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More "Sackcloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extremely ill of the small-pox; and it is a rule with Hindoos never to undertake any journey, even one of pilgrimage to a holy shrine, while any member of the family is afflicted with this disease; they must all sit at home clothed in sackcloth and ashes. He was told that he had better defer his journey to Benares till the child should recover; but he could neither sleep nor eat, so great was his terror, lest some dreadful calamity should befall the whole family before he could expiate his crime, or take the advice of his high ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and, if possible, its still kinder climate, which combines the soft warmth of South Devon with the bracing freshness of the Welsh mountains; where winter has slipped out of the list of the seasons, and mother Earth makes up for her summer's luxury by fasting, 'not in sackcloth and ashes, but in new silk and old sack;' and instead of standing three months chin-deep in ice, and christening great snowballs her 'friends and family,' as St. Francis of Assisi did of old, knows no severer ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Heaven, rich possessions in all zones; and we, wretched imbeciles, cannot do the function of administering them? And because the accounts do not stand well in the ledger, our remedy is, not to take shame to ourselves, and repent in sackcloth and ashes, and amend our beggarly imbecilities and insincerities in that as in other departments of our business, but to fling the business overboard, and declare the business itself to be bad? We are a hopeful set of heirs to ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... but affect the heart, and humble it in secret before God; whereas your forced and strained confessions made in public, they are merely taken on then, and proceed from no inward principle. There is no shadow of any soul humiliation, in secret, but as some use to put on sackcloth when they come to make that profession, and put it off when they go out, so you put on a habit of confession in public, and put it off you when you go out of the congregation. To be mourning before the Lord, in your ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of the Bible needs any description of Oriental mourning for the dead. The rent garments and sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31), loud weeping and wailing (ver. 32), protracted lamentation as for Jacob (Gen. 1.10 and 11), and for Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 8), and the hired mourning women (Jer. ix. 17, and Matt. ix. 23), were to be found nowhere in greater perfection than among the Nestorians. ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... old professor could have bitten out his tongue for his unholy jest. His penitence was in no wise lessened by the quality of Scott's answering laugh. Best leave those fellows to their ministerial sackcloth, without questioning the quality of the flax from which it was spun. A man of Scott Brenton's calibre would do no harm by his preaching. What was the sense of seeking to upset any orthodox beliefs he might happen to have inherited? Besides, as long as Scott ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... turkey of mine that you stole last week? You can't go to camp-meeting with that on your conscience. Come, now, better take off your finery and repent in sackcloth ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... will come back again—safe enough," commented Phil, philosophically, holding paint-brush No. 1 in his mouth, while he manipulated with No. 2. "He will come back in sackcloth and ashes; he is just that sort, you know,—thunder and lightning, fire and tow. And they will make it up ecstatically in secret, and pretend that nothing has been the matter, and there will be no going into the parlor for weeks ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 3:47 Then they fasted that day, and put on sackcloth, and cast ashes upon their heads, ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... as king of the great city of Nineveh, and after the lapse of many centuries, when Jonah came to Nineveh, and prophesied the overthrow of the city on account of the evil done by the people, it was Pharaoh who, seized by fear and terror, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and with his own mouth made proclamation and published this decree through Nineveh: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water; for I know there is no god beside Him in all ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... January 1, 1049, being then eighty-seven years old, and having been fifty-six years abbot. He would be carried to the church, to assist at the divine office, even in his agony; and having received the viaticum and extreme-unction the day before, he expired on sackcloth strewed with ashes on the ground. See his life, by his disciple Lotsald, as also, by St. Peter Damian, who wrote it soon after the saint's death, at the request of St. Hugh of Cluni, his successor, in Bollandus, and Bibliotheca Cluniacensis by Dom Marrier, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... felt at the first moment that time must pass by. He had become certain that her mad love for the man had perished. He had been made sure that she had repented her own deed in sackcloth and ashes. It had been acknowledged to him by her father that she had been anxious to be separated from her husband, if her husband would consent to such a separation. And then, remembering as he did his last interview with her, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... announce the approach of salvation to mourning Jerusalem, in which the covenant-people appears to the Prophet as personified. (Jerusalem does not stand for "the carried away Zionites;" it is an ideal person, the afflicted and bowed down widow sitting on the ground in sackcloth; the distressed and mourning mother of the children partly carried away, and partly killed,—compare chap. iii. 26, where Jerusalem, desolate and emptied, sits upon the ground.) But this salvation can be granted to those only whose hearts are ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... moreover, it would hardly have fitted the Vicar. But, as regarded Carry herself, when he thought of her in his solitary rambles, he would build little castles in the air on her behalf, in which her life should be anything but one of sackcloth and ashes. He would find for her some loving husband, who should know and should have forgiven the sin which had hardly been a sin, and she should be a loving wife with loving children. Perhaps, too, he would add ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... health will not be so firm; there will be a good deal of morbid sorrow over imaginary misdeeds, and none at all over real ones; there will be compensatory church-going, with delightful little monogram-covered prayer-books. But will the flesh be mortified by any real rough sackcloth and ashes? It is hardly to be hoped. Neither Lent, nor religion, nor judgment, nor anything but poverty and absolute impotence, will put a period to the wild pursuit of pleasure that a fashionable season begins. Ill for the next generation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... addressed her in calm, encouraging tones: "Are you ready, woman, to put away your evil-doing, and forswear your carnalities forevermore? Have you repented of your black and terrible sin? Do you ask for mercy? Have you come in sackcloth and ashes?" ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... on the other, she had a keen appreciation of the applause which the sacrifice of her fortune and her acts of piety had gained for her. Mortal vanity takes many shapes. Sometimes it arrays itself in silk and jewels; sometimes it walks in sackcloth, and speaks the language of self-abasement. In the convent, as in the world, the fair devotee thirsted for admiration. The halo of saintship glittered in her eyes like a diamond crown, and she aspired to outshine her sisters in humility. She was as sincere as Simeon Stylites on ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... before new ones. You were King of France before you were head of the brotherhoods; your conscience binds you to render to the kingship that which you owe it rather than to the fraternity that which you have promised it. You can excuse yourself from one, but not from the other. You only wear the sackcloth when you please, but you have the crown always on your head." When the wars of religion broke out, when the League took form and Henry de Guise had been assassinated at Blois, Villeroi, naturally a Leaguer and a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... performed tasks analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Jahveh, without pity for His people, called them to "weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: and behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. And the Lord of hosts revealed Himself in mine ears, Surely ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Lord: "The holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.... And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Louis without leaving a heart, or taking one with him? What wonder that these gay young beauties emptied many an Army pocket for flowers and gems, and only filled many an Army heart with despondency in return? Sackcloth lay beyond, on the frontier. Ball followed ball, one packed reception another. Dinings and sendings of flowers, and evening love-makings—these for the time seemed the main business of Jefferson Barracks. Social exemptions ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... of refuge, from which it has been thought expedient to banish everything pleasant, as though the only repentance to which we can afford to give a place must necessarily be one of sackcloth and ashes. It is hardly thus that we can hope to recall those to decency who, if they are to be recalled at all, must be induced to obey the summons before they have reached the last stage of that misery which I have attempted to describe. To me the mistake which we too often make seems ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... major-general you will scarce be permitted to return to your plough at Park-place, when we grudge every man that is left at the plough. Between the French and the earthquakes, you have no notion how good we are grown; nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth turned up with ashes. The fast was kept so devoutly, that Dick Edgecumbe, finding a very lean hazard at White's, said with a sigh, "Lord, how the times are degenerated! Formerly a fast would have brought ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the women, girt with sackcloth under their breasts, abounded in the streets, and the virgins that were kept in ran, some to the gates, and some to the walls, and others looked ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... a hardened little sinner! I abused her like a pickpocket, and called her an ungrateful serpent! Bring some sackcloth and ashes, somebody, quickly! I shall go in mourning for ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the stormy seas of time, the penitent saints serve us as saving beacons to guide our course during the tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword the sigh of repentance poured out ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... him. He looked from the young doctor to the body, and then back again. At last, with a start, he did as he was bidden. He had almost expected the sight that met his eyes, and yet the shock was cruel. To see, fixed in the rigidity of death and naked on that coarse layer of sackcloth, the man whom he had left well clad and full of meat and sin upon the threshold of a tavern, awoke, even in the thoughtless Fettes, some of the terrors of the conscience. It was a CRAS TIBI which ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Women, like Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, and Noadiah; inexperienced youths, like Jeremiah; men of high standing in society, like Isaiah and Daniel; humble men, like the ploughman Elisha and the herdsman Amos; men married and unmarried, are numbered among the Prophets. Living poorly, wearing sackcloth, feeding on vegetables, imprisoned or assassinated by kings, stoned by the people, the most unpopular of men, sometimes so possessed by the spirit as to rave like madmen, obliged to denounce judgments and woes against kings and people, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... around her, and had drawn the brown head down on her shoulder, where for a moment the child sobbed heartbrokenly. Then, with a mighty gulp, she swallowed back her grief and explained, "I heard Hope reading about the people who put on ash-cloth and sashes—I mean sackcloth and ashes whenever any one of their family died, so's the angels would let the soul into heaven. No one did that when papa died—and we don't know whether he ever got to heaven or not—but he's a man and could take care of himself, s'posing he didn't get in. With ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils. And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... in dark places are bathed in the ray of unwonted light. These long lifeless books, once most dainty, but now become corrupt and loathesome, covered with litters of mice and pierced with the gnawings of the worms, and who were once clothed in purple and fine linen, now Iying in sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion, seemed to have become habitations of the moth.... Thus the sacred vessels of learning came into our control and stewardship; some by gift, others by purchase, and some lent ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... of you," said Lady Tatham as she shook hands first with the mother, and then with the silent daughter. "Oh, I'm a dreadful neighbour. I confess it in sackcloth and ashes. I ought to have called upon you long ago. I don't know what to say. I'm incorrigible! Please will you sit down, and will you have some tea? My son will ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rebuke those cities in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they changed not their minds. [11:21]Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have changed their minds long ago in sackcloth and ashes. [11:22]But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in a day of judgment than for you. [11:23]And you, Capernaum, which are exalted even to heaven, shall go down even to hades; for if the mighty works ...
— The New Testament • Various
... conscience clothes The world in sackcloth; and, I fear, The stain of life this new heart loathes, Still clouds my sight; but thine ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... stick in her withered, trembling hand. If it had been in the country, I should most assuredly have carried up the poor creature's bundle for her; but I am sorry to say I had not moral courage to offer to do so in town: for a parson with a great sackcloth bundle on his back, would be greeted in that district with depreciatory observations. But I kept close by her, to help her if she fell; and when I got to the top of the steps I passed her and went on. I looked sharply at the poor old face in passing; I see it yet. I see the look of cowed, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... venerable about his nicely-combed gray whiskers, his white cravat, his snowy hair, his mild brown eyes, and his pleasing voice. One is almost constrained to receive him as the ideal of virtue absolved in sackcloth and ashes. As an evidence of our generosity, we regard him an excellent Christian, whose life hath been purified with an immense traffic in human—(perhaps some good friend will crack our skull ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... for they had a large supply of flowers and confetti on hand, which they were anxious to dispose of suddenly—since in ten minutes the horses would run, and then the carriages must leave the Corso. It was the last day of Carnival, and to-morrow—sackcloth and ashes. How the masks crowd around them; how the beautiful faces, unmasked, are smiling! Look at them well, stamp them on your heart, for many and many one shall we see never again. Another Carnival will bring them again, like song birds in summer; ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... surely such is not the case. Wit is the outward mental casing of the man, and has no more to do with the inner mind of thought and feelings than have the rich brocaded garments of the priest at the altar with the asceticism of the anchorite below them, whose skin is tormented with sackcloth, and whose body is half flayed with rods. Nay, will not such a one often rejoice more than any other in the rich show of outer apparel? Will it not be food for his pride to feel that he groans inwardly, while he shines outwardly? So it is with the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the trifle enclosed, $20, as a token of my friendship to the good cause, whose mighty burden of enlightenment is to hold the growth of future cycles with an all-controlling destiny. I am glad to see that those who have been willing to wear the sackcloth and ashes are beginning to receive the crowns of the olive and the bay upon their consecrated heads. Many will find it very agreeable, now, to sail in upon the sunny and ardent tide of the rippling river, forgetting that once it ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for Barney is by no means either stupid or weak. He is recklessly untidy as to his person; but the worst effects of his neglect are mitigated by a powdering of flour and mill dust; and his unbrushed clothes, made of a fashionable tailor's sackcloth, were evidently chosen regardless of expense for the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... does mean when it believes in the Highest—a thing poor Dryasdust never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for 'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling, flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them. This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted artificial 'substitute for salt,' as our fashion is. They that have human ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table,' he began to draw his breath more slowly. We saw that he was just going, so he was removed from his bed, and laid upon sackcloth and ashes. And thus, the whole family of his children being collected round him, he gave up his last breath into the hands of his ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... chair, I was, by turns, Mrs. Burwell (my own mother), Helen Maurice's Aunt Felix, Rosamond's mother, Rebecca, the Lady Rowena (my father began Ivanhoe in January), Mrs. Fairchild, Deborah, Mrs. Murray of Anna Ross, Naomi, and Ophelia. Once, I "did" Job by wrapping a meal-sack—for sackcloth—about me, and, sitting upon the ground, throwing ashes over my head and into the air, the while four colored boys, previously instructed, burst in one by one, with news of the mischief wrought by Sabean, lightning, Chaldean, and cyclone. A dramatization of Queen Esther, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Esquimo. They are woolly, fuzzy and the width of a finger thick. If I were a night-watchman, "doom'd for a certain term to walk the night," I should insist on English pajamas to keep me awake. If Saint Sebastian, who, I take it, wore sackcloth for the glory of his soul, could have lighted on the pair of pajamas that I bought on Oxford Circus, his halo would have burned ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the legislative assembly? How many of this description have been detected in their first offence, in their very offset in the career of criminality? How many ever afterwards deplore their errors in sackcloth and ashes, and conduct themselves in the most correct and unexceptionable manner? And shall no distinction be made between them and the still persevering offender whom no inducements can withhold, no punishments deter from the commission ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Bonegulch sits in sackcloth and ashes and cools her mammoth cheek in the breezes of Colorado canyon. The self-styled Emporium of the West has lost her British darling, Beaver Bill, the big swell who was first cousin to the Marquis of Buckingham and own grandmother to the Emperor of China, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... Fosdick persisted, feeding himself prodigiously, "is not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few faithful friends garbed ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... completely altered the whole manner of his life. He turned off all his brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank bitter water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered with dirt and vermin (for it was then thought very religious to be very dirty), flogged his back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little cell, washed the feet of thirteen poor people every day, and looked as miserable as he possibly could. If he had put twelve hundred monkeys on horseback ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... can the moral perversity of a young woman who never regrets a witty deception or a graceful subterfuge, but repents sometimes in sackcloth and ashes for her truth-telling. I'd give half my forest now to have back the letter I sent you yesterday. But since I cannot recall it, I wish you to bear in mind that what was true of a woman's heart yesterday, to-day may be only a little breach ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... reached the 77th verse, a strange divine entered the church, by the western door, and advanced solemnly up to the pulpit. The eyes of all the congregation were riveted on the sublime stranger, who was clothed in a robe of black sackcloth, that flowed all around him, and trailed far behind, and they weened him an angel, come to exhort them, in disguise. He read out his text from the Prophecies of Ezekiel, which consisted of these singular words: "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay! Shuddering, they drew her garments off—and found A robe of sackcloth next ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... troubles. I could neither get a sufficiency of food nor of clothing; but I suffered less from hunger than from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost in a state of nudity; no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trowsers; nothing but coarse sackcloth or tow-linen, made into a sort of shirt, reaching down to my knees. This I wore night and day, changing it once a week. In the day time I could protect myself pretty well, by keeping on the sunny side of the house; and in bad weather, in the corner of ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... quitted the apartment, when this cynic, attending him to the door with a look of morose disdain, "Were I an absolute prince," said he, "and that fellow one of my subjects, I would order him to be clothed in sackcloth, and he should drive my asses to water, that his lofty spirit might be lowered to the level of his deserts. The pride of a peacock is downright self-denial, when compared with the vanity of that coxcomb, which was naturally arrogant, but is now rendered altogether ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and Nile. Groups of men—not crowds, for there is plenty of elbow-room in Ecuador—in gay ponchos stand chatting in front of little shops, or lean against the wall to enjoy the sunshine; beggars in rags or sackcloth stretch forth their leprous hands for charity; monks in white, and canons in black, walk in the shade of immense hats; shoeless soldiers saunter to and fro; Indians from the mountains in every variety of costume cluster around heaps of ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... averted face; and in this discourse we wish to show the entire reasonableness of revelation in its frank recognition of the dark aspects of existence. Christianity is sometimes scouted as "the religion of sorrow," and many amongst us are ready to avow that the Persian forbidding the sackcloth is more to their taste than the Egyptian or the Christian dragging the corpse through the banquet; but we confidently contend that the recognition by Christ of the morbid phases of human life is altogether ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... by permission of B.P. Button & Company from "The Transfigured Sackcloth and Other ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bug came at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, and watered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly," said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a pea here that does not represent a drop of moisture ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a sea trout of 10 lb., which he has caught in the afternoon. Well; I have met many anglers in Norway who feel disgusted at such game; they want salmon, and think themselves hardly used if sea trout intrude. But I thank the gods (when I suppose I ought to sit in sackcloth for perverted taste) that up to this present Salmo trutta, great or small, evokes my fervent gratitude, and I can only say that, while I paid my five gaffed salmon the highest respect, I recall with no less satisfaction ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... hands of the divine Raphael. The age may be unsympathetic, but for those who will worship, the fire burns. Whereas art was once uplifted by the joyous acclaim of the whole people, she must now fight for space in a jostling competition. But is it not more reasonable that the prophet lay aside his sackcloth and accept the conditions of the new era, acknowledging that art has had its day in the sanctuary and has now come to adorn the home and that of necessity therefore the conditions of subject and of size must be altered? The impulse which aforetime ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... denounced against all these offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... dignity." "Your excellence," replied the priest, "must remember that there are various opinions as to what constitutes true dignity. For myself, I hold to Saint Peter's notion, that a man may maintain his dignity, though clothed in sackcloth. And since no really great ambassador ever thought of travelling in any other manner, I think you may venture to follow their example, without fear of damaging your dignity." This so completely reconciled the general, that he declared all his objections removed, and enjoined the priest not ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... poison of them entered her soul, corroded her sentiments towards him, dissolved the love she had borne him, and transformed it into venom. She would not have him now if he did penitence for his disaffection by going in sackcloth and crawling after her on his knees for a full twelvemonth. But neither should he have Ruth if she could thwart his purpose. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... following effect: It enacted, that no cambrics, French lawns, or linens of this kind usually entered under the denomination of cambrics, should be imported after the first day of next August, but in bales, cases, or boxes, covered with sackcloth or canvas, containing each one hundred whole pieces, or two hundred half pieces, on penalty of forfeiting the whole; that cambrics and French lawns should be imported for exportation only, lodged in the king's warehouses, and delivered out under like security, and restrictions as prohibited ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... you from the windows of those picture-shops which are a disgrace to our national morality? Is it from such as she that you will learn to be spiritual-minded? Does she appear before your carnal crowds repentant, her forehead covered with ashes, her limbs covered with sackcloth? No! Her brow is glowing with unquenchable fire to kindle the fuel that the devil has hidden in your hearts. Her raiment is cloth of gold; and she is not covered with it. Naked and unashamed, she smiles and weeps in mockery of the virtue which you would persuade yourselves that she ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... day and ghastly night, That dreads the darkness, and yet loathes the light, 1130 That winds around, and tears the quivering heart! Ah! wherefore not consume it—and depart! Woe to thee, rash and unrelenting Chief! Vainly thou heap'st the dust upon thy head, Vainly the sackcloth o'er thy limbs dost spread:[188] By that same hand Abdallah—Selim bled. Now let it tear thy beard in idle grief: Thy pride of heart, thy bride for Osman's bed, She, whom thy Sultan had but seen to wed,[hf] Thy Daughter's dead! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... my son? Needs must I punish thee, and as for Alaeddin, he will assuredly be hanged.' 'And I will die for love of him,' answered Jessamine. Then Khatoun stripped her of her jewels and silken raiment and clothing her in sackcloth drawers and a shift of hair-cloth, sent her down into the kitchen and made her a scullery-wench, saying, 'Thy punishment shall be to split wood and peel onions and set fire under the cooking pots.' Quoth she, 'I am willing to brook all ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... still Till the last echo died; then, throwing off The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back The pall from the still features of his child. He bowed his head upon him and broke forth In ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... mourning experience; and with many of God's best beloved, one tear is scarce dried when another is ready to flow! Mourners! rejoice! When the reaping time comes, the weeping time ends! When the white robe and the golden harp are bestowed, every remnant of the sackcloth attire is removed. The moment the pilgrim, whose forehead is here furrowed with woe, bathes it in the crystal river of life,—that moment the pangs of a lifetime of sorrow are eternally forgotten! Reader! if thou art one of these ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... globe, some empty, some being filled, others stacked in readiness for the carriers: a Babel of sounds, of hammering clamps, of creaking barrows, of horses by the open doors rattling their heavy harness and trampling the flagstones with their heavy hoofs; a ceaseless rushing of brawny men in sackcloth aprons, of dusty men with stumps of pencils and note-books and crumpled invoices, counting and checking and reporting to other men in narrow glass offices against the wall. Outside stood the great wagons laden with the white ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... above the squalor of the Moghrebin quarter to an eastern sky from which a sun that seldom sleeps bakes the grey stones, bares every detail of a crumbling ruin, and intensifies the wistful odor of decay. This, the remnant of Solomon's glory, is the Wailing Wall of the Jews. Clad in sackcloth and covered with ashes, patriarchal figures sway to and fro, press their lips to the hot granite, beat now their chests and now the wall, and today, as every day for eighteen hundreds of years, wail in ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... giving way to their grief, the mourners filed into the room. Some had cymbals, some flutes, some pieces of sackcloth which they put over their heads before turning their faces to the wall. "Alas the lion—alas the hero—alas for him!" wailed the mourners. "Woe! Woe! Death hath entered into the place of the living and hath taken ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... of heaven I dream, But that is a pullet and clouted cream; Myself by denial I mortify— With a dainty bit of a warden-pie; I'm clothed in sackcloth for my sin— With old sack wine I'm lined within; A chirping cup is my matin song, And the vesper's bell is my bowl, ding-dong. What baron or squire, Or knight of the shire, Lives half so well ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Take sackcloth of the darkest hue, And shroud the pulpits round; Servants of him who cannot lie Sit mourning ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... forget what hands have borne You to the heights and crowned you? Would you behold what sackcloth has been worn That laurels may ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... time when fashionable people finish the season by going to Goodwood—and to Goodwood Elinor was going with a party, Lady Mariamne and a number of the "set." She told her mother, to amuse her, of the new dresses she had got for this important occasion. "Phil says one may go in sackcloth and ashes the remainder of the year, but we must be fine for Goodwood," she said. "I wanted him to believe that I had too many clothes already, but he was inexorable. It is not often, is it, that one's husband is more anxious than one's ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... there you may watch the volcano better than from Naples. To-day come the Duke and Duchess d'Aosta to render assistance to the homeless and hungry; to-morrow His Majesty the King will be here to discover what damage has been caused. Alas! we have no sackcloth, but we are in ashes. I trust you will pardon my poor Naples for ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... hear it," said Maggie judicially. "And I hope now that she'll spend the rest of her days in sackcloth—with a scourge," she added. "Oh, did I ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Why their stage curtain consists of a large piece of threadbare sackcloth pasted over with tricolored paper on which they have painted the national coat of arms. Their wardrobe too is of the very simplest description. When they play a piece in which kings and queens appear, they ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... that I crave,' she said. 'I would have the glory of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But if you will have me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me as of such ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... got my first glimpse of the native fashion in mourning. It is a survival of the biblical "sackcloth and ashes." As soon as a death occurs all the members of the family smear their faces and bodies with ashes or dirt. Even the babies show these rude symbols of woe. It gives the person thus adorned ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... affections, rid In post for pleasures, bent to try All gamesters that would bid. I played with fire, did counsel spurn, Made life my common stake; But never thought that fire would burn, Or that a soul could ache. Glorious deceptions, gilded mists, False joys, fantastic flights, Pieces of sackcloth with silk lists, These were my prime delights. I sought choice bowers, haunted the spring, Culled flowers and made me posies; Gave my fond humours their full wing, And crowned my head with roses. But ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Nation that firmly was settling The crown on her head, Sits, like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes, And watches ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... for a space that I met her— Just for a day in the train! It began when she feared it would wet her, That tiniest spurtle of rain: So we tucked a great rug in the sashes, And carefully padded the pane; And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes, Longing ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... remedy by trimming it off short with scissors. No Turk could have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,—his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell under a chest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... sooner ordained priest and consecrated as archbishop than he changed his habits. He became as austere as Lanfranc. He laid aside his former ostentation. He clothed himself in sackcloth; he mortified his body with fasts and laceration; he associated only with the pious and the learned; he frequented the cloisters and places of meditation; he received into his palace the needy and the miserable; he washed the feet of thirteen ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Linlithgow's holy dome The King, as wont, was praying; While, for his royal father's soul, The chanters sung, the bells did toll, The bishop mass was saying - For now the year brought round again The day the luckless king was slain - In Katharine's aisle the monarch knelt, With sackcloth-shirt and iron belt, And eyes with sorrow streaming; Around him, in their stalls of state, The Thistle's knight-companions sate, Their banners o'er them beaming. I too was there, and, sooth to tell, Bedeafened with the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... and steel goods. Even were this decline permanent, it would not be the fault of our manufacturers, nor—except as a device for reducing their personal expenditure—is there any reason why these gentlemen should sit in sackcloth ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made; Thy bridal's fruit is ashes; in the dust The fair-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... dread of the scenes which he might encounter there. His crimes had condemned thousands to death and other thousands to live-long woe. He sought by priestcraft, and penances, and monastic vows, and garments of sackcloth, to efface the stains of a soul crimsoned with crime. He died, and his guilty spirit passed away to meet ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... at Jerusalem; and no doubt he laughed inwardly at the folly: but he must obey orders. Yet he hesitated, when he landed and saw the Jews come to him in thousands, covering the country like a cloud, young and old, rich and poor, unarmed, many clothed in sackcloth and with ashes on their heads, and beseeching him that he would not commit this abomination. He rebuked them sternly. He had a whole army at his back, and would compel them to obey. They answered that they must obey God rather ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... where purple, and scarlet, and green, and orange, and every gay colour, were mingled with cloth of gold and fair embroidery; instead of this, crept on the gloomy pageant of superstition, in cowl and sackcloth; with cross and coffin, and frightful symbols of human suffering. In place of the frank, hardy knight, open and brave, with his lady's favour in his casque, and amorous motto on his shield, looking, by gallant deeds, to win the smile of beauty, came the shaven, unmanly monk, with downcast ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... upon the land, And shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly, And shall cast up dust upon their heads, and wallow in the ashes; And they shall make themselves bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, And they shall weep for thee in bitterness of soul with bitter mourning. And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, And lament over thee saying, Who is there like Tyre, Like her that is brought to silence in the midst of the sea? When thy wares went forth ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... years of grandmotherhood had Mrs. Tams cast off the sackcloth of the charwoman and become a glorious domestic servant, with a room of her own in the house, and no responsibilities beyond the house, and no right to leave the house save once a week, when she visited younger generations, who still took ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... maintained a border warfare against the Moslems. At last he was taken prisoner and sent in chains to Medina. As he was conducted into the Great Mosque, Omar exclaimed, "Blessed be the Lord, that hath humbled this man and the like of him!" He bade them disrobe the prisoner and clothe him in sackcloth. Then, whip in hand, he upbraided him for his oft-repeated attacks and treachery. Hormuzan made as if fain to reply; then gasping, like one faint from thirst, he begged for water to drink. "Give it him," said the caliph, "and let him drink in peace." "Nay," ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... former looked like a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him—to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-cri-tical ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... way back to the camp was he sensible of the murmurs of censure at his hypocrisy in joining the penitential procession at all. Dame Idonea, in a complete suit of sackcloth, was informing her friends that she had made a vow not to wash her face till the whole adder brood of Montfort had been crushed; and that she trusted to see the beginning of justice done to-morrow. She had offered a candle to St. James to that effect, hoping ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon it; there had been a scare about spies carrying explosives in small objects, and one of those experimental orders which pass like waves over bureaucracy had decreed first that all visitors should change their clothes for a sort of official sackcloth, and then (when this method caused some murmurs) that they should at least turn out their pockets. Colonel Morris, the officer in charge, was a short, active man with a grim and leathery face, but a lively ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth" (chap. 11:1-3). ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... set of difficulties they have involved us in with their accursed astronomy. Boccaccio and the Troubadours should have been burned instead, and if this had been done all the abominable modern literature which would persuade the faithful that this world is not all sackcloth and ashes would never have been written. Away with him who says that the earth is as beautiful as heaven," and Gautier's phrase, "Moi, je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Barnes. When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! Mrs. Hobson's homilies must have been awful. How that outraged virtue must have groaned and lamented, gathered its children about its knees, wept over them and washed them; gone into sackcloth and ashes and tied up the knocker; confabulated with its spiritual adviser; uttered commonplaces to its husband; and bored the whole house! The punishment of worldliness and vanity, the evil of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sub-prior, died,—some say of austerities, others of ale,—that matters not; he was a learned man and a cunning. 'Nephew Nicholas,' said he on his death-bed, 'think twice before you tie yourself up to the cloister; it's ill leaping nowadays in a sackcloth bag. If a pious man be moved to the cowl by holy devotion, there is nothing to be said on the subject; but if he take to the Church as a calling, and wish to march ahead like his fellows, these times show him a prettier ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the West, the new London of Covent Garden, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly, whose glories her sister's pen had depicted with such fond enthusiasm, was now deserted by the rabble of quality who had peopled its palaces, while the old London of the East, the historic city, was sitting in sackcloth and ashes, a place of lamentations, a city where men and women rose up in the morning hale and healthy, and at night-fall were carried away in the dead-cart, to be flung into the pit where the dead lay shroudless ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... evil every good. You cannot diffuse education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of pessimism. 'We see not yet all things put under Him'; but 'we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour,' and the vision that cheered the first martyr—of Christ 'standing at the right hand of God'—is the rebuke of every fear ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgement than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... the shadow of an effectual blow, having no strength to do more than utter, from time to time, as he raised himself on his bed, the cry of Jerusalem! Jerusalem! and, at the last moment, as he lay in sackcloth and ashes, pronouncing merely these parting words: "Father, after the example of our Divine Master, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!" Even the crusader was extinct in St. Louis; and only the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... nearly at death's door again and again. I cannot tell you what I have suffered, but, now that I am here, never more will I stir from your feet. Rather will I be a servant in your house than a queen in another. Rather will I wear sackcloth where you are than a golden mantle away from you. Rather will I turn a spit in your kitchen than hold a sceptre under the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... light a heart or felt so well satisfied as since I smashed those murder mills. For years I had an aching, weeping heart. I would often put ashes on my head. I felt like wearing sackcloth. I can see the hand of God in my life. From a small child I loved the world, used to be fond of pets. It seemed that my pets always came to grief. Then I was very anxious to be thought smart. Would try to write and wanted a thorough education. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... an occasion of joy. Why should it not be so! Is not the heaven over your heads, which has so long been clothed in sackcloth, beginning to disclose its starry principalities and illumine your pathway? Do you not see the pitiless storm which, has so long been pouring its rage upon you breaking away, and a bow of promise as glorious as that which succeeded the ancient deluge ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... been biting her nails) And then ... and doubtless ... and strangely ... And not more thriftiness in Bergthorsknoll Where Njal saves old soft sackcloth for his wife. Oh, I must sit with peasants and aged women, And keep my head ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... sackcloth and ashes. My dream castles have tumbled down upon my head and left me bruised and sorrowful. I'm awake at last! I'd like to bury my face in my old red and green patchwork quilt and ask forgiveness for being a fool. But I must compose myself ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... upon the true occasion for them they were absent. So, too, at the first meal in the new house, there was none of that desirable sense of setting up a family altar, but a calamitous impression of irretrievable upheaval, in honor of which sackcloth and ashes seemed the only wear. Yet even the next day the Lares and Penates had regained something of their wonted cheerfulness, and life had begun again with the first breakfast. In fact, I found myself already so firmly established that, meeting the furniture cart which had moved me the day ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... committed by (possibly) the ancestors of the very men to whom we are now supposed to owe reparation. To the same cause is to be attributed the absurd demand that the Irish Catholics should put on ashes and sackcloth for the massacres of 1641, or that living Irishmen should be grateful for the well-meant though most unsuccessful efforts made by the Parliament of the United Kingdom to govern one-third of the United Kingdom on sound principles of justice. A Sovereign's ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... flocking out at the town gate, for they wanted to see the witch burned. The old horse drew the cart on which she sat. They had put upon her a garment of coarse sackcloth. Her lovely hair hung loose about her beautiful head; her cheeks were as pale as death; and her lips moved silently, while her fingers were engaged with the green flax. Even on the way to death she did not interrupt the work she had begun; the ten shirts ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Reynolds's highest card, and when out among the people he was always figuratively clothed in sackcloth and ashes. A few extracts from his book ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... laurelled chieftain or a titled senator. True, the throng who came out to see that pale form and marble brow were not gathered from the proud and great of earth. No king came weeping to the house of death; no noble cortege came in sackcloth and stood as mourners there; but the elect of God, the fruits of missionary labor on heathen soil, the converted sons and daughters of darkness, were the sincere, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... of the tribe, however, took the matter so much to heart that they obeyed the injunction of the great medicine-men literally, and took to sackcloth and ashes as soon as they reached home. Their motives were extremely laudable, but their action was by no means wise. They lost sight of what the shaman had strongly insisted upon; namely, that none of them should, by displaying particular sadness or by ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... when He had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... to have it challenged in so publick a Manner. It must be allowed, that any young Fellow that affects to dress and appear genteelly, might with artificial Management save ten Pound a Year; as instead of fine Holland he might mourn in Sackcloth, and in other Particulars be proportionably shabby: But of what great Service would this Sum be to avert any Misfortune, whilst it would leave him deserted by the little good Acquaintance he has, and prevent his gaining any other? As the Appearance ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... multitudes commoved to tears, of tyrannies destroyed and constitutions founded by tumultuous assemblies, of hostile parties and vindictive nobles locked in fraternal embraces, of cities clothed in sackcloth for their sins, of exhortations to peace echoing by the banks of rivers swollen with blood, of squares and hillsides resonant with sobs, of Lenten nights illuminated with bonfires of Vanity.[1] In the midst of these melodramatic scenes towers the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... which gave its name to the pirate ship "Alabama" now votes for tariffs to exclude the iron, steel, and coal of England. Sheffield is in sackcloth and ashes because Pennsylvania has taken away from her the Russian order for armor plates, and countless millions of British dollars are invested in American factories, giving high wages to tariff-protected American workmen instead of sweaters' wages ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... did, when he asked me to marry him. It was King Cophetua wooing the beggar-maid—and the beggar was an impudent, ungrateful, idiotic little piece!" Margaret hissed, in her most shrewish manner. "She ought to be spanked. She ought to go down on her knees to him in sackcloth, and tears, and ashes, and all sorts of penitential things. She will, too. Oh, it's such a beautiful world—such a beautiful world! Billy loves me—really! Billy's a millionaire, and I'm a pauper. Oh, I'm glad, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... frivolous, all about the good times she was having, and the parties she went to, and the new dresses she got. New dresses! When I read that letter of Anne's, I knew that all the purple and fine linen in the world was just like so much sackcloth and ashes to her as long as Gilbert was sulking out ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... condescend to offer. Fling down thy heading staff—renounce thy command—unbind thy prisoners—restore thy spoil—distribute what else thou hast of goods, to relieve those whom thou hast made orphans and widows—array thyself in sackcloth and ashes—take a palmer's staff in thy hand, and go barefooted on pilgrimage to Rome, and we will ourselves be intercessors for thee with the Imperial Chamber at Ratisbon for thy life, With our Holy Father the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... reason alone. If anything, there is, perhaps, too little pomp and ceremony in our worship, instead of too much. We quarrelled with the Roman Catholic Church, in a great hurry and a great passion; and, furious with spleen, clothed ourselves with sackcloth, because she was habited in brocade; rushing, like children, from one extreme to another, and blind to all medium between complication and barrenness, formality and neglect. I am very glad to find we are calling in, more and more, the aid of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... last, I was in the dumps. It was a dull world, and all the tigers I had ever shot were mounted on sackcloth, or stuffed with ashes. Sounds disgusting, doesn't it? But suddenly, the sun broke out, and dulness and tigers fled together. I suppose I must always have been a creature of moods, and didn't know ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... when they were sick, I put on sackcloth, and humbled my soul with fasting: and my prayer shall turn ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... shall repent of this in sackcloth and ashes! Detest and loathe as you please, you shall feel my lips upon your own! and ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... in words. The fount is these nine days dry. The prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased nor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlings be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment, sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And at last they sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the man, with a leer, "sitting in sackcloth and ashes, more ashes than sackcloth. Have you got ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... Rybin. "That's the star under which you were born. That's why. You think a chintz kerchief can conceal the blot of the nobleman from the eyes of the people? We'll recognize a priest even if he's wrapped in sackcloth. Here, for instance, you put your elbows on a wet table, and you started and frowned. Besides, your back is too straight ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... allowing me to know even his whole name—Vivian only, this and nothing more; he, a British officer, in a mad impulse (I am like him) marries my mother, nobody's daughter, and a ballet dancer, during a run he made to New York city just thirty-five years ago; my sire repents in sackcloth and ashes, dragging us with him; sells out; living by his wits anyhow and anywhere, chiefly at gaming places abroad. At a German suburb once he had left us, my late husband came to our cottage to enquire his road; as he was an American, ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... go you, and tell the young woman who sent you here she must come in sackcloth and ashes, if she can get them, and she must tell me her tale and her father's tale, without a lie mixed up in them; and when she has done this, and has humbly asked my pardon for the foul affront she has put upon me, then it will be time enough ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or not. And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn in pieces. And Jacob rent his garments, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down to the grave to my son mourning. And his father wept for him. ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... joy in their joy because he was filled with such heavy melancholy that it was as though even the blue sky had turned to sackcloth to his eyes, so that he beheld nothing bright ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... famine, war, &c.; and though they sadly neglected the commands of God in other particulars, yet they obeyed this command with great devotedness. The abstinence of the ancient Jews generally lasted from twenty-six to twenty-seven hours. On these days they wore sackcloth, laid themselves in ashes, and sprinkled them on their heads, in token of their great grief and penitence. Some spent the whole night in the synagogue; occasionally using with great effect a scourge as a penance for their sins, or as a stimulant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... waited on us looking like some old crazy loon out of the Bible. He'd made himself a prickly shirt of sackcloth and had smeared his black head and brown face with gray ashes. Big Bahut whimpered all night and trumpeted as if his ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... other mothers, how to gloat over the sweet charms of the one thing which in all the world had been quite her own. She had revelled in kisses and soft touches. Her Hester's garments had been a delight to her, till she had taught herself to think that though sackcloth and ashes were the proper wear for herself and her husband, nothing was too soft, too silken, too delicate for her little girl. The roses in the garden, and the goldfish in the bowl, and the pet spaniel, had been there because such surroundings had been needed for the ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... you can the moral perversity of a young woman who never regrets a witty deception or a graceful subterfuge, but repents sometimes in sackcloth and ashes for her truth-telling. I'd give half my forest now to have back the letter I sent you yesterday. But since I cannot recall it, I wish you to bear in mind that what was true of a woman's heart yesterday, to-day may be only a little breach of sentiment with ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... description given, may one be gay upon the Encantadas? Yes: that is, find one the gayety, and he will be gay. And, indeed, sackcloth and ashes as they are, the isles are not perhaps unmitigated gloom. For while no spectator can deny their claims to a most solemn and superstitious consideration, no more than my firmest resolutions can decline to behold ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... it were to mark the day Of penitence and prayer divine, When pilgrim-chiefs, in sad array, Sought Melrose, holy shrine. With naked foot, and sackcloth vest, And arms enfolded on his breast, Did every pilgrim go; The standers-by might hear aneath, Footstep, or voice, or high-drawn breath. Through all the lengthened row; No lordly look, no martial stride, Gone was their ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... and more powerful spirit, the genius of religious freedom, comes to participate in the great conflict. Arbitrary power, incarnated in the second Charlemagne, assails the new combination with unscrupulous, unforgiving fierceness. Venerable civic magistrates; haltered, grovel in sackcloth and ashes; innocent, religious reformers burn in holocausts. By the middle of the century, the battle rages more fiercely than ever. In the little Netherland territory, Humanity, bleeding but not killed, still stands at bay and defies the hunters. The two ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in which He had wrought so many mighty works, and wherein the people repented not: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... above, of gorgeous marriage processions, and the "voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride," of glittering trains of mandarins, of funeral processions, with the wail of hired mourners clad in sackcloth and ashes, of the Tartar city with its pagodas, of the hills of graves, great cities of the dead outside the walls, fiery-red under the tropic blue, of the "potter's field" with its pools of blood and sacks of heads, and crosses for ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... patience with such stuff As by Renan is writ, and when you read (Why do you read?) have hardly strength enough To hold your hand from flinging the vile screed Into the fire. That were a wasteful deed Which you'd repent in sackcloth extra rough; For books cost money, and I'm told you care To lay up treasures Here as ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... in and announced that a picture had come for me. We poured into the hall. Yes, it had come. In the charge of two messenger-boys and a taxi, carefully shrouded in sackcloth. Berry touched the latter and nodded approval. Then ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... became an inmate of a monastery far in the interior, where he undertook to perform the most menial services for the monks. Failing to find peace in this, he penetrated into the depths of a wilderness, clothed himself in sackcloth, and lived on the coarsest fare, away from the abodes of man. Here also he was disappointed. Returning to Constantinople, he united himself to the papal Armenians, hoping in their communion to find the relief ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... felt her first pang of remorse that she had told a fib, or rather, that she was found out in telling a fib, which is a far more cogent reason for repentance. Heaven help us! if some people were to do penance for telling lies, would they ever be out of sackcloth and ashes? ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... women wearing crape during the centennial glorification, the men should sit down in sackcloth and ashes, in humiliation of spirit, as those who repented in olden times were wont to do. The best centennial celebration, said they, for the men of the United States, the one to cover them with glory, would be to extend ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... all these offences; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the tribe, however, took the matter so much to heart that they obeyed the injunction of the great medicine-men literally, and took to sackcloth and ashes as soon as they reached home. Their motives were extremely laudable, but their action was by no means wise. They lost sight of what the shaman had strongly insisted upon; namely, that none of them should, by displaying particular sadness or by dropping mysterious hints, attract ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... by which I can sit down and rest, and pleasant streams, where I sometimes drink, mostly in secret, and am refreshed. I often remember the saying of a beloved friend, long since translated from this scene of mutation to a state of eternal beatitude: 'I wear my sackcloth on my loins; I don't wish to afflict others by carrying a sorrowful countenance.' A wise conclusion. I love to diffuse happiness over all with whom I come in contact. But all this is a kind of accident. I took up my pen to tell thee ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... "don't flatter. My heart is dreadful weak, and prone to the vanities of this world. It makes me abhor myself in dust and sackcloth fer you to say such things about ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... our friend is in the glow of a summer sunset: and we call him unsympathetic and unfeeling. If we let him know the state of our world, we should see the rosehues fade from his, and our friend put off his singing robes, and sit down with us in sackcloth and ashes, to share our temptation ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... tasteful gaiety of tint, which he had at the time thought very well of. But now, as he spread out the whole array on his bed, it seemed too emblematic of a light and blameless spirit for his wear. He ought to put on something as nearly analogous to sackcloth as a modern stock of dry-goods afforded; he ought, at least, to wear the grave materials of his winter costume. But they were really insupportable in this sudden access of summer. Besides, he had grown thin during his sickness, and the things ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... their sickness my clothing was sackcloth, With fasting I humbled my soul, And my prayer into my own ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... lovers of freedom, and, wherever a struggle has been made on American soil for liberty, one of these descendants of the youth who landed on American soil with Columbus, in 1492, has been found. They disliked Andros, and the members of this now extensive and widely scattered family were in sackcloth and ashes, so to speak, when King James, in 1688, gave Andros a vice-regal commission to rule New York ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... increased by this unexpectedly reckless attitude on the part of the man who should, he felt, be abased in sackcloth before him. He regarded the other with ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... might behold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon a time when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, it might be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon as sackcloth of hair, the last trump ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Mussulmans of the East even the shadow of an effectual blow, having no strength to do more than utter, from time to time, as he raised himself on his bed, the cry of Jerusalem! Jerusalem! and, at the last moment, as he lay in sackcloth and ashes, pronouncing merely these parting words: "Father, after the example of our Divine Master, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!" Even the crusader was extinct in St. Louis; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... road beyond the brook climbs at once into the woods, and you see all the horses' backs rising, one above another, like moving stairs. Cattiwow strode ahead in his sackcloth woodman's petticoat, belted at the waist with a leather strap; and when he turned and grinned, his red lips showed under his sackcloth-coloured beard. His cap was sackcloth too, with a flap behind, to keep twigs and bark out of his neck. He navigated the ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Lily Dallam in her usual staccato, following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses. She's stopped mourning for her husband. Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the sackcloth and kept the ashes. He's awfully clever. I don't wonder that she's crazy about him, do ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... always produced for a guest. The penitential husks which her sisters would have thought proper in the circumstances were not for Lois. He could not imagine her, no matter how grievously she might sin, as meekly repenting in sackcloth and ashes. He wondered just what she meant to do now that she had come back; he wondered what her sisters and the rest of Montgomery would do! The situation interested him impersonally. It sufficed for the moment that she was there, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... many in every market place, to consult the destiny in regard to his future fortunes; and they use the same forms before celebrating their marriages, to ascertain the lucky times. When a person of note dies, the kindred clothe themselves in canvas or sackcloth, and accompany the body to the funeral, both men and women, people being employed to play on musical instruments, and singing all the way prayers to their idols; and being come to the place, they cast into the fire in which the body is burnt, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... thought, "I will run for it;" and he groped his way out of the dark saloon to the front shop, where he paused, and, taking a match from his pocket, struck a light. His parcel proved to be rough sackcloth, on the outside of ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... careless tone of her usual day's work, but how much of her time had been occupied in doing the tasks of others? He knew well that she disliked the Carrolls. She would speak of her own dislike of them as of her great sin, of which it was necessary that she should repent in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... that Nelson exclaimed, "Do his majesty's ministers know their own minds? They at home," said he, "do not know what this fleet is capable of performing—anything and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see England, I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England, whose fleets are equal to meet the world in arms; and of all the fleets I ever saw, I never beheld one, in point of officers and men, equal to Sir John Jervis's, who is a commander-in-chief ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... autumn sun Saddens all it looks upon, Spreads its sackcloth on the hills, Strews its ashes in the rills, Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff, And in limbs of purest buff Challengest the sombre ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... where it may be, Nor the fortunes that years may alter, Be they simple or wise, the old home ties Make all of 'em often falter. Time may robe 'em in sackcloth coarse Or garb 'em in gorgeous splendor, But whatever their lot, they keep one spot Down deep ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Then they fasted that day, and put on sackcloth, and cast ashes upon their heads, ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... girl? Why, my dear man, that was nearly thirteen years ago. I am sorry that she had to go the way she did, but, good Lord, I can't go through life in sackcloth and ashes because she died—as a lot of people do, every year, you know. Hers was not an uncommon case. There are thousands just like it happening every year. It's the price we all pay, men and women. There's no use ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the gentle Saviour His eyes like midnight star, And His mournful gaze soon rested on ten lepers, who, afar, Stood motionless and suppliant, in sackcloth rudely clothed, Poor Pariahs! by their nearest, their dearest, shunned ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... disprove the accusation. Without a guess that he could be injuring his own land and enriching that of his enemy, an innocent magistrate of Amsterdam did that for which he would afterward have submitted to the abuse of his friends, and if sackcloth and ashes had been in vogue he would have worn them. It all came about through his wish to be pleasant to a Frenchman, the same being Louis XIV. He sent to this monarch a curiosity in the form of a young coffee-tree, thinking, no doubt, that a warm corner could be found for it in the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... I dream, But that is a pullet and clouted cream; Myself by denial I mortify— With a dainty bit of a warden-pie; I'm clothed in sackcloth for my sin— With old sack wine I'm lined within; A chirping cup is my matin song, And the vesper's bell is my bowl, ding-dong. What baron or squire, Or knight of the shire, Lives half so well as ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... How well they understood those little attentions of friendship, so superior to costly presents, unhappy being that I am. Why do I thus deceive myself? What is to be the outcome of all this wild, aimless, endless passion? I cannot pray except to her. Oh, Wilhelm, the hermit's cell, his sackcloth and girdle of thorns, would be luxury and indulgence compared with what ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... at all the art of the Middle Ages, nor its saints, whose vestment was sackcloth and whose body was a mere lay figure for a soul devoted entirely to purity, to simplicity, to mysticism, and to the other world. In the Sixteenth Century, however, people took the sackcloth from the saints and dressed them in flesh. Then was produced a kind of revival ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... that teeming consort to my soul;—never, ah! never shall we part; for soon as my fame shall shine unclouded by the charge of treason that now hangs over it, I will devote myself to penitence and woe. A cold, damp pavement shall be my bed; my raiment shall be sackcloth; the fields shall furnish herbage for my food; the stream shall quench my thirst; the minutes shall be numbered by my groans; the night be privy to my strains of sorrow, till Heaven, in pity to my sufferings, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Joan looking so charming. Of course she was in grey—that was in the nature of a certainty on such an occasion, but she might have been in sackcloth for all the attention Vane paid to her clothes. It was her face that held him, with the glow of perfect health on her cheeks, and the soft light of utter happiness in her eyes. She was pretty—always; but with a sudden catch ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... plume, and scarf, and banner, where purple, and scarlet, and green, and orange, and every gay colour, were mingled with cloth of gold and fair embroidery; instead of this, crept on the gloomy pageant of superstition, in cowl and sackcloth; with cross and coffin, and frightful symbols of human suffering. In place of the frank, hardy knight, open and brave, with his lady's favour in his casque, and amorous motto on his shield, looking, by gallant deeds, to win the smile of beauty, came the shaven, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... by books the number of years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth and ashes." It appears from his prayer, that he supposed the Babylonish captivity of seventy years, would terminate the chastisement of his nation. Upon which the angel Gabriel was sent to "give him skill and understanding," ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... came to pass, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he rent his clothes; and he passed by upon the wall, and the people looked, and, behold, he had sackcloth ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment" (here she pointed to her children). "Who would burden themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could help it? ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... was having, and the parties she went to, and the new dresses she got. New dresses! When I read that letter of Anne's, I knew that all the purple and fine linen in the world was just like so much sackcloth and ashes to her as long as Gilbert was sulking out on ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... got fairly into the wine. The cura had thrown aside his sanctity and become human like the rest; the padres had forgotten their sackcloth and bead-roll, and the senior of them, Padre Joaquin, entertained the table with spicy adventures which had occurred to him before he became a monk. Echevarria related anecdotes of Paris, with many adventures he had ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... of "taking the heart of stone out of them and giving them a heart of flesh." A Plato would rather have spoken of taking the films from their intellectual gaze and opening their eyes to the pure essences of things. The Hebrew would sit in sackcloth and ashes to atone for his offences and to induce the proper spiritual submission. The Hellene would only fast, if he fasted at all, so that he might by his plain living secure high thinking. No ardent missionaries, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... to wait the Pope's pleasure; and here, in the midst of that bitter winter weather, while the fierce winds of the Apennines were sweeping sleet upon him in their passage from Monte Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt barefoot, clothed in sackcloth, fasting from dawn till eve, for three whole days. On the morning of the fourth day, judging that Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit would not be granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of S. Nicholas, which stood within this second precinct. There ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... and other food of the richest kind. Sometimes I sleep on an elevated bedstead of the best kind. Sometimes I sleep on the bare ground. Sometimes my bed is made within a fine palace or mansion. I am sometimes clad in rags, sometimes in sackcloth, sometimes in raiments of fine texture, sometimes in deer-skins, sometimes in robes of the costliest kind. I never reject such enjoyments as are consistent with virtue and as are obtained by me without effort. I do not, at the same time, strive for attaining such objects as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... pretty stories. Algernon Charles Swinburne has more fire in him, and more wealth of expression, but he does not prophesy; he has a clever way of combining Biblical similes with Provengal passion—et voila tout! The prophets are always poor—the sackcloth and ashes of the world are their portion; and their bodies moulder a hundred years or more in the grave before the world finds out what they meant by their ravings. But apropos of these lines of Shelley. He speaks of the duality of existence. 'Nothing ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... know how it is with my brothers in Mizpeh," Said Achan, the swift-footed runner of Zorah, "They look at the wood they have hewn for the altar; And think of a shadow in sackcloth and ashes. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... the width of a finger thick. If I were a night-watchman, "doom'd for a certain term to walk the night," I should insist on English pajamas to keep me awake. If Saint Sebastian, who, I take it, wore sackcloth for the glory of his soul, could have lighted on the pair of pajamas that I bought on Oxford Circus, his halo would have burned ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... many sleeping-chambers, where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two occupants, and provided with sheets and pillow-cases that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the sense of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the arrangements of the almshouse; a little cheap luxury for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a substantial good. But, at all events, there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... then deprived me of my outward apparel, sash and sword, and having confined my hands and feet in chains, the links thereof were of a triangular form, they put sackcloth ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... of Joseph from Canaan was complete. It was an evanishment for which there was neither sackcloth nor surprise; and though there came no news of him it cannot be said that Canaan did not hear of him, for surely it could hear itself talk. The death of Jonas Tabor and young Louden's crime and flight incited high doings in the "National House" windows; many days the sages lingered with ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... returning penitent; but a severe and solemn form of discipline was instituted, which, while it served to expiate his crime, might powerfully deter the spectators from the imitation of his example. Humbled by a public confession, emaciated by fasting and clothed in sackcloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly, imploring with tears the pardon of his offences, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful. [147] If the fault was of a very heinous nature, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... dull, but stone dead." The pious Irish fast and pray during the week, and the great Roman Catholic Retreat at Milltown is crowded to the limits of its accommodation. The ladies wear a kind of half-mourning, a stylish sort of reminder of original sin. Sackcloth and ashes in Catholic Dublin consist of fetching brown, grey, or tan costumes, set off with huge bunches of fragrant violets, tied with a bow the exact shade of the flower, or a dull shade of purple, a sort of Lenten lugubriousness particularly becoming to blonde penitents. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... that, after having so long anticapated that party, I am now here in sackcloth and ashes, which is a figure of speech for the Peter Thompson uniform of the school, with plain white for evenings ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... knew death awaited her there; and, if Grandfather had been correctly informed, an incident had then taken place which connects her with our story. This Mary Dyer had entered the mint-master's dwelling, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and seated herself in our great chair with a sort of dignity and state. Then she proceeded to deliver what she called a message from Heaven, but in the midst of it they ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and his appetite gives itself as many airs, and requires as much waitin' on, as a crotchetty, fanciful, peevish old lady of fashion. If a man's sensibility is all in his palate he can't in course have much in his heart. Makin' oneself miserable, fastin' in sackcloth and ashes, ain't a bit more foolish than makin' oneself wretched in the midst of plenty, because the sea, the air, and the earth won't give him the dainties he wants, and Providence won't send the ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... mind,' said Alice, in grim indignation. 'She's humbling herself now, I trust and pray, but she was light-minded and full of vanity when Philip married her, and it might ha' been a lift towards her salvation in one way; but it pleased the Lord to work in a different way, and she mun wear her sackcloth and ashes in patience. So I'll say naught more about her. But for him as is absent, as thee hast spoken on so lightly and reproachfully, I'd have thee to know he were one of a different kind to any thee ever knew, I reckon. If he were led away by ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... behind the kitchen, or should she press them to her bosom as treasures to be loved as long as a single thread of them might hang together? She had taken such alms before—from her aunt Sophie—taking them in bitterness of spirit, and wearing them as though they were made of sackcloth, very sore to the skin. The acceptance of such things, even from her aunt, had been gall to her; but, in the old days, no idea of refusing them had come to her. Of course she must submit herself to her aunt's charity, because of her father's ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... card, and when out among the people he was always figuratively clothed in sackcloth and ashes. A few extracts from his ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... world was a small place after all! When this last enormity was let loose upon us Norty said solemnly, "Where's the nearest point policeman?" And, instead of taking the hint, the creature began to hold forth about "that fine body of men, the London police!" Wee-Wee was in sackcloth and ashes about it afterwards. She says that sort of thing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... sausage to the bank of the Manzanares and inter it there with great solemnity. On the following Saturday, after three days of death, the Carnival has a resurrection, and the maddest, wildest ball of the year takes place at the opera. Then the sackcloth and ashes of Lent come down in good earnest and the town mourns over its scarlet sins. It used to be very fashionable for the genteel Christians to repair during this season of mortification to the Church of San Gines, and scourge themselves ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and said, "We found this; see whether it is your son's coat or not." He recognized it and said, "It is my son's coat! A wild beast has devoured him! Joseph surely is torn in pieces." Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth about his waist, and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and his daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted, saying, "I shall go down to the grave mourning for my son." Thus Joseph's father ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... He claims that he never would have been caught the last time had not his housekeeper "given him away." The two had a domestic quarrel, and in her efforts to get even, she told the authorities of his theft. After his trial and conviction, womanlike, she repented in sackcloth and ashes, but Thomas would have no more to do with her. Later, she went over into Missouri, where she has since died. One of the first things Thomas will do on regaining his liberty will be to secure another housekeeper, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... healthier sign, however, that the more recent biographers of Burns snap their fingers in the face of convention, and, looking to the legacy he has left the world, refuse to sit in sackcloth and ashes round his grave, either in the character of moralising mourners or charitable mutes. Whatever has to be said against them nowadays, the 'cant of concealment'—to adopt another of Gilfillan's phrases—is ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth" (chap. 11:1-3). ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... elected, no matter who he is. They'd rather die of dry rot than elect anybody; it shocks them to think that any man could have the presumption to be presented. They require the spectacle of fasting and prayer—a view of a candidate seated in sackcloth and ashes in outer darkness. You've got to wait for ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... know how I've been. And though my lady was not a lady as any girl could like, and did deserve to have her things took if anybody's things ever should be took, still, Mr. Gager, I knows I did wrong. I do know it,—and I'm a-repenting of it in sackcloth and ashes;—so I am. But you'll be as good as your word, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I don't know as I blame you, George. A night like that is enough to lose any one's temper. I lost mine. The Foam Flake ran away with it. But he's repentin' in sackcloth and ashes, I guess. Judah says the old horse is lamer than ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... fourteen years transportation, who could generally become candidates for a seat in the legislative assembly? How many of this description have been detected in their first offence, in their very offset in the career of criminality? How many ever afterwards deplore their errors in sackcloth and ashes, and conduct themselves in the most correct and unexceptionable manner? And shall no distinction be made between them and the still persevering offender whom no inducements can withhold, no punishments deter from the commission of fresh enormities? Shall the novice in crime and ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... to guide our course during the tempest. Many a feeble soul would have suffered shipwreck had it not taken refuge near those tutelary towers where are suspended the memorial deeds of the sainted heroes whose armor was sackcloth, whose watchword the sigh of repentance poured ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Nietzschean solitude; to the noble ones who pride themselves on their stolen finery; to the flagellating ones who go to the opera in hair shirts, who excite themselves with denials and who fornicate only on Fast Days; to the just ones who find compensation for their nose rings and sackcloth by hamstringing all who refuse to put them on—all who have committed the alluring sins from which their own cowardice fled; to the conservative ones who gnaw elatedly upon old bones and wither with malnutrition; to the conservative ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... awaken interest, contributed little to conciliate esteem. He was often strangely rapt—it may have been from his genius; and, had its grandeur and darkness been then divulged, susceptible of explanation; but, at the time, it threw, as it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlings, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, churning an inarticulate melody, he seemed almost apparitional, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... chieftain or a titled senator. True, the throng who came out to see that pale form and marble brow were not gathered from the proud and great of earth. No king came weeping to the house of death; no noble cortege came in sackcloth and stood as mourners there; but the elect of God, the fruits of missionary labor on heathen soil, the converted sons and daughters of darkness, were the sincere, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... remembered sounds of forgotten music, that had been dear to me. They are vain, I know; how very vain in their attempt to soothe or comfort me. Dearest Lionel, you cannot guess what I have suffered during these long months. I have read of mourners in ancient days, who clothed themselves in sackcloth, scattered dust upon their heads, ate their bread mingled with ashes, and took up their abode on the bleak mountain tops, reproaching heaven and earth aloud with their misfortunes. Why this is ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... splendid apparel; royal dignity, by purple or scarlet, or by a crown; righteousness, by white and clean robes; wickedness, by spotted and filthy garments; affliction, mourning, and humiliation, by clothing in sackcloth; dishonour, shame, and want of good works, by nakedness; error and misery, by drinking a cup of his or her wine that causeth it; propagating any religion for gain, by exercising traffick and merchandize with that people whose religion it is; worshipping or serving the false Gods of any ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... this, and he had been successful. She strove, therefore, to be triumphant on his behalf, but she knew that she was striving ineffectually. She had made a mistake, and the days were coming in which she would have to own to herself that she had done so in sackcloth, and to repent ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... was aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.—The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.—Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy-robe of the masker of the carnival.—Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin, and still the saint was distressed ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... morbid sorrow over imaginary misdeeds, and none at all over real ones; there will be compensatory church-going, with delightful little monogram-covered prayer-books. But will the flesh be mortified by any real rough sackcloth and ashes? It is hardly to be hoped. Neither Lent, nor religion, nor judgment, nor anything but poverty and absolute impotence, will put a period to the wild pursuit of pleasure that a fashionable season begins. Ill for the next generation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... and batteries, no robberies and murders, no divorces, no cheating among the merchants of Glasgow or the bankers of Edinburg, no sympathizing with rebellion and the institution of slavery—for the Scotch are a sober and righteous people, much given to sackcloth and ashes, manufactures of iron, and societies for the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the floor of the cell; and as by degrees his sight became more able to penetrate the obscurity within, he began plainly to perceive the form of the miserable woman, crouched on her knees upon the damp slimy pavement of the wretched hole. She was already dressed in the sackcloth robe of the penitents condemned to the stake, and her poor grey hairs were without covering. So motionless was her form that for a moment the witchfinder thought she was dead, and had fallen together ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... hurt to death, she lay! Shuddering, they drew her garments off—and found 10 A robe of sackcloth deg. next ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... for our sin Our angel's term of watch is o'er, With proper prayer, true faith must win The guardian watcher back once more I Faith, brethren of the Church, and prayer— In blood and sackcloth, if it need; And still our spire shall rise in air, Our ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... land, And shall cause their voice to be heard over thee, and shall cry bitterly, And shall cast up dust upon their heads, and wallow in the ashes; And they shall make themselves bald for thee, and gird them with sackcloth, And they shall weep for thee in bitterness of soul with bitter mourning. And in their wailing they shall take up a lamentation for thee, And lament over thee saying, Who is there like Tyre, Like her that is brought ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... that the present manner of living must soon prove unendurable to her. It was essential that a change should be made, and that speedily, for she was aware of the limitations to her own patience. Her temperament was not one to let her sit down in sackcloth and ashes to weep over the ruins of romance. Rather, she would bestir herself to create a new sphere of activity, wherein she might find happiness in some other guise. Yet, despite the ingenuity of her mind, she could not for some time determine on the precise course ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... thou not, then, earth's alliance, Take thy stand behind the cross; Fear, lest by unblest compliance, Thou transmute thy gold to dross. Stedfast in thy meek endurance, Prophesy in sackcloth on; Hast thou not the pledged assurance, Kings one day ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... stranger? And is he to be run away with to this place when he would fain go elsewhere about his master's business, which is to catch this young lord and the Saxon serving-man? And then is he to be looked at as if he were a thief? Thou shalt repent, and so I tell thee; yea, in sackcloth and ashes. And if thou canst find no sackcloth, then thou shalt have a double portion of ashes, ye knaves, and so ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... no sooner ordained priest and consecrated as archbishop than he changed his habits. He became as austere as Lanfranc. He laid aside his former ostentation. He clothed himself in sackcloth; he mortified his body with fasts and laceration; he associated only with the pious and the learned; he frequented the cloisters and places of meditation; he received into his palace the needy and the miserable; he washed the feet of thirteen ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... stretched out their offerings of flowers to sell the passer-by—bright spring flowers—crocuses, daffodils and violets, whose freshness and purity served only to enhance the miserable aspect of their vendors. In verity it was a scene of velvet and rags, satin and sackcloth, riches and poverty: Lazarus looking longingly at Dives, and Dives going on ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... solemn voice of Religion should have gone over the land, as the call of God to guilty man to seek in him their strength; in this time when Religion should have restored sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, and bound up the broken-hearted, she was herself mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts came the noise of warring sects; some contending against others with bitter warfare; and some, possessed of a demon, wallowed upon the ground foaming and rending themselves. In ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... the high-priest, and with their hands mutually interfolded, one upon the other, he vowed to renounce, then and there, the world with all its cares and temptations, and to observe with obedience the doctrines of Buddha. This done, he was clad afresh in sackcloth, and led from the temple to the royal monastery, Watt Brahmanee Waid; with bare feet and eyes downcast he went, still chanting ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... notion of dignity." "Your excellence," replied the priest, "must remember that there are various opinions as to what constitutes true dignity. For myself, I hold to Saint Peter's notion, that a man may maintain his dignity, though clothed in sackcloth. And since no really great ambassador ever thought of travelling in any other manner, I think you may venture to follow their example, without fear of damaging your dignity." This so completely reconciled the general, that he declared all his objections removed, and enjoined the priest not to think ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... place and beat him down in his wages? And there are those who call themselves learned men, who tell the poor that that is God's will, and the way by which God intends them to prosper. If those men believed their Bibles, they would be repenting in sackcloth and ashes for having preached such a devil's sermon to God's children. If men really read their Bibles, there would be less eating and drinking with the drunken; less idleness and luxury among the rich; less fancying ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... considered a divine call, began the life of an itinerant preacher. He and his followers were subjected frequently to cruel persecution, both in England and America. In exceptional cases, they fell into extravagances of enthusiasm, interrupted public worship, walked in the streets clothed in sackcloth, or in some instances naked. They condemned war, practiced non-resistance, objected to oaths and to a paid ministry, and set an example of the utmost plainness and simplicity in speech and dress. Among their many ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the matin chimes of Lent announced that the gay season was ended, but although gayety arrayed itself in sackcloth and sprinkled ashes broadcast, the sackcloth moved in the waltz as its wearer tripped over the ashes. There were successions of informal dancing parties, lunch parties, and card parties during the penitential forty days, and then came the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... to the window; but it was too dark for her to see anything. She took it for granted he had gone away. She was glad, and ashamed of herself for being glad. She reproved herself. And then she had a vague sort of feeling that she would wear sackcloth and ashes—or try to be ten times kinder to everybody—or do something, anything, no matter what—to atone for this very unmistakable sense of gladness that seemed to pervade her whole being. She couldn't help it, because ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... say that I do not know of a quicker way to hell than by the way of adultery. Let no one flatter himself that he is going into the kingdom of God who does not repent of this sin in sackcloth and ashes. My friend, do you think God will never bring you into judgment? Does not the Bible say that no adulterer shall inherit the kingdom ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... they unblest, Who underneath the world's bright vest With sackcloth tame their aching breast, The ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... cast ashes not only on its own head but on the neighbourhood's too - after the manner of those pious persons who do penance for their own sins by putting other people into sackcloth - it was customary for those who now and then thirsted for a draught of pure air, which is not absolutely the most wicked among the vanities of life, to get a few miles away by the railroad, and then begin their walk, or their lounge ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... proud as Perseus, and who so joyful as all the AEthiop people? For they had stood watching the monster from the cliffs, wailing for the maiden's fate. And already a messenger had gone to Cepheus and Cassiopoeia, where they sat in sackcloth and ashes on the ground, in the innermost palace chambers, awaiting their daughter's end. And they came, and all the city with them, to see the wonder, with songs and with dances, with cymbals and harps, and received their daughter back ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... he next marched to Bari. Here he met with no resistance; but, on the contrary, an affecting appeal to his mercy in the spectacle of the citizens coming out before him, dressed in sackcloth, in token of submission. So solemn a humiliation, however, could not atone in the king's eye, for their crime in having demolished the citadel of the town, because it refused to turn disloyal, when the rebellion first broke out. To their entreaties ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... to his reputation after this, but rather detracted from it. He lived very quietly and devotedly, and died in 1695, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. It was found after his death that he was in the habit of mortifying himself with a shirt of sackcloth. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... back to the camp was he sensible of the murmurs of censure at his hypocrisy in joining the penitential procession at all. Dame Idonea, in a complete suit of sackcloth, was informing her friends that she had made a vow not to wash her face till the whole adder brood of Montfort had been crushed; and that she trusted to see the beginning of justice done to-morrow. She had offered a candle to St. James to that effect, hoping ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... house of the Duke Ki, came to my superior end. So, these my kinsmen came, these of my family, to be with me at my going, to call my spirit back from the roof-top with face turned to the north, to leap before my death-mat, to wail and bare the shoulders and bind the sackcloth about the head. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the great city of Nineveh, and after the lapse of many centuries, when Jonah came to Nineveh, and prophesied the overthrow of the city on account of the evil done by the people, it was Pharaoh who, seized by fear and terror, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes, and with his own mouth made proclamation and published this decree through Nineveh: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water; for I know there is no god beside Him in all the world, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... a Manner. It must be allowed, that any young Fellow that affects to dress and appear genteelly, might with artificial Management save ten Pound a Year; as instead of fine Holland he might mourn in Sackcloth, and in other Particulars be proportionably shabby: But of what great Service would this Sum be to avert any Misfortune, whilst it would leave him deserted by the little good Acquaintance he has, and prevent his gaining any other? As the Appearance of an easy Fortune is necessary towards making ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
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