"Bootless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no medicine but favor. Phoebus had herbs to heal all hurts but this passion; Circes had charms for all chances but for affection, and Mercury subtle reasons to refel all griefs but love. Persuasions are bootless, reason lends no remedy, counsel no comfort, to such whom fancy hath made resolute; and therefore though Phoebe loves Ganymede, yet Montanus must ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... wielders of weapons, in that battle, deprived cars and steeds and elephants, of their riders. Hearing the twang of his bow and the slap of his palms, both resembling the roll of the thunder, the troops, O king, trembled all over the field. The shafts, O chief of men, of thy sire were never bootless as they fell. Indeed, shot from Bhishma's bow they never fell only touching the bodies of the foe (but pierced them through in every case). We saw crowds of cars, O king, deprived of riders, but unto which ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the significancy. When the daughter of Isaac of York brought her diamonds and rubies—the poor gentle victim!—and, meekly laying them at the feet of the conquering Rowena, departed into foreign lands to tend the sick of her people, and to brood over the bootless passion which consumed her own pure heart, one would have thought that the heart of the royal lady would have melted before such beauty and humility, and that she would have been generous in the moment ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I said, "that you have given yourself a bootless journey. From what I suspect, your flown bird ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the other colonies, and would give nothing. New England, on the other hand, and especially Massachusetts, had suffered so much from French war-parties that they were always ready to fight. Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, had returned from his bootless errand to settle the boundary question at Paris. His leanings were strongly monarchical; yet he believed in the New Englanders, and was more or less in sympathy with them. Both he and they were strenuous against ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... a day by this bootless journey; but our consolation lay in the belief that our Indian pursuers, following upon our trail, would ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... present at the meeting, which was a great success. Meanwhile rumours that something was going to happen kept coming in, and Colonel Morrison was away for several days reconnoitring the country to the east and north-east. All our surplus stores were dumped and a guard of the bootless left with them, and we moved off from Sheikh Zowaid on the morning of the 25th of March, reaching Rafa about midday. Here a halt was made, and tea was issued. At five o'clock the Division moved on and crossed the frontier into Asia as dusk was falling. It was rather an impressive moment ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... Book libro. Book-keeper librotenisto. Book (copy-book) kajero. Bookseller libristo. Boom soni. Booming sonado. Boon bonfaro, gajno. Boorish maldelikata. Boot boto. Booth budo. Bootless neprofita. Bootmaker botisto. Booty akirajxo. Borax borakso. Border (edge) randajxo. Border, to put a borderi. Bore (a hole) bori. Bore (of a gun) kalibro. Borer (tool) borilo. Born, to be naskigxi. Born again renaskigxi. Borne portita. Borough ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... lights in the town glimmered in the distance, the stars shone occasionally through the broken clouds, the wind was light, and the sea comparatively smooth. On consultation with my shipmate, we came to the conclusion it was hardly worth while to pull the boat about in different directions on a bootless quest after the sloop. We also rejected the idea of returning to the town. We laid in our oars, composed ourselves as comfortably as we could beneath the thwarts, and with clear consciences resigned ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... men. The number of the Indians has been variously estimated. They had perhaps five thousand men in their villages when they met Custer in this, the most historic and most ghastly battle of the Plains. It would be bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and his rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... reported all things ready, Scott settled down at full length, coatless and bootless, on the broad leather-covered bunk. The heat under the iron-arched roof of the station might have been anything over a hundred degrees. At the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the pile of fagots, sticks and hay, The bellows raised the newly-kindled flame, When thus Olindo, in a doleful lay, Begun too late his bootless plaints to frame: "Be these the bonds? Is this the hoped-for day, Should join me to this long-desired dame? Is this the fire alike should burn our hearts? Ah, hard reward ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... wise one, desertion, illness, death of the untrained recruits in rapid march under the hot midsummer sun, did the work of many battles, and when Smolensk was reached after two months of bootless marching, the "Grand Army" was bound to have been reduced to ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... practice in the course of her Guide work, it was only after several shouts on the man's part and experiments on hers that she at last found herself standing beside Mr. John Smith, who was sitting on the ground with one bootless leg stretched ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... this bootless errand, Lucien and Coralie were breakfasting in melancholy spirits beside the fire in their pretty bedroom. Berenice had cooked a dish of eggs for them over the grate; for the cook had gone, and the coachman and servants had taken leave. They could not sell the furniture, for it had been ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... habit of asking two questions about it: (1) Is it married? (2) Of what family or families was it born? If you can get an understanding answer to these two questions, an answer that will tell you what its relations stand for as well as what their name is, your inquiries will be anything but bootless. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... this strife the glories all your owne, Your tribunes cannot share this prayse with you; Here your Centurions hath no part at all, Bootless your Armies and your Eagles were; No Navies helpt ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... the awful tragedy of Friday evening are yet fresh in the minds of the people of Waco, and it is bootless to recount them. Two of the principals thereto have passed to the beyond and a third is in the hands of the outraged law. And with him let the law deal. In life Captain Davis was our friend. His assailant was our enemy. In death they take on the proportions of common humanity. Upon ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... better? Did I yesterday Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun? And do thy kisses like the rest betray? The cock crows coldly. Go and manifest A late contrition, but no bootless fear! For when thy final need is dreariest, Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here. My voice, to God and angels, shall attest, "Because I know this man, let ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... extinguished it. In vain Champlain strove to restore order among the yelling savages. Finding himself unable to control his frenzied allies, he and his men busied themselves with picking off the Iroquois along the ramparts. After three hours of this bootless fighting, the Hurons fell back, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... at this severe command; But well he knew 'twas bootless to withstand: The terms accepted, as the fair ordain, 110 He put in bail for his return again, And promised answer at the day assign'd, The best, with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... when I waded ashore. I was swordless, coatless, hatless, and bootless; but I carried a well-filled purse in my belt. Up to that time I had given no thought to my ultimate destination; but being for the moment safe, I pondered the question and determined to make my way ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... demon cries, and blows A blast of sulphur from his mouth and nose. Ah! bootless aim! the critic fiend, Sagacious Yamen, judge of hell, Is judged in his turn; Parchment won't burn! His schemes of vengeance are dissolved in air, Parchment ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... my bosom fire, And waste my soul with care; But ah! how bootless to admire, When fated ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... cease these signs, I pray; I meant not all my heat might say. 685 Small need of inroad, or of fight, When the sage Douglas may unite Each mountain clan in friendly band, To guard the passes of their land, Till the foiled king, from pathless glen, 690 Shall bootless turn him ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... ourselves up, comrades; further resistance were but a bootless sacrifice." Not the least noteworthy of Bayard's many fine qualities were his rare good sense and his cheerfulness under misfortune. If he won, he enjoyed his victory; if he lost, he accepted defeat like ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... you," answered the man; "and Philip here says that our search will be bootless, for that he ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... plan, to redeem the past and enjoy blessings in the future, is to cease this bootless warfare and be the first to recognize our independence. We are exasperated with Europe, and like the old colonel in Bulwer's play, we can like a brave foe after fighting him. Let the North do this, and we will trade with its people, I have no doubt, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... presence—this instant!" exclaimed the general, irritated by this imprudent remark. "The prisoners shall die; and let me tell you that your errand is bootless." ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... that Demorest was no longer of such importance to him. He felt, too, that he was not yet quite sure of his voice or even what to say. As he hesitated she went on half playfully: "It seems hard that you had to come all the way here on such a bootless errand. You haven't even seen ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Chair Ranch there was bustle and excitement. Mexicans scrubbed and scoured under the direction of Alice and Mrs. Mackenzie, and vaqueros rode hither and thither on bootless errands devised by their nervous master. For late that morning a telephone call from Aravaipa had brought Webb to the receiver to listen to a telegram. The message was from Bucky, then on the train on his ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... and the horse whirled off, and it seemed to me as if he flew with the speed of lightning. My hat fell off the first thing; and there I was, clinging with might and main to the neck of the fiery animal, my head bare, my feet bootless, and my old stripped shirt blown from my back, and streaming out behind, and fluttering like a banner in the breeze; my ragged pants off at the knees, and my long legs dangling down some length below; and at the same time crying "Whoa! whoa!" as loud as I could. Nor was this ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... prospect of a long return voyage. The Caucasus passed numerous boats being towed up the stream, carrying all sorts of merchandise to Nijni-Novgorod. Then passed rafts of wood interminably long, and barges loaded to the gunwale, and nearly sinking under water. A bootless voyage they were making, since the fair had been abruptly ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... which he delivered the last sentence changed to a howl as his bootless foot alighted heavily upon an odd pebble, and Nobby peered out of some long grass, boot in mouth, to see whether the situation was affording further opportunities. Apparently it was not, for he lay down where he was and proceeded with the ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... month—April—when birds of passage wended their way north. For three days rations consisted of snow water and pipes of tobacco. The Indians endured the privations with stoical indifference, daily marching out on a bootless quest for game. On the third night Hearne was alone in his tent. Twilight deepened to night, night to morning. Still no hunters returned. Had he been deserted? Not a sound broke the waste silence but the baying of the wolf pack. Weak from hunger, Hearne fell asleep. Before ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... he was not the knavish spirit that frightened the maidens of the villagery, that skimmed milk, and sometimes laboured in the green, and bootless made the housewife churn, and sometimes made the drink to bear no barm, and whether Puck did not mislead night wanderers, and then laugh at their harm, and do the work of hobgoblins? Puck acknowledged ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... his bootless affection, and his expenses not limited within any compass, it appeared in the judgment of his kindred and friends that he was fallen into a mighty consumption, both of his body and means. In which respects many times they advised him to leave the city of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... were spoken slowly, and hurt the watching man almost as if the torture were his own. A shriek rose from the rounded white throat and the girl threw herself bootless upon the floor, and screamed in passionate childish sorrow, the wealth of disheveled hair mantling the dirty jacket, and covering the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Kadan (1534), Francois strengthened himself with a definite alliance with Soliman; and when, on the death of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, who left no heirs, Charles seized the duchy as its overlord, Francois, after some bootless negotiation, declared war on his great rival (1536). His usual fortunes prevailed so long as he was the attacking party: his forces were soon swept out of Piedmont, and the Emperor carried the war over the frontier into Provence. That also failed, and Charles was fain to withdraw ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... it was, when later on, I felt ambition pass From callow minnow joys to nobler greed for pike and bass; I found it quite convenient, when the beauties wouldn't bite And I returned all bootless from the watery chase at night, To feign a cheery aspect and recount in accents gay How the biggest fish that I had caught ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... starting-point. Good! In the other the smaller boys, each armed with a paper containing a problem in arithmetic, had to run to their sisters, wait for the problem to be solved, and then run back with the answer. Excellent! Simpson at his most inventive. Unfortunately, when the bootless boys arrived at the turning post, they found nothing but a small problem in arithmetic awaiting them, while on the adjoining stretch of grass young mathematicians were trying, with the help of their sisters, to get into two pairs ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... in blood, even by accident, is to incur the guilt of parricide, or kin-killing, a bootless crime, which can only be purged by religious ceremonies; and which involves exile, lest the gods' wrath fall on the land, and brings the curse of childlessness on the offender ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... style is, that whatever you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely dependent on the Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born Child into his hands. There is no other way in which a business untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless to add, that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is not good enough, both families and gentlemen ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... immemorial ages—had all passed through the various phases of the civilization of their time, and that they did not grow out of the tail of any gorilla. It is not for profane man to inquire what possible reason there could be for the perpetuation—let alone the creation—of such a useless, bootless race. There they are, occupiers of the soil for unknown centuries—before the white man ever saw their faces—many thousands of them still squatting there, cleaving, like bereaved Autochthons, to the bosom ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... predestination) with the liberty of man's will, and the contingency of inferior causes and effects. These, I say, we must acknowledge for the [Greek: hoti] but for the [Greek: to pos], I thought it bootless for me to think of comprehending it. And so came the two Acta Synodalia Dordrechtana to stand in my study, only to fill up a room ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... interrupted Bourdon, sinking back in his seat, and burying his face in his hands: "it were a bootless errand; she could not, in the face of that evidence, believe my unsupported assertion! It were as well perhaps she did not. And yet, sir, it is hard to be trampled into a felon's grave, loaded with the maledictions of those whom ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... with much labour of meandering pen in the schoolboys' maps, though for such my marks were always low, I being better skilled in the giving of raps with the closed fist than in the making of maps with inky fingers—a bootless toil, as it always hath seemed to me. Next to her sat SALLY, the little milkmaid, casting coy glances at mother, who would have none of them, but with undue sternness, as I thought then, and still think, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... by the publication of "The Lives of the Signers," by his friend and contributor, John Sanderson, to trouble the deaf public again with his bootless cries: ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... bridge, with other talk, The which my drama cares not to rehearse, Pass'd on; and to the summit reaching, stood To view another gap, within the round Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs. Marvelous darkness shadow'd o'er the place. In the Venetians' arsenal as boils Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear Their unsound vessels; for th' inclement time Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while His bark one builds anew, another stops The ribs of his, that ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Zeus, who hath laid low the head of many a city, yea, and shall lay low; for his is highest power. Shame is this even for them that come after to hear; how so goodly and great a folk of the Achaians thus vainly warred a bootless war, and fought scantier enemies, and no end thereof is yet seen. For if perchance we were minded, both Achaians and Trojans, to swear a solemn truce, and to number ourselves, and if the Trojans should gather together all that have their dwellings in the city, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... feet, shuffling, with heel exposed, And 'neath his upper garment just appears A many-colored robe; about his throat No comfortable scarf, but crumpled gills Shrink from the scanning eye of passenger The omnibus o'erhauling. List! 't was the last, Last stroke! it dies away, like murmuring wave. Bootless he came,—and bootless wends he back, Gnawing his gloveless thumb, and pacing slow. Bright eyes might gaze on him, compassionate, But that yon rosy maiden, early afoot, Is o'er her shoulder watching, with wild fear, A horned host that rushes by amain, Bellowing ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... Poor maiden! bootless wail or vow— "Have mercy, Jove—be gracious, thou! Dread prayer was mine before!" What if the gods have heard—and he, Lone victim of the stormy sea, Now struggles to the shore! There's not a sea-bird on the wave— Their hurrying wings the shelter seek; The stoutest ship the storms ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... o'er him, and he droops to death; While the Destroyer glideth by, And smiles, as if in mockery. How strong a hand hath Time! Fame wins The eager youth to her embrace; With tameless ardour he begins, And follows up the bootless race; Ah! bootless—for, as on he hies, With equal speed the phantom flies, Till youth, and strength, and vigour gone, He faints, and sinks, and dies unknown; While the Destroyer passeth by, And smiles, as if in mockery. Gaze, stranger, on the scene below; 'Tis scarce a century ago, Since here abode ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... day, calling, reminding, and chiding— Taking us back to the time when Peter he done gone and done it! These are the voices of those left by the boy in the farmhouse When, with his laughter and scorn, hatless and bootless and sockless, Clothed in his jeans and his pride, Peter sailed out in the weather, Broke from the warmth of his home into that fog of the devil. Into the smoke of that witch brewing her ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... a dead plant on us. Luck turned against him at last!" growled Blunt, as they counted up the cost of the bootless cruise of the Hirondelle. And only Justine Delande's bitter tears flowed in silence to lament the bold adventurer who had lost the game ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... would have kept her close: He wished not to be treated monstrously: Neither does any man, no more than he; Only to hinder wives, it serveth nought; - A good wife, that is clean of work and thought, No man would dream of hindering such a way. And just as bootless is it, night or day, Hindering a shrew; for it will never be. I hold it for a very foppery, Labour in vain, this toil to hinder wives, Old writers always say so, in ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... issue of these anxieties, and of the measures to which they gave rise, had not the French Revolution intervened to aggravate the distresses of Great Britain, and to constrain her to violent methods, is bootless to discuss. It remains true that, both before and during the conflict with the French Republic and Empire, the general character of her actions, to which the United States took exception, was determined by the conditions and ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... attempts," Glazier continues, "to assert what I considered my rights, but as I had not, at that time, much muscle to back my claims, they were not recognized, and thus I spent the whole night in a bootless ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Grace! the old Pagan ideal whose charm even unlovely Paul could not understand, but, as the legend tells us, his soul fainted within him, his heart misgave him, and, standing alone on the seashore at dusk, he "troubled deaf heaven with his bootless cries," his thin voice pleading for ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... from themselves, to think they be Headless, or other bodies' shades, Hath long and bootless dwelt with me; For could I think she some idea were, I still might love, forget, and have ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... and unconscious Tom approaching, lost in the profundity of thought, and though not in love, ruminating on every miss he had made in that day's bootless trudge. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... inheritance of the Faithful: and the flame was fanned by the capitan-pasha Yusuf, a Dalmatian renegade, who, independent of the hatred which from early associations he bore Venice, dreaded being sent on a bootless expedition against the impregnable defences of Malta—an enterprise which, since the memorable failure in the last years of Soliman, had never been attempted by the Osmanlis. Preparations for war, meanwhile, were carried on with unexampled activity, though the destination of the armament ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's bootless return, when he suddenly ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... palace. A native band, in which a big drum had the leading part, received us with 'God save the Queen' - whether in honour of King Tamy, or of his visitors, was not divulged. We were first introduced to a number of chiefs in European uniforms - except as to their feet, which were mostly bootless. Their names sounded like those of the state officers in Mr. Gilbert's 'Mikado.' I find in my journal one entered as Tovey-tovey, another as Kanakala. We were then conducted to the presence chamber by the Foreign Minister, Mr. Wiley, a ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... it bootless to row so far down the stream, or to seek any farther of this old fox; and therefore from the river of Waricapana, which lieth at the entrance of Emeria, we returned again, and left to the eastward those four rivers which fall from the mountains of Emeria into Orenoque, which ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For, while he spake, a braying ass Did sing most loud ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... La Verendrye sent his eldest son, Pierre, to pursue the discovery with two men, ordering him to hire guides among the Mandans and make his way to the Western Sea. But no guides were to be found, and in the next summer the young man returned from his bootless errand. [Footnote: Memoire du Sieur de la Verendrye, joint a sa ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... I crave. O Holy Father, pardon and grace! Dame Alice, my wife, The bane of my life, I have left, I fear me, in evil case! A scroll of shame in my rage I tore, Which that caitiff Page to a paramour bore; 'Twere bootless to tell how I storm'd and swore; Alack! and alack! too surely I knew The turn of each P, and the tail of each Q, And away to Ingoldsby Hall I flew! Dame Alice I found,—She sank on the ground,— I twisted her neck till I twisted it round! With jibe and jeer and mock and scoff, I ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... change of nomenclature or is not hidden at all. Our own social life is threaded through and through with customs and practices which go back to a superstitious origin. The matter is such a commonplace of history that it is bootless to labour ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... breeze by; A noise and a smoke on the plain afar— 'Tis the cloud and the clang of the Moslem war. And the light that flashed from his black eyes, lo! Was a light that paled the red wine's glow; And he shook his fetters in bootless ire, And called on the Prophet, and named his sire. But the lady of Saad heard the clang, And she knew the far sabres his fetters rang. Oh! she had the heart where a man might rest, For she knew the tempest in his breast. She rose. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Comines, "ere you set your mind so keenly against what is proposed, will consider your own want of power to prevent it. Every wise man, when he sees a rock giving way, withdraws from the bootless attempt ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Ireland, the Civil Wars, the reign of hypocrisy, followed by the reign of naked vice; the nation that beheaded the graceful Charles gaping idly on the scaffold of the lofty Sidney; the vain Revolution of 1688, which, if a jubilee in England, was a massacre in Ireland; the bootless glories of Marlborough; the organized corruption of Walpole, the frantic war with our own American sons, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... stealers"—forth with behaving as enemies. This induced one of the proprietors of the burnt houses to upbraid therewith one Maryn Adriaenzen, who at his request had led the freemen in the attack on the Indians, and who being reinforced by an English troop had afterwards undertaken two bootless expeditions in the open field. Imagining that the Director had accused him, he being one of the signers of the petition he determined to revenge himself. With this resolution he proceeded to the Director's house armed with a pistol, loaded and cocked, and ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... not until five hundred of their number had fallen did they yield. The buccaneers had eighty killed and wounded, not one of the latter recovering—an evidence of the desperation with which they fought. The town of Gibraltar, of course, fell into their hands; but it was a bootless conquest, inasmuch as during the time the pirates had wasted at Maracaibo, the people had secured their treasure by carrying it away. To save the town from the torch, however, the inhabitants paid a ransom ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... long and bootless search, to confess to himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for reflection—indeed ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... love hath bribed her to this deed, The glancing of his eyes did so bewitch her. O bootless theft! unprofitable meed! Love's treasury is sack'd, but she no richer; The sparkles of his eyes are cold and dead, And all his golden looks are turn'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... rapid of limb. Have you seen a skilful boxer watch his antagonist with a quiet, incessant eye? Such an eye as this did the pony keep upon whatever man took the rope. The man might pretend to look at the weather, which was fine; or he might affect earnest conversation with a bystander: it was bootless. The pony saw through it. No feint hoodwinked him. This animal was thoroughly a man of the world. His undistracted eye stayed fixed upon the dissembling foe, and the gravity of his horse-expression made the matter one of high comedy. Then the rope would ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... is a privilege granted to a few, or a right to which all people are justly entitled, it is bootless to discuss; but its development among civilized nations is a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... on model grand Perfected by the chivalry front which Both he and thou didst draw sweet childhood's milk. These men did quick condone the ev'ry act Which emanated from the Northern mind. Yearly were millions spent on bootless task Of feeding vacant minds on useless food Because unfitted to their various needs. "A little knowledge is a dang'rous thing" And doth unfit the plodding mass for toil, Which is their proper sphere; hence ev'ry thought Hard thrust within their skulls doth ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the thought of personal inferiority for merely conventional reasons; but he must be a materialist indeed who undervalues this priceless possession. It is something for a country to have reached the stage of passing "resolutions," even if their conversion into "acts" lags a little; it is bootless to sneer at a real "land of promise" because it is not at once and in every ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... with wringing. Let us part, And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat: Remove your siege from my unyielding heart; To love's alarms it will not ope the gate: 424 Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery; For where a heart is hard they ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... thing went from bad to worse, it would be bootless here to tell. Neither of the two dukes absolutely refused to join the Ministry; but they were persistent in their objection to Mr. Bonteen, and were joined in it by Lord Plinlimmon and Sir Harry Coldfoot. It was in vain that ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... though she had not heard his doom, so filled her with concern and indignation, that—her eyes and thoughts fixed upon him, at the other end of the class—she did not know when her turn came, but allowed the master to stand before her in bootless expectation. He did not interrupt her, but with a refinement of cruelty that ought to have done him credit in his own eyes, waited till the universal silence had at length aroused Annie to self-consciousness and a sense of annihilating confusion. Then, with a smile on his ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... commended their spirit, and assured them that King James, "who is the greatest man the sunn shines uppon, and never told a ly in his life, has given you his Royall word to protect you." [Footnote: Dongan's Reply to the Five Nations, Ibid., III. 535.] Vaillant returned from his bootless errand; and a stormy correspondence followed between the two governors. Dongan renewed his demands, then protested his wish for peace, extolled King James for his pious zeal, and declared that he was sending over missionaries ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... young arm dare not yet chastise, Reason may claim our gratitude, who now 245 Establishing the imperishable throne Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain The unprevailing malice of my Foe, Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave, Adds impotent eternities to pain, 250 Whilst keenest disappointment racks His breast To see the smiles of peace around them play, To frustrate or to sanctify ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was his answer to her as yet unasked question. She had come to him for guidance, to beg his counsel concerning her brother's letter, and he had told her in his music all that he knew of the world. He had shown her the cruel agony of the worldly life, the unrest, the bootless seeking, the satiety of realised ambition, and the calmness, the peace of the renunciation ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... quaint old country stories; and when Tom had no sport, and detecting a rat some hundred yards or so off along the bank, would rush off with Toby the turnspit terrier, his other faithful companion, in bootless pursuit, he might have tumbled in and been drowned twenty times over before Benjy could have ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Garth, let us understand one another," said Rotha solemnly. "What is it you wish to tell me? You said my father had gone on a bootless errand. What do you know about it? Tell me, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... been won by Theodoric and his allies (for in other parts of the field the Margrave Rudiger had vanquished Reinald) yet was it a bootless victory by reason of the death of Attila's sons. And Theodoric, riding back to the battle-field, came where his brother Diether was lying; and lamented him saying: "There liest thou; my brother Diether. This is the greatest sorrow that has ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... always be growing stronger, and with every trial nobly met, you will feel a growing assurance that nobleness is not a mere sentiment with you. I sympathize deeply in your anxiety about your mother; yet I cannot but remember the bootless fear and agitation about my mother, and how strangely our destinies were guided. Take refuge in prayer when you are most troubled; the door of the sanctuary will never be shut against you. I send you a paper which is very sacred to me. Bless ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... understand the speech Of my instructors, feeling, too, a mind Within me conscious of augmented pow'rs, I will attempt your ruin, be assured, Whether at Pylus, or continuing here. I go, indeed, (nor shall my voyage prove Of which I speak, bootless or vain) I go An humble passenger, who neither bark Nor rowers have to boast my own, denied 420 That honour (so ye judg'd it best) by you. He said, and from Antinoues' hand his own Drew sudden. Then their delicate repast The busy suitors on all sides ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... in arms he was; one grievous blot, So deem'd full many a courtly dame, I wot, Cross'd the full growth of his aspiring days, And dimm'd the lustre of meridian praise: With bootless artifice their lures they troll'd; Still, Gugemer lov'd not, or nothing told. The court's accustom'd love and service done, To his glad sire returns the welcome son. Now with his father dwelt he, and pursued Such pastimes as are meet for youth of noble blood. The woods ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... And numbers pine in solitary woe, Who furnish'd out this phantasy of show. When silent misery assail'd his eyes, Did e'er his throbbing bosom sympathise? Or his extensive charity pervade To those who languish in the barren shade, Where oft, by want and modesty suppress'd, The bootless talent warms the lonely breast? 150 No! petrified by dulness and disdain, Beyond the feeling of another's pain, The tear of pity ne'er bedew d his eye, Nor his lewd ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... said. Forrest lived with Cranston a few days while getting his own quarters in readiness, and was there to help the major welcome home his wife on her return from Europe late in October. Going to town "to see Wells" seemed to prove a bootless errand, for he came back with gloom in his dark brown eyes,—very pathetic gloom, Mrs. Cranston called it, and she, who had early gone to town to call on Mrs. Wells, began going rather more frequently than ever the major ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... rose, like Lady Eglinton, or any one of her six daughters; not dainty, like poor imprisoned Lady Lovat; she was more like desperate Lady Primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or fierce Lady Grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily, treacherous, scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown as a gipsy, skin, eyes, and hair—the last a rich, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... dispatched to New England, together with one of the principal inhabitants of Quebec, Jean Paul Godefroy. [ 2 ] They repaired to New Haven, and appeared before the Commissioners of the Four Colonies, then in session there; but their errand proved bootless. The Commissioners refused either to declare war or to permit volunteers to be raised in New England against the Iroquois. The Puritan, like his descendant, would not fight without a reason. The bait of free-trade with ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... stricter test. He had no doubt seen how his unsuggestive fixity and assurance could cramp and close a mind; and he felt more beholden to the rivals who produced d'Adda, Barillon, and Bonnet, than to the author of so many pictures and so much bootless decoration. He tendered a course of Bacon's Essays, or of Butler's and Newman's Sermons, as a preservative against intemperate dogmatism. He denounced Macaulay's indifference to the merits of the inferior cause, and desired ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... crisis—they all got well in spite of the doctor, and gave their own special cases and his anxiety all the credit for his grave looks; and all these half-finished streets and rough new roads in the east end of Carlingford were sown thick with the bootless suggestions of Dr Rider's love and fears. The crop did not show upon the vulgar soil, but gave lurking associations to every half-built street corner which he passed in his rounds many a day after, and served at this present momentous era to confuse doubly ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... bootless to pine after knowledge irretrievably buried in oblivion. Otherwise we might fairly have wished to have stood beside King Nebuchadnezzar when he so unadvisedly uttered that proud vaunt which ended in his being condemned to a long course of vegetable diet. For doubtless he gazed upon at least four ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... already alluded to the rage for treaties which prevailed for a while in Congress. It was this that sent William and Arthur Lee upon their bootless errands to Vienna and Berlin, Francis Dana to St. Petersburg, John Jay to encounter embarrassment and mortification at Madrid, and gave Ralph Izard an opportunity to draw an unearned salary, through two successive years, from the scanty funds of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... bootless, and his pants and many-pocketed jumper of coarse dungaree were exceedingly dirty, and looked as if they had been cut out with a knife and fork instead of scissors, they were so marvellously ill-fitting. His head-gear was an ancient Panama hat, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... breath. At first, nothing! Was it fancy? Or was some one noiselessly rifling the room down-stairs? But surely no one would steal of Uncle Tod, who, everybody knew, had nothing valuable. Then came a sound as of bootless feet pressing the stairs stealthily! And the thought darted through her, 'If it isn't he, what shall I do?' And then—'What shall I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Charms are bootless Spells to ward off age's peril; Lips that give not Love shall live not, Eyes that meet ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that with such a sum I could not fall into want. About this time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since boyhood, came tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty. The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry, bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have "taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of course, prowling about stealthily, or making frantic, bootless leaps at the swallows. A cat in a hayloft is a beautiful example of the eternal fitness of things. We had not heard of this fitness then, but we all felt that Paddy was in his own place in ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to the front of the Twelfth Army, back of Riga, where gaunt and bootless men sickened in the mud of desperate trenches; and when they saw us they started up, with their pinched faces and the flesh showing blue through their torn clothing, demanding eagerly, "Did you ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Halbert Glendinning, boldly, "it is bootless to threaten. one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but slay; nor do I think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so far. The terrors which your race produce upon others, are vain against me. My heart is hardened against fear, as by a sense of despair. If I am, as thy words ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the breath of the past. As the Indian is at present circumstanced and environed, he can beat up little or no game, and his poverty frequently putting out of his reach the procuring of the needful sporting gear, where he does follow hunting, it is pursued with much-weakened ardor, and often bootless issue. He is moved now to its pursuit, solely with the hope of realizing a paltry gain from the sale of the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... employment. They called themselves "Brothers of the Coast," and took a solemn oath not to secrete from each other any portion of the common spoil, nor uncharitably to disregard each other's wants. Violence and lust would have gone upon bootless ventures, if justice and generosity had not been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... behind her they went naturally and wordlessly into each other's arms. Lips met lips in a kiss that lasted for a long, long time. It was not a passionate embrace—passion would come later—it was as though each of them, after endless years of bootless, fruitless ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... appeared disposed to enter the bay and to find an anchorage under the protection of a small battery that had been planted for this express purpose near its head. But the distance was so great as obviously to render such an experiment bootless; and, after looking in that direction a few minutes, the head of la Divina Providenza was laid off shore, and she made every possible effort to put herself under the cover of the lugger. All this was done in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... be done now?" said Richards, who had placed himself in a sort of theatrical posture—his bootless foot on the gig-step, the other sticking fast ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... fruit-knife?" inquires Halicarnassus as I pass in. The reconnoitering party return to report a bootless search, and are electrified to find ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... have seen a swan With bootless labor swim against the tide, And spend her strength with over-matching waves. 1043 SHAKS.: 3 Henry VI., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... certain that the whole structure was wrapped in a sheet of flame. In the next instant, the fire burst through the dividing partition of the cabins, obliging our hero to fly in his night-gown, with his inexpressibles under his arm. Thus, coatless and bootless, he leaped on shore, when delay a second longer would have effectually prevented his ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... large a part of his fame rests enduringly—as a mere waste of energy and of time. I hope that he knows about, and takes a comforting pride in—over there in the Shades—the great city which owes its founding to that seemingly bootless voyage! ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... revolted, only to feel once more the merciless severity of their military rulers. French colonists did not readily adopt the new field for emigration. It seemed as though the best thing would be to withdraw from a bootless, expensive, and troublesome venture. Louis Napoleon, however, when he visited Algiers in 1865, contrived somewhat to reassure the Kabyles, while he guaranteed their undisturbed possession of their territories; and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... by all the arguments which the fertile ingenuity of kindness could invent; she prophesied Walter's speedy return, with his boyish disappointment forgotten, and with eyes no longer blinded to the attractions of one sister, by a bootless fancy for another. And though Ellinor interrupted her from time to time with assertions, now of Walter's eternal constancy to his present idol; now, with yet more vehement declarations of the certainty of his finding new objects for his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arrived at the village by our friend Lohiamalaka. The village looks to be in a fine healthy position, close to the west end of the Astrolabe, the high bluff bearing N.E. They have plenty of all kinds of food. We crossed from the Janara, a good-sized mountain torrent flowing S.W. to Bootless Inlet. We are 700 feet high. High bluff of Astrolabe, N.E.; Bootless Inlet, S.S.W.; peak ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... come back," remarked the knight to his lady, "that yon spies will have grown weary of their bootless watch, and will have taken themselves off. It is but the malice and suspicion of the Lord of Mortimer which causes the prior to act so. Alone he would never trouble himself. He knows that Brother Emmanuel is not ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... distinct from the outer one, and a stone staircase, so narrow that a large man could not ascend it. The staircase terminated against a dead stone ceiling, closing all further passages, the last step being only six or eight inches from it. For what purpose a staircase was carried up to such a bootless termination we could not conjecture. The whole tower was a substantial stone structure, and in its arrangements and purposes about as incomprehensible ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Hesse is defeated by the French at Spirebath..... Treaty between the Emperor and the Duke of Savoy..... The King of Portugal accedes to the Grand Alliance..... Sir Cloudesley Shovel sails with a Fleet to the Mediterranean..... Admiral Graydon's bootless Expedition to the West Indies..... Charles King ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... savages are just so many animals of prey, scattered through a vast forest, whence they are ever ready to issue, to raven and kill in the adjoining countries. After their ravages, to go in pursuit of them is a constant but almost bootless task. They have no settled place whither they can be traced with any certainty; they must be watched everywhere, and long waited for, with fire-arms ready primed. Many of their lurking-places could be reached only by blood-hounds or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... thought of remaining in town he was so. But now he had resolved to fly, and had resolved also that before he did so he would call in the ordinary way and say one last farewell. John, the servant, admitted him at once; though he had on that same morning sent bootless away a score of other suppliants for the honour of being admitted to ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... now several miles in width, and Spike, at first, proposed to his mate, to keep off dead before the wind, and by crossing over to the north shore, let the steamer pass ahead, and continue a bootless chase to the eastward. Several vessels, however, were visible in the middle of the passage, at distances varying from one to three miles, and Mulford pointed out the hopelessness of attempting to cross the sheet of open water, and expect to go unseen by the watchful ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... were stately, furnished / with trappings rich with gold; It were a task all bootless / to seek for knights more bold Than were the gallant Siegfried / and his chosen band. He longed to take departure / straightway for ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... task, although I have been much affected this morning by the Morbus, as I call it. Aching pain in the back, rendering one posture intolerable, fluttering of the heart, idle fears, gloomy thoughts and anxieties, which if not unfounded are at least bootless. I have been out once or twice, but am driven in by the rain. Mercy on us, what poor devils we are! I shook this affection off, however. Mr. Scrope and Col. Ferguson came to dinner, and we twaddled away the evening ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... horse-lines that half a dozen strides brought the drivers alongside their 'long-nosed chums.' It was early evening; but the horses having been watered and fed, the labours of their day were over, and the Wheel and Lead Drivers were luxuriating in bootless feet while they entertained the Gunner who had called in from his own billet ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... couple of hours of this bootless sort of thing we had made no headway toward getting a guide, nor could we get definite information about the Buffaloes or the Wolves. Finally the meeting suffered a sort ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... heart to help, believing, as she did, that Lucia's journey would be as bootless as it would be dangerous to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of the country to be spent at home; and thus to give a chance of saving our unhappy people from being swept off the face of the earth by widely-desolating famine, or the yet more desolating and dreadful agency of a bloody, a bootless, a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand Upon the desert verge of death, and say: "What shall avail the woes of yesterday To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land Whose currency is strange unto our hand? In life's small market they had served to pay Some late-found rapture, could ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... and bootless boast, For which he paid full dear; For while he spake, a braying ass Did sing most loud and clear, Whereat his horse did snort as he Had heard a lion's roar, And gallop'd off with all his might, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... developments than one at a distance. To one, Naples was more important than Minorca, more important than a half-dozen ships in a possible fleet action; to the other, Egypt was more important than the presence of sixteen thousand veterans, more or less, on a European battle-field. It is impossible and bootless, to weigh the comparative degree of culpability involved in breaches of orders which cannot be justified. It is perhaps safe to say that while a subordinate has necessarily a large amount of discretion in the particular matter intrusted to him, the burden of proof rests wholly upon ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... of his army from thence and its transference to northern Virginia, the defeats suffered by Pope, and the first invasion of Maryland, occurred either immediately before or during the time that Farragut was in Pensacola. His own bootless expedition up the Mississippi and subsequent enforced retirement conspired also to swell the general gloom; for, although thinking military men could realize from the first that the position into ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... a shriek, that waefu' night, Rose frae the stormy main; An' mony a bootless vow was made, An' mony a prayer vain; An' mithers wept, an' widows mourned For mony a weary day; An' maidens, ance o' blithest mood, Grew ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... to Marian Mayfield, just before going to Europe. I corresponded with her from Glasgow. I did appoint a meeting with her on the beach, upon the fatal evening in question—for what purpose that meeting was appointed, it is bootless to tell you, since the meeting never took place—for some hours before I should have set out to keep my appointment, my grandfather was stricken with apoplexy. I did not wish to leave his bedside ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth |
