"Mourner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be a 'chief mourner' at the funeral, and I don't know who can undertake the part if ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... sorrow" (alluding to rearing a family), "thy conception," "in sorrow shalt thou bring forth," "thy desire shall be to thy husband," "he shall rule over thee," express six of these. The remainder are:—She should be wrapped up like a mourner (that is, she should not appear in public without having her head covered); she was restricted to one husband, though he might have more wives than one, and was to be kept within doors like ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... intervals a fresh heap of earth and a slab of clean marble intruded with their tale of a new and clamorous grief among the sunken mounds and weatherstained tombstones of the ancient sleepers for whom the tears had long been dried. Now and then a mourner came to put flowers on a grave; now and then one of the two or three laborers who kept the walks and shrubberies in order would come along the path by Putnam's bench, trundling a squeaking wheelbarrow; sometimes a nurse with a baby-carriage found her way in. But generally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Eleanor; "it bitterly grieved my lord that so it should have been. Thou knowest, I hope, that he was the chief mourner when those honoured limbs were laid in the holy ground at Evesham Abbey. They told me, who saw him that day, that his weeping for his godfather and his Cousin Henry overcame all joy in his victory. And I can assure thee, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poetry. Milton's Lycidas has more of a massive commanding power, and Shelley's Adonais rises at times to poetic heights that Tennyson did not reach; but neither Lycidas nor Adonais equals In Memoriam in tracing every shadow of bereavement, from the first feeling of despair until the mourner can ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... around his campfire at night, tone and words and gestures all fitting into harmony with the movement of his body. So came the chants and songs of work and of triumph. For the dead warrior the moan of lamentation fitted itself to the slower moving to and fro of the mourner, and hence came the elegy. In its first expression this was but inarticulate, half action, half music, dumbly voicing the emotion through the senses; its rhythms were all for the ear and it had little meaning ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... hate to have to git used to another back. He never says a word, but he jest looks; but perhaps he'll git over it, or I'll git used to it, or maybe when I git more used to things I'll talk to him and ask him if he can't be a little more human, instead of lookin' like the chief mourner at a funeral. It sometimes makes me feel that I'm dead and ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... of the Active. Accordingly, snatching a hasty breakfast of dry bread and milk—for that was all the food the present low state of our finances would allow us to indulge in—we sallied forth, taking poor little Williams with us, whom we intended should act as chief mourner. When we arrived at the house, and went into the room where Delisle had last seen the body, it was no longer there. We searched about, but nowhere could we see it. In another room we found Captain ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... back to gnawing his nails in bitter meditation and forgot the mourner at his door whose slow wits began to remember—remember; and who, as he remembered, began to shake in his poor broken shoes and feel nailed to the ground. At last he ambled away, thankful that his master did not recur to the questioning of ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... year died dear, simple-minded Gay, who found in Pope a sincere mourner, and an elegant elegiast; and on the 7th of June 1733, expired good old Mrs Pope, at the age of ninety-four. Pope, who had always been a dutiful son, erected an obelisk in his own grounds to her memory, with a simple but striking inscription in Latin. During ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... happy screams and miniature war-whoops from the boisterous youngsters rang through the parlor. In eye, and look, and voice, the popular tribute spoke in honor of the popular instrument,—an instrument whose strings can sound almost every passion forth: The quip and quirk of merriment, the mourner's wail, the measured praise of solemn psalms, the lively beat of joy, the subtle charm of indolent moods, and the sweet ecstacy of youthful pleasure, when with flying feet and in the abandon of delight she swings, circles, and ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... on earth, With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth, See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, And feed with varied fools th' eternal jest: Thou who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece; Where wealth, unlov'd, without a mourner dy'd; And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; Where change of fav'rites made no change of laws, And senates ...
— English Satires • Various
... native timber contractor for four days, and then elaborately pretending that the animal had been "lost." Later on I saw elephant performances in the "Greatest Show on Earth" and elsewhere, and for eighteen years I have been chief mourner over the idiosyncrasies of Gunda and Alice. If I do not now know something about elephants, then my own case of animal ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Unobserved of any one I took my way again to the vault. I carried with me a small lantern, a hammer, and some strong nails. Arrived at the cemetery I looked carefully everywhere about me, lest some stray mourner or curious stranger might possibly be in the neighborhood. Not a soul was in sight. Making use of the secret passage, I soon found myself on the scene of my recent terrors and sufferings, all of which seemed now so slight in comparison with, the mental torture of my ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... uncontrolled, The shaggy monarch of the wood, Before a virgin, fair and good, Hath pacified his savage mood. But passions in the human frame Oft put the lion's rage to shame: And jealousy, by dark intrigue, With sordid avarice in league, Had practised with their bowl and knife Against the mourner's harmless life. This crime was charged 'gainst those who lay ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... by opponents of the government. The banner of the lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Barre, attended by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham. Burke, Savile, and Dunning upheld the pall. Lord Camden was conspicuous in the procession. The chief mourner was young William Pitt. After the lapse of more than twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and perilous, his own shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the same pomp, in the same ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his nose to the roof of the dwelling and uttered a long and dismal howl of sorrow. Again and again, at brief intervals, did the faithful servant thus deplore his master's fate, till Bruin, angered by the noise, threw the broken drum at the unconscious mourner, with such effect, indeed, that the shattered extremity alighted on his crown, and for the time completely buried him, his voice sounding singularly sepulchral from the depths of the hollow instrument. It effectually stopped the current of his grief ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... comfort him. His once haughty spirit was completely broken down. We at length aroused him; and calling Ben to our assistance, Halliday and I conveyed the body of his wife to a distance from the camp, where we dug a grave and buried her, he attending as the only mourner. He was then delivered over to his purchaser with the rest of the Spaniards, the young black alone remaining with us. We could not help pitying the poor people as we saw them carried away, though their fate might not be worse than ours; indeed, as they had some prospect of being redeemed, ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... comes out more distinctly if we follow the Revised Version, and read 'to give unto them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.' There we have two contrasted pictures suggested: one of a mourner with grey ashes strewed upon his dishevelled locks, and his spirit clothed in gloom like a black robe; and to him there comes One who, with gentle hand, smoothes the ashes out of his hair, trains a garland round ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... sunshine of prosperity. Not a cloud drifts across his sky, when, without word of warning, a night of storm crushes along his world, destroys herds and servants, reduces his habitations to ruins, slays his children, leaves himself in poverty, a mourner at the funeral of all he loved. Then his world begins to wonder at him; then distrust him, as if he were evil; his glory is eclipsed, as it would seem, forever; and, as if not content at the havoc of the man's hopes and prosperity and joy, misfortune follows ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... another, but from the misrepresentations that have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would like to follow her remains, to the grave as a mourner. I would like to convince the world, I hope yet to convince you, that she was infinitely dearer to ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... there was not a truer mourner for the old Rector than the new one. "I so little thought I should never see him again," he cried to me. "I have often felt I did not half avail myself of the privilege of knowing such a man, when I was here. I have notes of more than a score of matters, on which I purposed ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Prendergast fancied he had secured secrecy by eluding questions and giving orders at the latest possible moment. The concourse in the church and churchyard was no welcome sight to him, since he could not hope that the tall figure of the chief mourner could remain unrecognized. Worthy man, did he think that Wrapworth needed that sight to assure them of what each tongue had wagged about ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the position he enjoys. Actual tears are expected as a slight return for the seal of office which has enabled its possessor to grow rich at the expense too often of a poor and struggling population. We fancy, however, that the mind of the mourner is more frequently occupied with thinking how many friends he can count among the Imperial censors than in dwelling upon the transcendent bounty of ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... those who die married and bury the unmarried. Before setting out for a funeral they drink liquor and again on their return, and a little liquor is sprinkled over the grave. When a man has been cremated his ashes are taken and thrown into a river on the third day. The chief mourner, after being shaved by his brother-in-law, takes the hair with some copper coins in his hand and, diving into the river, leaves them there as an offering to the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... both in their rich coats of Her Majesty's Arms enbroider'd; the body, between 6 persons of the Arms of Christ's Hospital, St. Bartholomew's, Merchant Taylors Company, City of London, empaled coat and single coat; the chief mourner and his four assistants, followed by the relations of the defunct, &c."[B] In this aggregation of grandeur the mere bagatelle in the shape of a corpse seems almost completely overshadowed, and it is thus ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the bier beside, His master's corpse with wonder eyed— 395 Poor Stumah! whom his least halloo Could send like lightning o'er the dew, Bristles his crest, and points his ears, As if some stranger step he hears. 'Tis not a mourner's muffled tread, 400 Who comes to sorrow o'er the dead, But headlong haste, or deadly fear, Urge the precipitate career. All stand aghast—unheeding all, The henchman bursts into the hall; 405 Before the dead man's bier he stood; Held forth the Cross ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... fresh-complexioned, having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and inclined to shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a funereal mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with Dolly; but she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so", and viewing ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... The solemn pom-pom-pom of the funeral dirge for the Mother of the heir to the Chinese Throne, was indescribably impressive. About eighty men bore the casket from the dwelling to its canopied hearse. One of the mourner's told us that the fourteen-year-old heir to the throne, had not cared much, when all his playthings were taken from him, or even when his throne was taken, but that now he was inconsolable over the loss of ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... lately employed to repair a part of the premises. I fetched thence a slate and some mortar, put the slate on the hollow, secured it with cement, covered the hole with black mould, and, finally, replaced the ivy. This done, I rested, leaning against the tree; lingering, like any other mourner, beside a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... selfish crowd, for a little time to come out of your unhappy self, and by sympathy with others, again to become a little child. Your soul would be refreshed and strengthened by bathing in the morning dews of youth; here would you find a balm for the wounds inflicted by the careless world; many a mourner has been drawn away from that sorrow which feeds upon the very springs of life, by the innocent caresses and gay converse of a child. Cleave then to your liveliness, young people! and throw away from you all vapors, megrims, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... enough, but when heightened by contrast, it becomes still more effective, and I seemed to have secured, with two barrels, a cotinga and its shadow. The latter was also a full-grown male cotinga, known to a few people in this world as the dark-breasted mourner (Lipaugus simplex). In general shape and form it was not unlike its cousin, but in color it was its shadow, its silhouette. Not a feather upon head or body, wings or tail showed a hint of warmth, only a dull uniform gray; an ash of a bird, living in the same ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... incapable of perceiving those merits; or at least during the act of composition had lost sight of them; for, the understanding having been so busy in its petty occupation, how could the heart of the mourner be other than cold? and in either of these cases, whether the fault be on the part of the buried person or the survivors, the memorial is unaffecting ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... respect for, and that was a new acquisition at this period of his life. So long as grandpa Stebbins lived, he and "Dodd" were fast friends, and when, years after, the old man went to his reward, there was no more genuine mourner that stood about his grave than the ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... dying, in May, 1885, Paris was but the first mourner for all France; and the magnificent funeral pageant which conducted the pauper's coffin, antithetically enshrining the remains considered worthy of the highest possible reverence and honors, from the Champs Elysees to the Pantheon, was the more memorable from ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... affection wrapped his pale limbs in the shroud. Here in these grottoes the heroic soul rose up superior to sorrow. Hope and faith smiled exultingly, and pointed to the light of immortal life, and the voice of praise breathed forth from the lips of the mourner. ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... to see Calyste, or rather his shadow, leaning on the arm of the old Chevalier du Halga—a spectre leading a shade—and following the baron's coffin as chief mourner. The church and the little square were crowded with the country people coming in to the funeral from a circuit of ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... story that his house is haunted keeps intruders from the doors, but they venture near enough on the day of his funeral, to see the coffin brought out by the mute negro, and laid on a cart, and that the solitary mourner is Poquelin's brother, long supposed to be dead. He is a leper, for whom the elder brother has cared secretly all these years, not permitting the knowledge of his existence to get abroad, lest the unfortunate man should be removed forcibly, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... nor joy nor woe Can make or mar my fate; I gaze around, above, below, And all is desolate. Go, bid the shattered pine to bloom; The mourner to be merry; But bid no ray to cheer the tomb In which ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... another world ... and therefore not to be brought to your recollection by a common-place representation of her countenance in profile—as an inhabitant of earth. Besides, the chief female figure or mourner, about to enter the vault, is carrying her ashes in an urn: and I own it appears to me to be a little incongruous—or, at least, a little defective in that pure classical taste which the sculptor unquestionably possesses,—to put, what may be considered visible and invisible—or tangible ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... biographer, not without misgivings indeed, but with a deliberation and healthfulness of judgment which most of his readers will approve as allowed to overrule them, has spread before us at length, from the most sacred privacy of the stricken mourner, heart-exercises and scenes in the death-chamber, such as engage with most painful, but still entrancing sympathy, the very soul of the reader. We know not where, in all our literature, to find matter like this, so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... right and liberty. I hear the voice of God, O ye that weep, knighting your dear ones. The freedom of the press is their patent of nobility, our hearts, their monuments. Every one of us, every German, is a mourner, and you, survivors, are ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the spirit of religion, as it was even in India and Egypt, when women were debased; when every man and woman held a human being in cruel bondage; when home was abandoned for the circus and the amphitheatre; when the cry of the mourner was unheard in shouts of victory; when women sold themselves as wives to those who would pay the highest price, and men abstained from marriage unless they could fatten on rich dowries; when utility was the spring of every action, and demoralizing pleasure ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... law of nature that however much one may grieve over the death of a dear one, at the end of a year consolation finds its way to the heart of the mourner. But the disappearance of a living man can never be wiped out of one's memory. Therefore the fact that he was inconsolable made Jacob suspect that Joseph was alive, and he did not give entire credence to the report ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... will she? Does she name Castalio? And with such tenderness? Conduct me quickly To the poor lovely mourner. ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... fashion to put on mourning for nearest relatives, which will make a saving to this town of L20,000 per annum." It also states that a funeral had been held at Charlestown at which no mourning had been worn. At that of Ellis Callender in the same year, the chief mourner wore in black only bonnet, gloves, ribbons, and handkerchief. Letters are in existence from Boston merchants to English agents rebuking the latter for sending mourning goods, such as crapes, "which are not worn." ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... oratory. His attitude was rigidly erect—his complexion so dark that he might have passed for a native of a warmer climate than ours; and his harsh features were composed to an expression resembling that of a chief mourner at a funeral. It was commonly said that he looked rather like a Spanish grandee than like an English gentleman. The nicknames of Dismal, Don Dismallo, and Don Diego, were fastened on him by jesters, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... grave, leading Oriana's pony, the mourner looked up, and gazed in his face again with that sad and inquiring look. But now it did not change to disappointment, for he knew that the stranger was not Uncas. There was even pleasure in his countenance as the clear glance of the English boy's deep blue eye met his ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... the remains of her dearly beloved sister to their last resting place, and then came home on foot (for she was the only mourner), and sat in her black gown before the little fire, and reflected upon her position. What was she to do? She could not stay in these rooms. It made her heart ache every time her eyes fell upon the empty sofa opposite, dinted as it was with the accustomed ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... faint with a nameless terror. Her most peaceful moments were those in which she managed to convince herself that Evelina was dead. She thought of her then, mournfully but more calmly, as thrust away under the neglected mound of some unknown cemetery, where no headstone marked her name, no mourner with flowers for another grave paused in pity to lay a blossom on hers. But this vision did not often give Ann Eliza its negative relief; and always, beneath its hazy lines, lurked the dark conviction that Evelina was alive, in ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... of mourning, Nor go about to lament,(711) Because My Peace I have swept Away from this people.(712) For them shall none lament, 6b Nor gash nor make themselves bald; Neither break bread(713) to the mourner,(714) 7 For the dead to console him, Nor pour him(715) the cup of condolement For his father or mother. Come thou not to the house of feasting, 8 To sit with them eating and drinking. For thus saith the Lord of Hosts,(716) 9 The God of Israel: Lo, I shall stay from this ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... unhappy and debauched children. It turned Holy Christmas into a drunken orgy. And "right thar in their very midst," he thundered, was a satellite of the Devil-King, "who was a-doin' all these very things," and that limb of Satan must give up his still, come to the mourner's bench, and "wrassle with the Sperit or else be druv from the county and go down to burnin' damnation forevermore." And that was not all: this man, he had heard, was "a-detainin' a female," an' the little judge of Happy Valley would soon be hot ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... Polkimbra until her death. After this event, her husband shut himself up with the tortures of his own stern conscience, and was seen by few. In this dismal self-communing he died on the 27th of October, 1837, leaving behind him one mourner, his son Ezekiel, then a strong and ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... long, the drooping muse hath stay'd And left her debt to Addison unpaid, Blame not her silence, Warwick, but bemoan, And judge, oh judge, my bosom by your own. What mourner ever felt poetic fires! Slow comes the verse that real woe inspires: Grief unaffected suits but ill with art, Or flowing numbers with a bleeding heart. Can I forget the dismal night that gave My soul's best part for ever to the grave! How silent did his old ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... a large funeral that buried Bill, and it was openly and widely said that nine out of ten were there merely to make sure that he was dead and buried. The Widow Hartigan was chief mourner in the first carriage. She and Jim led the line, and when he was laid away, she had a stone erected with the words, "A true friend and a man without fear." So passed Kenna; but Jim bore the traces of his influence long and deeply—yes, all his life. Masterful, physical, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... man in Scotland, who, when he died, was buried in a graveyard in Edinburgh, his only mourner being a little Scotch terrier. On two mornings the sexton found the dog lying on his master's grave and drove him away, but the third morning was cold and wet and the dog was allowed to remain. From that time, for twelve years ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... She always talked in this style to strangers; the role of a patriotic mourner for the sorrows of Italy formed an effective combination with her boarding-school manner and ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... different from widowers—it was hardly fair in the folks of Egypt to twist every act of Widower Britt to his discredit and to make him out a renegade of a relict. He did go through all the accepted motions as a mourner. He took on "something dreadful" at the funeral. He placed in the cemetery lot a granite statue of himself, in a frock coat of stone and holding a stone plug hat in the hook of the elbow. That statue cost Tasper Britt rising sixteen hundred dollars—and ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... chief mourner himself arose just then, and began running frantically around the pulpit with snaps, howls and ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal Household followed, the knights wore black armour and black plumes of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as light as day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais there was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... highly applauded the widow's conduct to the officers; but, being himself rather of a social turn, and fond of a good dinner and a bottle, he represented to the lovely mourner that she should endeavor to divert her grief by a little respectable society, and recommended that she should from time to time entertain a few grave and sober persons whom he would present to her. As Dr. Sly had an unbounded influence over ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... is being lowered to his last resting place, Pettifoggism, being his chief mourner, will be so overwhelmed with grief that he will tumble into the same grave. How then to hasten the demise of this venerable Humbug is the question. Some are for letting him die a natural death, others for reducing him gradually by a system of slow starvation: for myself, I confess, I ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... horns, and gold and green wings. Next followed mourners, and after them the herald, with the dead man's coat armour, checkered silver and azure. Then followed the corpse, attended by clerks and the livery. After the corpse came the son, the chief mourner, and two other couples of mourners. The swordbearer and Lord Mayor, in state, walked next; then the aldermen, sheriffs, and the Drapery livery, followed by all the ladies, gentlewomen, and aldermen's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... old man said, "the last time I seen you uns I remember well ez ye war a-settin' on the mourner's bench." For there had been a great religious revival the previous year and many had been pricked in conscience. "Ye ain't so tuk up now in contemplatin' the goodness o' God an' yer sins agin same," he ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... inconsolable mourner for the husband of her youth, lived a very retired life, devoting herself to his mother and ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... hushed it awakens no more; "Friends that are gone" it can never restore; Yet e'en to the mourner one hope it may bring, 'Tis the type of Eternity's ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... condition presented in the foregoing allusion, into a positively lachrymose state, will be readily conceived of, without proclaiming specially, the fact. He will maintain a mien, which shall consist eminently with the atmosphere of the house of mourning; in truth, as an efficient mourner, the Indian may be freely ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... time to go and shake hands with Harry before dinner; and, though scarcely a word passed between them, he saw with delight that he had evidently given pleasure to the mourner. Then he had a charming long evening with Katie, walking in the garden with her between dinner and tea, and after tea discoursing in low tones over her work-table, while Mr. Winter benevolently slept in his arm-chair. Their discourse branched into many paths, but ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... life had become a burden; that common humanity demanded his departure. In vain Philemon offered three fish-hooks and a jackknife by way of solace. In vain Solomon was sure his father would present a calf to the mourner for ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sent a pencil scrawl along with the superintendent's letter to say that she'd 'miss Mr. Barr dreadful,'—that he'd get up and get the breakfast when she was sick, and 'the kids, they thought the world of him.' She signed herself, 'A true mourner, Mrs. Wilson.'" ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... such a fellow for necktie parties as you are, Yorky. Not three weeks ago, you was invitin' me to be chief mourner at one of your little affairs, and your friend Johnson was to be master of ceremonies. Now you've got the parts reversed. No, I reckon we'll have to ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... a poor woman to-day in the last stage of consumption, she gives evidence that her peace is made with God. I find it a heavy cross to visit the sick. Help me, Lord, to search out the mourner, bind up broken hearts, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... coyotes. The nearest of kin usually mourn for the period of one month, during that time giving utterance at intervals to the most dismal lamentations, which are apparently sincere. During the day this obligation is frequently neglected or forgotten, but when the mourner is reminded of his duty he renews his howling with evident interest. This custom of mourning for the period of thirty days corresponds to that ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... recompense her assistants received for their aid, when they saw Cecilia so contentedly engaged with young Delvile, whose eyes were rivetted on her face, with an expression of the most lively admiration: each, however, then quitted the other, and hastened to the fair mourner; no time was now lost, Mrs Harrel was supported to the coach, Cecilia followed her, and Delvile, jumping in after them, ordered the man to drive ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... commonplace, I wonder, and did the unknown mourner console himself ultimately with a new wife? Who knows? as my Italian friends say when they discuss the future of France. Shall I ever penetrate that mystery of the past? My task seems to me almost as ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... he was ours. So let the note of pride Hush into silence all the mourner's ruth; In our safe harbor he was fain to bide And build for aye, after the storm of youth. We saw his mighty spirit onward stride To eternal realms of Beauty and of Truth; While far behind him lay fantasmally The vulgar things that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... 'a' heard a talk I heard Doc Nesbit give this afternoon. That old sinner will be shouting on the mourner's bench ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... beloved friend When in thy Mother's arms Thou a fair gift from Heaven wert laid In all thine infant charms, That day, with cloudless sky returns, But yet thou art not here And from the smitten Mother's eye Distils the mourner's tear. ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... overcome by his grief, and on the point of fainting, the poet accosts him, and courteously demands his pardon for the intrusion. Thereupon the disconsolate mourner, touched by this token of sympathy, breaks out into the tale of his sorrow which forms the real subject of the poem. It is a lament for the loss of a wife who was hard to gain (the historical basis of this is unknown, but great heiresses are usually ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Committal Prayer, and the practice of casting earth upon the coffin is part of a very old ceremony. The last two prayers were added in 1552, and the "Grace" in 1661. Many of the dissenting sects use this Service. The whole Office is of a nature to cheer the heart of the mourner, and to rouse in all a "hope full ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... October, 1852. On the day of the funeral my elder brother and I were taken back to the house where my father lay dead, and while my brother went as chief mourner, poor little boy swamped in crape and miserable exceedingly, I sat in an upstairs room with my mother and her sisters; and still comes back to me her figure, seated on a sofa, with fixed white face and dull vacant eyes, counting the minutes till the funeral ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... still and ever on the great high road that is to terminate in Mr. Snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... his opportunity, cried, "O consul, thy son lies dead in the camp;" which made a great impression upon all others who heard it, yet in nowise discomposed Horatius, who returned merely the reply, "Cast the dead out whither you please; I am not a mourner;" and so completed the dedication. The news was not true, but Marcus thought the lie might avert him from his performance; but it argues him a man of wonderful self-possession, whether he at once saw through the cheat, or, believing it as ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... has secured one mourner. He might have died to all eternity if he hadn't nailed me first. See how selfish men are, and bad-hearted into the bargain. I believe that young fellow had been to a doctor, and found out he was booked in spite of his mahogany cheeks; so then ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... moment to look after this unfortunate woman. He gave his horse to a spearman as he dismounted, and, approaching the unhappy female, asked her, in the most soothing tone he could assume, whether he could assist her in her distress. The mourner made him no direct answer; but endeavouring, with a trembling and unskilful hand, to undo the springs of the visor and gorget, said, in a tone of impatient grief, "Oh, he would recover instantly could I but give him air—land and living, life and honour, would I give for the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... occurrence of the sorrowful event, and, while brief, should not be cold and formal; neither should they touch the opposite extreme, and, by dwelling with maddening iteration upon the fresh sorrow, harrow anew the stricken soul of the mourner. The occasion should never be seized upon as a text for a sermon on resignation, nor should frequent reference be made to various like bereavements suffered by the writer. These comparisons only wound, for "there is no sorrow like unto my sorrow," ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... good, and learn'd as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee; Marble piles, let no man raise To her fame; for after days, Some kind woman born as she, Reading this, like Niobe, Shall turn statue and become Both her mourner and her tomb. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... mat the mourner perceived a white square on the floor. He picked it up and carefully examined it, and then handed ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... abandon their sins. He preached with unusual force and power, the strange scene lending him inspiration. When he had concluded his sermon, as was the custom then, he invited those who were converted to come forward to the mourner's bench and pray and talk with ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... more lovely than before. He could readily understand that mother, who at the risk of life had been unwilling that this charming creature should profane her youth and beauty by serving as a mourner in a celebration of which Marat was the deity. He recalled that cold damp cell which he had lately visited, and shuddered at the thought that this delicate white ermine before his eyes had been imprisoned there, without sun or air, for six weeks. He looked at the throat, too long perhaps, but ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... life again,—hard, cold, inexorable life, knocking with business-like sound at the mourner's door, obtruding its common-place pertinacity on the dull ear of sorrow. The world cannot wait for us; the world knows no leisure for tears; it moves onward, and drags along with its motion the weary and heavy-laden who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... gain'd, he left his prize, He left her to complain; To talk of joy with weeping eyes, And measure time by pain. But heav'n will take the mourner's part, In pity to despair; And the last sigh that rends the heart, ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... Up with the lark the sorrowful duke arose, A mourner chief at Dudon's burial, Of cypress sad a pile his friends compose Under a hill o'ergrown with cedars tall, Beside the hearse a fruitful palm-tree grows, Ennobled since by this great funeral, Where Dudon's corpse ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... mourner just bereaved of one in whom his whole love was garnered, distracted with grief, his faculties unbalanced, his soul a chaos, is of sorrow and fantasy all compact; and he solaces himself with the ideal embodiment of his dreams, half seeing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... was still neglected, and he wrote a pretty vague little song about an earthly mourner and a fresh presence that set him thinking of the story of Persephone and how she passed in the springtime up from the shadows again, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... which makes it holy and reverend. It loses its reality and becomes a miserable shadow. On this ground we have an opportunity to assign over multitudes who would willingly claim places here to other parts of the procession. If the mourner have anything dearer than his grief he must seek his true position elsewhere. There are so many unsubstantial sorrows which the necessity of our mortal state begets on idleness, that an observer, casting aside sentiment, is sometimes led to question ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The mourner's short-lived energy had exhausted itself in the necessary preparations, and now he lay crushed, clinging to the cold lead that ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... flashed with an unnatural fire; her previously raised arm fell powerless by her side; her head, like a broken rose, sank upon her breast; her other hand convulsively grasped the urn, and in this position she in fact resembled an abandoned mourner, weeping over the ashes of her lost happiness. She was now the repudiated and forsaken one who, ready to resign her life, was brooding upon thoughts of death. And while her face took this expression, and she, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the nearest relatives of the deceased victims issued from the church, seeking the carriages in waiting for them. Among those who came next was a handsome, spirited-looking girl of twenty-five, who, though not of the family group, was a sincere mourner. As she stepped forward with the elasticity of youth, glad of the fresh air on her tear-stained cheeks, it happened that she also observed the presence of the reporter, and she paused, plainly appalled. Her nostrils quivered ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... inscriptions, urns, busts, and statues, which are placed in the upper apartments of this edifice. I saw them but once, and then I was struck with the following particulars. A bacchanalian drunk; a Jupiter and Leda, at least equal to that in the gallery at Florence; an old praesica, or hired mourner, very much resembling those wrinkled hags still employed in Ireland, and in the Highlands of Scotland, to sing the coronach at funerals, in praise of the deceased; the famous Antinous, an elegant figure, which Pousin studied as canon or rule of symmetry; ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... to-day with the Garfield boys. Yesterday poor Peter Rabbit died and his funeral was held with proper state. Archie, in his overalls, dragged the wagon with the little black coffin in which poor Peter Rabbit lay. Mother walked behind as chief mourner, she and Archie solemnly exchanging tributes to the worth and good qualities of the departed. Then he was buried, with a ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... precept," said Rasselas, "which you so powerfully enforced?{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} consider that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same." "What comfort," said the mourner, "can truth and reason afford me? Of what effect are they now, but to tell me that my daughter will ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... pyles let no man raise, To her name, for after daies, Some kind woman, born as she, Reading this like Niobe, Shall turn marble, and become, Both her mourner ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... methods might do for other people; let those who would, worship the rising star; he, at least, would be faithful to the sun which had set. And so he got up, and walked to the chapel door, and unlocked it, fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... up, and lo, a man there came From midst the trees, and stood regarding me Until my tears were dried for very shame; Then he cried out: "O mourner, where is she Whom I have sought o'er every land and sea? I love her and she loveth me, and still We meet no more than green ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... was the solitary mourner who watched his unconscious master while life was ebbing and sought to comfort him with mournful ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... and JULES FAVRE fight domestic treason within the walls, and the Prussians without, upon stomachs that feebly digest Parisian "hard tack" and gritty vin ordinaire, is enough to make the spirit of liberty lay over the mourner's bench and perpetrate a perfect Niagara of tears. When FLOURENS bagged the whole government at the Hotel de Ville the other day, my feelings got the better of me, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... took place with all the state that undertakers could give to it in a little village, but with no other honours. Lord George was the chief mourner and almost the only one. One or two neighbours came,—Mr. De Baron, from Rudham Park, and such of the farmers as had been long on the land, among them being Mr. Price. But there was one person among the number whom no one had expected. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... there came to them the Destroyer of all delights.[FN57] Now when the Wazir Dandan had ended the tale of Taj al-Muluk and the Lady Dunya, Zau al-Makan said to him, "Of a truth, it is the like of thee who lighten the mourner's heart and who deserve to be the boon companions of Kings and to guide their policy in the right way." All this befel and they were still besieging Constantinople, where they lay four whole years, till they yearned after their native land; and the troops murmured, being weary of vigil ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the spectators rushed in, dragged the carcase once more from the fire, and fell to hacking off suitable morsels, each for himself. In a few minutes every one who could get hold of a long arrow, or a spear, or a pointed stick, was busy learning to cook. Even the wailing old mourner, finding the excitement irresistible, forsook the body of her slain mate and came forward to take her share. Only the dead man, lying outstretched in the sun by the cave-door, and the crippled giant ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... affection and sympathy dictated at once the kindest course. Without attempting to control the torrent of grief in its full current, she gently sat her down beside the mourner.... She waited a more composed moment to offer her little stock of consolation in ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various |
