"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I thought these two people's happiness should be sacrificed, or the poor old woman left desolate. Albinia has spirits and energy for a worse infliction, and Edmund Kendal himself is the better for every shock to his secluded habits. If it is a step I would never dare advise, still less ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there was no one in the comparatively desolate country about Barrataria who could buy the valuable goods which were brought into that port, but the great object of the owners of this merchandise was to smuggle it up to New Orleans and dispose of it. But ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... her; it was broken by the clock striking eleven. Probably she was roused at the first stroke, for, failing to count, the number seemed to her so interminable that she started up and made to herself fretful complaint. Pain was weakening her self-control; she found herself crying in a weary, desolate way, and could not stop her tears for a long time. The gusts of wind went by her windows and bore their voices away on to the common, wailing and sobbing in the far distance; rain spattered the windows at times. When her tears ceased, Emily hid her face in the pillow ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Death to spare him if a substitute could be found. Admetus' parents and friends failed him, but his wife Alcestis for his sake was content to leave the light. After a series of speeches of great beauty and pathos she dies, leaving her husband desolate. Heracles arrives at the palace on the day of her death; he notices that some sorrow is come upon his host, but being assured that only a relation has died he remains. Meanwhile Admetus' parents arrive to console him; he reviles them ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Two of his large ships having been separated from him in a storm before he weathered Cape Horn, had put in at Rio de Janeiro, on the coast of Brazil, from whence they returned to Europe. A frigate commanded by captain Cheap, was shipwrecked on a desolate island in the South-Sea. Mr. Anson having undergone a dreadful tempest, which dispersed his fleet, arrived at the island of Juan Fernandez, where he was joined by the Gloucester, a ship of the line, a sloop, and a pink ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... vision was, he would have banished it if he could, and hated himself for being capable of conjuring it up at such a time. Was it for him to profit by the great calamity which would make his brother's house desolate? He could not endure the thought, nor himself for finding it possible; and he was ashamed to look in Gerald's face with even the shadow of such an imagination on his own. He tapped at the library window after a while, and told his brother that he was going up to ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... as of a pendulum forever stopped, as of Time but a wreck on the shore of Space, and Space a deserted coast, an experiment of some Power who found it ineffective and tossed it away. The Now and Here, petrified forever, desolate forever, an obscure bubble in the sea of being, a faint tracing on the eternal Mind to be overlaid and forgotten—here it rested, and would rest. The field would stay and the actors would stay, both forever as they were, standing, lying, in motion or at rest, suffering, thirsting, tasting ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... any great elevation,—the promontory of Aspatogon, about five hundred feet high, being the highest land on the Atlantic coast of the Province. The general aspect of the shore is low, rocky, and desolate, strewn often with huge boulders of granite or quartzite,—and where not bleak and rocky, it is covered with thick forests of spruce ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... of the house, as had been said, was an orchard, at the other was a large garden. If the desolate appearance of the house was likely to raise oppressive feelings in a stranger's mind, how much more this garden! It was a large oblong piece of ground, the walls of which enclosed the western end of the house completely. One of them ran ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... The desolate expanse around the gulch, was all but without motion. The icy breeze tore tiny puffs of dust from grotesque, angling drifts of soil, nearly waterless for eons. Patches of drab lichen grew here and there on the up-jutting rocks, but in the desert itself, no other life was visible. ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... sixteen, sitting on a stool by the open window, looking out listlessly on the stretch of dreary fenland, shrouded in the cold and heavy mist. It was a day on which the scenery of the fen country looked desolate, cheerless, and chill. These green meadows and flat stretches have need of the sunshine to warm them always. Sitting there in the soft grey light, Gladys Graham looked more of a woman than a child, though her gown did not reach her ankles, and her hair hung in a thick ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... moments continues so, motionless, gazing rigidly at the motionless men who return his gaze in silence. In the pale first glimmer of dawn, he might well think them unreal, creations of a bad dream. The spell of silence is broken by the cry bursting from his lips: "The desolate Day—for the last time!" Melot steps forward and points at him: "You shall now tell me," he speaks to Mark, "whether I rightfully accused him? Whether I am to retain my head which I placed at stake? I have shown him to you in the very act. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... after Roscoe was taken ill we were passing through the canal, the search-light of the 'Fulvia' sweeping the path ahead of it and glorifying everything it touched. Mud barges were fairy palaces; Arab punts beautiful gondolas; the ragged Egyptians on the banks became picturesque; and the desolate country behind them had a wide vestibule of splendour. I stood for half an hour watching this scene, then I went below to Roscoe's cabin and relieved the bookmaker. The sick man was sleeping from the effects of a sedative draught. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... often, especially just before the dawn, has he not longed to be delivered from the perfectly futile preoccupation, so that he might go to sleep again—and failed to get free! How often, in the midst of some jolly gathering, has he not felt secretly desolate because the one tyrannic topic would run round and round in his mind, just like a clockwork mouse, accomplishing no useful end, and making impossible any genuine participation in the ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... in summer, there should surely be the largest bowls of roses. I saw the old house last in a frosty December sunset, surrounded by floodwater, with farm horses splashing up the road, and plovers crying round the edges of the stream. It looked desolate enough; but three hundred years ago it was a fine house, at one time the property of the Austens of Shalford, and later passing into the hands of the trustees of Henry Smith, the "Dog Smith" who gave so much to Surrey ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... country between was so bright that they could not tell where the land ended and the sea began. But as they gazed a great cloud came over the sun, the sea turned cold and gray as death—a true March sea, and the land lay low and desolate between. The spring was gone and the winter was there. A gust of wind, full of keen hail, drove ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... "the eyes of Pauguk Glare upon me in the darkness, I can feel his icy fingers Clasping mine amid the darkness! Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" And the desolate Hiawatha, Far away amid the forest, Miles away among the mountains, Heard that sudden cry of anguish, Heard the voice of Minnehaha Calling to him in the darkness, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... trial to Sylvia as the absence of all hope had been in the morning. But that instinct told her that her mother was becoming incapable of argument, she would have asked her why her views were so essentially changed in so few hours. This inability of reason in poor Bell made Sylvia feel very desolate. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... seen it, he might have drawn images of another Bolgia from its horrors." [Footnote: "Domestic Manners of the Americans," p. r] But no French visitor, so far as I know, has ever found it gloomy, even in flood or tempest on its subtropical stretches; nor has he found those level vastnesses desolate. A traveller, Paul Fountain by name, and so of French origin, I suspect, wandering over those valley plains in the early days, tells of the sense of freedom, health, and strength that they give: "There is no air like the prairie air—not even the grand ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... millions of others were fighting; that was why tens of thousands of the flower of young English manhood; as well as the best life of France, were being crushed in the dust. That was why homes were being made desolate—hearts broken. ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... burnt and slaughtered bodies, together with those wounded by bullets and axes. The last agonies and the moans and lamentations were dreadful to hear.... The houses were converted into heaps of stones, so that I might say with Micah, "We are made desolate;" and with Jeremiah, "A piteous wail may go forth in his distress." With Paul I say, "Brothers, pray for us." I have every evening, during a whole month, offered up prayers with the congregation, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... target for our cannoneers or plunder for our camps. A country better adapted to all good purposes of man, nor one more pleasing to the eye, hardly exists on earth; but before it was trodden by armies, it had become little less than desolate. The James River is as navigable as the Hudson, and flows through a region far more fertile, longer settled, more inviting, and of more genial climate; but there are upon the Hudson's banks more cities than there are rotten ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Loki withdrew. He wandered about long in the most barren, desolate parts of the earth, cursing the gods and hating himself. At length he found a spot which he felt sure would be hidden even from Odin's eyes. It was in a steep, rocky valley, where nothing grew, and where no sound ever came except the weird noise of the wind as it swept through the narrow ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... heart that moaned that day like choruses of haunted winds through desolate halls, he fell to sleep even as he mumbled to her, she, seated near his sofa, playing with his hair, his arm around her, faint zephyrs from the window fanning his ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... people had seen the witches in their long gowns, and it was rumoured that if any one dared to make the venture, they might be found crouching over their fire any dark, stormy night on the slope of Ergles, where nobody ever went, for it was a desolate waste, where a goat might ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... last days' march. The path of his life was growing desolate and gloomy; the vegetation was dwindling; the great groves diminished into sparse, miserable lichens. From the murky abyss came an icy breath; he saw it in the distance, he walked without escape toward its ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... proportion of his team, his kine and sheep, are reserved for him, that he may still be able to support his family. Surely this is much preferable to the English system under which the furniture is dragged away, the hearth made desolate, and the children left to starve, because their father has been unfortunate. Is it not better that a little villainy should escape punishment, than that such cruelty should be in daily practice? I say a ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... stood with her hand tightly clenched in Sara's. Huge blue-black clouds, with slivery shafts showing through the rents the wind had made, banked the western horizon, and out to seaward the yellow Brenton Reef light vessel rolled desolate on the surge. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... West Point, ticketed to a desolate frontier post, and would have worn out his existence there but for his guiding star, which was always making frantic efforts to bolt its established orbit. One day he was doing scout duty, perhaps half a mile in advance of the pay-train, as they called the picturesque caravan which, consisting ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... torpedo alertly as he probed the southern bay of Ramasarett. He was a scientist-12 and also a hereditary hunter. If the giant fish, long since eliminated from the rest of the seas, were breeding in some secret area of the far and desolate southern rocks, it was his business to know it. No fish could catch his high-powered torpedo, while his electric spears packed a lethal jolt. Probably, he thought, a rumor of the poor fisher folk ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... to think more of heaven. It is not a mere annex of earth. It is not a desolate outpost. As Jerusalem was the capital of Judae, and Babylon the capital of the Babylonian monarchy, and London is the capital of Great Britain, and Washington is the capital of our own republic, the New Jerusalem is the capital of the universe. The king lives there, and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... my steps to Sant' Aloisa. Fever-mists hung over the cane-brakes and the reedy swamps; the earth was baked and cracked; everything looked thirsty, withered, pallid, dull, decaying: in the heats of August it is always so desolate wherever Tiber rolls. "Marchioni is out," said the old brown crone whom I had seen the day before. "But come in: bring your fish to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... also be punished by a term of imprisonment. There shall be three prisons—one for common offences against life and property; another, near by the spot where the Nocturnal Council will assemble, which is to be called the 'House of Reformation'; the third, to be situated in some desolate region in the centre of the country, shall be called by a name indicating retribution. There are three causes of impiety, and from each of them spring impieties of two kinds, six in all. First, there is the impiety of those who deny the existence of the Gods; these may be honest ...
— Laws • Plato
... will scarce fall Into one flower's gold cup; I think the bird will miss me, And give the summer up. O sweet place, desolate in tall Wild grass, have you forgot How her lips loved to kiss me, Now ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... her head after one went by. Her beauty was as still sunsets of bitter evenings when all the world is frore, a wonder and a chill. She was as a sun-stricken mountain uplifted alone, all beautiful with ice, a desolate and lonely radiance late at evening far up beyond the comfortable world, not quite to be companioned by the stars, the doom ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... Bruno passed his childhood. His paternal home was situated at the foot of Mount Cicada, celebrated for its fruitful soil. From early youth his pleasure was to pass the night out on the mountain, now watching the stars, now contemplating the arid, desolate sides of Vesuvius. He tells how, in recalling those days—the only peaceful ones of his life—he used to think, as he looked up at the infinite expanse of heaven and the confines of the horizon, with the towering volcano, that this ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... her, with the old man—old no longer, but erect and gallant- -bearing in his hand the false white hair that had won his way into their desolate and miserable home. He saw her listening to him, as he bent his head to whisper in her ear; and suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as they moved slowly down the dim wooden gallery towards the door by which they had entered it. He saw them ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Crusoe was never better pleased with the appearance of the first ship which arrived, and rescued him from his desolate island, than I was with the vessel which proved the means of thus opening to view a country capable of supporting a future nation, and which, we trust, will be the means of relieving the Hobart Town country of its over-stocked cattle, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... chant, O Anthem-Maker, Out of the fall of lonely seas and the wind's sorrow. Behind are the burning glens of the sunset sky Where, like blown ghosts, the seamews Wail their desolate sea dirges. Make now of these a lulling chant, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... old and very intimate friend of the Burneys. To them alone was confided the name of the desolate old hall in which he hid himself like a wild beast in a den. For them were reserved such remains of his humanity as had survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he regarded as his daughter. He called her his Fannikin, and she in return called him her dear Daddy. In truth, he seems ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the western mouth of this northern branch of the Beagle Channel, we sailed amongst many unknown desolate islands, and the weather was wretchedly bad. We met with no natives. The coast was almost everywhere so steep, that we had several times to pull many miles before we could find space enough to pitch our two tents: one night we slept on large round boulders, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to remark the presence of a strange mourner—one whose dress bespoke him to be a gentleman; and as the widow turned to leave the grave, he stept up to her and offered her his arm for support. She took it mechanically, and wended her way to her desolate home. He was the only one, with the exception of Old ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... felt quite so desolate and forlorn and helpless as she felt that day when she left the "Daily Review" office, and found herself in the noise and bustle of Fleet Street. The midday sun blazed down upon her in all its strength; the pavements seemed to scorch her feet; the weary succession of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... marriage song, holding in my hand the hand of her that is dead; and after us followed a troop that magnified her and me, so noble a pair we were. And now with wailing instead of marriage songs, and garments of black for white wedding robes, I go to my desolate couch." ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... hearth and began to think with terror of the eternal solitude of that hearth. Alone! always alone! Already he had said to himself very often that he had chosen the wrong road, that this arid and desolate path was not the one needful to his ardent soul, that the hopes with which he had formerly been deluded, were falsehoods in reality, and that the God whom they had made him believe that he loved with such ardour, left his ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... individual whose part in these sketches was performed for General Pierce in particular, and "Uncle Sam" in general. Mr. Smooth was born and "growed" on the extreme south point of Cape Cod—a seemingly desolate spot, yet somewhat renowned as the birthplace of Long Tom Coffin. If I would select one of our nation's 'cutest sons; if I were called upon to name the kind of man with that in his natural composition to make the safest, shrewdest, and most calculating merchant; ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the communication between Corinth and Chalcis, he proceeded to the north, where alone a decisive blow could be struck. The great difficulties of provisioning the army in a hostile and for the most part desolate country, which had often hampered its operations, were now to be obviated by the fleet accompanying the army along the coast and carrying after it supplies sent from Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia. The decisive blow came, however, earlier than Flamininus had hoped. Philip, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... without exchanging one word; swallowing every day the tasteless soup, old fish, tough vegetables, and insipid wine which have an international reputation, so to speak. But above all, he was to have the horror, every evening upon going to his room, of passing through those uniform and desolate corridors, faintly lighted by gas, where before each door are pairs of cosmopolitan shoes—heavy alpine shoes, filthy German boots, the conjugal boots of my lord and my lady, which make one think, by their size, of the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... sadly to their homes, Queen Kriemhild began to speak of returning to the land of the Nibelungens. But Ute, her aged mother, could not bear to part with her, and besought her to stay, for a while at least, in the now desolate Burgundian castle. And Gernot and Giselher, her true and loving brothers, added their words of entreaty also. And so, though heart-sick, and with many misgivings, she agreed to abide for a season in this ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... especially mercury, is as strong in many quarters now as it was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Names are only air, and blow away with a change of wind; but beliefs are rooted in human wants and weakness, and die hard. The oaks of Dodona are prostrate, and the shrine of Delphi is desolate; but the Pythoness and the Sibyl may be consulted in Lowell Street for a very moderate compensation. Nostradamus and Lilly seem impossible in our time; but we have seen the advertisements of an astrologer in our Boston papers ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... places in Death Valley where he could travel in sand that was so powdery it would bog a butterfly. First the high places, to wear them out and make Pisen-face Lynch get quarrelsome; and then the desolate Valley, with its heat and poison springs, to put the final touch to his revenge. For it was revenge that Wunpost sought, revenge on Pisen-face Lynch, who had driven him from two claims with a gun; and this chase over the hills, which had started ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... ship's beef and a biscuit, as to be often the subject of his messmates' jokes. That morning even he could eat but little, though both felt it to be a duty they owed to themselves to take enough to sustain nature. It was while these two forlorn and desolate mariners sat there on the windlass, picking, as it might be, morsel by morsel, that they first entered into a full and frank communication with each other, touching the realities of their present situation. After a good deal had passed between ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... soberly, "love such as ours is not a light thing to be passed lightly by. To me, Nan Brent, you are sacred; to you, I yearn to be all things that—the—other man was not. I didn't realize until I entered unannounced and found you so desolate that I loved you. For two weeks you have been constantly in my thoughts, and I know now that, after all, you were ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... were ever intended that a desolate island in the deep sea should be inhabited by one solitary family, then indeed Celia Thaxter was the fitting daughter of such ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... silence of sorrowful hours The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers Alike for the friend and the foe: Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the roses, the Blue, Under the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... now looks out on Lake Michigan was the habitation of a small number of men only, a steamboat was seen in the distance, and the report was that it contained a cargo of women, who were coming to the desolate place for the purpose of being married to the forlorn men. Every bachelor hastened to the pier, with a telescope in one hand and a speaking-trumpet in the other. By the aid of the telescope each lover selected his mate, and by ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... never realized how desolate the world would be to me without you until I heard of your sudden illness. Let me urge you with all the strength I have, and all the love I bear you, to stay at home and rest and save your precious self." From Mrs. Cooper this urgent message: "You are too ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... a desolate island, but in the quiet homes of England, many little girls like Alice have the power, by their cheerfulness and good spirits, and, we may add, by their piety and kindness, to be of inestimable use to all ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... way, and yet, once torn from their old associations, the travelling mania seized them; they seemed absolutely unable to rest. So on foot, and speaking not a word of any language but their own, these three desolate sisters journeyed over a great part of the Continent. They visited most of the principal towns, and were well known in several. I daresay they are still remembered at some of the places they used to stay at, though never for more than a short ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... the myrtle warblers, I venture to assert, though on this point I have never taken my friend's testimony. Perfectly at home as they are in the wildest and most desolate places, they manifest a particular fondness for the immediate vicinity of houses, delighting especially to fly about the gutters of the roof and against the window panes. Here, at the Summit House, they were constantly to be seen hawking back and forth against ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... improved. From the Eternal City itself its splendors had vanished. The marble streets, of which Augustus had once boasted, had disappeared. Temples, broken columns, and the long, arcaded vistas of gigantic aqueducts bestriding the desolate Campagna, presented a mournful scene. From the uses to which they had been respectively put, the Capitol had been known as Goats' Hill, and the site of the Roman Forum, whence laws had been issued ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the sacrifice of his only Son, will quarrel about tenets which no one understands, and will tear each other to pieces like wild-beasts. Horrible atrocities, surpassing all the abominations perpetrated by men since they first sprung into existence, will desolate unhappy Europe. My hopes appear to you too bold,—I read it in your doubting countenances; but listen to me whilst I explain. Religious disagreements will give rise to these frenzies. Then first will Fanaticism, the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... the hour of horror-struck indignation, was not Punch too blood-thirsty, vindictive, unjust, and oblivious to the truth of history, that the insurgents are poor superstitious heathens, whom a selfish policy may have kept superstitious and heathenish? True, he was the witness of broken hearts and desolate hearth-stones at home, and daily heard of hellish atrocities inflicted on the women and children abroad,—enough to crush out for the moment every thought but the thought of vengeance. Yet, even at such a crisis, he should have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... and Factna. Factna, son of Cass, wedded the beautiful Nessa, and from their union sprang Concobar, the great hero and ruler of Ulster—in those days named Ulad, and the dwellers there the Ulaid. Factna died while Concobar was yet a boy; and Nessa, left desolate, was yet so beautiful in her sadness that Fergus became her slave, and sued for her favor, though himself a king whose favors others sued. Nessa's heart was wholly with her son, her life wrapt up in his. She answered, therefore, that she would renounce her mourning and give ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... in lands once flourishing, now forlorn, And desolate capitals, the traveller sees Wild tribes, in ruins from the ruins torn Hutted like beasts 'mid marble palaces, Unknowing what those relics mean, and whose The goblets gold-enchased And images of the gods ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... seen or heard anything suspicious on the night of the murder; no prowling gamekeeper or watcher had noticed anything out of the common. Along the Essex and Norfolk marshes, where the Grand Coast Railway wound along like a steel snake, they had taken their desolate and dreary way. True, the dead body of a man had been found in the fowling nets up in the mouth of the Little Ouse, and nobody seemed to know who he was; but there could be no connection between this unhappy individual and the express criminal. Merrick ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... carts and horse-back riders was headed for the Driving Club, where there was tennis and the new game of golf. But Sommers turned his horse into the disfigured Midway, where the Wreck of the Fair began. He came out, finally, on a broad stretch of sandy field, south of the desolate ruins of the Fair itself. The horse picked his way daintily among the debris of staff and wood that lay scattered about for acres. A wagon road led across this waste land toward the crumbling Spanish convent. In this place there was a fine sense of repose, of vast ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... got farther from the high road, the ruts became so deep that we were obliged to proceed at a more moderate pace. After skirting a thick wood for some distance, we came suddenly upon a small bleak desolate-looking common, near the centre of which stood the mill, which appeared in a somewhat dilapidated condition. A little half-ruinous cottage, probably the habitation of the miller, lay to the right of the larger building; but no signs of 451 Carriage or horses were ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... knows all may haunt the haunting, He who fears nought hath conquered fate; Who bears in silence quells the daunting, And sees his spoiler desolate. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the present great trans-continental railway at this time had been built, and was but piers at either end of a desolate and wild expanse as yet unbridged. When the overland traveller left the rail at Reno, he left, as it were, civilization with it; and, until he reached the Nebraska frontier, the rest of his road was only the old emigrant trail traversed by the coaches of the Overland Company. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... from the ancients, you only here and there can catch a stammering descriptive syllable—how Fielding has given us every character of the quiet lake, Robson[65] of the mountain tarn, De Wint of the lowland river, Nesfield of the radiant cataract, Harding of the roaring torrent, Fielding of the desolate sea, Stanfield of the blue, open, boundless ocean. Arrange all this in your mind, observe the perfect truth of it in all its parts, compare it with the fragmentary falsities of the ancients, and then, come with ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... energy beyond his years, but in vain. Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of the young state prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, sank for a time under the emotions which his desolate situation had produced. Such situations bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... through the waters; and I was enabled, through His strength, to lift my head from the pillow of sickness, and ascend the deck, where I thought of Noah looking out of the window in the ark, upon the face of the desolate flood, and of Peter walking on the sea; and I said to myself, it matters not where we are, for we can be in no place where Jehovah is not there likewise, whether it be on the waves of the ocean, or the mountain tops, or in the valley ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... neglected, its marble chamber broken and ruinous, its wainscotings and ceilings cracked and mouldering, its paintings mildewed and half effaced, Hoghton Tower presents only the wreck of its former grandeur. Desolate indeed are its halls, and their glory for ever departed! However, this history has to do with it in the season of its greatest splendour; when it glistened with silks and velvets, and resounded with loud laughter and blithe music; when stately nobles ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mean?' exclaimed Shir Ali: 'the Shah's villages are left desolate, and I am to pity the fugitives? No, they would have all been put to death ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... court the foremost citizen of the Netherlands, the first living statesman of Europe, was brought day by day during a period of nearly three months; coming down stairs from the mean and desolate room where he was confined to the comfortable apartment below, which had been fitted up for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that a friendly message, accompanied by a small present, consisting of the country's produce, sent by Prince Tom Bassa, a chief of some distinction, inspired something like encouragement to the hopes of the desolate little band; but it cannot be denied that their despondency outweighed their hopes, on discovering that, exclusive of rice, there remained but fifteen days provision in store. Each individual was ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... and blue, and tranquil, and desolate, for even from this commanding height not a sail was visible. There was nothing here which could attract Tom's attention for any long period; so he prepared to continue his progress. In front of him lay a wood, before plunging in which ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... no more questions. His thoughts leaped the desolate, frozen miles to where a lonely girl watched hour by hour beside the wretched bed of her father, only relieved now and then by a perfunctory and uninterested doctor. He had not allowed himself to think of her often; it was a dangerous and poignant subject for him. He had kept his mind ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... that real angels were sent to minister to the Jews and to punish them; but no angels, or only mocking spectra of angels, or even devils in the shapes of angels, to lead Lycurgus and Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless grave:—and if we can think that it was only the influence of specters, or the teaching of demons, which issued in the making of mothers like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, we may, of course, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... windows of Olive's drawing-room, looking over the water, took in the red sunsets of winter; the long, low bridge that crawled, on its staggering posts, across the Charles; the casual patches of ice and snow; the desolate suburban horizons, peeled and made bald by the rigour of the season; the general hard, cold void of the prospect; the extrusion, at Charlestown, at Cambridge, of a few chimneys and steeples, straight, sordid tubes of factories and engine-shops, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... against the dirty window pane, waiting for Madge to come and find her. She even hoped that a stranger might walk along close enough to the house for her to call for aid. But a dreary rain set in and all the countryside near Tania's prison house looked desolate. More than anything Tania feared the return of Philip Holt. Once he got hold of her again, she knew he ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... asylum, where she might live solitary and unknown, she bent her way from the town towards those rocks, where she wished to shelter herself as in a nest. All suffering creatures, from a sort of common instinct, fly for refuge amidst their pains to haunts the most wild and desolate; as if rocks could form a rampart against misfortune; as if the calm of nature could hush the tumults of the soul. That Providence, which lends its support when we ask but the supply of our necessary ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... winter's snow, with earth for a pillow, and the canopy of heaven for a covering—treason thundering in their ears—rewards offered for their heads, and nothing but liberty and independence, with the secret assurance of heaven's succour from a just God, to cheer and console them—bleeding, dying, desolate. Shall the time-serving traitor take his position by the side of such men? Shall all merit be levelled into one common mass of calculating selfishness? For such must be the effect, if General Joseph Reed is to occupy a niche of glory in the same temple with George Washington. But there ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... lay in the trenches where they had fallen; wired bombs were on every hand, so that no object could be touched that lay on the battle-fields; the streets of some of the towns were still mined, so that no automobiles could enter; the towns were deserted, the streets desolate. It was an appalling panorama of the most frightful ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... to Abbey folk and orthodoxy, I to the Society of Friends—the mayor's rosy children seemed greatly amused by watching us shivering shelterers from the rain. Doubtless our position made their own appear all the pleasanter. For myself it mattered little; but for this poor, desolate, homeless, wayfaring lad to stand in sight of their merry nursery window, and hear the clatter of voices, and of not unwelcome dinner-sounds—I wondered how he ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... a feeble folk who greet her, But old in grief, and very wise in tears; Say that we, being desolate, entreat her That she forget us not in after years; For we have seen the light, and it were grievous To dim that dawning if our lady ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... bore her away into the bush, and there at a desolate spot, where no one was likely to live or plant or build, they left her and stole ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... become a self-supporting citizen instead of an object of charity; to visit the families of inebriates and by every means possible aid them to a higher and better life. It has brought sunshine and happiness into more than one thousand desolate homes, and enabled the heads of these homes to become self-supporting. Husbands and wives who have been driven asunder by the curse of drink have been re-united. Thousands of children who would have been thrown upon the world ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... chapels, nor even the high altar itself, adorned and lighted for worship. The pictures that decorated the shrines along the side aisles have been removed, leaving bare, blank spaces of brickwork, very dreary and desolate to behold. This is almost worse than a black oil-painting or a faded fresco. The church was much injured by the French, and afterwards by the Austrians, both powers having quartered their troops within the holy precincts. Its old walls, however, are ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prognostics by the symptoms. What can these signs fore tell otherwise than folly, dotage, madness, gross ignorance, despair, obstinacy, a reprobate sense, [6590]a bad end? What else can superstition, heresy produce, but wars, tumults, uproars, torture of souls, and despair, a desolate land, as Jeremy teacheth, cap. vii. 34. when they commit idolatry, and walk after their own ways? how should it be otherwise with them? what can they expect but "blasting, famine, dearth," and all the plagues of Egypt, as Amos denounceth, cap. iv. vers. 9. 10. to be led into captivity? ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... in his nerve to tackle the lower Colorado, after his record in Cataract Canyon. The five scattered peaks of the Henry Mountains were now to the north-northwest of us, rugged and snow-capped, supreme in their majesty above this desolate region. ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... men without hope, yet with the proud, bitter mien of those who had known good and had lost it, had seen content and now were desolate. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... light wind through the leaves came over the forest. The night, to Henry's great joy, grew much darker. No sound came from the room in the cliff, nor did any come from the Indians in the thickets. Apparently the whole place was a wilderness, as lone and desolate as it was when it first emerged from the sea. Nowhere was the sign of a human being visible, but Henry knew that vigilant eyes watched at the mouth of the stone cleft and that eyes equally as keen peered continually ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... And the terrified people uttered cries of Oh and Alas and all buying and selling were stopped. All religious rites ceased, and the earth became destitute of sacred ceremonies and marriages. Agriculture was neglected and cattle were no longer tended. Towns and asylums became desolate. And scattered over with bones and skeletons, the earth assumed a frightful aspect. All ceremonies in honour of the Pitris were suspended, and the sacred sound of Vashat and the whole circle of auspicious rites ceased. The earth became frightful to behold. The Sun and the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the evening light was fading away; and over all the desolate place there hung a still and awful calm. The heave of the main ocean on the great sandbank out in the bay, was a heave that made no sound. The inner sea lay lost and dim, without a breath of wind to stir it. Patches of nasty ooze floated, yellow-white, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... atmosphere created by a sky that has rained itself out and an earth that can hold no more, and came finally to his dripping garden by the wicket at the back of the cottage. There he stood to inhale the fine earthy fragrance which atoned somewhat for a rather desolate scene. The roses were all washed away. William Allen Richardson clung here and there, in the shelter of the southern eaves, but he was far past his prime, and had better have perished with the exposed ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... whispered, "first or last, there could never be another. It is you who make my life. It is you who, when you go, leave it desolate." ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... entered into the countrey of the Bisermini, who speake the language of Comania, but obserue the law of the Saracens. In this countrey we found innumerable cities with castles ruined, and many towns left desolate. [Sidenote: Alti Soldanus. Huge mountaines.] The lord of this country was called Soldan Alti, who with al his progenie, was destroyed by the Tartars. This countrey hath most huge mountains. On the South side it hath Ierusalem ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... that all thought of self is lost in the joy of it. We know that S. Mary could have had no other thought than the offering of her love in whatever way it was permitted to express itself; and we know that the quality of that love was such that the moment of the ascension would have left her desolate, watching the cloud that ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... length beyond the outmost limits of dread, and entered upon a land of level meadows, of hedges and trees, of crops and cattle. Michael Snowdon was anxious that Jane should not regard with the carelessness of familiarity those desolate tracts from which they were escaping. In Bethnal Green he directed her attention with a whispered word to the view from each window, and Jane had learnt well to understand him. But, the lesson over, it was none of his purpose to spoil her natural mood of holiday. Sidney sat opposite ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... earnestness contending together with their hands and feet, with their teeth and nails, nay, even ready to expire, rather than own themselves conquered. Is any country of barbarians more uncivilized or desolate than India? Yet they have among them some that are held for wise men, who never wear any clothes all their life long, and who bear the snow of Caucasus, and the piercing cold of winter, without any pain; and who if they come in contact with fire endure ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of evening were closing in upon a stormy March day; rain and sleet falling fast while a blustering northeast wind sent them sweeping across the desolate-looking fields and gardens, and over the wet road where a hack was lumbering along, drawn by two weary-looking steeds; its solitary passenger sighing and groaning with impatience over its slow progress ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... ascending streets of Zion and the tall fortifications mounting the heights within the city's limits. There she saw the flash of swords, swung afar off, spears brandished and the running hither and thither of defenders on the wall. Below she saw the remote constricted passages between rows of desolate houses, moving with people, sounding with clamor. There she saw combats, terrible scenes of frenzy, deaths and unnamable horrors; starvelings gnawing their nails; shadows of infants pressed to hollow bosoms; old men ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... compelled by necessity, implored the aid of Hanno. He endeavoured to bring the Crotonians to surrender, under an agreement that they should allow a colony of Bruttians to settle there; so that their city, desolate and depopulated by wars, might recover its former populousness: but not a man besides Aristomachus did he move; they affirmed, that "they would die sooner than, mixing with Bruttians, be turned to the rites, manners, and laws, and soon the language also of ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Perugia and Piacenza. Nor was this all. In this second war all Italy was laid waste and ruined, Rome was twice besieged and occupied by the Goths, and in 546, when Totila had done with her, during a space of forty days the City remained utterly desolate, without a single inhabitant. How had such a miserable and unexpected catastrophe befallen ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... wild, desolate tract of open country; broken rocks and brushwood occupy the centre ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... theatre-goers by night adds sensibly to the brilliancy of the complexion of London. The flare of electricity in the region of the theatres made a midnight summer in the empty heart of September, and recalled the gayety of the season for the moment to the desolate metropolis. But this splendor was always so massed and so vivid that even in the height of the season it was one of the things that distinguished itself among the various immense impressions. The impressions were all, if I may so try to characterize ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... decaies, and ruines of coveringes, walls, and wyndowes, and by appointing unmeet and unseemly tables, with fowle clothes, for the communion of the sacraments, and generally leavynge the place of prayers desolate of all cleanlynes, and of meet ornaments for such a place, whereby it might be known a place provided for divine service." And the commissioners were required to consider the same, and in their discretion to determine upon some good and speedy means of reformation; and, amongst other ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... other haunts servants to swear at, and sofas to snore on. Another suggestion, that members should be balloted for anew every five years, would simply cause clubs to be depopulated. Pall-Mall and St. James's would be desolate, mourning their children, and refusing comfort. The system would act like a proscription. People would give up their friends that they might purchase aid against their enemies. Clubs are more endurable as ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... so, there was something perfectly in keeping between the recreation of these men and the wild, uncouth life they led. The long, grey winter and the brief, fleeting summer, the desolate ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... when the fields were covered with snow and the Belt was full of ice-floes which I drove up on to the coast,' said the wind, 'the ravens and crows came in flocks, the one blacker than the other, and perched upon the desolate, dead ship by the shore. They screamed themselves hoarse about the forest which had disappeared, and the many precious birds' nests which had been devastated, leaving old and young homeless; and ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... water is available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it is perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress can at once direct thousands of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... departure from Wager island, another dreadful accident befel them, as the yawl sunk at an anchor, and one of her hands was drowned; and, as the barge was incapable of carrying the whole company, they were reduced to the hard necessity of leaving four marines behind them, on that desolate coast. They still, however, kept their course to the northward; though greatly delayed by cross winds, and by the frequent interruptions occasioned by the necessity of searching for food on shore, and constantly struggling ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... a new land at last to be seen; Toothed rocks down the side of the firth on the east guard a weary wide lea, And black slope the hillsides above, striped adown with their desolate green: And a peak rises up on the west from the meeting of cloud and of sea, Foursquare from base unto point like the building of Gods that have been, The last of that waste of the mountains all cloud-wreathed and snow-flecked and grey, And ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... oasis is, for the most part, just as bare and desolate as the plateau above, but here and there are patches of green round the Artesian wells, which were the only sources of water. Except for the surroundings of the village of Khargeh itself, where there are a number of splendid ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... England, the church, empty of the Divine Presence, was emptying, too, of its human visitors. She could hear great doors somewhere crash together, and the reverberation roll beneath the stone vaulting. It would empty soon, desolate and dark; and so it would be all night.... Why did not ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... hung over the circumstances of the family, and his father's heart. When asked how he was, he uniformly replied "better," and his large lucid eyes would faintly smile upon his mother, as if to give her hope, after which the desolate boy would amuse himself by handling the bedclothes as invalids often do, or play with the humid straw of his cold and miserable bed, or strive ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... commonly holding a lamb in his arms, who drives his flock to water at the pond opposite my window, is the only thing that gives token of the season. I am quite mortified at this on your account, for April, in general a month of great beauty here, will be as desolate as winter. Nevertheless you must come and see me, you and Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch, and perhaps you can continue to stay a day or two, or to come more than once. I want to see as much of you as I can, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... around on the rocks, and clamber up the mountain's sides the fall storms have driven away these many months past. And the lighthouse keeper out there on the point; the old fru on the mountain farm, and the mountain peasant and his house-folk go their accustomed ways, and do not run about on the desolate heather-fields. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... face grave, sad, desolate, walked through the mess to his room. I heard him rinsing his hands. A chill struck ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... can be nobody there," answered Tommy, in a bewilderment that was obviously unfeigned, "unless—unless—" He looked at Corp, and the eyes of both finished the sentence. The desolate scene at Double Dykes, which the meeting with McLean and Miss Ailie had driven from their minds, again confronted them, and they seemed once more to hear the whimpering ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... been laid waste, their houses burned, their cattle stolen. They will be turned out of the cities penniless and homeless, and exchange the certainty of dying of hunger in the crowded city for the equal certainty of dying of hunger in the desolate wasted country. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... good-bye, the tears filled her eyes again, and oh, how lonely and desolate the poor girl felt, as she shivered in the sharp air, and how hopelessly she again took up her fight ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... followers pitched their tents at the base of the Wasatch Range—a spur of the Rocky Mountains. This was the nucleus of what is now known as the flourishing city of Salt Lake. These pioneers came across the vast plains, over the desolate mountains and entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake through Emigration Canon. Their first view of the locality was from the mouth of the canon which is at an elevation of seven hundred feet above the city, and from this eminence the clearness of the atmosphere enabled them ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... wander over the desolate garden of the next house, so recently robbed of all its greenery; then the muslin-draped windows opposite came within her vision. The caroling canary, in his little gilded prison, caught a glance, a frolicking squirrel running an endless race in his make-believe home, ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... found by a man belonging to a hunting party, who, little suspecting to see human beings in that desolate region, took them at a distance for deer, and had concealed himself behind a fallen tree, with his gun pointed towards one of them, when his dog, leaping towards them, began to bark, and shewed his error. When they related ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... central low-lying, desolate portions of the country make up the great Garagum (Kara-Kum) desert, which occupies over 80% of the country; eastern ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... South, to handcuff and chain their wretched victims, who have been bought up as the interest of the trader, and the luxury or necessities of the planter may chance to require, without regard to the ties sundered or the affections made desolate, by these infernal bargains. About the 1st of September, after the slaves destined for Alabama had taken a final farewell of their old home, and of the friends they were leaving behind, our party started ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the books on the little shelf were my father's books, and for fifteen years the old man had read no others. Helpless tears of joy, of gratitude, of wonder ran down the furrows of his cheeks into his white beard. And how could I at whom he so gazed help being moved: on that desolate, unknown mountain-side, far from the world, the name which I had inherited was loved and honored! One does not get one's privileges for nothing. My father gave me power to make my way, and cast sunshine on the path; but he made ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne |
