not a tree upon the vast sweep of bleached grass which ran all round her to the horizon. It was inexpressibly lonely, a lifeless desolation, with only the ploughed-up trail to show that man had ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... child," said he, "you are bound straight for the most cheerless hell that was ever inhabited by ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... night, in a dark, cheerless September mist, I closed my door behind me for ten months, and with three assistants went to the station to meet ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... arm presaging throbs amain, My troubled heart is sick with pain, And cheerless omens ill portend Where'er my anxious eyes I bend. Dear brother, hear my words: advance Resolved and armed for every chance, For every sign I mark to-day Foretells a peril in the way. This bird of most ill-omened note, Loud screaming with discordant throat, Announces with a warning ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... still empty, scarcely even held romance now. Rain dripped from it sadly. Its cheerless bareness seemed worse than the most ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... of kings, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings"—steeping the altar in rich suffusion, chequering the walls and pavement with variegated hues, and filling the whole sacred spot with a warm and congenial glow, these panes produce a cold, cheerless, and most disagreeable effect. ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... prairies, and in the misty rain that fell and fell they seemed to melt afar into a gray and cheerless ocean. The sodden grass was matted now and unkempt. Lifeless lakes filled the depressions, and through them we waded mile after mile ankle-deep. There was a little cavalcade mounted on the tiny French ponies, and sometimes I rode with these; but oftenest Cowan or Tom ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stay in town and have a thoroughly good time. As the idea struck him he looked round the studio. The corners were dismal and shadowy. Everything not in the immediate circle of the fire looked grey and cheerless. His easel, with a bit of drapery thrown across it, was like a spectre with outstretched arms. It suggested despair. He could think of no one whom he wanted to see. There wasn't a soul he knew whom he would not in this crisis deliberately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... with wintering at a point five hundred and fifty miles from Lake Athabasca, which he called Fort Enterprise. Here there was prospect of plenty, for large herds of reindeer were grazing along the shores of the lake, and from their flesh "pemmican" was made; but the winter was long and cheerless, and Franklin soon realised that there was not enough food to last through it. So he dispatched the midshipman Back to Lake Athabasca for help. Back's journey was truly splendid, and we cannot omit his simple summary: "On the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... to scan the different scenes as they lay spread out before us, upon the map of busy life. The day had closed, dark, dreary and cheerless. The rain and sleet were driven furiously before the wind, and the child of want shrank from the biting blast, as stern necessity drove him forth to meet the peltings of the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... And cheerless was that resting-place For him who claimed a throne; His canopy, devoid of grace,— The rude, rough beams alone; The heather couch his only bed, Yet well I know had slumber fled From couch of eider down; Through darksome ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... It was a cheerless prospect to be turned loose into a bare field at 4.0 a.m. on a late September morning. Poeuilly, however, was found to contain a certain amount of useful material which very soon found its way to our field, and with the aid of a few "trench shelters," and taking advantage of some trenches which ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... than ever; she wore a slatternly wrapper, and her hair was thrust unbrushed into its net. But she suffered, no doubt, in her own way; she was red-eyed, and very hasty-handed with her nestful of babes. Sitting in the cheerless parlour, Ned's dark-eyed eldest on her knee, Mary strove to soothe and encourage. But: it has never been much of a home for the poor boy was her private opinion; and she pressed her cheek affectionately against the little ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists, just beneath the unattainable sky,—left her, worn out with shivering at the cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our own substance the ravenous little populace of a Roman bed at night,—left her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomach of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... discovered. A frightful encounter. Escape of Mahnewe. They pursue their journey in the night. Discovery of a river over which they cross. Come to a prairie. Approach a sandy desert. They provide themselves with ample provisions and set out over the cheerless waste. 231 ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... of moral evil is necessary? There seems to be no such good in reality. It appears to be a dream of the imagination, a splendid fiction, which has been recommended to the human mind by its horror of the cheerless gloom of scepticism. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Morny. "What have you to say to the way in which you treated your prisoners? You were never taken captive with your father— I mean your uncle, and shut up in a great cheerless building right out upon a cold, ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... nature may engender. There was indeed much joyousness among the Greeks—Homer's flow of enthusiasm for most things that the sun shines upon is steady. But even in Homer the reflective passages are cheerless,[73] and the moment the Greeks grew systematically pensive and thought of ultimates, they became unmitigated pessimists.[74] The jealousy of the gods, the nemesis that follows too much happiness, the all-encompassing death, fate's dark opacity, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... army was brought into position on the north side of the stream, and arrangements commenced for a general assault. Sharp picket firing and the occasional roar of artillery, warned us that we were on the eve of a great battle. A cold storm of rain rendered the situation cheerless and uncomfortable, but the excitement of getting into position, regiments and brigades marching from one part of the line to another, now approaching where the bullets of the rebel skirmishers whistled about them, and then withdrawing a little to the rear, kept up the spirits ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... to keep herself from crying out. Clara often looked at her, full of surprise, but Miss Rottenmeier did not notice them and found no occasion to carry out her threat. However, the poor child got more cheerless every day, and looked so thin and pale that Sebastian became worried. He tried to encourage her at table to help herself to all the good dishes, but listlessly she would let them pass and hardly touch them. In the evening she would cry quietly, ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... known as the forest of Waltham. Although light still lingered, a gloom was gathering over the countryside, and within the precincts of the forest the first shades of evening warned the horsemen that ere many hours the cheerless twilight which prevailed in England at that period of the year, would find them outside the ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... no hat on, the sleeves of her cotton blouse were rolled up over her elbow, and she wore still the big rough apron she had donned for scrubbing. It struck her, as she crossed the river, that the wind was very cold, and that the day was grey and cheerless, now the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... he entered the mill, he had felt that his burden was almost greater than he could bear. He was disgraced and thrown out of his position, and was about entering upon a cheerless life, where there was but ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listen'd with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneel'd and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soil'd gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... be, but at the same time she was none the less a woman to him—a woman to love and to be loved; to give him sympathy, companionship; to inspire him to overcome his weaknesses by striving to be worthy of her; to bring into his life that feminine charm without which a man's life must be cold and cheerless. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... we could spend the night. Our men were tired and drenched, some of them cross; fires were out of the question until fuel could be cut and brought from the edge of a swamp a mile from camp. When brought, the green wood smoked so badly that suppers were late and rather cheerless; still there was spirit enough left in those stalwart hearts to start some mirth-provoking ditty, or indulge in good-natured raillery over the joys and comforts ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... acting on the mere cold knowledge. For feeling to knowledge, in young minds, is like the match to a fire laid in a grate; knowledge without feeling being as cheerless and impotent as the ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Rufka was the Preceptress, and its very existence is owing to the patient and faithful labors of those two Christian Syrian women. If any one who reads these lines should doubt the utility of labors for the girls and women of the Arab race, let him visit first the squalid, disorderly, cheerless and Christless homes of the mass of the Arab villagers of Syria, and then enter the cheerful, tidy, well ordered home of Mr. and Mrs. Araman, when the family are at morning prayers, listen to the voice of prayer and praise and ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... a stealthy step approached. It stopped, a wooden door swung back, and a band of greyish light showed a low room of rough beams without a window. At the door Wife Gougeon peered in, and behind her was the cheerless perspective of the shop, additionally cheerless in the grey ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... is, we did not start again until the evening, husbanding our strength for the worst part of the way, which was yet to come. From this point the water-holes became less frequent, and the landscape particularly cheerless—monotonous stony expanses alternating with hideous thorn-thickets. Yet both men and beasts held out bravely through those three miserable days, and on the 12th of May we reached in good condition, though wetted to the skin by a sudden and unexpected downpour of rain, the charming country of the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... it looked to the eastward! Did ever evening close in so fast? And how black and cold the river looked! She never remembered to have seen it quite so cheerless and gloomy before. A thick white fog was rising from the marshy lands, and she could not see the friendly twinkling lights upon the bridge. Despite her exertions, which were great, she felt chill and shivery; and when at last she heard the sound of a lusty shout behind her, her heart seemed ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to the wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things, as in a mock-embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed possible ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... paused on the threshold and took in the picture. He could see the low-lying, sunless afternoon sky, all gray and cheerless; the gray, complaining sea creeping up on the greasy shingle; the desolate expanse of road; the tongue of marshland; the strip of black pine woods—all that could be seen from the window. The prison-room ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back, Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, With one great gush of blossoms storms the world. A week ago the Sparrow was divine; The Bluebird, shifting his light load of song From post to post along the cheerless fence, Was as a rhymer ere the poet came; But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West, Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud, Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, The Bobolink ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... it was spring. Nothing can keep away the change in the season. In the mountain country the change comes swiftly, unheralded. One day it was bleak and cheerless; the next day brought with it the grace of sunshine and warmth; as if by magic, verdure began to deck the hillsides, and we heard again the cheerful murmur of waters in the gulch. The hollyhocks about The Bower shot up once more and put forth ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... demolished, as we understood, at the time of the Revolution; but in its best days must have been but a wretched residence, as no trace remains within many hundred yards of it, of any soil where tree or garden could have stood. To the genuine admirers of Mad. de Sevigne, however, even these cheerless mountain holds present an interesting object, as having been peopled by the honest country families whose ceremonious visits to Grignan afforded her many a good-natured laugh.[15] Or to treat the Chateau Race-du-fort (for such ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... fishermen and their families live like rabbits in a burrow. That these poor people are not all devoured by snails or crippled with rheumatism is a marvel to any stranger who takes a peep into their filthy and cheerless little cabins. The oozy slime of fish and smoke mingles with the green mould of the rocks; barnacles cover the walls, and puddles make a soft carpeting for the floors. The earth is overhead, and their heads ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... rain, and too frail to afford protection from the burning heat of the noonday sun, or the chilling effects of the midnight blast. As their families increased, another and another cabin was added, as crazy and as cheerless as the first, until, admonished of the increase of their own substance, the influx of wealthier neighbors, and the general improvement of the country around them, they were allured by pride to do that to ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form 10 Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... need not stop to ask why. Nobody who has read the story of John Stuart Mill's boyhood will wonder that Mill was a skeptic. And nobody who has read the story of Thomas Huxley's boyhood will wonder at his becoming an agnostic. As Edward Clodd, his biographer, says, 'his boyhood was a cheerless time. Reversing Matthew ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... Str-l-tz? Not all the treasure went. Non omnis moritur. A poor old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts her shaking old hand to her nose. Gliding noiselessly among the beds where lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old ghost with a snuff-box that does not creak. "There, Goody, take of my rappee. You will not sneeze, and I shall not say 'God bless you.' But you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won't you? Ah! I had a many troubles, a many troubles. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hacked foothold on the ladder, left his men in the dory, and notched his perilous way to the deck. The fore-hatch was open, just as the hastily departing salvagers had left it. He went below, down the frosted iron ladder. He was fronted with a cheerless aspect. Cargo and water hid what damage she had suffered. The fat man had secured most of the cargo that the water had ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... house, which Abraham Lincoln called his home, was now more lonely and cheerless than before. The sunlight of his mother's presence had gone out of ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... before—nay, had sometimes assisted at the dipping. He had seen her short striped gown and blue woolen stockings, and smelled the cooking cabbage, but they never struck him with so great a sense of discomfort as they did to-day when he stood, hat in hand, wondering why home seemed so cheerless. It was as if the shadow of the great shock awaiting him had already fallen upon him, oppressing him with a weight he could not well shake off. He had no thought that any harm had come to Ethie, and yet his first question was for her. Had his mother heard ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that the distant Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned to the cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think, and wish the ship would make the land—for we had not eaten much for ten ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is dark and cheerless now! No smile of Love's deceit Can warm my veins with wonted glow, Can bid Life's pulses beat: Not e'en the hope of future fame Can wake my faint, exhausted frame. Or crown with fancied wreaths my head. Mine is a short inglorious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... I walk the cheerless shore. The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war, Ere you will ever know, O! Heart of mine, That I have sought, reflected in the blue Of these sea depths, some shadow of your eyes; Have hoped the laughing waves would ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... anyone who knows what conversation is. Once arguing at a table in a tavern the most famous man on earth would wish to be obscure, so that his brilliant remarks might blaze like the stars on the background of his obscurity. To anything worth calling a man nothing can be conceived more cold or cheerless than to be king of your company. But it may be said that in masculine sports and games, other than the great game of debate, there is definite emulation and eclipse. There is indeed emulation, but this is only an ardent sort of equality. Games ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... enveloping mists of the vanguard of a snow-storm, huddling themselves gradually into smaller and smaller compass as the sleety snow warmed—or rather, cooled—to its task of discouragement and settled down in ghostly earnest, pushing back the already delayed dawn and casting a cheerless gloom over ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... visitor. Toward evening, his servants arrived; Lavretzky did not wish to sleep in his aunt's bed; he gave orders that a bed should be made up for him in the dining-room. Extinguishing the candle, he stared about him for a long time, and meditated on cheerless thoughts; he experienced the sensation familiar to every man who chances to pass the night, for the first time, in a place which has long been uninhabited; it seemed to him that the darkness which surrounded him ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Also he loved the wise daughter; but her heart was hard because that her sister was preferred before her. The man's name was Eli M'Diarmid, and his daughters' names were Sophia and Elsie. He had been long in the little kirk of Cauldshields. To the manse he had brought his young wife, and from its cheerless four walls he had walked behind her hearse one day nigh twenty years ago. The daughters had been reared here; but, even as enmity had arisen on the tilled slips of garden outside Eden, so there had always been strife between the daughters of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... behind me cantered too. I thought, "I will stay, and let the knave pass," but as I stayed in the way, the horseman that followed stayed as well. We had ridden some hour and a half like this, and the road ran now through a wood that seemed dark and cheerless to the sight, yet I was forced to press on. I had not progressed far, when I heard a whistle behind me, and lo! I saw, as it were, in answer two great knights come spurring towards me ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... had entered into his flesh and spirit. Yet somehow he had hoped that his Master's large and keen perception of human things, his judicial mind, would have lifted him above the prejudices of Reason. He sat there cheerless, his college cap between his knees; and was seeking the moment to say good-bye when the Master suddenly sat down beside him. To any one looking in at the window, the two seated side by side on the hard sofa would have seemed an ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... himself, detains him at some distance from his home from morning till night. Sunday is the only day on which they could all meet together, and enjoy a homely meal in social comfort; and now they sit down to a cold and cheerless dinner: the pious guardians of the man's salvation having, in their regard for the welfare of his precious soul, shut up the bakers' shops. The fire blazes high in the kitchen chimney of these well-fed hypocrites, and the rich steams ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... tinselled hero whom we praise and pay Is twice an actor in a twofold play. We smile at children when a painted screen Seems to their simple eyes a real scene; Ask the poor hireling, who has left his throne To seek the cheerless home he calls his own, Which of his double lives most real seems, The world of solid fact or scenic dreams? Canvas, or clouds,—the footlights, or the spheres,— The play of two short hours, or seventy years? Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not comfort her then, for he needed it the most, and so in silence he left her and went on his way to Linwood, which seemed as if a funeral train had left it, bearing away all Morris' life and love, and leaving only a cheerless blank. It was well for him that there were many sick ones on his list, for in attending to them he forgot himself in part so that the day with him passed faster than at the farmhouse, where life ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Indeed, for the past week they had been very unhappy over the turn of affairs. They tried their hardest to brace up and be good sports, but their disappointment was greater than they had expected. On tournament day they wandered about with a cheerless air, watching the various companies file into the side streets to await the formation of the parade that would be conducted up Webster ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... noticed the cheerless aspect of the heavens as he approached the window immediately upon rising. But as all the necessary directions had been given respecting the promenade, and every preparation had been made accordingly, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her face, and made an effort to powder away the evidence of her grief. Then she went bravely down and faced the silent crowd in the breakfast room. No one was eating anything. The very air smote chill and cheerless as she entered. As if he had been lying in wait for her, Fisher pounced upon her on ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... and dreary That long and narrow street: Only the sound of the rain, And the tramp of passing feet, The duller glow of the fire, And gathering mists of night To mark how slow and weary The long day's cheerless flight! ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... through the heart of France from the mud of the trenches, leaving the cold and cheerless days behind for the sunny south was full of interest, and of looking forward to what was in store. Marseilles, that busy Mediterranean Port which has seen such wonderful scenes of troops arriving from all parts of the world, and of all ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... degrees he got the snow-shoes put on again, and mounted out of the hole which he had made, with snow adhering to all his garments and snow melting adown his neck and wrists. He now realised that he had spent nearly half an hour in walking not a quarter of a mile. With this cheerless reflection as a companion he went doggedly on, choosing now the drifted ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... lines of dingy houses; and I nothing, an atom in the confusion, a grain of dust on the great chariot wheel of society, a lonely and obscure struggler in the mighty current of human life, which rolled along the sullen channels of the most cheerless, however it might be the largest, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... that hill of houses over London had been domed and sealed up with cold cloud. Yet three men and two girls had at last found even the gray and chilly garden more tolerable than the black and cheerless interior. When the wind came it split the sky and shouldered the cloudland left and right, unbarring great clear furnaces of evening gold. The burst of light released and the burst of air blowing seemed to come almost simultaneously; ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... before the time set for his departure David set out on a round of farewell visits to the country folk. It was one of those cold, cheerless days that intervene between the first haze of autumn and the golden glow of October. He had never before realized how lonely the shiver of wind through the poplars could sound. Two innovations had been made that day in the country. The rural delivery carrier, ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... fell over the lifeless scene without as he ceased to speak. I could see a crimson beam glowing upon a crucifix that stood on the wayside by the hill-foot yonder; but the cheerless monotony of plough land and of pasture, stretching away leafless, treeless, without bud or flower, herd or herdsman, church or cottage, to the shadowed horizon, looming dark as the twilight deepened, was ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... Signor "Lib" hiding from the Captain when the weather was not all it might be, and he in consequence felt anything but well. One mate after another would be despatched with the strictest orders from the Captain to search for the cheerless chessite; but after a time the Captain's patience would be exhausted, his strident voice could be heard calling upon the caricaturist to come forth and show himself, and eventually he might be seen en route to his cabin ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... down in his seat. Bill wondered if he was tired. Darkness crept over the intense moonlight like a veil, and Bill realized that the moon was gone. He kept his course, however, with the aid of his indicator and the air compass and at last a new light commenced to show, the cold, cheerless, dun light of early dawn. As yet there was no ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... long hours of the night as they slowly passed. Then the dawn came. The side-lights showed fainter and fainter in the water; the light on the mast shed no rays on the deck, but twinkled uselessly behind its glass. Then the mate turned his gaze from the wet, cheerless deck and heaving seas to the figure in the boat dragging behind. The skipper, who returned his gaze with a fierce scowl, was holding his wet handkerchief to his temple. He removed it as the mate looked, and showed a ghastly wound. Still, neither of them spoke. The mate averted his gaze, and ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... summer of my days— Wealth without care and love without desire? O misty, cheerless moon of falling leaves! Is this the fruitage promised by the spring? O blighted clusters withering on the vine! O promised lips of love to one who dreams And wakens holding ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... all to come. Not yet (with us) have the kindly old bars, reverend in their attenuation, been restored to their time-honoured throne; not yet have the dingy festoons of pink and white paper disappeared from the garish mantel. Still desolate and cheerless shows the noble edifice. The gaunt chimney yawns still in sick anticipation of deferred smoke. The "irons," innocent of coal, and polished to the tip, skulk and cower sympathetically into the extreme corner of the fender. The very rug seems ghastly and grim, wanting the kindly play of the excited ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... once that Isabel must be given up, with all her attractions. How lone and cheerless the future appeared. Casting himself upon his knees, he prayed for help to bear the blow which had ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... sounded a very, very little impatient; but Ford once more politely expressed his sorrow, and abstained from putting on his coat. At that moment, too, Dick Lee came tiptoeing in from his cheerless garret, and looking astonishingly spruce. The "shine" on his shoes was a brilliancy to be remembered; and so was the shine on his face, and the sunset glow of ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... chill in the air of the cheerless room had suddenly accentuated itself, she arose, took a match-box from the mantel, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... steam, vibrated with suppressed energy, straining at mighty cables as if impatient to start on her long and hazardous voyage across the tumbling seas. A raw, piercing northeaster, howling dismally above the monotonous creaking and puffing of the donkey-engine, swept through the cheerless, draughty dock, chilling the spectators to the marrow. The sun, vainly trying to break through the banks of leaden-colored clouds, cast a grayish pall over land and sky. A day it was of sinister portent, that could not fail to have a depressing ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... heard through the silent mansion strains of music, which startled the echoes in its silent and deserted rooms, accompanied by a voice of such thrilling sweetness and volume of tone, that the solitary old man, in his cold and cheerless apartment, threw down his pen, and sprung to his feet, to listen. It was Helen singing wild cavatinas from Norma, and solos from Der Freischutz, and looking so splendidly beautiful the while, that Walter Jerrold thought with pride and exultation of introducing so much loveliness ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... Bay," a forlorn female is seen, a bottle held tightly under her shawl. Sailing as it were into the bottomless pit of the house of the Nine Nations, then suddenly returning with the drug, seeking the cheerless garret of her dissolute partner, and there striving to blunt her feelings against the horrors ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... There, through these long years she has lived in sorrow, far removed from home and friends and the scenes of her happy childhood. And now that the hero Telamon, to whom she was wedded, lives no longer, I ween that her life is indeed a cheerless one." ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... it a bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines of a few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, and dotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali. In places, stunted poplar bluffs cut against the sky, but, for ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... Bill's prediction, the proceeds barely paid Jeff's debts. Aunt Sally prevented any troublesome consideration of HER future, by applying a small surplus of profit to the expenses of a journey back to her relatives in Kentucky. She wrote Jeff a letter of cheerless instruction, reminded him of the fulfillment of her worst prophecies regarding him, but begged him, in her absence, to rely solely upon the "Word." "For the sperrit killeth," she added vaguely. Whether this referred figuratively to Jeff's business, he did not stop to consider. He was more ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... drive, she stopped just as she was going to step into the carriage and said she thought she would go round and look at the conservatory from the outside. So John turned the horses, and followed. It was a very cold day, and there were few people in the street. Every thing was so cheerless out of doors, and the flowers looked so summer-like! No wonder the people liked to stop, poor souls! For the richer, more comfortable ones lived farther up town. It was not in the shopping region; and, except the business-men who ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... with all her speed, and the lieutenant felt the deck quiver as though it was in danger of being shaken out of her. But she was not followed by the Bellevite, and things began to look dark and somewhat cheerless to Christy. The firing came to an end, for the distance was becoming too great for it to ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... swearing, of which so much has been made by moralists, was not an objection to its sinfulness but an objection to its charm. In brief, he feared comfort, satisfaction, joy. The boarding houses in which he dragged out his gray years were as bare and cheerless as so many piano boxes. He avoided all the little vices and dissipations which make human existence bearable: good eating, good drinking, dancing, tobacco, poker, poetry, the theatre, personal ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... deep love for Elizabeth he could have wished himself anywhere else and charged with any other mission. He dropped heavily into a chair. North's arrest, and the results of that arrest as he now saw them in that cheerless atmosphere, loomed large before his mind's eye. He reflected that a trial for murder was a horrible and soul-racking experience. He devoutly and prayerfully hoped that it would not come to this ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... There in that cheerless abode dead Balder was enthroned, but, said Frigga, he who braves that dread journey must take no heed of him, nor of the sad ghosts flitting to and fro, like eddying leaves. First he must accost their gloomy queen and ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... climbing roses. From his height he commanded the gardens of this cottage, and his eye of artist was pleased, from the first sight, with the beauty which some exquisite taste had given to the ground. Even in that cheerless season of the year, the garden wore a summer smile; the evergreens were so bright and various, and the few flowers, still left, so hardy and so healthful. Facing the south, a colonnade, or covered gallery, of rustic woodwork had been formed, and creeping plants, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... board once more, we spent our time basking in the sunshine, drinking it in as it were, for it seemed so delightful in spite of its heat after our dull, cheerless, hazy home in ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... a weary, hot day on the coast railway of Maine. Notwithstanding the high temperature, the country seemed cheerless, the sunlight to fall less genially than in more fertile regions to the south, upon a landscape stripped of its forests, naked, and unpicturesque. Why should the little white houses of the prosperous little villages on the line of the rail seem cold and suggest ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cloudy day in February, and everything on the road looked dowie and cheerless; the very cows and sheep, that crowded cowering beneath the trees in the parks, seemed to be grieving for some disaster, and hanging down their heads like mourners at a burial. The rain whiles obliged me to put up my umbrella, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... careful lest the mantle of its gravity should be disturbed in any of its folds; and rather than allow a privileged place to folly beside itself, it has unconsciously assumed the part of the ridiculous; but, alas! a heavy and cheerless ridicule.[28] It would be easy to make a collection of the excellent sallies and biting sarcasms which have been preserved of celebrated court fools. It is well known that they frequently told such ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke |
