"Mercifully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sake, is this the only way of getting to your camp?" he gasped, when Johnny and the bronk mercifully slowed to climb a ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... that he might always have some one with him. But even in the face of this care, he stumbled and fell into the laundry-pot with its boiling family-wash, was badly scalded and seriously blinded. James mercifully died two years later ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... platform at the edge, when another engine, coming from the opposite direction, passed over the spot on which he had been standing. In an instant he would have been crushed to death. "How grateful did I feel to God that I had been thus mercifully preserved!" he said. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the wrath about to descend upon the earth, in terms that were almost prophetic. He ordered all to pray that the Lord might lift up His Church, protect it from the wiles of the enemy, extirpate heresies, grant peace and true unity among Christian princes, and mercifully avert ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... few moments the girls, their arms clasped round each other's waists, stood still, as if spellbound, staring at the door which mercifully veiled from their view the tragedy of life then being enacted in the adjoining room. Terror-stricken, too frightened even to cry, they sat down and waited, straining their ears to hear what was going on. Why had Doctor Everett summoned ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... creature had managed to get its right hind-leg caught in a dingo-trap, to which a heavy clog of wood was attached. In the course of time the wallaby would have died very miserably, and already it had begun to lose flesh. But Finn brought a mercifully sudden death to the crippled creature, and then proceeded to tear in sunder the limb which held the trap. Having accomplished this, he slung the wallaby over his shoulder and set out for the mountain, meaning to allow the family to feast upon this early kill, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... that the space of time allotted to him on earth was but short. Walter sank on his knees by the bedside and taking the pale and wasted hand in his, breathed a prayer that God might see fit to deal mercifully with a life yet so young; while the invalid smiled faintly, and stroked the cheek ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... so essential a part of our program. We must provide easy reading for thousands of children. Milk and water stories may have an actual value to children whose unfavorable heritage and environment have retarded their mental development. But the deplorable thing is to see young people, mercifully saved from the above handicaps, making a bee line for the current diluted literature for grown-ups, (as accessible as Scott on our open shelves) and to realize that this taste, which is getting a life set, is the inevitable outcome of the habit of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... The lines that the mercifully deliberate on-coming of age draws on all of us were, it is true, nearly obliterated, but in their place was a certain blankness that ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... out of the difficulty is suggested by Gutberlet and others, who, holding with St. Thomas that infants that die without Baptism will enjoy a kind of natural beatitude, think it possible that God, in view of their sufferings, may mercifully cleanse them from original sin and thereby place them in a state of innocence.(497) This theory is based on the assumption that the ultimate fate of unbaptized children is deprivation of the beatific vision ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... stronger and fuller manhood, as if the great arteries of the vast universal world-life pulsed in his own being. The drowsy, indolent existence at home appeared like a dull remote dream from which he had awaked, and he blessed the destiny which, by its very sternness, had mercifully saved him; he blessed her, too, who, from the very want of love for him, had, perhaps, made ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... surprise that she heard no flop such as must attend the violent falling of so fat a body. But the next instant, realizing the purpose of his absurd posture, she shrank back with a faint gasp, and her face was mercifully blurred to his sight once more amid the shadows of her chair. Thus was he spared the look of utter loathing, of unconquerable, irrepressible disgust that leapt into ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... attained the age of thirty, when he was mercifully awakened to a sense of his guilt here, his peril hereafter. It seemed to many that his very nature was so warped that penitence in its true sense could never come to him; but the mercy of God is unfathomable; ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and the paragon of mothers, Anna lived with him for four years on those terms, without complaining to anyone, and contented herself by praying fervently to God that He would mercifully inspire her husband with the desire to begin a second series of the twelve tribes. At times even, in order to make her prayers more efficacious, she tried to compass that end by culinary means. She spared no pains, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Mercifully, Tom and the others fired only to disable, and not to kill the red pygmies. Wounded in the arms or legs, the little savages would be incapable of fighting, and this plan was followed. But so fierce were they that some, who were wounded ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... again, her fists clenched, her lower lip between her teeth. If only it were time to begin ... time for the kick-off! This was always the worse part, just before.... It was L. A.'s kick-off. The whistle sounded, mercifully, and with the solid, satisfying impact of leather against leather she relaxed. It was on. It had started. All the weeks of waiting for the championship game were over. This was the game, and it was ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... darkness, I began again to tremble for him; but I need not have done so; for he walked on so straight through it, that it seemed scarcely to make any difference to him at all. In the best part of the road his feebleness had taught him to lean altogether upon Him who had so mercifully helped him on the bank, and who had held up his fainting steps hitherto; and this strength could hold him up as well even in this extreme darkness. I heard him, as he parsed along, say, "When I am weak, then am I strong;" and with that he broke out ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... of these commentaries were written during the year which is mercifully over, it would not have been possible, even if it had been sought, to avoid current topics. Why should a writer shrink from being called a journalist? He need not cease to be writer. But if he wishes to be true to his original calling, to make his hope and election sure, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... almost as soon as she had proposed it, and ever since that moment, the day before, when she had caught the flash of triumph in his eyes, she had felt certain that he meant to use the expedition as an opportunity for punishing her; and she felt, too, that he was not likely to deal more mercifully with her than he had done before. Why, then, was she sitting there at all? As she watched his every movement and each action of the horses, she asked herself this question over and over again; not that she expected to find an answer, but because her thoughts insisted ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... second. I was born three months after that night, my mother being mercifully permitted to lay down her life in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... of the Eumenides had sworn, and he sent her back to Hades. At the same time he launched a thunderbolt upon one particularly perfidious race of men. This, however, being hurled by a father's arm, mercifully fell in a desert, causing less ruin than alarm. What followed from this was simply that the wicked brood took heart at such indulgence and did not trouble to mend their ways. Then all the gods in Olympus complained, until he who controls ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... hope in their faces, stand side by side a moment, to be harangued by the Sheriff, and then suddenly on his bewildered ears rang out the plaudits of the assembled crowd, all Winchester clapping its hands because the King had mercifully saved the lives of the prisoners. And still the steady rain kept falling as the Castle Green grew empty, and Raleigh at his window was left alone with his bewilderment. He was very soon told that he also was spared, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the severest that ever was in the memory of Man. And yet February must not pass without a stroke upon Pemquid Chub, whom the Government had mercifully permitted after his examination to retire unto his habitation in Andover. As much out of the way as to Andover there came above thirty Indians about the middle of February as if their errand had been for vengeance ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... created Tarzan could write such stories." If Tarzan were in any way comparable with the present volume, it would perhaps not be unfair to add the corollary that only those readers who appreciated the one could swallow the other. Mercifully, Mr. BURROUGHS writes so continually at the top of his voice that after a time the clatter comes to have an effect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... living volcano. His mind spawned sonorous phrases as a roe shad spawns eggs. He was in all outward regards a shape of a man to catch the eye, with a voice to cajole the senses as with music of bugles, and an oratory to inspire. Moreover, the destiny which shaped his ends had mercifully denied him that which is a boon to common men but a curse to public men. Jason Mallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; he never laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before now fallen into the woful error of doing ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... mountains, and the stars sparkled o'er the blue concave, we have been accustomed to sit down to the compilation of this unpretending volume, and therefore it is called "Eventide." O, that its pages might be read at that calm, silent hour,—their follies mercifully overlooked, their faults ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... petered out humiliatingly. Quite without the precedent of the previous trip to Buffalo, Niagara Palls, and Chicago, train-sickness set in and the remainder of the day was spent hunched with her face to the prickly hot plush of the seat, her hair and linen suit awry, and not a spot on the pillow mercifully proffered by the porter that would remain cool to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... morally but physically happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class of artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through all its worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature has mercifully appointed that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances break, or religions fail; and at this hour, while the streets of Florence and Verona are full of idle politicians, loud of tongue, useless ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... and the woful loss and eclipse into the shadow of which we shall stumble darkling if it is not ours, then surely that is a reason for prizing and laying to heart, and living by the revelation so mercifully made. People do not usually kick over their telescopes, and neglect to look through them, because they are so powerful that they show them the craters in the moon and turn faint specks into blazing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... without wages," and the "cries" of whom "are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth;" and we must also take into the account the tears, and sweat, and groans, and blood, of the millions of similar laborers, whom, during the last "fifty years," death has mercifully released from Southern bondage. Talks the slaveholder of the "prosperity" of the South? It is but his own "prosperity"—and a "prosperity," such as the wolf may boast, when gorging ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... more, for he, too, was wholly unable to stem the torrent once it broke loose; but I have forgotten it; or, rather, mercifully I did not hear it, for I stopped my ears and only heard the occasional words when I took my fingers out to find if he had come to an end. In due course he did come to an end, and there we left it, for I then knew positively what he already knew: that somewhere here in the night, and within the walls ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... these words from God, he worshipped before Him. He and Eve worshipped Him and gave Him thanks, because He had dealt mercifully with them. ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... the apparatus on the laboratory table and then gently took the little dog from his basket and laid him beside it. A few minutes later the poor little suffering Buster was mercifully under the influence ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the lives of normal, decent people as to be simply unbelievable by them. The 'white slave' trade of to-day is one of these incredible things. The calmest, simplest statements of its facts are almost beyond the comprehension of belief of men and women who are mercifully spared from contact with the dark and hideous secrets of the 'under-world' ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... scarlet or typhus fever during the whole time, though smallpox was permitted to find an entrance into the smallest of the orphan houses. Prayer was still the one resort. The disease spread to the other houses, until at one time fifteen were ill with it. The cases, however, were mercifully light, and the Lord was besought to allow the epidemic to spread no further. Not another child was taken; and when, after nine months, the disease altogether disappeared, not one child had died of it, and only one teacher or adult had had an attack, and that was very mild. What ravages ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... I remembered what the doctor said in Brighton when the inquest was held on the tiny white body, "that it had been mercifully drugged before it ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... ceases. Under the shock of mighty upheaval it has been dislocated by the most drastic strain ever put upon the economic fabric. But it will march on long after Peace will have mercifully sheathed the Sword. Therefore the permanent world ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... person of Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied his seat; the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the second; the lawful caliph, in the mosch of Cufa, received a mortal wound from the hand of the third. He expired in the sixty-third year of his age, and mercifully recommended to his children, that they would despatch the murderer by a single stroke. [1742] The sepulchre of Ali [175] was concealed from the tyrants of the house of Ommiyah; [176] but in the fourth age of the Hegira, a tomb, a temple, a city, arose near the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... he exclaimed on seeing the dying horse panting beside the prostrate destroyer, 'nothing can be done for you, I see. Lead him away if possible, and put him out of his pain as mercifully as you can. Fine creature. I cannot bear to look at him; he little thought, when he pranced off so stately yesterday morning, that he was coming to feed the hounds at Clairmont, and a tit-bit they will find him; he's in capital condition. Pray ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... brambles, and sank slowly down through their interwoven runners, which struck their myriad claws into him and reluctantly let him pass, until he was cautiously deposited, deep down among the sharp stones at the bottom of a ravine, shuddering and thanking his stars for all the thorns that had mercifully flayed his hide in order that he should not split his skull. Then he must needs grope forward, through the darkness and running water, until he found a tree and was able to climb ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... kneel down beside him, telling him to recommend himself also to St. Philippe, but the wretched priest implored the saint beneath his breath to prevent him from failing if on the morrow that the lady should receive him kindly and mercifully; and the good archbishop, observing the fervour of his servant, cried out him, "Courage little one, and Heaven ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... that," he said sharply. "Why make a fuss? Things arrange themselves, and eventually we adjust ourselves to the new arrangement. A great deal of caring and grieving, phase one; still more caring and grieving, phase two; less caring and grieving, phase three; no further feeling whatsoever, phase four. Mercifully I am at phase four. You are at phase one. Make a quick journey over ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... not a bad-hearted woman, was not one to remain for pleasure in a sick-room, if told she might leave it. She, Lady Isabel, remained alone. She fell on her knees again, this time in prayer for the departing spirit, on its wing, and that God would mercifully vouchsafe herself a resting-place with ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... already been robbed, two of them having spent four nights hand-running at the post poker-room—the leader was not so destitute of fellow-feeling as to condemn the hapless trio to the loss of even the necessaries of life, and mercifully handed back half ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... seemingly overwhelming and irretrievable, but Daun does not follow up. The siege of Prag is raised and the Prussian army—much smaller—retreats to Saxony. And on the west Cumberland is in retreat seawards, after Hastenbeck, and French armies are advancing; Cumberland very soon mercifully to disappear, Convention of Kloster-Seven unratified. But Pitt at last has hold of the reins in England, and Ferdinand of Brunswick gets ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... of the Long Knives is mercifully inclined to forgive," he said. "It was in play. But there must be no more play with the Chief's son. And the path to the Great Chief's presence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Lieutenant upon Earth, The ancient Children of the Wilderness—the Torgote Tartars Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar, Wandering Sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial Empire in the year 1616, But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow, Into the fold of their forgiving Shepherd. Hallowed be the spot for ever, and Hallowed be ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... chapter for me to write. Mercifully it is to be a short one. Later on I shall become used to the situation; inclined, even, to dwell upon its humorous side; but for the moment I cannot see beyond the sadness of it. That to a Prince of the ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... we must kill him to put him out of pain," the savage in us rapidly growing with indulgence. All took heartily to this sort of cat mercy and began throwing the heaviest stones we could manage, but that old fellow knew what characters we were, and just as we imagined him mercifully dead he evidently thought the play was becoming too serious and that it was time to retreat; for suddenly with a wild whirr and gurr of energy he launched himself over our heads, rushed across the yard in a blur of speed, climbed to the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... keep herself alive in the world which held for her the past we know and the future of an even more undesirable quality—seems to me a very fantastic combination. But I believe it was not so bad. She was being, she wrote, mercifully drugged by her task. She had learned to "converse" all day long, mechanically, absently, as if in a trance. An uneasy trance it must have been! Her worst moments were when off duty—alone in the evening, shut up in her own little ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... self-gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give glory to Him who had mercifully led him through all, and enabled him, like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the terrors of Doubting Castle, and to reach the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant, and the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... anticipated that anyone would have the cool impertinence to try to save him from drowning, found himself seized from behind and towed vigorously away from a ten-dollar bill which he had almost succeeded in grasping. The spiritual agony caused by this assault rendered him mercifully dumb; though, even had he contrived to utter the rich Swedish oaths which occurred to him, his remarks could scarcely have been heard, for the crowd on the dock was cheering as one man. They had often paid good money to see far less gripping ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the two small boys. He had acquired his nick-name from the very leisurely pace at which he advanced up the school. He wore "Charity tails," as they were called, the swallow-tail coat of the Upper School mercifully given to boys of the Lower School who are too tall to wear with decency the short Eton jacket; he possessed a trouser-press; and his "bags" were perfectly creased and quite spotless. From tip to toe, at all seasons and in all weathers, he looked conspicuously spick and span. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... a reason for praising God, and also for great sorrow of heart, because very many go backwards who, poor souls, know not how to help themselves; and I too, I believe, would have gone back also, if our Lord had not so mercifully on His part done everything for me. And until He, of His goodness, had done all, nothing was done by me, as you, my father, may have seen already, beyond falling and rising again. I wish I knew how to explain it, because many souls, I believe, delude themselves in this ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... the tragedy underlying the lives of these people, saw it far more clearly, perhaps, than they did themselves, for he had known so many other phases, whilst they were inured to the drab monotony, most had been born to it, and so its full meaning was mercifully hidden from them. They would have waxed wrath at hearing it called a poor locality, in fact it was not one, being eminently respectable, as any house agent could tell you. Why, the late mayor, who died during his third term of office, had left nearly ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... get off any other night; works all night, I believe, and would work all Sunday, too, if his principles didn't mercifully interfere. He will be boss of the concern ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... more mercifully for us than we plan for ourselves. Had not the Hebrew prophets a vision of the punishment by prosperity? Perhaps it applied to an old age, gratified to the end by possession of everything that selfishness covets, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was in her own bed they mercifully gave her something which smoothed her brain into the black velvet softness of sleep. The future must tell whether her body and mind could ever be brought back ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... of the fierce fight that he had so hardly won, Blake could no longer sustain such acute grief. Nature mercifully dulled his consciousness. He sank into a stupor that outwardly ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... (according to the poet's representation) Henry IV. uttered this lamentation, expressive of deep present sorrow at the reckless misdoings of his son, and of anticipations of worse, that very son was doing his duty valiantly and mercifully ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... loom of Time weaves on. The globe cools out. Life mercifully ceases from upon its surface. The atmosphere and water disappear. It rests. It ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... the cause of those wild shouts of rejoicing, and who it was that had been made captive in her place, her heart would indeed have been heavy, but mercifully the ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... is ever coming to the front. I had thought to have asked Edward as a boon that I should have kept you as my prisoner until exchanged for one on our side, but being Sir Archibald Forbes I know that it were useless indeed; nevertheless, sir knight, I will send to King Edward, begging him to look mercifully upon your case, seeing how bravely and honourably ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of those blessings, which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty with which you are favoured; and which I hope you will willingly allow you have mercifully received, from the immediate hand of that Being from whom proceedeth ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... expected to be speared by naked savages on landing; and for the first few months after my arrival I wished at least once a day that such a blessed fate had befallen me. But it is no part of my story to tell you what I suffered in those early days. The Church had dealt with me mercifully, as is her wont, and her punishment fell far below ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... quick eyed. He had seen the unfriendly intention of the mandarin, and thrown himself down. The Great Mandarin was soon after taken with fifteen junks; three were sunk. The pirate lieutenant would have dealt mercifully with him, but the fierce old man suddenly seized him by the hair on the crown of his head, and grinned at him, so that he might provoke him to slay him. But even then Paou spoke kindly to him. Upon this he committed suicide, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... guests of the kitchen, and went through the ordeal with more or less of success. For my own part, I confess that I failed to catch the cup in the hat at the first trial and had to try again; the chairman, however, mercifully gave me only a small quantity of beer the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... were we able to cease baling. The blacks paddled on bravely through the pitchy darkness. Suddenly a flash of lightning burst from the clouds, followed by a tremendous roar of thunder. I could see the flame dancing along over the water, mercifully avoiding our canoe, leaving all in darkness beyond. The blacks ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... as he was, of all sweet elements—apart from social influences, from the regard, the affection, the approbation of his kind—and he died of heart-starvation; fortunate, indeed, in that he was mercifully permitted so to die, rather than have lived, as less fervent natures might have done, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... prominence. The first was when she electrified a visiting trustee by her intimate knowledge of the archipelagos of the eastern hemisphere. The fact that she had not the remotest idea of the nature of an archipelago was mercifully not divulged. The second had been less successful. It was during a visit of Bishop Bland's to the school. He was making a personal investigation concerning a report, then current, that public school children were ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... this floating coffin?" he demanded in a chain-locker voice. It was quite evident that even in the darkness, where her many defects were mercifully hidden, the Maggie did not suit the special envoy of the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... guard-room, for the high crime and misdemeanour of presuming to appear in the clothes which had officially been served out to me. I appeared at the orderly-room next morning, and underwent a severe wigging from the officer who was in temporary command of the regiment; but the incident was mercifully allowed to close with a mere reprimand. It did a little good, perhaps, for I never knew any other recruit to be served out with an utterly obsolete and useless kit so long as I remained with the regiment; but, until the hour at which my ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... little one! Quickly enough proven! And then if what you say is untrue...." He left the sentence mercifully unfinished, and turned toward the sturdily-built cubicle ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... one's garments are precisely like those of every one else, except that there is a difference between those of men and women and those of married and unmarried persons. The sick are carefully tended, but the victims of hopeless or painful disease are mercifully put to death if they so desire. Crime is naturally at a minimum, but those who persist in it are made slaves (not executed, for why should the State be deprived of their services?). Detesting war, the Utopians make a practice of hiring certain ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... became a victim. It is certain that these numerous losses weaned her much from life; it is also certain that her splendid reasoning powers gave way for a time, and the infirmity of premature old age crept over her mind. In this way she was mercifully kept from being utterly crushed. Yet, while her mental strength remained, she thought lovingly of those ladies who had been associated with her in her philanthropic works and penned a few lines of parting counsel to them. The following is the text of the ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... Bandokolo; for at last the dominion has passed out of the hands of that cruel and wicked woman, under whose galling yoke the country has groaned for unnumbered generations, and has passed into yours, who will rule us mercifully, wisely, and justly. Great is my pride and joy, O Chia'gnosi, that mine is the privilege to be the first to hail you king. Deign to honour my poor house with your gracious presence for a few hours, Your Majesty, while ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... comrades. And he might obtain good terms at last. William might be glad to pay a fair price in order to escape such a thorn in his side as the camp of refuge, and might deal—or, at least, promise to deal— mercifully and generously with the last remnant of the English gentry. For himself yield he would not: when all was over, he would flee to the sea, with Torfrida and his own housecarles, and turn Viking; or go to Sweyn Ulfsson in Denmark, and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the carriage horse had been so badly hurt that its recovery was impossible, and Ted mercifully put a bullet ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... suffrages of the sex without exception; he was received with bright smiles and graceful congratulations, even from those who had espoused Eyre Montacute's cause, and still fluttered their losing azure, though the poor hunter lay dead, with his back broken, and a pistol-ball mercifully sent through his brains—the martyr to a man's hot haste, as the dumb things have ever ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... turned to and put up some huts for the ladies, in which they passed the night. Mercifully towards morning a heavy fall of rain came on and extinguished the fire almost as suddenly as ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... working for his destruction. But those who do not publish until they can express, and do not express until they have something worth expressing, are so rare that they can be counted on the fingers of three or perhaps four hands; mercifully, we all—or nearly all believe ourselves ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... certainty upon which the mind can rest. Thrones totter and fall; Commanders-in-chief are superseded; Admirals of the High Fleet are displaced; in politics leaders come and go and reputations pass; in ordinary life a thousand mutations are visible. But amid all this flux there remains mercifully one resolute piece of routine that nothing can alter. Whatever may be happening elsewhere in the world—mutinies in the German Navy, revolutions in Russia, advances in France, advances in Flanders—Leicester ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... may be driven upon War by phantasm TERRORS, and go into it, in sorrow of heart, not gayety of heart; and that is a shade better. And one always pities a poor Nation, in such case;—as the very Destinies rather do, and judge it more mercifully. Nay, the poor bewildered Nation may, among its brain-phantasms, have something of reality and sanity inarticulately stirring it withal. It may have a real ordinance of Heaven to accomplish on those terms:—and IF so, it will sometimes, in the most chaotic ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... accompanied by roaring of waters, such as he had never heard the like, and he was tossed this way and that, and his hands so numbed with the cold that he could not close them. Having escaped the danger of which, he was mercifully carried into a small bay, where ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... been so barbarously done to death: the other a human head impaled upon a spike on the gable of the building. That blanched skull had rested on the shoulders of our traitor host, and we, doomed to "midnight murder," were mercifully destined to witness a repulsive, but just evidence, that Providence interposes often between the villain ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... her by the chin and turned up her face for a closer inspection—Mr. Pendleton was, mercifully, somewhat near-sighted. She smiled back sweetly, with wide, ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Father, that despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as be sorrowful: Mercifully assist our prayers that we make before thee in all our troubles and adversities, whensoever they oppress us; and graciously hear us, that those evils, which the craft and subtilty of the devil or man ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... and white as death, mercifully unconscious, while an eagle with a wild scream circled about and perched on a lightning-blasted tree far above and looked down ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Livy won't stand much chance. We have progressed as far as her twelfth year, and I was just on the point of learning how she survived scarlet fever when the doctor didn't expect her to live, last night, when she happened to remember that she hadn't looked at her history lesson and I was mercifully spared further torture." ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... report of their conversation, for the excuse I had for listening was one that is not transferable. A woman's happiness was at stake. No other consideration could have persuaded me to means so mean save an end so noble. I didn't even tell Rosalind all I heard. Mercifully for her, the candour of fools is not among my superstitions. Suffice it for all third persons to know—what Rosalind indeed has never known, and what I hope no reader will be fool enough to tell her—that Orlando was for the moment hopelessly and ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... of slain was mercifully small: of twenty that had fallen it was found that but six were dead, the others being more or less severely hurt. Conspicuous among the men that remained, and perhaps the bravest of them all was old Des Cadoux. He had recovered his snuff-box, than which there seemed to be nothing ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... nation needed discipline, and it has come suddenly, sharply, but, who shall dare to say, not mercifully? ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... to hear students in kindergarten training classes (and even some full-fledged kindergartners) express a distaste for the second gift, and it is, unfortunately, even more common to find the children dealing with it either sunk in deepest apathy, or mercifully oblivious of the matter in hand and chatting with their neighbors. The fact is that we have too commonly made the exercises dull, dreary affairs; we have doled out the forms to the children and asked a series of formal questions about them, giving no experiments, no concerted work, and no ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pound of the Pacific in his ears and the steady beat of the motor blending somehow with it, and the tingle of uncertainty as to whether they would make the next sharp curve on two wheels as successfully as they had made the last. Mercifully, they met no one on the hills. There were straight level stretches just beyond reach of the tide, and sometimes two eyes would glare at them, growing bigger and bigger. There would be a swoo—sh as a dark object shot by with mere inches to spare, and the eyes ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... thunderstruck at receiving a visit from my sister's mahogany-colored husband, Mr. Batterbury. When I was respectably settled at home, this gentleman would not so much as look at me without a frown; and now, when I was a scamp, in prison, he mercifully and fraternally came to condole with me on my misfortunes. A little dexterous questioning disclosed the secret of this prodigious change in our relations toward each other, and informed me of a family event which altered my position toward my sister ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... grasping the instrument and the key open. A bullet hole in his head mutely told how he had met his death. Beside him lay the Indian, dead, one hand grasping Hogan's scalp lock, the other clasping a murderous-looking knife. Death had mercifully prevented the accomplishment of his ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... passed in the cold and darkness, hearing the footsteps of passers-by above his living tomb, and feeling the pangs of hunger and thirst. What weeks those three days must have seemed to him in their fearful darkness, until insensibility mercifully came to his aid, and hushed his ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... Suppose that the foot of the crucifix had swung to; suppose that her father were dead; suppose that Jacob Meyer had broken into the cave? Well for herself she was no longer afraid of Jacob Meyer. Oh, they were there! The heavy door had begun to close, but mercifully her bit of rock ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... might pass years of their lives in a prison. They are not responsible for their father's misdeeds and ambition, and it may be that, if they are restored, Glendower may be induced to treat those who fall into his hands mercifully. None but ourselves know of this, and no one need ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... implacable saber-tooth tigers, and giant black-gray wolves which hunted in small, handy packs of six or seven in number. All these, the dread foes of Man for as long as tradition could remember, had been mercifully few and scattered. Now, in a night, they had become as common as conies; and not a child could be allowed to play beyond shelter of the cave-mouth fires, not a woman durst venture to the spring without a brightly blazing fire-brand in her hand. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... for half a century started up at the first shot fired against Fort Sumter. Over the chimney-place of more than one cottage in such secluded villages hangs an infantry or a cavalry sword in its dinted sheath, looked at to-day by wife or mother with the tenderly proud smile that has mercifully ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it too openly) for the urbanity of his manners. At that time, however, only a minister of such experience as Mr. Dishart's predecessor could lead up to a marriage in prayer without inadvertently joining the couple; and the catechizing was mercifully brief. Another prayer followed the union; the minister waived his right to kiss the bride; every one looked at every other one, as if he had for the moment forgotten what he was on the point of saying and found it very annoying; and Janet signed frantically to Willie Todd, who nodded intelligently ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... branches covering them from the rain. A man can scarcely be placed during a thunder-storm in a more dangerous place than a forest: every tree is a mark for the lightning; yet these men were calm and self-possessed, and were mercifully protected. ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... wit flashed with incessant brilliancy; Mr. Murphy told several stories with admirable humour; and the Bishop of Peterborough was a worthy third in contributing towards general entertainment. He turns out most gaily sociable. Mrs. H— was discussed, and, poor lady, not very mercifully. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... indifference and stupidity, or that burning sense of wrong. These sable millions are too powerful to be allowed to remain either indifferent or discontented. Enfranchise them, and they become self-respecting and country-loving citizens. Disfranchise them, and the mark of Cain is set upon them less mercifully than upon the first murderer, for no man was to hurt him. But this mark of inferiority—all the more palpable because of a difference of color—not only dooms the negro to be a vagabond, but makes him the prey of insult and outrage everywhere. While nothing may be urged ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... land those hereabout Ignore ... Its gates are barred By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt. These mercifully guard That land we seek—the land so fair!— And all the fields thereof, Where daffodils flaunt everywhere And ouzels chant of love,— Lest we attain the Middle-Land, Whence clouded well-springs rise, And vipers from a slimy strand Lift glittering ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... poor wretch, foamed like a troubled sea, following the rushing of my own tide, forsaking Thee, and exceeded all Thy limits; yet I escaped not Thy scourges. For what mortal can? For Thou wert ever with me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures: that I might seek pleasures without alloy. But where to find such, I could not discover, save in Thee, O Lord, who teachest by sorrow, and woundest us, to heal; and killest us, lest we die from Thee. Where ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... times to serve the territory for ten dollars a day and expenses. In addition to this representative group Alicran Skeel had dropped in from nowhere, Chuck Morgan had driven over with a wagon from Soogan Creek (mercifully the family at Moccasin Spring had not yet been informed of their bereavement), and Sheriff Jake Rule and his deputy Kansas Casey had ridden out from Farewell. Punch-the-breeze Thompson had returned with the sheriff. Which circumstance either disposed of the theory ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... indifference to religion and my brother in his antipathy to the house of Hers. The months kept gliding by, and still I was irresolute. I have prayed, with all the ardor I could command, for light to see my vocation; and if God have mercifully granted it, I wilfully remain blind. This self-made uncertainty and irresolution cost me many a pang; nor have I even the merit of patiently and cheerfully enduring ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... husband or wife, whom they have injured or imagine that they have injured, either during life or by not fulfilling their last wishes, declare in all good faith that the form of the dead is often present to their memory and visible while they are awake; thus implying that the dead mercifully appear to comfort their mourning friends, or else to reproach them for not fulfilling their promises. In a word, these images did not seem to them to be subjective, and an ordinary phenomenon of the memory, but objective and personal apparitions ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... mist and flame by the attack of the Air Trust epervier, Gabriel had abandoned himself for lost. Death, mercifully swift, he had felt could be his only fate; and with this thought had come no fear, but only a wild joy that he had shared this glorious battle, sure to end in victory! This was his only thought—this, and a quick ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... he travels so fast and so far that merely to follow him in fancy is a breathless business. When I have told you that Diccon belonged to the spacious times of ELIZABETH, I need hardly add that his methods of winning fame and fortune on the sea were as rough as they were ready. Mercifully he had a steady head and a very strong back, or something must have given way under the strain that his creator puts upon him. No hero in modern fiction has jumped so frequently from the frying-pan ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... nonplussed as the Government, did not dare as yet to claim the recruit. Consequently he was left alone till he should see fit to take a further step. He refused to be interviewed, using blasphemous language about our free Press; and mercifully he showed no desire to make speeches. He went down to golf at Littlestone, and rarely showed himself in the House. The earnest young reformer seemed to have adopted not only the creed but ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the deil, it was a' superstition by his way of it; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an' the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, and the deil was mercifully restrained. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... them, but they mercifully were storms of short duration, and seldom interfered with hours of travel. Staggering, but ever struggling forward, they forced their way painfully on and on, over pitiless windswept ridges, across life-sapping, desolate barrens, through scarcely less inhospitable forests. Exerting ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... of heaven, mercifully limiting the disasters of the empire within the compass of one region, led on this king to such an extravagant degree of elation, that he seemed to believe that the moment he made his appearance the besieged would be suddenly panic-stricken, and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... For five of the sleepers—nothing. The cabin which had held them was a flattened smear against the mountain side. Three more half aroused, choked, fought for life and breath in a darkness which was a mercifully short nightmare, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... examples of every kind of misery which human beings can inflict upon each other, except one. Europe has mercifully been spared long sieges of populous towns, ending in the surrender of the starving population. But many towns and villages have been burnt; and masses of refugees have fled before the invader, knowing ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... the second attack of the dragon, the woman flees a second time to the place of safety, which had been mercifully prepared for her preservation before the war began, (v. 6.) And she is in no less peril from her ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... it seemed to cause pain even to sit down. How much longer could the torment last, ere death came mercifully to their relief? ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... humiliation and gratitude to God, for His goodness and gracious protection, over my frail life, through unseen dangers of various kinds, and for his continued favors and unmerited blessings. Many of my fellow men have fallen in death's cold embrace since that time, while my health and life has been mercifully preserved. ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... gently back into his chair like a balloon mercifully relieved of some of its content. When he spoke, it was with a slow, controlled viciousness. "I've heard of guts, Joshua. I've heard of gall—plain unmitigated nerve. But this tops anything—why, man, you threw me out! You robbed me! You left me standing ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... daughter. Little more than two months elapsed, when on the 2nd of March the warning was repeated in the almost sudden death of a grandchild, daughter of his eldest son. He communicated this event with the reflection—"We have long been mercifully spared. Death has at length entered our family, and it behoves us all ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... "'Tis a talent the Lord has mercifully bestowed upon us, and we ought not to neglect it. But, what with the parsons and clerks and school-people and serious tea-parties, the merry old ways of good life have gone to the dogs—upon my ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy |
