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Lugubrious   Listen
adjective
Lugubrious  adj.  Mournful; indicating sorrow, often ridiculously or feignedly; doleful; woful; pitiable; as, a whining tone and a lugubrious look. "Crossbones, scythes, hourglasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lugubrious" Quotes from Famous Books



... civil, but not at all enjoying the congratulations on the successful bazaar. The ladies all talked and discussed their yesterday's adventures, gathering in little knots, as they traced the fate of favourite achievements of their skill, while Ethel, lugubrious and impatient, beside Flora, the only one not engaged, and, therefore, conscious of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... hour they called, "Sentinels, look out!" And the soldiers of the marine, placed in the topsails, replied to this by, "All's well," pronounced in a drawling, mournful tone. Nothing could be more monotonous or depressing than this continual murmur, this lugubrious mingling of voices all in the same tone, especially as those making these cries endeavored to make ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... his droll conduct, drew his hand from the side pocket of his blouse and, with his head thrown back and mouth wide open, poured a few dry cracker crumbs down his throat. When asked by the ringman what that act signified, he drawled out, in lugubrious tones, "Soldier eating Christmas dinner!" The righteous indignation produced among the few citizens by such sacrilegious use of a church soon brought ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... spoke never a word, though the other stared back with compound interest. There they sat, beaming upon each other—one fiercely, the other curiously, until the re-appearance of the landlord with a very lugubrious and woebegone countenance. It struck Sir Norman that it was about time to start for the ruin; and, with an eye to business, he turned to cross-examine ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... the chances and changes of this chequered, and, in some respects, lugubrious life, Mr. PUNCHINELLO has the perennial consolation of one friendship, which promises to be immortal, and over which time and space hold no sway. Need we say that we are alluding to the tender emotions which ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... letters he ought to have written that afternoon. Angelica beguiled him successfully on the way out, however, so that he did not notice the distance, but on the way back her manner changed. So far she had been all brightness and animation; now she became lugubrious, and took a morbid view of things. She talked of all the men of middle age who had died lately, and of what they had died of, showing that most of them were taken off suddenly when in perfect health ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... trembling lips! Mr. Enders would have given one an excellent idea of the effect produced by a real old piney-woods chill; he shook as with suppressed laughter. But when the tremendous preacher (tremendous because composed of gigantic Nothing) turned his lugubrious face towards Mrs. Morse, and addressed her as Mrs. Morgan under the impression that she had come down to see her daughter married, Miriam's risibles could no longer stand it, and she flew from the room in time to ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... look of amusement; "that's frogs." "It may be," I thought, but I followed the sounds till they led me in the darkness to the edge of a swamp. No doubt the creatures were frogs, but of some kind new to me, with voices more lugubrious and homesick than I should have supposed could possibly belong to any batrachian. A week or two later, in the New Smyrna flat-woods, I heard in the distance a sound which I took for the grunting of pigs. I made a note of it, mentally, as a cheerful token, indicative of a probable scarcity ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... This lugubrious business had failed to infect Mr. Cancut with corresponding deportment. Undertakers are always sombre in dreary mockery of woe. Sextons are solemncholy, if not solemn. I fear Cancut was too cheerful for his trade, and therefore had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... you—it's my own thoughts. I have been thinking—thinking. Sit down there, and let me look at you again." Newman seated himself, folded his arms, and bent a heavy gaze upon his friend. He seemed to be playing a part, mechanically, in a lugubrious comedy. Valentin looked at him for some time. "Yes, this morning I was right; you have something on your mind heavier than Valentin de Bellegarde. Come, I'm a dying man and it's indecent to deceive me. Something happened after I left Paris. It was not for nothing ...
— The American • Henry James

... who had dropped in, was suddenly reminded of that lugubrious old ballad, "The Mistletoe Bough," and recited large worn fragments of it impressively. It tells of how a beautiful girl hid away in a chest during a Christmas game of hide-and-seek, and how she was found, a dried vestige, years afterwards. It took a very powerful hold upon Herr Heinrich's imagination. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... looking somewhat lugubrious when the door opened and Miss Mildmay senior came in. It was not very often that their aunt paid the girls a visit in their own little sitting-room, and they both looked ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... been going on below stairs, was peacefully reading a letter he had received that morning from Strachan at Wrykyn, in which the successor to the cricket captaincy which should have been Mike's had a good deal to say in a lugubrious strain. In Mike's absence things had been going badly with Wrykyn. A broken arm, contracted in the course of some rash experiments with a day-boy's motor-bicycle, had deprived the team of the services of Dunstable, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... wind blows raw and chilly from off the snowy slopes of Ararat next morning, and the shivering, half-clad-wretches shuffle off toward the fields and pastures, - with blue noses and unwilling faces, humping their backs and shrinking within themselves and wearing most lugubrious countenances; one naturally falls to wondering what they do in the winter. The independent villagers of the surrounding country have a tough enough time of it, worrying through the cheerless winters of a treeless and mountainous country; but they at least have no domestic authority to obey ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... obsequies according to the quality and worth of their actions. The nearest relatives were careful to close their mouths, for they feared lest the soul of the dead would enter into their bodies and do them a great deal of harm. Then they began their mourning by lugubrious songs, which one of the kin intoned, while the others were very attentive in order to respond, in time, with fearful cries. That lasted more or less time according to the excellence of the deceased, whose exploits were mentioned with great exaggeration. The friends and acquaintances ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... very identical puppet performers of Harry Rowe, the famous Yorkshire trumpeter. These, I suppose, were the first plays I ever saw. Those were pleasant walks to Claverton, and pleasant days at Claverton Hall! I wish Hans Breitmann and his "Avay in die Ewigkeit" did not come in, like a ludicrous, lugubrious burden, to all one's reminiscences of places and people one knew upward ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... their expedition, and thus deprived him of his revenge. He therefore kept up a dismal lament through half the night; while other old men, crouching over Hennepin as he lay trying to sleep, stroked him with their hands, and uttered wailings so lugubrious that he was forced to the belief that he had been doomed to death, and that they were charitably bemoaning his fate. [Footnote: This weeping and wailing over Hennepin once seemed to me an anomaly in his account of Sioux manners, as I am not aware that such practices ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... who apparently have—or are expected to have—his monetary entanglements at their fingers' ends. It is a constant enumeration of novels and tales begun or delivered, revised or bargained for. The tone is always profoundly sombre and bitter. The reader's general impression is that of lugubrious egotism. It is the rarest thing in the world that there is an allusion to anything but Balzac's own affairs, and to the most sordid details of his own affairs. Hardly an echo of the life of his time, of the world he lived in, finds its way into his letters; there ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... the year 1844, been mainly effected by men of the commercial classes, and the shareholders in them principally belonged to the manufacturing districts,—the capitalists of the metropolis as yet holding aloof, and prophesying disaster to all concerned in railway projects. But when the lugubrious anticipations of the City men were found to be so entirely falsified by the results—when, after the lapse of years, it was ascertained that railway traffic rapidly increased and dividends steadily improved—a change came over the spirit ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... illiterate maniac, headlines such as "Darwin Chews Dirt; Critic Boulnois says He Jumps the Shocks"—or "Keep Catastrophic, says Thinker Boulnois." And Mr Calhoun Kidd, of the Western Sun, was bidden to take his butterfly tie and lugubrious visage down to the little house outside Oxford where Thinker Boulnois lived in happy ignorance ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... and Longley kept with him, hearing only a rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the lugubrious ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... "Er—a bit lugubrious, isn't it, Mrs Hilliard?" ventured Stanor at last, voicing the general impression so strongly that Esmeralda's imagination instantly ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... Ticonderoga, and it seemed as though England was never to rise from the dust of humiliation. It was openly said that Louisbourg would never fall; that it was as impregnable as Quebec. Oh, there was such lugubrious talk! And then came the news of the victory, and of Brigadier Wolfe's valiant and doughty deeds. You may guess how your mother's eyes shone at that! And all England echoed to the sound of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... thoroughfare. It contains small, cheap flats, and a number of frowsy looking houses which give one the impression of having run to seed. A hostelry of sad aspect occupies a commanding position midway along the street, but inspires the traveler not with cheer, but with lugubrious reflections upon the horrors of inebriety. The odors, unpleasantly mingled, of fried bacon and paraffin oil, are wafted to the wayfarer from the porches of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... of firearms in the distance brought a sudden stop to his lugubrious reflections. Five, a dozen—a score of shots were heard. The blood turned cold in the veins of every one in the garden; faces blanched suddenly and all voices were hushed; a form of paralysis seized and held them ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... intense each day—nipped their noses and ears viciously, and the feet became so painful that every step was anguish; but when they caught sight of the open stretch of country it appeared to them so appallingly lugubrious under its illimitable white covering that they turned back with one accord, their hearts constricted, their spirits below zero. The four ladies walked in front, the three men following ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... was turning a long screw, "Jacobs, my boy, do you take the chair to-night?"—"Yes," said Jacobs who was a long lugubrious-looking man, "I do take the chair, if I live over this ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... to come from? All that I've saved from slavin' and sweatin' in the sun with a gang of lazy Dagoes'll be up the spout in no time. (Bitterly.) What a fool a man is to be raisin' a raft of children and him not a millionaire! (With lugubrious self-pity.) Mary, dear, it's a black curse God put on me when he took your mother just when I needed her most. (Mary commences to sob. Carmody starts and looks at her angrily.) What are you ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... the "Shell Road," and soon our feet crunched upon the fragments of unios and bivalves that strewed the path. Here was a scene more in unison with our thoughts. Above and around waved the dark solemn cypress-trees, fit emblems of grief—rendered doubly lugubrious in their expression by the hoary tillandsia, that draped them like a couch of the dead. The sounds, too, that here saluted our ears had a soothing effect; the melancholy "coowhoo-a" of the swamp-owl—the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... rolls off in a very unsuccinct condition; happily unchased, for he admits that chase would have been ruinous. Off towards Lobau (what nights for Zinzendorf and Herrnhuth, as such things tumble past them!); thence towards Bautzen; and arrives in the most lugubrious torn condition any Prussian General ever stood in. Reaches Bautzen on those terms;—and is warned that his Brother will be there ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... new superstition of Theosophy is, in our judgment, more foolish and less dignified than Christianity. We are therefore moved to say that she does injustice to Christianity in representing it as responsible for all the black paraphernalia and lugubrious ceremonies of death. There was, indeed, nothing of all this among the primitive Christians. Such things belong to the world's common customs and superstitions. Black was not merely a sign of sorrow, or at least of depression; it was also thought to ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... "I have been taught to open doors." I managed a sly, lugubrious smile. "I shall not ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... faight," commented the Dutch police officer in lugubrious accents, "my vriends, ve are too ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... that their rather expensive smartness was detrimental to his chances, in spite of their scrupulous look of having come almost new out of the bandbox that morning. His rather small felt hats still curved jauntily over his full pink face. But his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt he had not deserved so much bad luck, and there were bilious ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... said the woman, laughing and nudging him. "Go on—introduce me—can't you? Don't stand there like a tombstone. You won't? Well, I'll introduce myself." She laughed again, and then, with an excellent imitation of Patterson's lugubrious accents, said, "Mr. Spencer Tucker's wife that is, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Spencer Tucker's sweetheart that was! Hold on! I said that was. For true as I stand here, ma'am—and I reckon I wouldn't stand here if it wasn't true—I haven't set eyes on him ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... seethe, and hearts that burn, Where every emulous scholar hears, In every breath that comes to his ears, The rustling of another's laurels! The air of the place is called salubrious; The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it Au odor volcanic, that rather mends it, And the building's have an aspect lugubrious, That inspires a feeling of awe and terror Into the heart of the beholder. And befits such an ancient homestead of error, Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried away in the zeal of youth, And sown like tares in the field of truth, To ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... him up the following day, and he quickly noticed Toni's extreme disquietude upon learning that Dona Cinta wished to talk with him. The mate left the boat in lugubrious silence as though he were being taken away to mortal torment: then he began to hum loudly, an indication that he ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... dull eyes there escaped a look, an ineffable look, a profound, lugubrious, imperturbable look, incessantly fixed upon a corner of the cell which could not be seen from without; a gaze which seemed to fix all the sombre thoughts of that soul in distress upon some ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... hardened as he looked, and Mr. Finney's lugubrious countenance seemed positively despairing, while Amos hopped on one foot crying: "Leave me look through your glass, Chris! What do you see? ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... comfortable, dear Augusta, and tell me everything. So very kind of you to drive over like this on such a sunny morning. Yes, that's right. Take off that lugubrious Harem veil,—the mark of a Southampton woman,—and let me see your beautiful face. Before I try to give you a chance to speak I must tell you, and I'm sure you won't mind with your keen sense of humor, how that nice boy, Harry Oldershaw, describes those things. No, after ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... knew that my time had come, and that there was a very fair chance of victory before me. Whether this clergyman had a toothache, or a headache, or a heavy load on his mind, I cannot say, but his reading was more lugubrious than the wind in an equinoctial gale. I have since observed that he was only a degree worse than many other clerical readers, and that a strange and delightfully mistaken notion seems prevalent that the Bible must be read ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall

... comes on with the night, the trees drip, drip in a feeble melancholy sort of way, the wind has a lugubrious sob in its voice, and it is intensely dark. It is about nine o'clock, when Miss Catheron rises from her place by the sick-bed and goes out of the room. In the corridor she stands a moment, with the air of one who looks, and listens. She sees no one. The dark figure ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... hymnbook, he then gave out the first two lines of a hymn. The choir accordion in the front side bench awoke like an infant into wailing life, and Cissy Appleby, soprano, took up a little more musically the lugubrious chant. At the close of the verse the preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with a breezy bass that seemed to fill the little building with the trouble of the sea. Then followed prayer from Deacon Shadwell, broken by "Amens" from the preacher, with a nautical suggestion ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... evenings before our departure there was a round of simple festivities in the little colony. We were to leave first, but all must scatter soon. To me these entertainments seemed as lugubrious as a prolonged "wake." It was as though we were launching out in the night, and, like children in the dark, we sang aloud ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... inventory afforded me a little relief; moreover, public opinion was so unanimously unfavorable to the colonel that little by little the place lost the lugubrious aspect that had at first struck me. At last I entered into possession of the legacy, which I converted into land-titles ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... entered, followed by a cat, larger than any I had ever believed could exist. The beast looked at us and gave so hopeless a miau that I shuddered. I had never heard so lugubrious a cry. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... cab up. No one was at home except Freddy and his friend, who had to stop their tennis and to entertain her for a solid hour. Cecil and Lucy turned up at four o'clock, and these, with little Minnie Beebe, made a somewhat lugubrious sextette upon the upper ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... would be no trouble for him," was the lugubrious thought of the youth, "but it will be the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... picturesque effect, and was regarded with feelings of veneration by many of the American passengers, one of whom paid a tribute to the departed hero, which he wound up by observing with nasal emphasis and lugubrious countenance, "If twarnt for that ere man, wher'd we be, I waunt to know; not here I guess." This sentiment, although I could scarcely see the point of it myself, elicited half-a-dozen "do tells" and "I waunt to knows" from those around; expressions which, foolish as they sound ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... a woe-begone glance into the mirror, dimly conscious that he was a very heroic young person. He kissed various objects dear to the little maid, and then, in lugubrious ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... the colonel's lugubrious face as he bowed stiffly and walked in sorrowful silence beside them, shaking his white head at intervals; but no one but Dulce took any notice of his ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... sat down to write his mother a pilot-boat letter, assuring her that he had thus far survived the perils of the deep and had already found a job as knight-errant to the homeliest and most lugubrious girl on the seven seas. At the warning call for the closing of the mails he hastened to the rendezvous on deck. She was there before him, still muffled up, still swollen of feature, and still, as he indignantly put ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... intangible shade Can be seen to this day, so the villagers say, In diaphanous garments arrayed. In the gloom of the room where she met with her doom She's appearing once nightly, it seems, And the listener quails as lugubrious wails ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various

... cheery motto," commented Trenby lightly. "They must have been a lugubrious lot in ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... a most pernicious effect upon the uprightness of the greater part of the company. Having the sanction of authority, several others, the minor spirits it is true, settled down under their chairs without a struggle. The survivors made some lugubrious efforts at a triumph over their less stubborn companions, but the laborious and husky laugh was but a poor apology for the proper performance of this feat. Munro, who to his other qualities added those of a sturdy bon-vivant, together with Forrester, and a few who still girt in the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... attended the trial of Bumpus, entered his cell along with him, slept with him during the night, accompanied him to the gallows in the morning, and sat under him when they were adjusting the noose, looking up with feelings of unutterable dismay, as clearly indicated by the lugubrious and woebegone cast of his ragged countenance. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... see the comforting stars like friendly eyes watching in the sky. One by one the clocks of the town struck midnight, and when the sounds died away the deep silence of a windless night fell again over everything. Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious, filled the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... I say, that is good! Why, Moggy, don't you remember how I remonstrated straight through your packing. Never a bit would you listen to me, and here is the result," pulling out a baggage memorandum as he spoke, and reading aloud in a lugubrious tone, "Extra weight of trunks, thirteen ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... barges like my own had flitted by, and the gondoliers had warned each other at every turning with hoarse, lugubrious cries; the lines of balconied palaces had never ended;—here and there at their doors larger craft were moored, with dim figures of men moving uncertainly about on them. At last we had passed abruptly out of the Grand Canal into one of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... father began to tell the story, his wife set up such a weeping and lamentation, and the old nurse followed her example after such a lugubrious fashion, that their lordships could not hear a word. Whereupon his Grace Duke Philip was obliged earnestly to request that the women should keep silence whilst ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... leave her until the girl had fallen asleep. But her slumber was of short duration. It was scarcely midnight when Antoinette awoke with a start from a frightful dream. Philip had appeared to her, his hands bound behind his back, his neck bare, his hair cut short. He was clad in the lugubrious garb of the condemned, and he called her name in ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... James Hyslop, a schoolmaster on a man-of-war. I do not know how it came into my possession, but I remember it was adorned by an extremely dim and ill-executed wood-cut of a lake surrounded by mountains, with tombstones in the foreground. This lugubrious frontispiece positively fascinated me, and lent a further gloomy charm to the ballad itself. It was in this copy of mediocre verses that the sense of romance first appealed to me, the kind of nature-romance ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... of her lugubrious nature was broken up, and whatever was kindly and cheerful in its depths floated to the top; she was almost gay in the demand which the calamity made upon her. Annie knew that she must have seen and helped to soothe the horror of mutilation ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... nature. When Mercier (1740-1814) tried to write in the same vein, his "nature" was that of declamatory sentiment imposed upon trivial incidents. Beaumarchais, in his earlier pieces, was tearful and romantic; happily he repented him of his lugubrious sentiment, and restored to France its old gaiety in the Barbier de Seville and the inimitable Mariage de Figaro; but amid the mirth of Figaro can be heard the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... tearing himself violently from the chamber where he had just found dead him to whom he came to report the news of the death of Porthos, he uttered sobs so heart-rending that the servants, who seemed only to wait for an explosion of grief, answered to it by their lugubrious clamors, and the dogs of the late comte by their lamentable howlings. Grimaud was the only one who did not lift up his voice. Even in the paroxysm of his grief he would not have dared to profane the dead, or for the first time disturb the slumber of his master. Had not ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of Mark Antony, the famous triumvir whose name remains forever linked in story with that of Cleopatra. This daughter of Antony was certainly the noblest and the gentlest of all the women who appear in the lugubrious and tragic history of the family of the Caesars. Serious, modest, and even-tempered, she was likewise endowed with beauty and virtue, and she brought into the family and into its struggles a spirit of concord, serenity ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... now—he has gone from us—but if old Ciss (Here again no description can adequately inform the reader of the drollery which characterized the lecturer. His reference to Cicero was made in the most lugubrious manner, as if he really deplored his death and valued him as a schoolfellow loved and lost.) could have heard that effort it would have given him the rinderpest. I'll tell you how it was. There are stationed ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne

... Christian doctrine, only from the creeds which assume authoritatively to define such doctrine. Public teachers are being arraigned for their departure from certain standards, such as the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Westminster Confession, and the lugubrious compilation known as the New Hampshire Confession of Faith. These documents, with whatever excellency they may be accredited, were prepared by fallible men—some of them, indeed, exceedingly fallible—who were hardly qualified in their day to define the faith of Christ for ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... my ingratitude. I had come in a sorry plight. I was now restored. She was no longer useful, therefore I left her. And so on, till I said with a solemnity no doubt lugubrious: ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... long, solemn face and arched, lugubrious eyebrows bore no little resemblance to the well-known portrait of the conscientious but unlucky Stuart in whose service his ancestor had shed blood and money, receiving in lieu of both, a great many Royal promises, the Eastern ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... lugubrious ideas to the mind of the unhappy Plenipotentiary; and shut up in a hackney-coach, with a man on each side of him with a most gloomy conceptions of overwhelming fetters, black bread, and green water. He arrived at the principal gaol in Hubbabub. He was ushered into ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... handsomely furnished—being, in fact, the chamber of Mrs. Wilcox, the mother of the little fellow who occupied the wide bed. He lay there in lugubrious state, the rosy face stained with much crying, just showing above the edge of the counterpane; his tangle of yellow curls crushed upon the bolster. Below these was a white mound, stretched along the middle ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... groans, while at intervals a voice choking with emotion rose in shrill accents: "There was an old woman all skin and bones, o-o-oh!" When it faltered and collapsed on the o-o-oh, the other voices joined in and dragged out the syllable to lugubrious and harrowing length. Then some one giggled hysterically and another squealed. The soloist took up the verse: "She went to the church to pray, o-o-oh!" The chorus wailed and moaned and croaked and whimpered and groaned in concert. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... and brilliant state of being flooded him; he felt capable of profoundly witty conversation, and laughed at the solemn absurdities of the Ammidons, at his father attempting to call down a blessing out of the empty sky upon their food, at his sister's lugubrious countenance, the childish emotions of Nettie. What a ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... terrible on all sides and thousands were killed on this lugubrious field; the French resisted on both banks ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... to his ears, The rustling of another's laurels! The air of the place is called salubrious; The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it An odor volcanic, that rather mends it, And the buildings have an aspect lugubrious, That inspires a feeling of awe and terror Into the heart of the beholder, And befits such an ancient homestead of error, Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried away, in the zeal of youth, And sown like tares in the ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... reached this lugubrious pass when an event occurred which materially affected the condition of the prisoners, and considerably altered the ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... one would ever enter it except for a funeral or a wedding, he felt safe from intrusion. There he sank down upon the slippery horsehair lounge, and, staring helplessly at the severe portrait of Mrs. Peaslee, done by a lugubrious artist in crayon, wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson

... his book, absorbed in the contemplation of a wood-cut depicting a black cat, he began to hum some words of his own composition: 'Oh, you pretty cat; oh, you ugly cat; oh, you pretty, ugly cat,' and so on, ad infinitum, ever in the same lugubrious manner. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... "why didn't you send your card up, or have the desk call me? I hope you're not in the habit of expecting young ladies to meet you on the corner. I waited and waited, and then was just about to——" She stopped at sight of his lugubrious face, relented, and laughed. "Never mind! Don't take it to heart, and—are those violets for me? You are a dear, after all! I love them." She took them from his outstretched hand and buried her face in them, ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... those squaws and children, according to custom, would be exposure and death to him as well as themselves; while to assist by his passive presence at the horrible sacrifice of his countrymen was too much for even his weak selfishness. Scarcely knowing what he did as the lugubrious procession passed before him, he hurriedly hid his face in his blanket and turned his back upon the scene. There was a dead silence. The warriors were evidently unprepared for this extraordinary conduct of their chief. What might have been their action it was impossible to ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... on Monday night was a very stylish jam. He is a small, puny-built man, with gold rings in his ears, and a face of genteel ugliness, but touchingly lugubrious in its expression. With his violin at his shoulder, he has the air of a husband undergoing the nocturnal penance of walking the room with 'the child'—and performing it, too, with unaffected pity. He plays with the purest ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... The morrow's waking was lugubrious enough. Headache and nausea weighed upon him. Worse still, a scrutiny of his pockets showed that he had only the shamefaced change of half-a-crown wherewith to transport himself and his belongings to Twybridge. Now, the railway ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... an opposing one—was reached. There were some missteps and mishaps,—flounderings in the water, and some dangerous rescues,—but in half an hour the whole concourse stood upon the trail and commenced the ascent. It was a slow, difficult, and lugubrious procession—I fear not the best-tempered one, now that the stimulus of danger and chivalry was past. When they reached the dam made by the fallen tree, although they were obliged to make a long detour to avoid its steep sides, they could see how successfully ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... thoughtless, idle boy, that once defied me. I remember (musing, with a smile) how the little rascal, ha, ha! once struck me,—STRUCK ME!—when I corrected him: ha, ha! (Rubbing his hands with amusement, and then suddenly becoming grave and lugubrious.) No, no. These are the whisperings of the flesh. Why should I find fault with him for being all that a righteous conversion demands,—all that I asked and prayed for? No, Alexander Morton: it is you, ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte

... of rain set in during the night, and made the morning of departure gray. Blurred clouds rested helplessly on the backs of the hills, and wept themselves into the wet valley without seeming to grow less lugubrious for the indulgence. There was no wind; trees and plants stood up and were soaked in passive resignation. The weather-beaten boards of the barn were drenched black, except a small place right under the eaves, which looked as if it had been painted a light ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... lugubrious song of many stanzas about a cowboy, the refrain of which was, "Bury me out on ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... one of the artists plunged into a comic song, and by the ecstatic look of the company I knew that a purgatorial time was before me. I resigned myself to my fate. Song followed song, until at last even my friend of the flints struck up the ballad of Little Billee, whose lugubrious refrain seemed to 'set the table in a roar'; but to me it will always be associated with ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... and to begin to pity him on account of the stories of his incurable melancholy she would hear. After he had thus suffered her to dream of his probable suicide for a fortnight, he contrived to send her one little lugubrious note, confessing that he had been intoxicated and begging her pardon. Then he waited three days, days of great anxiety to her. For Katy feared lest her neglect to return an answer should precipitate Westcott's suicide. But ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... it, of those men of the forests who lived here in the ages, in the uncalculated and dark ages, because, suddenly, from a point distant from the shore, a long Basque cry rises from the darkness in a lugubrious falsetto, an "irrintzina," the only thing in this country with which he never could become entirely familiar. But a great mocking noise occurs in the distance, the crash of iron, whistles: a train from Paris to Madrid, which is passing over there, behind them, in the black ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... regret vanquished fatigue, and sadness drove away sleep, then Jack, who compared himself to Peter the Great, when a voluntary exile in the shipyards of Saardam, would endeavor to infuse a little mirth into the lugubrious party. If all his efforts to make them merry failed, all three would join together in a humble prayer to their Heavenly Father, who bestowed ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... manager entered, his plump cheeks sagging into lugubrious and reproachful lines, speaking witnesses to a sentiment not wholly unjustifiable in his case. To see circulation steadily going up and advertising as steadily going down, is an irritant experience to the official ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... without some sign of repugnance. And yet the contrary proved the case. However, the young detective had no time to ponder over the circumstance, for a rumble of wheels now announced the approach of that lugubrious vehicle, the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... women burst into lugubrious sobs and rocked themselves back and forth in unison. "'Twar Dad!" ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... little colt—broncho, loaned to the farm To be broken in time without fury or harm, Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm, Calling "Beware," with lugubrious singing ... The butterflies there in the bush were romancing, The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance, So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces, O broncho that would ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... shook her, and a tiny streamlet of blood dribbled from her mouth. Madame Vetu had again vomited, Elise Rouquet no longer thought of hiding the frightful sore open on her face. And from the man yonder, breathing hard, there still came a lugubrious rattle, as though he were at every moment on the point of expiring. In vain did Madame de Jonquiere and Sister Hyacinthe lavish their attentions on the patients, they could but slightly assuage so much suffering. At times it all seemed like an evil dream—that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... examination had not fully undeceived me, instead of now being in a state to console you and to reassure you against yourself, you would see me at the present moment partaking your inquietudes, and augmenting in your mind the lugubrious ideas with which I perceive you to be tormented. Thanks to Reason and Philosophy, an unruffled serenity long ago irradiated my understanding, and banished the terrors with which I was formerly agitated. What happiness for me if the peace which I enjoy should put it in my power to ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... the poor, everywhere, began to be out of work, and recruiting to be lively among them too, because for thousands of them it was soldier's pay or no bread. Among the troops from the country death had begun to reap great harvests ere a gun was fired, and in all the camps lovers nightly sang their lugubrious "Lorena," feeling that "a hundred months had passed" before they had really dragged through one. March was so tedious, and lovers are such poor arithmeticians. Wherever Hilary Kincaid went, showing these how ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... ability to receive consolation was quite as ready as her grief had at first been impetuous; the sobs which seemed to be breaking her heart ceased all at once; new thoughts, more gentle, less lugubrious, took possession of the young queen's mind; the trace of tears vanished, and a smile lit up her liquid eyes like the sun's ray following on rain. This change, anxiously awaited, was soon observed by Joan's chamberwoman: ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... not to dream of such a trip, because we are tied to a two-year agreement with each other, you know. Then we've got to give a definite answer to those life-partners, you know," was Polly's lugubrious reply. ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... the corridor on to which the doors of the boxes opened, and read the name written on the card underneath the number painted on the door of the box in which Eleanor was sitting. "The Viscountess Walbrook." The name puzzled him, and he turned to an attendant, a lugubrious man in a dingy frock-coat looking extraordinarily like a dejected image of Albert the Good, and asked ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... before us! When shall we have done with them?" said the major, in a lugubrious tone. "How high is this Haystack you ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... anywhere. I now gave up our man as lost, but still held on, in a pouring mixture of sleet and snow, which added considerably to the gloom of the scene. Every now and then the old mate, who was in very low spirits, would raise a lugubrious wail at the top of his voice of "Ai Khansaman Jee! Ai Khansaman Jee?" "Oh, cook of my soul! oh, cook of my soul, where art thou?" at the same time apparently apostrophizing the deepest whirlpools of the torrent, while the roar of the waters effectually prevented his magnificent voice from ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... remembered it as the kind of place where an order of scrambled eggs was liable to come in, flaming, on a golden sabre. But Luba wanted the Solar Room, and Malone was not at all sure she wouldn't use blackmail if he turned her down. "Fine," he said in a lugubrious tone. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the dining-room. The drawn blinds gave a lugubrious aspect. The Vicar sat at the end of the table at which his wife had always sat and poured out the tea with ceremony. Philip could not help feeling that neither of them should have been able to eat anything, but when he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... it, Mat,' added she, in a lugubrious tone; 'and it's all backbiting, and lying, and mischief-making, and what's worse, by the people who might live quietly and let others ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... a well, with a farm or ranch close to it. Here we halted for the night. A cotton train was encamped close to us, and a lugubrious half-naked teamster informed us that three of his oxen ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... nations of the confederacy. [Footnote: See the Jesuit Relation for 1660, p. 6.] The Delawares were not conquered and reduced to subjection without a long and sanguinary struggle. In a Condoling Council we might expect that the tone of feeling would be lugubrious; but the sense of loss and of danger is too marked in all the speeches of the Canienga Book to be merely a formal utterance. It does not appear in those of the Onondaga Book, which is seemingly of ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... But what means the lugubrious wail that too often bursts from the circle of his friends? The tears shed might be excused if he were going to Norfolk Island at the Government expense. But sometimes the missionary note is pitched on the same key. The white cliffs of Dover become immensely dear to those who never cared ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... hastened to the gate to inquire the cause. There, to his joy, he beheld his long-lost daughter in company with a strange knight and attendant squire. Hearing the wonderful tale, he commanded all his courtiers to put on the lugubrious weeds of mourning, and to accompany him to the castle of the Giant, that there perchance he might discover some means of releasing his six other daughters, while the noble-minded Rosalinde and Saint Anthony were left to take care of the city till ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... and each had his appointed seat. There were places for the chiefs, the drummers, the dancers, the women, and the priests. The drums—perhaps twenty strong, and some of them twelve feet high—continuously throbbed in time. In time the singers kept up their long-drawn, lugubrious, ululating song; in time, too, the dancers, tricked out in singular finery, stepped, leaped, swayed, and gesticulated—their plumed fingers fluttering in the air like butterflies. The sense of time, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sorcerers, alchemists, compounders of magical powders and philtres, frightful rumours circulated, "pacts with the devil were talked of, sacrifices of new-born babies, incantations, sacrilegious Masses and other practices as disquieting as they were lugubrious."[259] Even the King's mistress, Madame de Montespan, is said to have had recourse to black Masses in order to retain the royal favour through the agency of the celebrated sorceress La Voisin, with whom she was later implicated in an accusation ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... I have here undertaken becomes known to the public, it will be seen how many and how important are the retrenchments to be made from that lugubrious page of our history. Another important circumstance may be appreciated, which appears to me to arise from all these facts. After having weighed my proofs, every one I hope will join me in seeing that the wretches around the scaffold of Bailly were but the refuse of the population, fulfilling for ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... not prophesy as divinely as she. They denounced "Woe, woe" upon their persecutors. They reviled Babylon as the oppressor of the House of Israel. They preached the most violent declamations against Rome, drawn from the most lugubrious of the prophets, and stirred the minds of their hearers into ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... is little wind, but that little from the north, so that the termination of our voyage appears as far off now as it did eight days ago. The faces of all on board are calmly lugubrious. Little said. A few Spanish shrugs interchanged ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... Then he condoled with Mrs. Bernard on a mishap to her child that other people avoided speaking of, for the consequences were likely to be very serious, and she had not yet been made fully aware of them. There was a peculiar, low, lugubrious note in his voice which caused it to be audible through the room, and Bessie, who sat opposite to him, between Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Mr. Logger, devoted all her conversation to them to avoid that of the rector. But he had taken note of her at the moment of his entrance, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... these affectations of French dishes became highly significant. They were really the symbol of London's night romance. They were the tuning fork which gave the pitch for London pleasures. For romance and gaiety in London are grafted to an otherwise unromantic and lugubrious hulk. All joys in that terrible city are lugged from overseas, and, in the process of suturing, the spontaneity has been lost, the buoyancy has disappeared, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... Chamber of the States General; opposite is the First Chamber, with the ministries and various other offices of public administration. The Minister of the Interior has his office in a little low black tower of the most lugubrious aspect, that hangs directly over ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... of the Consolidated, whose crew was following the trench-diggers, accosted Farr, after several inspections of his lugubrious countenance. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... affection, to fly all worldly pleasures, the theatre, concerts, the cafe; to be looked upon by people, even by those who think themselves religious, as a strange being, a sort of intermediate, neither a man nor a woman; to wear petticoats and to be dressed like a lugubrious doll; and in exchange for all these sacrifices to earn less than a man who breaks stones on the road. We live idly, certain that we shall never fall from over-work, but our poverty is greater than that of many workmen; we cannot ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... were celebrated at night, with all the pomp observed amongst noble families on such occasions. The church in which the corpse was buried, was hung with black cloth; and even the innumerable wax tapers which burned upon the altar and around the coffin failed to diminish the lugubrious aspect ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... Ulimengo absconded with all his master's property, consisting of a few cloths and a bag of salt, which he had thought of taking to Unyanyembe for trade. Ibrahim was inconsolable, and he kept lamenting his loss daily in such lugubrious tones that the people, instead of sympathizing, laughed at him. I asked him why he purchased such a slave, and, while he was with him, why he did not feed him? Replied he, tartly, "Was he not my slave? Was not the cloth with which I bought him mine? If the cloth was my own, could I not purchase ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... words in a tone of unspeakable terror; and her finger pointed, among the crowd of dandies, to a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the straddling eyebrows, that the death's head in question immediately ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... which I was ushered, sat two gentlemen somewhat advanced in years, who I rightly supposed were my medical confreres. One of these was a tall, pale, ascetic-looking man, with grey hairs, and retreating forehead, slow in speech, and lugubrious in demeanour. The other, his antithesis, was a short, rosy-cheeked, apoplectic-looking subject, with a laugh like a suffocating wheeze, and a paunch like an alderman; his quick, restless eye, and full nether lip denoting more ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever

... Lugubrious Longface Loved Learning and Literary Lore, Which he always got out of the books he bought at Cole's ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... softly and said nothing. They saw the lights of evening, and heard lugubrious songs coming toward them. And then, like spectres chased by the wind, appeared the black penitents. The crucifix was before them. They were Brothers of Mercy, holding torches, singing psalms on the way to the cemetery. In accordance ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... the afternoon of a lugubrious March day when Jadwin and Gretry, in the broker's private room, sat studying the latest Government reports as to the supply of wheat, and Jadwin observed, "Why, Sam, there's less than 100,000,000 bushels in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... lugubrious saint! You fret high Heaven with your plaint. Is this the "Christian's joy" you paint? Is this the Christian's boasted bliss? Avails your faith ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... two stood on the long bridge leading to Yahagi across the river. "The luck of one, the misfortune of another—'twas the life of the Go Shukke Sama and of this Jimbei against the lives and fortunes of those wretched people. And is there aught to outweigh life?" The priest nodded a lugubrious and pleased assent to this plain doctrine. "It is just as well the host of Masuya lost life as well as goods. He might have made plaint, and had too long a tongue.... Jimbei could not foresee such weakness in so huge a body." He looked Dentatsu over with a little kindly contempt. "And so the honoured ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... first impression. I arrived at one in the afternoon and found a place for myself only at ten at night. The once luxurious Hotel Bristol was full to-day, no hope for to-morrow, no, nor for to-morrow week. At the Royal Hotel a lugubrious porter says "l'hotel n'existe plus." The Victoria, which was the first hotel I ever stayed at in Russia, knew me no more. At the Metropole a preoccupied clerk said "Nima" without looking up from the news from the Silesian front which was ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... the pavement and prepared her vegetables for sale in the most realistic manner. The second scene, when Potsdam wakes up in the morning, reminded me of the opening of the second act of "Lohengrin." The last act was very sad, and rather lugubrious, representing Frederick the Great seated in the garden in front of Sans-Souci. There was no singing in this act at all, only pantomime. The respectful manner and the sad faces of the lackeys as they helped the poor old King to his chair and covered ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... say, casting his eyes heavenward, and with a most lugubrious countenance—"it is enough, Morgiana, that I should suffer, even though your thoughtlessness has been the cause of my ruin. But enough of THAT! I will not rebuke you for faults for which I know you are now repentant; and I never could bear to see you in the midst of the miseries ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Titmouse, thought perhaps that a Cockney dandy could not be caricatured, and he consequently went desperate lengths, but threw in here and there a touch of nature. Mr. Lyon was as energetic as ever in Gammon; Mrs. Yates as lugubrious as is her wont in Miss Aubrey; Mrs. Grattan acted and looked as if she were quite deserving of a man with ten thousand a year. As to her singing, if her husband were in possession of twenty thousand per annum, (would to the gods he were!) it could not have been more charmingly tasteful. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... circumstances, many times being entirely dependent upon their protection and care, which never failed me. So I used to set at naught the well-meant counsels of my kindly old friend, to laugh at his lugubrious countenance and the portentous shaking of his silvery head. We remained firm friends, however, and, though my dear old mentor has long since passed away, I still revere his memory. Dr. Yates was an ideal Texan, brave, determined, plain, and straightforward, either a warm, true friend or an ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... both hands, and, oblivious to the hopeful derision Gathering on the faces of those about me, I breathed into it all the despair and anguish of my expiring breath. It gave forth a hollow, soulless, and lugubrious squeak, utterly out of proportion to the vital force expended, yet I felt that I had triumphed, and detected a new expression of awe and admiration on the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... again. Somebody appeared at the doorway, a pull of cotton waste in his hand, and turned a negroid face, made lugubrious by white lines which sweat had channelled downwards through its coal dust. It looked at me, this spectre with eyes brilliant yet full of unutterable reproach, saw that I was awake, and winked slowly. It was the second engineer. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... point of giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,—the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things—melancholy antitheses—sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had better ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the public; a little book of natural history for children; and a novel in three volumes, called Wood Leighton, which seems to have had some success. The Seven Temptations, it must be owned, is a rather lugubrious production, probably inspired by Joanna Baillie's Plays on the Passions. The scene of Wood Leighton is laid at Uttoxeter, and the book is not so much a connected tale as a series of sketches descriptive of scenes and characters in and about the author's early home. It is evident ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... a sensation of surprise that Sidney first became aware of light-heartedness in the young girl who was a silent hearer of so many lugubrious discussions. Ridiculous as it may sound—as Sidney felt it to be—he almost resented this evidence of happiness; to him, only just recovering from a shock which would leave its mark upon his life to the end, his youth wronged by bitter necessities, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... so relieved," she affirmed. "I don't mind such lugubrious tales myself, but she is young and sensitive, and so tender-hearted. I am sure I thank you, Mrs. Truax, for your consideration, and beg leave to wish ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... easy to see why religion should be associated with gloom and disheartening ugliness. The long-drawn music of an Old Testament psalm is not without a certain doleful impressiveness, but the human soul needs occasional stimulus, even on Sundays, of something less lugubrious. Certain congregations hate hymns: they consider them carnal and uninspired. As for organ-music in a church, that would be praising God by machinery, a preposterous and intolerable approximation to Popery. Not long ago, a poor crofter in a Hebridean ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... was running like a mill-race, bending the willows, lapping hungrily at the crumbling shore. The bank was black with groups of people, tearful wives and whimpering children, lugubrious neighbors, pessimistic citizens. Bruce called the men together and assigned each boat its place in line. Beyond explicit orders that no boatman should attempt to pass another and the barges must be kept a safe distance apart, he gave few instructions, for they had only ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... you should all appear to be in the best of spirits." There was a fluttering at the corners of Malcolm Sage's mouth, as he lifted his eyes for a second to the almost lugubrious countenance of Lord Beamdale. "Under no circumstances refer to the robbery, even amongst yourselves. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... receive visitors, although it was only eleven o'clock. Mrs Forrester was there, crying quietly and sadly, and my arrival seemed only to call forth fresh tears. Before we had finished our greetings, performed with lugubrious mystery of demeanour, there was another rat-tat-tat, and Mrs Fitz- Adam appeared, crimson with walking and excitement. It seemed as if this was all the company expected; for now Miss Pole made several demonstrations ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... "the new junior does strike one as being downright stunning. She came from New York City, and"—with a lugubrious sigh—"though I've never set eyes on her before, I was informed this morning that she is to be my roommate for the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... the young of the sex, and which is never departed from here until after marriage, moving in perfect time to delightful music, as if animated by a common soul. The men, too, did better than usual, being less lugubrious and mournful than our sex is apt to be in dancing. I do not know how it is in private, but in the world, at Paris, every young woman seems to have a good mother; or, at least, one capable of giving her both a good ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... humorous and original impersonation of the Yarra-banker was his waggish begging. When he had danced, before leaving his partner, he assumed a most lugubrious ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... funeral ceremony, like those prevalent among other Celtic peoples, is indeed a lugubrious affair, and somewhat recalls the Irish wake in its strange mixture of mourning and feasting; but curiously enough brightness reigns afterward, for the peasant is absolutely assured that at the moment his friend is placed in the tomb ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... Dance of Death, of the cemetery at Basle. I do not need to describe it in detail. The Middle Ages were never tired of composing variations upon this dismal theme. The most conspicuous of them are brought together in this lugubrious painting, which covers all the walls of one chapel. From the Pope and the Emperor to the infant in his cradle, each human being in his turn enters upon the dance with the inevitable terror. But death is not depicted as a skeleton, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... man rideth England with seven thousand spies; these three years I have lived in terror of my life. I have had no bliss that fear hath not entered into—in very truth inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos strangulavit.' His lugubrious tones grew higher with hatred; he raised one hand above his head and one gripped tight her fat shoulder. 'Terror hath bestridden our realm of England; no man dares to whisper his hate even to the rushes. Me! Me! Me!' he reached ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... skeleton armed with a whip, who runs in the furrow beside the terrified horses and belabors them, thus serving the old husbandman as ploughboy. This spectre, which Holbein has introduced allegorically in the succession of philosophical and religious subjects, at once lugubrious and burlesque, entitled the Dance of Death, is ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand



Words linked to "Lugubrious" :   sorrowful, lugubriousness



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