"Hapless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thy care; Poor Estrild lives despairing of relief, For friends in trouble are but few and rare. What, said I few? Aye! few or none at all, For cruel death made havoc of them all. Thrice happy they whose fortune was so good, To end their lives, and with their lives their woes! Thrice hapless I, whom fortune so withstood, That cruelly she gave me to my foes! Oh, soldiers, is there any misery, To be compared ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... had broken up his home in Melbourne and started with his little daughter for a distant settlement. He never reached the settlement, and all Miss Merivale's efforts to trace him proved fruitless. She at last accepted the belief of the lawyers that he had lost his way, and, like so many other hapless wanderers, had perished ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... silence of the voice came my half articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across the room, switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw him, his eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless charwoman may have seen him ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pitying sigh 100 Forbid not; he was dear to Britons, dear To every beating heart, far as the world Extends; and my faint faltering touch ev'n now Dies on the strings, when I pronounce thy name, Oh, lost, lamented, generous, hapless Cook! But cease the vain complaint; turn from the shores, Wet with his blood, Remembrance: cast thine eyes Upon the long seas, and the wider world, Displayed from his research. Smile, glowing Health! For now no more the wasted seaman sinks, 110 With haggard eye ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... great scandals that come before the autocrats of the Jockey Club, where the tampering is clearly known, can the matter ever be really proved and sifted? Very rarely. The trainer affects stolid unconsciousness or unimpeachable respectability; the hapless stable-boy is cross-examined, to protest innocence and ignorance, and most likely protest them rightly; he is accused, dismissed, and ruined; or some young jock has a "caution" out everywhere against him, and never again can get a mount even for the commonest ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... it out, my boys, figure it out!" Balbus gaily exclaimed, as he put pens, ink, and paper before his hapless ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... baby could take its place as a new link between a wife and a husband, but Maggie and her father had, with every ingenuity, converted the precious creature into a link between a mamma and a grandpapa. The Principino, for a chance spectator of this process, might have become, by an untoward stroke, a hapless half-orphan, with the place of immediate male parent swept bare and open to the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... chief articles of her religion, and she instilled these virtues into the mind of her granddaughter by the most vigorous discipline. A week of solitary confinement was among the penalties inflicted upon the hapless child who had failed to reach the standard of duty prescribed for her. The standard, with Madam Dix, did not differ from perfection discernibly. Mr. Tiffany quotes a lady who in her girlhood, as a special reward of merit, was allowed to make an entire shirt under ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... enormous and cavernous seas. Mysterious journey! Uncharted, unknown and finally—but there is no finality! Mysterious and stunning sequel—not end—to the mysterious and tremendous adventure! Finally, of this portion, death, disappearance,—gone! Astounding development! Mysterious and hapless arrival, tremendous and mysterious passage, mysterious and alarming departure. No escaping it; no volition to enter it or to avoid it; no prospect of defeating it or solving it. Odd affair! Mysterious and baffling conundrum to ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... controlled by the master genius of Ellsworth. They fought like tigers, furiously, madly; but all discipline had ceased among them, and they rushed wildly to the right and the left, totally heedless of their officers. They fought like demons, and as Tom saw them shoot down, hew down, or bayonet the hapless rebels who came within their reach, it seemed to him as though they had lost their humanity, and been transformed ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... abroad, Of every puddle drinking. The house with rage he scratch'd and gnaw'd, In vain,—he fast was Sinking; Full many an anguish'd bound he gave, Nothing the hapless brute could save, As if ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Diana had to fortify her fictitious objection by alluding to her maid's prattle of the household below; and she excused the hapless, overfed, idle people ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thee first of thy perfections: thy body is as fair as an angel's; no painter could design it. And if any man be sad, he has but to look on thee, and despite himself he takes courage, the hapless one, and his heart is joyous. Upon thy brows are shining the constellated Pleiades, thy breast is full of the flowers of May, thy breasts are lilies. Thou hast the eyes of a princess, the glance of a queen, and but one fault hast ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... dogs what she should have given to the poor. A usurer painted without eyes, for usurers could not weep, sits among flames; devils drive pitchforks into his head, moneybags hang round his neck, he counts and swallows red hot coins. Other hapless souls, condemned to walk a bridge of spikes, carry burdens over a thin plank like a saw set on edge. Above is a nimbus of clouds, and above the nimbus, the weighing of souls. The archangel Michael balances ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... that the adhesive gum caused cancer in the tongue, to the romance that a desperate young lady was collecting a huge supply of used stamps for the purpose of papering a room of untold dimensions. This feat was the single stipulation on the part of a tyrannical parent, on compliance with which the hapless maiden would be allowed to ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Dolent does not belie its name, and even thirteen centuries and a half have failed to obliterate the memory of a savage and unnatural crime, which, its remoteness notwithstanding, fills the soul with loathing against its perpetrators and with deep pity for the hapless and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... has not read the touching legend of Edwy and Elgiva—for it is little more than a legend in most of its details; and which of these youthful readers has not execrated the cruelty of the Churchmen who separated those unhappy lovers? While the tragical story of the fate of the hapless Elgiva has been the theme of many a poet and even historian, who has accepted the tale as if it were of as undoubted authenticity as the ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... like a deer up the stony creek bed until he regained the road, his scouts following pell-mell, and in ten minutes more they found him bending over the lifeless body of brave, sturdy Jack Bennett, weltering in his blood at the side of the spring house, and with no sign of the hapless, helpless ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... equal courage and equal hopes of victory on both sides: but the loss of the flower of their armies, and especially of their beloved spouses, had heavily oppressed the adverse monarchs: who, retiring to a secured spot, bemoaned in secret the hapless deaths of their queens, and bitterly bewailed that injudicious law which, of necessity, so much exposed their fair persons, by giving them such an unlimited power. The fortune of the day, therefore, remained in the hands ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... snares are set, the plot is laid, Ruin awaits thee,—hapless maid! Seduction sly assails thine ear, And gloating, foul desire is near; Baneful and blighting are their smiles, Destruction waits upon their wiles; Alas! thy guardian angel sleeps, Vice clasps her hands, and ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... gone from me, and left me thus mourning, To quell the proud rebels—for valiant is he; And, ah! there's no hope of his speedy returning, To wander again on the banks of the Dee. He 's gone, hapless youth! o'er the rude roaring billows, The kindest and sweetest of all the gay fellows, And left me to wander 'mongst those once loved willows, The loneliest maid on the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... far as my dignity and sense of right permitted, I wore out Mr. Stixon, so far as he would go, not asking him any thing that the very worst-minded person could call "inquisitive," but allowing him to talk, as he seemed to like to do, while he waited upon me, and alternately lamented my hapless history and my hopeless ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... when the children are born, they keep them or slay them as they will, as they would with whelps or calves. To be short, year by year these vile wretches grow fiercer and more beastly, and their thralls more hapless and down-trodden; and now at last is come the time either to do or to die, as ye men of Burgdale shall speedily find out. But now must I go sleep if I am to be where I look to be ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... leading a troop of Netherlander against the Spaniards; his fame as an author rests securely on his euphuistic prose romance "Arcadia," his critical treatise "The Defence of Poesy," and above all on his exquisite sonnet-series "Astrophel and Stella," in which he sings the story of his hapless love for Penelope Devereux, who married Lord Rich; was the friend of Edmund Spenser, and the centre of an influential ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that I should be crazy enough to obey that impulse, what would happen? Why, the king's guards would be upon me in a second, and I should be hacked to pieces by their terrible bangwans in the drawing of a single breath, while probably an even worse fate would befall my hapless followers! No, of course, the idea was madness, the act an impossibility; yet when a few minutes later I saw the tall induna, Logwane—Mapela's friend—led forth and mercilessly done to death, I could not refrain from leaning toward ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... also ravaged Northern Africa, but of its course there little is known. The horrors of that dreadful time were increased by the fearful persecutions visited on the Jews, who were accused of having caused the pestilence by poisoning the public wells. The people rose to exterminate the hapless race, and killed them by fire and torture wherever found. It is impossible for us to conceive of the actual ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Comparatively few fell before the bullets or machetes of the insurgents—for, as we shall see, the revolutionists adopted the tactics of Fabius—but by thousands they succumbed to fevers of every kind. Death without glory was the hapless lot of the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... even somewhat humiliating to endure, and which he must have inherited in some extraordinary way from his great-uncle, King William IV. of Prussia, who died insane. There are certainly some traits of resemblance between this hapless monarch and the present occupant of the German throne, for in both there exists and has existed the same exaggerated and narrow-minded religious beliefs, bordering on mysticism, and also an all-embracing faith in ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... on deck to witness the burning of their vessel. For a few minutes the fire raged furiously, the flames rising in one huge pyramid, till on a sudden they disappeared as she sunk beneath the surface, to which so many of her hapless passengers had lately ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... canvas. With not a breath of air stirring it was intensely hot, the rays of the unclouded sun beating down upon us fiercely as the breath of a furnace, and I inwardly execrated that scoundrel Bainbridge and his lawless crew as I thought of the crowded longboat and the hapless women and children—to say nothing of the wounded skipper—pent up in her, with nothing to protect them from the pitiless heat ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... lines, toward one of the batteries which had so decimated the hapless wretches lying on the banks of the river. A few moments later, the gallop of two horses echoed over the snow, and the wakened artillery men poured out a volley which ranged above the heads of the sleeping men. The pace of the horses was so fleet that ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... started to his feet in horror he saw the somnolent sentries at the gap in the very act of falling under the flashing blades of a horde of yelling, shouting, ferocious savages who, at the first wild rush, had broken into the fort, and were now spearing the hapless Chinese seamen, who, scarcely half-awake, were blindly searching for their rifles ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... carriage, and were soon on our way. Our path was cut from the breast of the mountain, in a stifling gorge, where walls of rock on both sides served as double reflectors to concentrate the heat of the sun on our hapless heads. To be sure, there was a fine foaming stream at the bottom of the pass, and ever so much fine scenery, if we could have seen it; but our chars opened but one way, and that against the perpendicular ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be dashed in pieces and actually thinking of every wicked thing she ever did; my, but it was an awful panorama! A snorting steed is heard in pursuit, the knight errant spurs him on and seizes the bridle of the running horse, rescues the hapless maiden, who has discovered that she is so wicked she wants to live, and then, mirabile dictu! the knight errant is discovered to be no less a personage than one Rodney Allison. Excuse me, Auntie, if I express the ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... his fortunes and places, and continual dangling at court, procured Bubo, as Pope styled him, one pre-eminence. His dinners at Hammersmith were the most recherches in the metropolis. Every one remembers Brandenburgh House, when the hapless Caroline of Brunswick held her court there, and where her brave heart,—burdened probably with some sins, as well as with endless regrets,—broke at last. It had been the residence of the beautiful and famous Margravine of Anspach, whose ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... unquenchable heart, then he might have been inconsolable, then might he have cast the gorge at life, then have cowered in the darkening chamber of his being, tapestried with mouldering hopes, and hearkened to the winds that swept across the illimitable wastes of death. But no such hapless lot was Shelley's as that of his own contemporaries—Keats, half chewed in the jaws of London and spit dying on to Italy; de Quincey, who, if he escaped, escaped rent and maimed from those cruel jaws; Coleridge, whom they dully mumbled for ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... affections, though divided into twelve rills, would not have been exhausted in twenty-four, and her soul, forecasting its sorrow, yearned after that nonentity Number Thirteen. She pictured to herself the hapless strangeling borne away from her bosom by those strong arms, and—in fact she sobbed so that Ginx grew ashamed, and sought to comfort her by the suggestion that she could not have any more. But she ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... they were assailed by physical infirmities, their hapless chieftain was sick both in body and mind. He shared all their hardships, and watched them with most unremitting solicitude. He erected camp hospitals, and furnished the sick with wine and delicacies which he ordered from Vienna for ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... purpose, for just at that moment he saw a group of four people dripping with rain rush on to the slippery boards of the jetty. They were four who had been pretty noticeable as law-breakers during the whole trip—at least, so the captain thought. Marcella gave a cry of hapless disappointment as she saw Louis with Ole Fred, the red-haired man and another. They were laughing wildly, and almost close enough to touch the ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... us by exciting grief, pity, or perturbation of any sort. But the professed philanthropists, it is strange and horrible to say, are an altogether odious set of people, whom one would shun as the worst of bores and canters. But my conscience, my unhappy conscience respects that hapless class who see the faults and stains of our social order, and who pray and strive incessantly to right the wrong; this annoying class of men and women, though they commonly find the work altogether beyond their faculty, and their results are, for the present, ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... upon the condition of the hapless girl whom I had left in the power of the savages. Was it impossible to rescue her? Might I not relieve her from her bonds, and make her the companion of my flight? The exploit was perilous, but not impracticable. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... we unhappy princes are the cause. Nay, Paul, I know what you would say, brave loyal heart; but it lies heavy on my soul for all that. And having suffered thus, why tempt your fate anew by linking your fortunes with those of the hapless House of Lancaster? ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... pictures, her portrait, and the few articles of furniture which they could still exist without, and sold them for a miserable sum, which prolonged the agony of the hapless household for a time. During these days of wretchedness Ginevra showed the sublimity of her nature and the extent ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... blue jay kept close watch over our movements, but at last decided that we are harmless, and with a last shriek of defiance flew away to pour out his vituperations on other hapless wanderers. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... had been carried away by the frenzy that had driven so many of his people out of their senses, was not an awakening likely to take place, when his better nature would resume control? Could he forget that he had eaten salt with this hapless fellow, and stand by, without raising hand or voice, when his extremity should come, as come it must, ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... he gain'd his wish. The pudding, rising from its dish, On Goody Homespun's nose was stuck So fast, no power on earth could pluck The sad incumbrance away. What could be done? Oh, hapless day! She cried, she stamp'd, she tore her hair; The fatal pudding ...
— Think Before You Speak - The Three Wishes • Catherine Dorset
... torture, surely the invention of brains rendered mad by their own ferocious cruelty, was even now being inflicted on the hapless, dethroned Queen of France. Marguerite, in far-off England, had shuddered when she heard of it, and in her heart had prayed, as indeed every pure-minded woman did then, that proud, unfortunate Marie Antoinette might soon find release ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... now look back for a moment to the triumphs of the pagan emperors, well may we bless God for the change which the religion of Christ has wrought in this city. After they had let loose war, and famine, and pestilence, to prey upon hapless nations, they ascended the Capitol to offer incense with polluted hands to their profane gods; and meantime the groans of the dying and unpitied princes, whom they had reserved to decorate their triumph, ascended from the scala Gemonia to call down the vengeance of heaven upon their oppressors. ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... in the midst of wilderness And ruins thou first openest thine eyes, O hapless One, my humble offerings Will not appear like thy wrath's threats, nor like The joyful trumpetings of thy reveille, Nor like an image of thy passion's cross, Nor like thy sorrow's dirge, nor like glad hymns; But like soft songs and trembling lights and fondlings Of lily hands, ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... Assembly met. Parliament men—and now these were walking with head in the air—might regret the execution of the past January, and yet be prepared to assert that with the fall of the kingdom fell all powers and offices named and decreed by the hapless monarch. What was a passionate royalist government doing in Virginia now that England was a Commonwealth? The passionate government answered for itself in acts passed by this Assembly. With swelling words, with a tragic accent, it denounced the late happenings in England ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... returning to the hapless Luke, "has had every advantage. I suppose he will try to explain matters when he comes. I could ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... carrier dove, though seas divide, I'll seek my lonely mate; But if afar I find a grave, You'll mourn my hapless fate. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... quickly attracted the attention of the king, and her skilful and unscrupulous arts soon made her a power in the court. The queen was in her way; but no long time passed before, on the pretext of a spiritual relationship with her husband which rendered the marriage illegal, the hapless Andovere was repudiated ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... to wait for the outcast keepers of souls.[3] When he knew that it was ready, he enveloped it in eternal night and equipped it with torment, filling it with fire and fearful cold, with fume and red flame: then he commanded the terrors of suffering to increase throughout that hapless place. 45 ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... summit of her blissful anticipations into a slough of despair. She had little or no hope of his ever making her the only possible reparation. Ruin, disgrace, stared her in the face. And after all the fine hopes with which she had embarked on life! Her pride revolted at this promise of hapless degradation. Anything rather than that. There was but one way to avoid such a fate, not only for her, but for the new life within her. The roar and rush of the express, when she had crossed the footbridge at the station, sounded hopefully in ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... covered with mouths, like the ones the boys had seen absorb the rats, shot out of the sea. Another and another followed it, and hapless Sanborn, screaming in terror, was dragged from the structure of the aeroplane, to which he clung with ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... after a new place of work as was involved in writing letters to his friend Grundy, and probably to others, suing for employment. But his offence had been too glaring to be condoned. Mr. Grundy seems to have advised the hapless young man to take shelter in the Church, where the influence of his father and his mother's relatives might help him along; but, as Branwell said, he had not a single qualification, "save, perhaps hypocrisy." Parson's sons rarely have ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... ever as earth waxed wiser, and softer the beating of time's wide wings, Since fate fell dark on her father, most hapless and gentlest of star-crossed kings, Her praise has increased as the chant of the dawn that the choir of the ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for the mere accomplishments of life. Each had two daughters, who, with the natural tastes of the sex, were not averse to the graces of education, in the abstract, but could not bear to see them displayed by their "stuck-up, pauper cousin," as they often termed that hapless young lady in private conversation. A kind offer, which she was imprudent enough, to make, to teach them all she knew, had set them against her ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... followed dauntlessly on, determined to do it or die in the attempt; and if he had ever heard of the Flying Dutchman, would undoubtedly have come to the conclusion that he was just then following his track on dry land. But, unlike the hapless Vanderdecken, Sir Norman came to a halt at last, and that so suddenly that his horse stood on his beam ends, and flourished his two fore limbs in the atmosphere. It was before La Masque's door; and ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... their trifling weight Through all my frame a weary aching leaves; For long I struggled with my hapless fate, And staid and toiled till it was dark and late,— Yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... all that is strong, defacing all that is beautiful, and casting its blight over the fairest and happiest scenes of human life—and which, from day to day, and from year to year, with intolerant and interminable malignity, sends its thousands and its tens of thousands of hapless victims into the ever-yawning ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... their evening meal before his unheeding eyes, and become sick and wearied in listening to his insane ravings,—to which they had wholly ceased making any reply,—retired to rest, leaving him to partake such food as was left on the table, to occupy, as he chose to do, the same sofa which his hapless wife had done the night before, to sleep down the wild commotion of his feelings, and awake a calmer and more humbled, but not yet a better ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... "on his feet again," the argument lost its edge, and there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence of the indissolubility of marriage. Society must manage to get on without the Beauforts, and there was an end of it—except indeed for such hapless victims of the disaster as Medora Manson, the poor old Miss Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good family who, if only they had listened to Mr. Henry van ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... wrapped up in their blankets, Then at the door of Evangeline's tent she sat and repeated Slowly, with soft, low voice, and the charm of her Indian accent, All the tale of her love, with its pleasures, and pains, and reverses. Much Evangeline wept at the tale, and to know that another Hapless heart like her own had loved and had been disappointed. Moved to the depths of her soul by pity and woman's compassion, Yet in her sorrow pleased that one who had suffered was near her, She in turn related her love and all its disasters. Mute with wonder the Shawnee sat, and when ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Khionontaterrhonons, Petuneux or Nation du Petun (Tobacco). ] In manners, as in language, they closely resembled the Hurons. Of old they were their enemies, but were now at peace with them, and about the year 1640 became their close confederates. Indeed, in the ruin which befell that hapless people, the Tionnontates alone retained a tribal organization; and their descendants, with a trifling exception, are to this day the sole inheritors of the Huron or Wyandot name. Expatriated and wandering, they held for generations a paramount influence among the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... author of a hapless race, Whose daughter 'twas my mother's boast to be, Who well may'st blush to see me in such plight, For the last time I come to ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... down in a comatose condition in his chair, as though his last drop of strength and life had oozed away. Now de Burgher was one of those who can resist anything but temptation. He stole over and tied the man's legs to his chair. Then he got a German soldier to tap the hapless victim on the shoulder. Roused from his stupor to see the soldier standing over him like a messenger of doom, the poor fellow turned ashen pale. He sprang to his feet, but the chair bound to his legs tripped him up and ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... the grass, And plac'd in midst of all that lovely lass Who chosen is their queen,—with her fine head Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red: For there the lily, and the musk-rose, sighing, Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying: Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble, A bunch of violets full blown, and double, Serenely sleep:—she from a casket takes A little book,—and then a joy awakes About each youthful ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... memory of all he stole— How here he sipped, how there he plundered snug, And sucked all o'er like an industrious bug. Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes, and here The frippery of crucified Moliere; There hapless Shakespeare, yet of Tibbald sore, Wished he had ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the Warren, the Burrow—it went by all of these names—was a hapless property that was trying to pay taxes on itself between the ebbing of one tide of prosperity and the hoped-for flood of another. Centres were shifting, values were see-sawing, and old Ezekiel Warren was waiting for the nature of the neighbourhood to declare itself with something like distinctness. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... look of such solemn, bright assurance as made her, in the dusky, golden twilight, seem like some serene angel sent down to comfort, rather than a hapless mortal just wrenched ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Church, has become gradually operative in the world, and has been creative of all the great liberating movements in history. It lay behind Dante's vision of a spiritual monarchy, and has been the inspiring motive of those who, in obedience to Christ, have wrought for the uplifting of the hapless and the down-trodden. It has been the soul of all mighty reformations, and is the source of that conception of a new social order which has begun to mean ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... and went slowly upstairs. She knew her sister would not welcome her, for she had often been sent on like errands before, and the brunt of Kate's anger had fallen upon the hapless messenger, wearing itself out there so that she might descend all smiles to greet father and mother and smooth off the situation ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... full of finished poetry and of charm, is the idealised and pathetic version of the figure that Diderot has thus conceived for genius. The dialogues between the hapless poet and Antonio, the man of the world, are a skilful, lofty, and impressive statement of the problem that often vexed Diderot. Goethe sympathised with Antonio's point of view; he had in his nature so much of the spirit of conduct, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Oh but, sir, you write religion, and we like your books, and we've come across from New York State to Canada to get married,—so please, &c. &c. Of course, I did not please, and as to marriage at all gave them Punch's celebrated advice to persons about to marry, Don't. On which the hapless pair departed sorrowfully. If I had read the service over them, possibly their respectable consciences might have been satisfied,—and as with Romeo and Juliet a lay friar Lawrence would have sufficed. Moreover, there's no penalty from one State to another: and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-looking man of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history of which is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearl given by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is another of the heirlooms of Baron's Court; but the ring and the note left by Mary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappeared during the long minority of the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... giantism where husbands Like mushrooms grow, whilst hapless we are forced To be content, nay, happy ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... soul! Were not the hearts of the heroes pure, they must grow cynical as they looked on the evil mass of roguery, idleness, foulness, and cunning that seethes around them. But they have passed the portal beyond which peace is found; and the sorrow wherewith they gaze on their hapless fellow-men is tinctured neither by scorn nor weariness. If there is no reward for them, then we all of us have cause for bitter disappointment. But the forlorn hope of goodness never trouble themselves about rewards; ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... not seek to ascertain whether any of the openings were passable for the Bridgewater, and might enable him to take those on board who had escaped drowning. He bore away round all; and whilst the two hapless vessels were still visible from the mast head, passed the leeward extremity of the reef, and hove to for the night. The apprehension of danger to himself must then have ceased; but he neither attempted to work up in the smooth water, nor sent any of his boats to see ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... husbands completely spoil on their wives' hands, by reason of a teething child, whose worrisomeness happened to be aggravated at the time by the summer-complaint. With a breaking heart, and my handkerchief to my eyes, I followed those three hapless young husbands, one after the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the universal temperament in both man and beast. Our good-fortune placed us in a hotel fronting the famous Castel dell' Ovo, across a little space of land and water, and we could hear, late and early, the cackling and crowing of the chickens which have replaced the hapless prisoners of other days in that fortress. At times the voices of the hens were lifted in a choral of self-praise, as if they had among them just laid the mighty structure which takes its name from its ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... horse to be instantly re-saddled and brought to the door; and having mounted him I was in High-street, the scene of action, in a few minutes. There I found the people assembled, in immense numbers. Having broken in the windows and window frames of the house in which the hapless member, Mr. Bathurst, had concealed himself, they only waited for a cessation of throwing brick-bats and stones to rush into the house; which, if they had once done, his forfeited life would have been the inevitable price of the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... aftertime behold My native bounds- see many a harvest hence With ravished eyes the lowly turf-roofed cot Where I was king? These fallows, trimmed so fair, Some brutal soldier will possess these fields An alien master. Ah! to what a pass Has civil discord brought our hapless folk! For such as these, then, were our furrows sown! Now, Meliboeus, graft your pears, now set Your vines in order! Go, once happy flock, My she-goats, go. Never again shall I, Stretched in green cave, behold you from ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... and melodic designs contained in the piece, will be able to discern the degree of quickness intended by the author. But if the Largo be four in a bar, of simple melodic structure, and containing but few notes in each bar, what means has the hapless conductor of discovering the true time? And in how many ways might he not be deceived? The different degrees of slowness that might be assigned to the performance of such a Largo are very numerous; the individual feeling of the orchestral ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... Ah, hapless fate! Could it be just, That her young life should play Its easy, natural way; Then, with an unexpected thrust, Be hence thus rudely sent; Even as her feelings blent With those around, whose love would trust ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... taking hold of one of these men. "Say your prayers, for we are going down," was the brutal reply. For the first and only time during my American travels I was really petrified with fear. Suddenly a wave struck the hapless vessel, and with a stunning crash broke through the thin woodwork of the side of the saloon. I caught hold of a life-buoy which was near me—a gentleman clutched it from me, for fright makes some men selfish—and, breathless, I was thrown ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... figure of a dwarf, nicely labeled as Turold—for many of the actors in this embroidered story are labeled in delicate stitches—and tells us that his was the hand that set the copy for all the happy and beloved maids of the Queen, and the hapless and perhaps equally beloved Saxon maids. We wonder, again, how these skillful and noble Saxons like to find themselves thus writing their own infelicities and humiliations for all the world to see, and then—for so does the human mind go groping into motives and ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... in vain On radiant wings drew near; The hapless moth in vain grew wroth - The fair rose leaned to hear The deep-voiced stranger's low refrain That thrilled ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Such is my hapless case, oh! cruel fair Who sent this mitten—emblem of my fate; But why the dickens didn't you send a pair— For what's the use of one, without ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... on his aiguillette. Arrived at Carlton House the company, before they could enter the ball-room, had to advance in single file along a corridor in which the old King, bewigged and bestarred, was seated on a sofa. When the hapless youth who lacked the aiguillette approached the presence, he heard a very high voice exclaim, "Who is this d—d fellow?" Retreat was impossible, and there was nothing for it but to shuffle on and try to pass the King without further rebuke. Not a bit of it. As he neared the sofa the King exclaimed, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... in on him like the side of a mountain, falling on a hapless traveler during a landslide. And, Malone told himself, he had never had less help in ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... watchful dogs an odious ward Right well one hapless virgin guard, When in a tower of brass immured, By mighty bars of steel secured, Although by mortal rake-hells lewd With all their midnight arts ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... they are alike in this, that they do not attempt to present very complex character-studies, or to probe the deeps of human experience. The last play cited, The Silver Box, may perhaps be thought an exception to this rule; but, though the experience of the hapless charwoman is pitiful enough, hers is a simple soul, so inured to suffering that a little more or less is no such great matter. The play is an admirable genre-picture rather than ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Geromes; and in the place of honour at the end of the gallery there was a grand Delaroche, Anne Boleyn's last letter to the king, the hapless girl-queen sitting at a table in her gloomy cell in the Tower, a shaft of golden light from the narrow window streaming on the fair, disordered hair, the face bleached with unutterable woe, a sublime image of despair ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... officials have monopolized all local traffic, and have set their own price on all provisions, from which some have made great profits. Salazar—who has with good reason been styled "the Las Casas of the Philippines"—enumerates a melancholy list of injuries and opressions inflicted upon the hapless natives by their conquerors, and urges in most forcible and eloquent language that they be protected from injustice and treated as human beings. He cites from the royal decrees the clauses which make such provisions in behalf of the Indians, and claims that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... this thrilling tale. The wicked hero had invented a hideous pill, compounded of ingredients which would explode within a human body and blow it to atoms. And now I was approaching the terrible scene in which the fatal dose was about to be administered to the hapless victim. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... nature, and be never more Still to be so displac't. I was all eare, 560 And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of Death, but O ere long Too well I did perceive it was the voice Of my most honour'd Lady, your dear sister. Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear, And O poor hapless Nightingale thought I, How sweet thou sing'st, how neer the deadly snare! Then down the Lawns I ran with headlong hast Through paths, and turnings oft'n trod by day, Till guided by mine ear I found the place 570 Where that damn'd wisard hid in sly disguise (For so by certain signes ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... do this; and when the real story of the "Fresco-painting for the Houses of Parliament" comes to be written, it will be another chapter added to our national misadventures and reproaches in everything connected with Art and its hapless cultivators. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... did as so many other hapless women have done when work fails or wages do not suffice, and hunger becomes too pressing," replied Cephyse, in a broken voice; "only that, unlike so many others, instead of living on my shame, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ill-treatment without complaint. "Thus end all my schemes for the amelioration of the red and black races of this hapless country," he said to me, as I was sitting near him, which I was allowed to do. "I found them very different, I confess, to what I expected. With some noble qualities, the Indians are savage in the extreme; and the ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... evidently portions of wrecks. Over the door of one might be seen the figure-head of some unfortunate vessel. An arbour, not rustic but nautical, was composed of the carved work of a Dutch galliot; indeed, the owners of few had failed to secure some portion of the numerous hapless vessels which from time to time had been driven on ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... was in the air, its hind-legs were extended horizontally, its fore-legs were waving impotently up and down'. The ant-bear had carved its way deep into the bowels of the earth, gradually but relentlessly dragging the hapless pony down until its posterior parts hermetically sealed up the burrow. It was, in fact, only the smallness of the latter which prevented the animal from being completely buried. Eventually, however, the rein snapped, and the pony was thus released from a durance probably unique in equine experience. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... have no right to say that," she exclaimed, her eyes flashing dangerously. His heart smote him at once and he sued humbly for pardon. He listened to her views concerning the hapless Indianian, and it was not long before he was heart and head in sympathy ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... two yards off. However, he made a pretty fair guess as to the whereabouts, and, rising softly, discharged such a blow downwards as would have split a yule log. A volley of sparks flew up from the hapless Spaniard's armor, and a grunt issued from within it, which proved that, whether he was killed or not, the blow ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... cry. He became helpless, she put a blanket under his head and covered him with another blanket, and went up the ladder and lay down in the hay. She asked herself what had she done to deserve this trouble? and she cried a great deal; and the poor, hapless old woman was asleep in the morning when Peter stumbled to his feet. And, after dipping his head in a pail of water, he remembered that the horses were waiting for him in the farm. He walked off to his work, staggering a little, and as soon as he was gone Kate drew back the bolt ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... laughed sardonically; while Eleanor, with flashing eyes, now joined in the attack upon the hapless nobleman. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... legible traces upon the brow of my hapless mentor when I saw her again. How different now was the vision that greeted my daily sight from that of former years! The want that admits not of idle wailing compelled her still to pursue her daily course of labour, and she pursued it with the same ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... used, he says, to detest them, and mob them wherever they appeared; for which offence, of course, he can find no words too strong. St. Augustine, however, himself a countryman of theirs, who died, happily, just before the storm burst on that hapless land, speaks bitterly of their exceeding profligacy—of which he himself in his wild youth, had had but too sad experience. Salvian's assertion is, that the Africans were the most profligate of all the Romans; and that while ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... or song to charm the ear, Through all the land did Jamie find a peer? 380 Cursed be that year[114] by every honest Scot, And in the shepherd's calendar forgot, That fatal year when Jamie, hapless swain! In evil hour forsook the peaceful plain: Jamie, when our young laird discreetly fled, Was seized, and hang'd till he was ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... ye sisters, sisters sad, Ye sisters sad, his tomb with sorrow; And weep around in waeful wise His hapless fate ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... hapless negro is the fruitful subject of reprisals in other quarters. John Pettit, whom Tom Benton paid his respects to, you will recollect, calls the immortal Declaration "a self-evident lie"; while at the birthplace of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... good deal, but it was possible to abuse even her patience. Snatching Jerry from his lawless embraces, she reversed him across her knee, and then—the outrage offered to the whole superior sex in Jerry's hapless person was too painful to witness; but though I turned my head away, the sound of brisk slaps continued to reach my tingling ears. When I looked again, Jerry was sitting up as before; his garment, somewhat crumpled, was restored to its original position; ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... son, For him whose god-like eloquence could stun, Like some vast cat'ract, Faction's clam'rous tongue, Or by its sweetness charm, like Virgil's song, For him, whose mighty spirit rous'd afar Europe's plum'd legions to the hallow'd war; But who, ah! hapless tale! could not inspire Their recreant chiefs with his heroic fire; Who, as they pass'd the tyrant Conqu'ror's yoke, Felt, as the bolt of Heav'n, the ruthless stroke; And having long, in vain, the tempest brav'd, Could breathe no longer in a ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the like sophistical reasonings, that he endeavored to palliate his ingratitude and cruelty towards the hapless victim of his lawless desires; for hardened as he was in his libertinism, and unjust as were his sentiments with regard to women, he could not avoid feeling a pang of conscious remorse at the recollection of Theodora. He had systematically won the confidence ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... opposing ascent, the gap was closed upon them, and they were surrounded on every side. The rear-guard were left behind with the wagons and fled in a tumult, with a throng of Indians in close pursuit. From the sheltering trees a deadly fusillade swept the hapless files of those who were hemmed about on the rising ground. Darting from their cover, the Indians sprang upon such as lay wounded and dispatched them ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... the smoke of its gardens and hamlets. The dismal cloud rolled up the hill and hung about the towers of the Alhambra, where the unfortunate Boabdil still remained shut up from the indignation of his subjects. The hapless monarch smote his breast as he looked down from his mountain-palace on the desolation effected by his late ally. He dared not even show himself in arms among the populace, for they cursed him as the cause of the miseries once ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... me 'midst every toil and care, A hapless undergraduate still, To fag at mathematics dire, &c. Gradus ad ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... soared far above the tallest tree-tops, and launching out in the high regions of the air, uttered from time to time a wild shrill scream, or hollow booming sound, as they suddenly descended to pounce with wide-extended throat upon some hapless moth or insect that sported all unheeding in mid-air, happily unconscious of the approach of so ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill |
