"Piteous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fred, do say 'Now', or our chance is gone," said Samson to himself; and as if this was communicated to the young officer by some peculiar sense, he was drawing in his breath previous to giving the word and dashing at their tracker, when a low, piteous ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... walked to see the Doctor, and his old tutor. To both he opened his piteous tale, and both of them gave him the most generous and liberal assistance; they promised also to procure him such other aid as might lie in their power. A little lighter in heart, he went to pay his visit to Thornley, whom he found occupying his old rooms. As Bruce recrossed ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the piteous appeals of the Koreans to China had produced some effect. A small army of five thousand men, which was raised in the adjoining province of Laotung, was sent to their aid. This insufficient force rashly undertook to attack the Japanese in Pingshang. ...
— Japan • David Murray
... outside the gates of Geneva, the last tragic scene took place. With his brow adorned with a crown of straw sprinkled with brimstone, his Fatal Books at his side, chained to a low seat, and surrounded by piles of blazing faggots, the newness and moisture of which added greatly to his torture, in piteous agony Servetus breathed his last, a sad spectacle of crime wrought in religion's name, a fearful example of how great woes an author may bring upon himself by his arrogance and self- sufficiency. The errors of Servetus were deplorable, but the vindictive cruelty of his foes ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the better. This world palls upon me," said Lilburne, almost gloomily. "I grow sick of the miserable quackeries—of the piteous conceits that men, women, and children call 'knowledge,' I wish to catch a glimpse of nature before I die. This creature interests me, and that is something in this life. Clear those ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... grass he talked in the light tone that served his trade, as if Aldebaran's woes were but a flight of swallows 'cross a summer sky, and would as soon be gone. And when between his quirks he'd drawn the piteous tale entirely from him, he doubled up with laughter and ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... features, faintly suggestive of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her girlhood. When she peered into those piteous, blighted eyes, mighty sobs of pity shook her, but she felt that she must be silent, and she forced back the tears. Outside, a spring bunting was still singing, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... its headlong passage. Once or twice, when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried past, the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague, mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight darkened, gradually; but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look fixed in one direction—watching—watching; and, while the howling wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to shudder in ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... Partridge in his nets, and was just about to wring its neck when it made a piteous appeal to him to spare its life and said, "Do not kill me, but let me live and I will repay you for your kindness by decoying other partridges into your nets." "No," said the Fowler, "I will not spare you. I was going to kill you anyhow, and after that treacherous ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors... And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He raised a sigh so piteous and profound As it did seem to shatter all his bulk And end ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... looked up in his face. Her look was piteous; it disarmed Beatrice; her great anger fled. She went up to the poor woman, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the time shall be When to my place of rest, With milder grace my wild fawn shall return Here where she looked on me Upon that day thrice blest: Then she shall bend her radiant eyes that yearn In search of me, and (piteous sight!) shall learn That I, amidst the stones, am clay. May love inspire her in such wise, With gentlest breath of sighs, That I, a stony corpse, shall hear her pray, And force the very skies, That I may wipe the tears from ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Now the old maid, who was all eyes, and followed the great and notable changes which were taking place in the person of this badly hanged man, pulled the surgeon by the sleeve, and pointing out to him, by a curious glance of the eye, the piteous cause, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... through a speaking-trumpet, "Trunnion! turn out and be spliced, or lie still and be damned!" By this, and other stratagems, Trunnion's obstinacy was overcome. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and heaving a piteous groan yielded to the remonstrances of Hatchway in these words: "Well, since it must be so, I think we must e'en grapple. But 'tis a hard case that a fellow of my years should be compelled, d'ye see, to beat up to windward ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... thing, the self-deception of a criminal idealist shattering his existence like a thunder-clap out of a clear sky, and re-echoing amongst the wreckage in the false assumptions of those other fools. Fancy that hungry and piteous imbecile furnishing to the curiosity of the revolutionist refugees this utterly fantastic detail! He appreciated it as by no means constituting a danger. On the contrary. As things stood it was for his advantage rather, a piece of sinister ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... ear, which he always did when he was put out. At least a dozen of his best plants were ruined, but he could not scold the little mice, whose little piteous faces were turned up ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... me! No, give me the cannon!" mamma began begging like a little child. Her face showed a piteous fear that she would not get it. Kolya was disconcerted. The captain ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with a piteous little expression of appeal. 'I'm so uncomfortable, and my foot's going to sleep. And you needn't be horrid ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... typify that spirit of violence and insurrection which is necessarily generated by systematic oppression, and rudely avenges its crimes; and the picture he has drawn of its prevalence in that unhappy country is at once piteous and frightful. Its effect in exciting our horror and indignation is in the long run increased, we think— though at first it may seem counteracted—by the tone of levity, and even jocularity, under which he has chosen to ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... difficulty, "A boy in a boat—over he goes;" and burst out in a piteous wail, "Oh, my poor little Ephraim! I always ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... for a full minute and a half. Then, seeing he never winked or budged, she grew frightened and piteous, threw her arms up, turned, and fled up the north path, squealing like a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... with the gusto of a connoisseur how neatly the denouement of this piteous farce had been prepared. His rage with Charteris; Anne's overhearing, and misinterpretation of, a dozen angry words; that old affair with Clarice—immediately before her marriage (one of how many pleasurable gallantries? the colonel idly wondered, and regretted ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... she felt her heart die in her breast, leaving only the shell, the husk, of what had been Randalin, Frode's daughter. Her first thought Was a vague wonder that after it she could breathe and move as if she were still alive. Her next, a piteous desire to escape from him while she had this strength, before the end should really come. Clutching the broken chain, she drew herself up bravely, her words coming in uneven breathfuls. "I want not that recompense, lord. I want—nothing you have to give. Little ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... independence of the Rebel States. Thus far the Free States had waited with commendable patience for some symptom of vitality in the new Administration, something that should distinguish it from the piteous helplessness of its predecessor. But now their pride was too deeply outraged for endurance; indignant remonstrances were heard from all quarters, and the Government seemed for the first time fairly to comprehend that it had twenty millions of freemen at its back, and that forts might be taken and ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... poor little Arthur shrink up in a moment and look piteous; and Tom with a shrug of his shoulders ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... fastened up, much against his will, and his piteous protests no longer added to the girl's agony. She clung to the after rail, and watched the boat, now a tiny dot hard to discern amidst the ripples caused by the inflowing tide. Her intimate acquaintance with the daily happenings of life aboard told her ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... disarmed men marching between a double rank of heavily equipped hoplites. As they drew near, they clasped imploring hands and evidently begged for mercy from the stern, tight jawed figure at Nelson's side. Contemptuous and unhearing the prisoners' piteous pleadings and lamentations, Hero Giles scowled upon them and deliberately turned ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... by the wharves, and indeed all Deephaven looked more or less out of repair. All along shore one might see dories and wherries and whale-boats, which had been left to die a lingering death. There is something piteous to me in the sight of an old boat. If one I had used much and cared for were past its usefulness, I should say good by to it, and have it towed out to sea and sunk; it never should be left to fall to pieces ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... piteous state from the sickness, which had cut off hosts of people of all ranks. It lasted seven or nine days in each, and seems to have been a malignant fever. Pericles lost his eldest son, his sister, and almost all his dearest friends in it; but still ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it is too late,' murmured the young man, who had studied in the schools of philosophy; 'but, all the same, put the fish in that vessel full of water, and we will take it back to show my father that we have done what we could.' But when he drew near the fish it looked up at him with such piteous eyes that he could not make up his mind to condemn it to death. For he knew well that, though the doctors of his own country were ignorant of the secret of the ointment, they would do all in their power to extract something from the fish's blood. So he picked up the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... arise from the presence of some other fine compensating or equivalent quality. Perhaps one may say that this equivalent for grandeur is a certain simple touching of our sense of human kinship, of the large identity of the conditions of the human lot, of the piteous fatalities which bring the lives of the great multitude of men to be little more than "grains of sand to be blown by the wind." This old woe, the poet says, now in the fulness of the ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... his piteous cry," sang the tenors, and the prima donna stepped out and sang a beautiful aria beginning "Now the cruel waves advancing." After she had finished the bass got ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... lain thus for some time, still grasping the little child, and in spite of his piteous cries, unconscious of his presence, when she was aroused by ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... lumpish cluster of red geranium blossoms, still aromatic and not quite dead, though naturally, after three hours of such intimate confinement, they wore an unmistakable look of suffering. With a tenderness which his family had never observed in him since that piteous day in his fifth year when he tried to mend his broken doll, William laid the geranium blossoms in the cardboard box among the botanical and ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... Piteous as were his hardships—doleful as were his tales of the "lothsome view of y^e shore, and y^e irksome noyse of y^e yce," "y^e stinking fogs and cruelle windes" of Desolation Land—the seamen of that ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... not drive down upon us, and if so, inevitably with one touch send us to the bottom. Our only chance of escape was to make sail, but the alternative was a dangerous one. I was preparing to do this when we saw those on board stretching out their hands towards us imploring help. It was a piteous sight, for none could we afford, and all her own boats had, we saw, been washed away. Now, as we mounted to the summit of a sea, she began, it seemed, to climb up another watery height, but a still vaster billow came rolling on, and thundering over her deck; down she went beneath it, and ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the abbey would ruin the castle; finally, she gave utterance to a thousand wise arguments, such as ladies use in the height of the storms of life, when they have had about enough of them. Amador's face was so piteous, his appearance so wretched, and so open to banter, that the lord, saddened by the weather, conceived the idea of enjoying a joke at his expense, tormenting him, playing tricks on him, and of giving him a lively recollection of his reception at the chateau. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... by the Colony to witness the death of Conanchet, stood near, gazing mournfully on the piteous spectacle. The instant the spirit of the condemned man had fled, the prayers of the divine had ceased, for he believed that then the soul had gone to judgment. But there was more of human charity, and less of that exaggerated ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... know that I shall leave town for a month: my friend Monclar looks piteous when I talk of such an event. I can't bear to leave him; he is to take my portrait to-day (a famous one he has taken!) and very like he engages it shall be. I am going to town for the purpose. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... trifle. Much can be bought with them. But Schorlin Castle razed to the ground, my master's lady mother and Fraulein Maria held as half captives in the convent, to say nothing of the light-hearted Prince Hartmann and Sir Heinz's piteous grief—if all these things could be undone, child, I should not think the bag of gold, and another into the bargain, too high a price to pay for it. What is the use of a house filled with fine furniture when the heart is so full ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... whipped hastily round to hinder Camille from going. She found Josephine white as death, apparently fainting, and clutching at the tree convulsively with her nails. Such was the intensity of the situation that she left her beloved sister in that piteous state, and even hoped she would faint dead away, and so hear no more. She came back white, and told Camille it was only a bird got into the tree. "And to think you should be wounded," said she, to divert his attention from ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... had quartered himself, in the superabundance of his heroism, at a gun where he had no business to be, and in running it out, he had jammed his toe in a scupper hole, so fast that there was no extricating him; and notwithstanding his piteous entreaty "to be eased out handsomely, as the leg was made out of a plank of the Victory, and the ring at the end out of one of her bolts," the captain of the gun finding, after a stout pull, that the man was like to come home in his hand without ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... endeavoured to take her from her husband, and as she fled across some fields to elude his pursuit, she was bitten in the foot by a venomous snake, which lay concealed in the long grass. Eurydice died of the wound, and her sorrowing husband filled the groves and valleys with his piteous and unceasing lamentations. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... so constantly impressed upon the count's mind by his mother that he seemed, at times, to be thoroughly aware of it; yet at others the recollection faded from his memory. At first, when the voyage was mentioned, he would remonstrate in a piteous, feeble, fretful way, declaring that he would not go; but of late he had appeared to yield to the potency of Madame ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... for the first time he stepped under the doorway, was touched with a deeper emotion than he had felt in a long time as he thought of the first time that question had come to him in the piteous appeal of the shabby young man who had appeared in the First Church of Raymond ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... pathetic manner to death at the hands of man. Claudio Gay, in his Natural History of Chili, says, "When attacked by man its energy and daring at once forsake it, and it becomes a weak, inoffensive animal, and trembling, and uttering piteous moans, and shedding abundant tears, it seems to implore compassion from a generous enemy." The enemy is not often generous; but many gauchos have assured me, when speaking on this subject, that although they kill the puma readily to protect their domestic animals, they ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... they are striking, not for themselves, but for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. And are we, who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to stand by and coldly condemn these piteous victims of the Furies and Fates? Are we to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic self-devotion, sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject submission to injustice and wrong? Are we ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... then spake: "What moans From yonder thicket come? No forest beast Doth utter cry so piteous and sad. This holy morn, the holiest of the year, Doth bring to Nature a deep-thrilling joy. 'T is only humankind that can be sad. Ah! there again the grieving and the moans,— Methinks I know that sad despairing cry. These brambles I will tear apart and see What their ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... bear the grief His country suffers; I will pardon him. He lost his courage first, and then his mind; His courage rushes back, his mind still wanders. The guest of heaven was piteous to these men, And princes stoop to ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... Herb bestowed upon me that baby raccoon, I called the little innocent 'Zip,' and kept him in-doors, letting him roam at will. But after he grew to manhood, I was obliged to banish him to our yard and chain him up; and there his piteous, sky-piercing calls, which seemed to come from the roof of a house near him, first showed me what a ventriloquist the animal ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... minutely as I could,—and Kate and Bob were thrilled by the narrative. For my own part I had not yet recovered from the shock it had given me. The expression of agony on my uncle's face haunted my imagination. I could still see his pale face and his quivering lip, and his piteous pleading lingered in my ears. Most terrible are the sufferings of the evil-doer, and I resolved anew that I would always be true to God and principle. What were mines of wealth to a man tortured with ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... the skull and earth are vanished. This is beyond melancholy. I do dare my fate To do its worst. Now to my sister's lodging And sum up all these horrors: the disgrace The prince threw on me; next the piteous sight Of my dead brother; and my mother's dotage; And last this terrible vision: all these Shall with Vittoria's bounty turn to good, Or I will drown this weapon in ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... hand through his arm. "Oh, La-Larry, why did you ever take such a risk!" she breathed. Her whisper was piteous, aquiver with fright. "Come this way!" and she quickly pulled him into the room where he had met Miss Grierson and to the door by ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Harker was late at the office that night, bending, sad and wrinkled, over his interminable papers; the whole business connected with which was so repugnant to him. Sigh after sigh escaped his thin lips, as he read the piteous appeals, and knew that he must refuse them; must deal out fresh misery against his will. It was hard to be the tool of such a merciless fiend; to be the servant of such a master of deceit, villainy and fraud; but so greatly did the father love his child that he would scarce have hesitated ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... of the law of gravitation. It is the paragon and masterpiece of ingratitude, showing more than any other act of history what is so often charged and we so fondly deny, that republics are ungrateful. The freedmen ask for bread, and you send them a stone. With piteous voice they ask for protection. You thrust them back unprotected into the cruel den of their former masters. Such an attempt, thus bad as bad can be, thus abortive for all good, thus perilous, thus pregnant with a war of race upon race, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... years later her mother was seized with fatal illness. Jeanne could not bring herself to show her any tenderness. The piteous glance of the dying woman followed all her comings and goings, but she pretended not to see it. Once, when her father was out of the room, her mother called Jeanne ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... an opening in the cliffs, beyond which we could see the dark forest. From it there issued various sounds, which seemed to echo backwards and forwards among the rocks. Among them we could distinguish the moaning cries of monkeys—one seeming to be calling to the other for help in piteous tones. The effect was curious, and had a peculiarly melancholy sound; indeed we might easily have supposed them to be the cries of captive slaves, or perhaps a more fanciful person might describe them as disembodied spirits in some haunted island. Meanwhile the night wind, sighing through the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... down the river there was but one feeling of bitter rage against the impending ruin of the water; there was but one piteous cry of helpless desperation. But to weld this, which was mere emotion, into that sterner passion of which resistance and revolt are made, was a task ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... have got this man to say that there was no threat, to be simply piteous, he thought that he might even yet have suggested some compromise. But that was impossible when he was told that worse than threats was in store for him. He was silent for some moments, thinking whether it would not be better ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... moved at the piteous sight, that I from my heart repented the undertaking, and would willing had given over, thinking he had full enough; but, he encouraging and beseeching me earnestly to proceed, I gave him ten more lashes; and then resting, surveyed the increase of bloody ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... boyishly tender for any animal, and to see the gentle creatures mangled, writhing and tumbling, uttering most piteous cries, touched him so deeply that he wept. He had no inclination to swear until afterward, when the full knowledge that it was a trick and not an accident came to him. He started at once for the camp to carry ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... lady repeated, vague-like and turning her eyes so piteous at me that I looked the visitor straight in the face and getting between her and my mistress I ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... station. If he were too much engrossed with cards or had been attracted by some other woman, I thought that both Gruzin and Kukushkin would remind him of us. But our expectations were vain. Five times a day I would go in to Zinaida Fyodorovna, intending to tell her the truth, But her eyes looked piteous as a fawn's, her shoulders seemed to droop, her lips were moving, and I went away again without saying a word. Pity and sympathy seemed to rob me of all manliness. Polya, as cheerful and well satisfied with herself as though nothing had happened, was tidying the master's study and the bedroom, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the antique tragedy is by no means that of expression, but is of form merely. In the utterance of great passions, something must be indulged to the extravagance of Nature; the subdued tones to which pathos and sentiment are limited cannot express a tempest of the soul The range between the piteous "no more but so," in which Ophelia compresses the heart-break whose compression was to make her mad, and that sublime appeal of Lear to the elements of Nature, only to be matched, if matched at all, in the "Prometheus," ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... raised his voice, a grating creak, But only to himself would speak. Groaning with tears in piteous pain, "O! O! ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... are troubled by the piteous end of Horwendil be worried by the sight of this disaster before you; be not ye, I say, distressed, who have remained loyal to your king and duteous to your father. Behold the corpse, not of a prince, but of a fratricide. Indeed, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... up the Montagues.—Some others; search:— We see the ground whereon these woes do lie; But the true ground of all these piteous woes We cannot without ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... her face was pinched and piteous; there was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes. She snuggled up in her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured statement he had thought out with much care. His heart felt sore, as the great heart of a mother-bird ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Here their nests are formed of soft leaves, where the young are placed till they are able to accompany their parents on their predatory expeditions. It is a gentle little creature, and when caught, instead of attempting to bite, only gives vent to a piteous cry. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... chairs with a screen shading the light, near the stove in the middle ward, until the next were due. One night I heard a cat mewing. It seemed to be almost under my chair, I got up and looked everywhere. Yes, there it was again, but this time coming from under one of the men's beds. It was a piteous mew, and I was determined to find it. I spent a quarter of an hour on tiptoe looking everywhere. It was not till I heard a stifled chuckle from the bed next the Dutchman's that I suspected anything, and then, determined they ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... NELL,—Poor little Flossy! I have not yet screwed up nerve to tell papa about her fate, it seems to me so piteous. However, she had a happy life with a kind mistress, whatever her death has been. Little hapless plague! She had more goodness and patience shown her than she ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... foot of her bed. Her hands, wrinkled and small, groped over the coverlet, with nervous twitchings, as every now and then the howls or the pistol-shots of the mob in the streets below them fell on her ear. And at every such movement the lips of the girl by her pillow twitched in piteous sympathy. About half-past twelve there was sharp firing in volleys to the southward of them, that threw the half-conscious sufferer into an agony of supersensitive disturbance. Then there came a silence that seemed unnaturally deep, yet it was only the silence ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... subject, and would not go back to it; and after a few minutes he telephoned Adelaide, ordered a cart, and set out to take her for a drive. Mrs. Whitney watched him depart with a heavy heart and so piteous a face that Ross was moved almost to the point of confiding in her what he was pretending not to admit to himself. "Ross is sensible beyond his years," she said to herself sadly, "but youth is so romantic. It never can see beyond ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... a man's mind to think on 'em, and to make a note on 'em as fur as might be." And then came one covered with flowers and berries, and another with fruits, and another with shells, and so on through the whole fifteen. They hung now in little Star's window, a strange and piteous record; and every night before the child said her prayers, she kissed the first and last shell, and then prayed that Daddy Captain might forget the "dreadful time," and never, never think ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... until he grew delirious, and raved in the most distressing manner. The unfortunate haricot was still on his mind, and he was persecuted by men with strange-shaped heads and carrot eyes. Sometimes he imagined himself pursued by Caddy, and would cry in the most piteous manner to have her prevented from beating him. Then his mind strayed off to the marble-ground, where he would play imaginary games, and laugh over his success in such a wild and frightful manner as to draw tears from the eyes ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... poor lady under her breath, and put out a hand as if feeling for some stick of furniture to lean against. "It has come!" she repeated aloud, but still hoarsely; and with that she turned to the lass with a most piteous look, and "Oh, Kirstie, girl," she cried, "you won't leave me? I have been kind to you—say ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... He spoke none now, either in answer to Estrella's appeals, becoming piteous in their craving for relief from suspense, or in response to Brent Palmer's steady stream of insults and vituperations. Such things were far below. The bitterness and anger and desolation were squeezing his heart. He remembered ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... the dead and the living," said Mrs. Strawberry. "'Tis a piteous sight. I wish they were both bound to the one place. We'll have no good of this love-sick girl; and I have some fears myself of her brutal brother and the father of the brat. I hear his voice: they are home. Well, they may just step up, and look at their work. If this is ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of boy Arthur, and shut him up in a great tower. Very piteous tales are told of what happened next. Some say that John ordered a hardhearted servant to burn out Arthur's beautiful blue eyes with a hot iron. What John himself said was that "the boy died in prison," and that to him as next of kin belonged those fair lands of Aquitaine beyond ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... she came back to Haworth, in a letter to one of the household in which she had been staying, there occurs this passage:—"Our poor little cat has been ill two days, and is just dead. It is piteous to see even an animal lying lifeless. Emily is sorry." These few words relate to points in the characters of the two sisters, which I must dwell upon a little. Charlotte was more than commonly tender in her treatment of all dumb creatures, and they, with that fine ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... duly promulgated, it was a piteous sight to behold the late valiant burgomasters, who had demolished the whole British empire in their harangues, peeping ruefully out of their hiding-places; crawling cautiously forth; dodging through narrow lanes and alleys; starting at every little ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... piteous, subdued eye, and smiled a tender, kind smile. With years her understanding of her ancient aunts had grown. They were no longer rather contemptible, narrow-minded elders in her eyes, but filled her with a pitiful ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... floor of its chancel the brasses of his father and his grandfather mark their graves. A step nearer to the altar, unmarked by brass or epitaph, lies the grave in which, with bitter tears and cries, his greencoats laid the body of the leader whom they loved. "Never were heard such piteous cries at the death of one man as at Master Hampden's." With him indeed all seemed lost. But bitter as were their tears, a noble faith lifted these Puritans out of despair. As they bore him to his grave they sang, in the words of the ninetieth psalm, how ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... unkingly. Rather was it the wail of a criminal on being told that the executioner waited without. His ruddy cheeks blanched, and his hands were outstretched as if in a piteous plea for mercy. There was a tumult of objurgations in the outer passage; but this King in spite ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One thing at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison, nevertheless it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it could not die, but was immortal ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Margaret, an old and faithful servant, who was her constant companion. As darkness was already overspreading the city, she hurried on, unwilling to be out so late at night, when she was accosted by a poor woman, who, with a piteous tale, too likely to be true, entreated that she would visit her perishing family. Without hesitation she desired Margaret to return home and obtain such scanty provisions as remained, while she accompanied the suppliant. ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... take arms against human beings in such a piteous plight, but we stood with our muskets cocked and waited for ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... see the panic in the town as the poor folk knew that the Danes were on them. They filled the road down which I must go, thronging in wild terror to the gates, and I will not remember the faces of that crowd, for they were too piteous. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... father. He believed the story of his child's shame, and it was piteous to hear him lamenting over her, as she lay like one dead before him, wishing she might never more open ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... entering the house, as the fire was raging fiercely, and the house would soon fall in. Finding that his entreaties were not regarded, and suffering from burns and injuries, the noble animal discontinued his efforts, but ran uneasily round the engine, howling in a piteous manner; nor would he leave the spot after the fire was put out until search was made, when beneath the still smouldering embers, the firemen discovered the charred body of an old man, whom he had ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Dorothea with piteous entreaty. He terrified her; she could not recognize her little, gay, gentle brother in those ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... the mill, nor gave them longer rest than the cuckoo's note lasted, or they could sing a song. But that quern was such that it ground anything that the grinder chose, though until then it had ground nothing but gold and peace. So the maidens ground and ground, and one sang their piteous tale in a strain worthy of Aeschylus as the other worked— they prayed for rest and pity, but Frodi was deaf. Then they turned in giant mood, and ground no longer peace and plenty, but fire and war. Then the quern went fast and furious, and that very night came Mysing the Sea-rover, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... now as he went bowing down His reeking head full low, The bottles twain behind his back Were shatter'd at a blow; Down ran the wine into the road, Most piteous to be seen, Which made his horses flanks to smoke, As they had ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... cased in shoes and stockings, struggling in the air. The poor orator who had called down destruction upon himself jumped out of the caftan, by which they had seized him, and in his scant parti-coloured under waistcoat clasped Bulba's legs, and cried, in piteous tones, "Great lord! gracious noble! I knew your brother, the late Doroscha. He was a warrior who was an ornament to all knighthood. I gave him eight hundred sequins when he was obliged to ransom ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... on when he found himself stopped by a piteous figure that, with appealing eyes and timid gestures, stepped up ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... on his legs last night for three hours and three quarters, and I sat through it all. As far as I could observe through the bars I was the only person in the House who listened to him. I'm sure Mr. Gresham was fast asleep. It was quite piteous to see some of them yawning. Plantagenet did it very well, and I almost think I understood him. They seem to say that nobody on the other side will take trouble enough to make a regular opposition, but that there are men in the City who will write letters to the newspapers, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to find Captain Will Hallam, and to him he made almost a piteous appeal for a loan of fifteen thousand dollars through ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... oil was rubbed upon the tongue of a large cat. Immediately the animal uttered piteous cries and began ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... Elsie be thinking of? She did not run. Robbie looked at her in piteous distress; Duncan was beside himself. He cast a beseeching glance at Elsie, a momentary one of resentful anger at his mother, an impatient one at Robbie, the unfortunate messenger ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... these words. But every novel experiment seems doomed to fail, or meet with some disaster. The water in the bottle had been reduced too low by vaporism, and the bottle burst suddenly, with a loud report. That report was followed by a piteous wail. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... would that lady's lips There speak her grievous woe, Though in her chamber in the night Her frequent tears would flow. She dreamt of wrong where love was sought, Of crafty cruel eyes, Of one steep stair, of grasping hands That stifled piteous cries; ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee; O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free: In rigorous chains, in piteous pains, I am longing for Thee! In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling, I pray, I beseech Thee, O Lord, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... colonies of lepers, who, being compelled to isolate themselves from their fellows, have taken up their abode in rude hovels or caves by the road-side, and sally forth in all their hideousness to beset the traveller with piteous cries for assistance. Some of these poor lepers are loathsome in appearance to the last degree; their scanty coverings of rags and tatters conceals nothing of the ravages of their dread disease; some sit at the entrance to their hovels, stretching out their hands and piteously ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Tuileries. Bonaparte stopped, and, seizing Roederer by the arm, he said: "On the 20th of June I was there," pointing with his finger to the terrace by the water, "behind the third linden. Through the open window I could see the poor king, with the red cap on his head. It was a piteous sight; I pitied him." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... stench of the burning clothing, the odor of blood, the piteous bleating of the doomed creatures sickened me; and I made my way out of the barn and down to the river, where I stripped and waded out to wash ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... few consolatory words and jumped down from the wheel. She was torn both ways. Bella's plight was piteous, but to make her father rise in his present state of health and attend such a case, hours long, in the chill, night breath of the open—it might kill him! She turned toward the camp, vaguely conscious of the men standing in awkward attitudes ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... never made good lovers, you and I. Look you, I would not have you love me, sir, For all the love's sake in the world. I say, You love the queen, and loving burns you up, And mars the grace and joyous wit you had, Turning your speech to sad, your face to strange, Your mirth to nothing: and I am piteous, I, Even as the queen is, and such women are; And if I helped you to your love-longing, Meseems some grain of love might fall my way And love's god help me when I came to love; I have read tales of men that won their ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and so piteous, She would weep if that she saw a mouse Caught in a trap, if it were dead ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... an April day, The year Napoleon's troops took Venice—say The twenty-fifth of April. All alone Walking the ward, I heard a sick man moan, In tones so piteous, as his heart would break: 'Lost, lost, and lost again—for Venice' sake!' I turned. There lay a man no longer young, Wasted with fever. I had marked, none hung About his bed, as friends, with tenderness, And, when the priest ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the boot to get it off, he succeeded in doing so, and I, picking it up with its fellow, made good my retreat. But where was my coat? I could not get an echo of an answer, where? So I went downstairs and told my piteous tale to the landlord, who laughed at my troubles, and told me he could not give me the slightest hopes of ever seeing it again; but he offered to lend me a garment in which to travel to Wilmington, which ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... monarchs of former times. And although that old couple desirous of seeing their son, was comforted, yet recollecting the youthful days of their son, they became exceedingly sorry. And afflicted with grief, they began to lament in piteous accents, saying, 'Alas, O son, alas, O chaste daughter-in-law, where are you?' Then a truthful Brahmana of the name of Suvarchas spake unto them, saying, 'Considering the austerities, self-restraint, and behaviour of his wife Savitri, there can be no doubt that Satyavan liveth!' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that he might think the salt an improvement. At all events, I resolved to be prepared, in case he should pay us a second visit. Accordingly, before going to bed, I loaded my gun with ball, and tied Suffolk up in the vicinity of the pork-barrel. At midnight we were suddenly awakened by the piteous howlings of the poor dog, and by a noise, as if everything in the room had been violently thrown down. I jumped out of bed instantly, and seizing my gun, crept cautiously along the passage, till I came to the kitchen-door, which I threw open, whereupon some ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... was one of those piteous beings, a middle-aged young woman. She was forty-six, but across a considerably-lighted room looked thirty-six. The shock, when one approached her, was so much the greater. Her plentiful, grey-streaked hair dwelt in disgrace behind a glossy ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... silence on the fields; And, as I passed, the bushes and the trees, The very ruts and puddles of the road Spoke to each other, saying it was she, The happy woman, the elected one, The vessel of strange mercy and the sign Of many loving wonders done in Heaven To help the piteous earth. ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... diverted himself with pictures of a cleaner, kindlier world than he had ever known. In the small hours of the night, the twain drowsed upon their frail platform which floated as a speck on the shrouded ocean. The waves splashed over the spars as the breeze grew livelier and the piteous voyagers were sopping wet but the water was not chill and they slept through ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... count of many paternosters. So we shall make our prayer continuous and faithful; because in the fire of His love we know that He is powerful to give us what we ask. He is Highest Wisdom, who knows how to give and discern what we need; He is a most piteous and gracious Father, who wishes to give us more than we desire, and more than we know how to ask for our need. The soul is humble, for it has recognized its own defects and that in itself it is not. This is the kind ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Dame Ursula; "even so—I never knew a Scot of you but was descended, as ye call it, from some great house or other; and a piteous descent it often is—and as for the distance you speak of, it is so great as to put you out of sight of each other. Yet do not toss your pretty head so scornfully, but tell me the name of this lordly northern gallant, and we will try what can ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... and saw the responding ruffians in the opposite doors, he swiftly thrust the girl into the spot of blacker shadow at his back, and seized the wrist of Mohammed Abbas with a force and suddenness that wrung from him a piteous wail. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... and the homes in which each had been born and brought up, an unbroken line of emigrants soon filled the streets, and the sight of others caused their tears to break out afresh in pity for one another: piteous cries too were heard, of the women more especially, as they passed by their revered temples now beset with armed men, and left their gods as it were in captivity. After the Albans had evacuated the town, the Roman soldiery levelled ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... learned the agony of love that cannot help. The little Katherine lived long enough to make a woman of her; and strangely enough it reached the one soft spot in the heart of Basil Kildare. During its brief and piteous life, husband and wife came almost close to ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... with us. I was detained at the Parliament House till the hour of poor Mrs. Ballantyne's funeral, then attended that melancholy ceremony. The husband was unable to appear; the sight of the poor children was piteous enough. James Ballantyne has taken his brother Sandy into the house, I mean the firm, about which there ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the gauntlet and should let them do their worst. There was no more heard of all this, but after that the Russians were punished on the other side of a belt of trees just outside the laager, where we could not see them, though their piteous ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... rest-house itself, the sheds in the rear for the accommodation of relays, the syce squatting asleep in the sunshine, the few scrawny chickens squabbling and scratching over their precarious sustenance in the deep hot dust of the compound, even the broken tonga reposing with its shafts uplifted at a piteous angle of decrepitude—all these Amber surveyed with a ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... with arms outstretched in front of her. A low moan of terror and piteous appeal came from ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... it's piteous to think how stodgy you have grown! Married sisters are a delusion. We used to imagine coming to stay, and doing whatever we liked, and eating all sorts of indigestible things that we mayn't have at home. But now Maud can think of nothing but that baby, and you are so prim—too fearfully ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... pericranium just at that instant. I took off the skin and head of the dead bear in half the time that some people would be in skinning a rabbit, and wrapped myself in it, placing my own head directly under Bruin's; the whole herd came round me immediately, and my apprehensions threw me into a most piteous situation to be sure: however, my scheme turned out a most admirable one for my own safety. They all came smelling, and evidently took me for a brother Bruin; I wanted nothing but bulk to make an excellent counterfeit: ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... One bitter cold night George set up a terrible barking. I left my room, went downstairs—nothing apparently the matter. But George would not let me go. He barked and ran to the door. Then I heard a low, piteous cry. I opened the door, and in walked Sultan from the snow-covered step, perished ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... left alone And mourns her cruel fate; She makes a sad and piteous moan, Alone without a mate. She fears her friend is dead and gone— Confirmed in her belief, Her sorrow finds relief in song, And thus she tells her grief. 'Sweet mate! Alas, where art thou now? ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... John in his loud cheery voice, and the horse made a step forward, while the children round cried "Hurrah!" and waved their hands. But suddenly there was a loud piteous cry which made John give the horse a sudden push back and drop his whip, and then, from where they sat, Milly and Tiza heard a sound of crying and screaming, while everybody in the field ran toward the hay-cart. They ran too; what could ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no time for more words. The week of misery; the piteous strain of the long evening; the sweet, sad, wailing melody,—his favorite waltz; the sudden, stunning revelation that it was for Willy's sake that he—her hero—was now to suffer, he whose heart she had trampled on and crushed! It is all more than mortal girl can bear. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... sufficiently, a complaint was duly entered against Mrs. Sims for 'assault with intent to kill;' and Mrs. Sims, despite her piteous entreaties, was arrested and brought before the magistrate. Her appeals for ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... they moved forward involuntarily. He did not attempt to take her hand. He was afraid—vastly afraid of what he had done, unaccountable as it may seem. That piteous sigh wrought shame in his heart. He felt that he had wronged her—had seized upon a willing, hapless victim when she had not the power to defend ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... sister was in bed. Sleeping innocence was aroused by a brutal command. Your sister, as pure, as sweet, as guiltless of wrong, as beautiful in spirit as the angels in heaven, was dragged from her bed by the rough hands of those human devils. Her shrieks and cries, were answered by jeers. Her piteous appeal that they would leave the room until she clothed herself, was refused with curses. She was compelled to dress in their presence, underneath the blazing glare of every light in the room, and before the eyes of those inhuman ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Commemoration—to which festival "lions" from all quarters of the earth resorted in vast droves—when one of this class was hard hit by the charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of expressing his admiration otherwise than by piteous looks, directed at her from an immense distance, out of shot for an opera-glass; when in her immediate vicinity his motto was that of the Breton baron—mourir muet. Claret-cup flowed and Champagne sparkled, powerless to raise him to the audacity of an avowal. Under ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... his head, and though his clothes were stained with blood and he was hatless. He sat upright on his horse, and as the boy turned, he heard the voices of Captain Ward and his soldiers, begging to be sent into the fight. It was a clamour fierce and piteous, and the general had turned his head to the Kansans, when something at the left startled him. There was no firing, and a column of soldiers was approaching. Doubt paralyzed the group around Lyon for a moment. The men wore gray blouses ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... disappointment! First her husband taken, then her dearest child; her ungrateful boys not over-kind to her; and now this last blow dealt her by Beth, just when the prospect of getting her well married was bringing a gleam of happiness into her mother's life. The piteous sobs continued. Beth stole downstairs, bent on atoning in her own person by any sacrifice for all the sorrows, no matter by whom occasioned, which she felt were culminating in this final outburst of grief. She found her mother standing beside the high old-fashioned mantelpiece, leaning ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... out rolled an organ hymn, From Synagogue a loudly chaunted air, Each with its Prophet's high acclaim instinct. Then for the first time met their eyes, swift-linked In one strange, silent, piteous gaze, and dim With ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to avenge the death of American seamen and to carry the cup of liberty to a people perishing for its healing draught. The other is the crackling of a burning house in the night's dead hours, the piteous cries of pain and terror from the lips of wounded babes; the despairing, heart-rending, maddening shrieks of the wife and mother; the harrowing groans of the dying husband and father, and the gladsome shout of the fiendish mob of white American citizens, ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... need— For unto all at last there comes a time When no sweet care can do us any good! Not in my life that I remember of, Could my neglect have injured any one, And if I have by my officious love, Thrown harmful shadows in the way of some, Be piteous to my natural weakness, friends: I never shall offend ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God saue the marke, here on his manly brest, A pitteous Coarse, a bloody piteous Coarse: Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb'd in blood, All in gore blood I sounded at ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... before,—breaks suddenly into a kind of atrocious laughter,—and finally sobs itself out in a plaint like the crying of a little child. The ghastliness of the performance is chiefly—though not entirely—in the goblin mockery of the laughing tones as contrasted with the piteous agony of the wailing ones: an incongruity that makes you think of madness. And I imagine a corresponding incongruity in the soul of the creature. I know that she loves me,—that she would throw away her poor life for me at an instant's ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... that he had long been a suspected man: "By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen, Sir, (was his lofty reply); I hope I see things from a greater distance."' In the Garrick Corres (i. 473) is a piteous letter in bad French, written from St. Malo, by Bickerstaff to Garrick, endorsed by Garrick, 'From that poor wretch Bickerstaff: I could not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell |
