"Direful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Alexander the Great," said the Professor. "You would prefer the fame of Achilles to that of Homer, who told the story of his wrath and its direful consequences. I am afraid that I should hardly agree with you. Achilles was little better than a Choctaw brave. I won't quote Horace's line which characterizes him so admirably, for I will take it for granted that you all know it. He was a gentleman,—so is a first-class Indian,—a very noble gentleman ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deter me from pursuing an avocation so full of hazard and peril! If I had taken their advice, and acceded to their solicitations, in all probability I should, at this time, have been in the enjoyment of much happiness." I was aroused from this reverie by the most direful screams from the united voices of the whole tribe, they having drunk largely of the rum, and become so much intoxicated that a general fight ensued. Many of them lay stretched on the ground, with tomahawks deeply implanted in their skulls: and many others, as the common phrase ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Tall Ed, for the first time in his life, was set afoot, and this, you must understand, is a most direful disaster in cowboy life. It means that you must begin again from the ground up, as if you were a perfectly new tenderfoot ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... people amongst us can regard war as anything but a direful necessity arising out of our present conditions; only the thoughtless and those who batten upon such disasters can rejoice in the idea of what I have heard termed 'a jolly ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... hillside. On entering the deeper defiles, above them towered dark green masses of pine, and occasionally the madrono shook its bright scarlet berries. As they toiled up many a steep ascent, Father Jose sometimes picked up fragments of scoria, which spake to his imagination of direful volcanoes and impending earthquakes. To the less scientific mind of the muleteer Ignacio they had even a more terrifying significance; and he once or twice snuffed the air suspiciously, and declared that it smelt of sulphur. So the first day of their journey wore away, and at night they encamped ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... wild bursts of cheering given out again and again by the rescued men, wounded (who were many) and sound (who were very few), to those who had succoured them in their direful time of need—shouts that were echoed and re-echoed by the wearied and weather-worn comrades warmly shaking hands and almost ready to embrace old friends—there were other meetings and heart-stirring incidents. Not the least interesting ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Paterson, an' we went there, an' took a room at a little hotel, an' walked over to the falls. But they wasn't no good, after all, for there wasn't no water runnin' over em. There was rocks and precipicers, an' direful depths, and everything for a good falls, except water, and that was all bein' used at the mills. 'Well, Miguel,' says I, 'this is about as nice a place for a falls ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... hall, Where no corrupted voices brawl; No conscience molten into gold, No forged accuser bought or sold, No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey; For there Christ is the King's Attorney. And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, Against our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... triumph, or horrid cries, filled the vales below and echoing wood. Among the Romans were feeble fires, low broken murmurs; they leaned, drooping here and there, against the pales, or wandered about the tents, more like men wanting sleep than quite awake. The general, too, was alarmed by direful visions during his sleep; he thought he heard, and saw, Quintilius Varus, rising out of the marsh, all besmeared with blood, stretching forth his hand and calling upon him, but that he rejected the call, and pushed back his hand as he held it toward him. At break ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the favor and revolted from the Covenant. He therefore hid His countenance, withdrawing the assistance and protection which they so gratefully accepted in distress, but deceitfully rejected when prosperity returned. The relapse threw them suddenly into direful conditions of misrule, oppression, and profuse bloodshed, which continued nearly ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... In that case only one way was left open. He must plead with Reginald himself, confront at all risks that snatcher of souls. To-night he would not fall asleep. He would keep his vigil. And if Reginald should approach his room, if in some way he felt the direful presence, he must speak out, threaten if need be, to save his friend from ruin. He had fully determined upon this course when a cry of joy from Ethel, who had just returned from her walk, interrupted his reverie. But ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... should be branded as a rebel. Even Gilbert and Henry of Stramen were crestfallen in the blight of all their budding hopes. Of all our Suabian friends, Father Omehr was the only one who rejoiced in this amicable termination of the council, and who devoutly returned thanks to God for averting a direful war, and proclaiming, in the favorite language ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... have either the time or the skill necessary to adjust a cold shoe to the hoof so that it will fit, as we say, "air-tight." Though the opponents of hot fitting draw a lurid picture of the direful consequences of applying a hot shoe to the hoof, it is only the abuse of the practice that is to be condemned. If a heavy shoe at a yellow heat be held tightly pressed against a hoof which has been pared too thin, till it embeds itself, serious damage may be done. But a shoe at a dark ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... deities who watched over the fortunes of the Nederlanders having unthinkingly left the field, and stepped into a neighboring tavern to refresh themselves with a pot of beer, a direful catastrophe had well-nigh ensued. Scarce had the myrmidons of Michael Paw attained the front of battle, when the Swedes, instructed by the cunning Risingh, leveled a shower of blows full at their tobacco-pipes. Astounded at this assault, and dismayed ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... darkened heavens by the wild water-spout, only to fall again into the surging deep, to be tossed to and fro on waters which cannot rest! Rash youth! Would you launch away on this sea of death? Quaff of the intoxicating bowl, and soon its hungry waves will be around you. Would you avoid a fate so direful? Seal your lips to the first drop, and the drear prospect will sink ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... by our Irish friend, and observes that Sam takes to wearing his old clothes for a twelvemonth, and never seems to have any ready money. We shall see some day whether or no this horse will carry Sam ten miles, if required, on such direful emergency, too, as falls to the lot of few men. However, this is all to come. Now in holiday clothes and in holiday mind, the two noble animals cross the paddock, and so down by the fence towards the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to waste as much time as possible in chattering, running, and sleeping; that they became unfaithful, for they withheld in this way from their masters what they had lent and sold to them—time. But as every disloyalty punished itself, so this also caused very direful consequences; for betrayal of the master was betrayal of oneself. Every action tended imperceptibly to form a habit which we could never get rid of. When a maid-servant or a man-servant had for years done as little as possible, worked as slowly as possible, always grumbled at ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of the Red Cross in America, many direful calamities have afflicted the country. In each of these visitations the Red Cross has acted in some degree as the Almoner—the distributer and organizer—of the bountiful measures of relief that have been poured out by the ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... dearest and most intimate friend, and she is one to whom they can never speak of the thing that interested them most. No doubt "our best plays mean secret plays"; but Charlotte, at any rate, suffered from this secrecy. There was nothing to counteract Miss Nussey's direful influence on her spiritual youth. "Papa" highly approved of the friendship. He wished it to continue, and it did; and it was the best that Charlotte had. I know few things more pathetic than the cry that Charlotte, at twenty-one, sent out of her solitude (with some verses) ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... his other disappointments, a direful change had taken place at camp. The "peach of a captain" had been raised to the rank of major and Captain Wurtz had been put in his place. It seemed as if ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... look in the blue eyes before her. "Yes, a little," she said lightly; "for I hate the very word. But, if it must be spoken, it should always be short and staccato. Instead, he sat here, and we talked about Fate and wounds and all sorts of direful things." She shook herself and shivered slightly. Then she sat down in the chair which Weldon had just left vacant. "It is bad manners to have nerves, Captain Frazer. Forgive me first, and then tell me something altogether flippant, to make ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... his religion?" I thanked the Prince for his noble feelings of tolerance, and left him and his clown to their tête-� -tête. Khanouhen is one of the few of those strong-minded and right-thinking men, who see the utter folly and direful mischief of forging a creed for the consciences of his fellows. Had he been a Christian prince of the times of Charles V., he would not, like that celebrated monarch, have passed all his life in binding the religious opinions ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... west. It was now evening again. I left these desolate hills, the Ehrenberg Ranges of my map, and travelled upon a different line, hoping to find a better or less thick route through the scrubs, but it was just the same, and altogether abominable. Night again overtook me in the direful scrubs, not very far from the place at which I had slept the previous night; the most of the day was wasted in an ineffectual ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Piper of Hamelin, well known in the version of Robert Browning, leads to the same conclusion. In 1284 the good people of Hamelin could obtain no rest, night or day, by reason of the direful host of rats which infested their town. One day came a strange man in a bunting-suit, and offered for five hundred guilders to rid the town of the vermin. The people agreed: whereupon the man took out a pipe and piped, and instantly all the rats in town, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... slave-trade, he wrote to a friend in that State, "I must say that I lament the decision of your legislature upon the question of importing slaves after March 1793. I was in hopes that motives of policy as well as other good reasons, supported by the direful effects of slavery, which at this moment are presented, would have operated to produce a total prohibition of the importation of slaves, whenever the question came to be agitated in any State, that might be interested in the measure." For his own State he expressed ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... our own eyes, two nations eminent in civilization have furnished an instance of this incredible folly, waging together a world- convulsing, soul-harrowing, and most barbarous contest. All ask how long the direful duel will be continued. Better ask, How long will be continued that War System by which such a duel is authorized and regulated among nations? When will this legalized, organized crime be abolished? When at last will it be confessed that the Law of Right is the same for nations ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... confidence that whatever, at any moment, might seem to be the relative positions of the two different bands of workers, they must at last come together, for truth is one. But logic is not history. History is full of interferences which have cost the earth dear. Strangest of all, some of the most direful of them have been made by the best of men, actuated by the purest motives, seeking the noblest results. These interferences and the struggle against them make up the warfare of science. One statement more to clear the ground. You will not understand me at all to say ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... saw the direful consequences of such a procedure, and summoned his courage to say: "No. It's very kind of you, but I ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... misfortunes like that of the Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more curiosity than benevolence. This sick woman, surrounded by luxury in the midst of such direful poverty, made him forget the horrible details of the strangest of all nervous disorders, which is happily rare, though recorded by a few historians. One of our most gossiping chroniclers, Tallemant des Reaux, cites an instance of it. The mind instinctively pictures a woman as being ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... governor, Sallust seems to have pursued the methods common to that class, for he became immensely rich. Upon his return from Africa, he retired to an extensive estate on the Quirinal Hill, and lived through the direful days which followed the death of Csar. He died in the year 34 B.C., his last years being devoted to diligent pursuits of literature. His two works are Catilina, a history of the suppression of the conspiracy of Catiline, and Jugurtha, a history of the war against Jugurtha, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... gifts nor healings nor speaking with tongues,—this miserable generation so blind in these last days when the time of God's wrath is at hand. Oh, I burn in my heart for them, night after night, suffering for the tortures that must come upon them—thrice direful because they have rejected the message of Moroni and trampled upon the priesthood of high heaven, butchering the Saints of the Most High, and hunting the prophets of God like Ahab ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... before it sinks!—The distress'd inhabitants of this house are still alive; it is proclaim'd from every room by dreadful groans.—You sent me on a raven's message:—like that ill-boding bird I flew from house to house, afraid to croak my direful tidings. ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... presents. The joy of king and retainers is, however, of short duration. Grendel, the monster, is seized with hateful jealousy. He cannot brook the sounds of joyance that reach him down in his fen-dwelling near the hall. Oft and anon he goes to the joyous building, bent on direful mischief. Thane after thane is ruthlessly carried off and devoured, while no one is found strong enough and bold enough to cope with the monster. For twelve years he persecutes Hrothgar ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... things. His right hand has saved him and his holy arm. The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the presence of the nations. We may now appropriately respond to the inspired command to sing a new song, inasmuch as after such direful spectacles and narrations we now have the happiness to see and celebrate what many holy men before us and the martyrs for God desired to see on earth, and did not see, and to hear, and have not heard. But advancing more rapidly they attained far superior gifts in heaven, being ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... the feet of the dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, and may I see the Minotaur tranquilly seated this very evening upon my bed, if you do not know as well as I do how he expends it. Almost all men spend in necessary toils, or in the anguish of direful passions, this fine sum of energy and of will, with which nature has endowed them; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices and the struggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... von Zwehl would make the position untenable, and under cover of that appalling rain of death, the German infantry would creep back to reoccupy the positions from which they had been ousted by the bayonets only a few hours before. It was the German tactics of machine vs. men, a direful and cruel battle plan to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... her here. My heart is now So full of anger, malice, and fierce hate, With all those direful and envenom'd passions By which the breasts of demons are infected; If I but even look'd upon her face, My scorching breath would wither up her charms Like adder's poison. Would I had ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... journeyed through Texas again by land. My health continued very good for some length of time; but when I reached the middle part of the Texas country, it was my misfortune to come again in contact with the direful "cholera," and again I was the subject of its virulent attacks. My detention was great, and affliction severe; though I finally expelled the disorder as I had done before. My sufferings were somewhat aggravated in several instances, by the fearful ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... these twenty-four years are fully expired; for night beginning, my hour-glass is at an end, the direful finishing whereof I carefully expect; for out of all doubt, this night he will fetch me to whom I have given myself in recompense of his service, body and soul, and twice confirmed writings with my ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... say, this time the wasp seemed almost to drop into her claws; she clutched him with such a tight grasp, that he had no possibility of escape; but in an instant, with a direful scream, Wishie unclosed her paw; and the wasp dropped on the floor. Wishie's paw was terribly stung. Her first trial of the Fairy's gift had not proved pleasant by any means. So, limping and mewing, Wishie went back to ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... Scythian character and language, announced a people who had attained the rudiments of science: [36] they enumerated the conquests, they offered the friendship and military aid of the Turks; and their sincerity was attested by direful imprecations (if they were guilty of falsehood) against their own head, and the head of Disabul their master. The Greek prince entertained with hospitable regard the ambassadors of a remote and powerful monarch: the sight of silk-worms and looms disappointed the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the world's history that was when the ladies had no nerves! Alas! I was born too late instead of too early, as the complaint of some is. I am cursed with nerves, and, as a consequence, am ever and anon distressed with nervous fears of some direful calamity or painful affliction. I am a simpleton for this, I know; but then, how can I help it? I try to be a woman of sense, but my nerves are too delicately strung. Reason is not sufficient to subdue the fears of impending evil ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... have a care, my daughter!" he said at length. "The blessed Saint James telleth us that the tongue is a little member, but it can kindle a great fire. How mayst thou hope to say such direful words against the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... of common life, in which this drama commences, with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;—there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses—(such as ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... gray-eyed queen of wisdom, Thy praise I sing! Steadfast, all holy, sure ward of our city, Triton-born rule whom High Zeus doth bring Forth from his forehead. Thou springest forth valiant; The clangour swells far as thy direful arms ring. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the grave unto my son mourning." And yet I think that without anticipating any revelation, the man whose thoughts about God and holiness were those which the Psalms of David disclose, cannot have lost his best-loved son in the very act and deed of direful guilt, without an aggravation of his anguish because of this sad thing. If Absalom in the midst of upright walking and works of righteousness had been stricken by disease and had died in his bed, the tidings of this when it reached the father might and would no doubt ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... hand-to-hand contact than those Miss Furman describes, or a group with whom it is a greater satisfaction to establish it. Tucked away on the tops and slopes of the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee are thousands of families, many of them descendants of the best of English stock. Centuries of direful poverty combined with almost complete isolation from the life of the world has not been able to take from them their look of race, or corrupt their brave, loyal, proud hearts. Encircled as they are by the richest and most highly cultivated parts ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... in my patron's name (I speak of things too far divulg'd by fame), My kinsman fell. Then I, without support, In private mourn'd his loss, and left the court. Mad as I was, I could not bear his fate With silent grief, but loudly blam'd the state, And curs'd the direful author of my woes. 'T was told again; and hence my ruin rose. I threaten'd, if indulgent Heav'n once more Would land me safely on my native shore, His death with double vengeance to restore. This mov'd the ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the east side of the road at present. This is lined with shops, varying in quality and increasing in size towards the Marble Arch. There are no buildings of importance. The road ends in Oxford Street, the ancient Tyburn Road, a name associated with the direful ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... when the baby laughed and crowed, and made chirrupy sounds, she was abundantly satisfied. Peter, too, was most ingenious in keeping off the fatal sounds of baby's wailing: he would blow into a paper bag, and then when the baby had screwed up her face, and was preparing to let out a whole volley of direful notes, he would clap his hands violently on the bag and cause it to explode, thereby absolutely frightening the poor little creature ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... the book of fate, Hands may not unbind it; Eyes may search for truth till late, But will never find it—! Rising on the brow of night Like a portent of dismay, As the worlds in wild affright Track it on its direful way; Resting like a rainbow bar Where the curve and level meet, As the children chase it far O'er the sands with blistered feet; Sadly through the mist of ages Gazing on this life of fear, Doubtful shining on its pages, Only seen to disappear! Sit thee by the sounding shore ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... fact, not without some later analogies, that the introduction into the New World of this "direful spring of woes unnumbered" was promoted, in the first instance, by the good Las Casas, as the hopeful preventive of a worse evil. Touched by the spectacle of whole tribes and nations of the Indians perishing under the cruel ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... chose to curse: For reasons good she did not please To visit our antipodes— Folks rude and savage like the beasts, Who, wedding-free from forms and priests, In simple tent or leafy bower, Make little work for such a power. That she might know exactly where Her direful aid was in demand, Renown flew courier through the land, Reporting each dispute with care; Then she, outrunning Peace, was quickly there; And if she found a spark of ire, Was sure to blow it to a fire. At length, Renown got out of ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Eradicate's direful warning cry had died away, Tom was on his way out of the house, pausing only long enough to slip on a pair of shoes and his trousers. There was but one thought in his mind. If he could get the Humming-Bird safely out he would not care if the shed did burn, even though it contained many valuable ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... wielded by brute force, was the best form of Government possible in this age; so a worship based chiefly upon the incitements and terrors of retributive law—the holding out of inducements of reward for the good, and of determents of direful punishment for the wicked, in a future world—was the best religion for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... kindness speak for her, except mankind; a recollection of nursing, comforting, praying with some one, but all forgotten now. "Via Crucia, Via Crucia," her thorn-torn feet seemed to patter in the echoes of her ears and mind, and there arose upon her spirit the sternest curse of women, direful with God's own rage, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... there a Chief Magistrate of whom so much evil has been predicted, and from whom so much good has come? Never has any man entered upon the Chief Magistracy of a country under such appalling predictions of ruin and woe! never has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications! never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly ...
— Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution • Thomas Hart Benton
... escape of my one neck, when, goose as I was, I presented it where two seemed to be an essential by the sign of the habitation and the dangers of the gate,—I was aroused by a crash, something like the noise of the machine which accompanies the falling of an avalanche or a castle, or some such direful affair at "Astley's;" and starting up, I thought,—had the coach upset? but, much to my gratification, found myself a safe "inside." Still came crash after crash, until I thought it high time to see as well as hear. "What on earth is the matter?" ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... But the direful words were never spoken, for she was in his arms again—close in his arms; and, as he kissed her with a delicious sensation that it was all too good to ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... events we are still so busy in contemplating, that the union of the two kinds of force now specified, was essential to the liberation of the world from that odious but scientific oppression, by which it had been so long held in misery, and which was repeatedly found, by very direful experience, to be too strong for either of them separately. It was not till the enthusiastic indignation of vulgar minds, and the cordial ferocity of some of the rudest of the allied tribes, had been amalgamated with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... let me know if anything turns up. I have'nt entered into minute details of what I have been doing, which people I have seen, and what they have told me, etc., because I would much sooner wait till I can write and tell you what has turned up. You'd be thinking all sorts of direful things if I were to write by one mail and say I was going to see the great so-and-so to-morrow, and tell you how I had backed myself up with an array of mutual friends, letters of introduction, etc., and then write by next mail to say that it had all come to nothing; and yet that is what is ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... excitement. Then he broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars—his potato cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it occasionally; but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... arrests in that connection should be made public until the significance of the fact that at the time of the tragedy the child was wearing the coat—afterward found hanging loose, without a rent or a blemish, on the tree in the valley—should be fully exploited. If it were indeed a direful instance of murder and abduction, as the sheriff now believed, he wished the miscreants to rest unwitting of the activity of the officers and the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... her panniers rocked, on Dobbin A matron rode to market bobbing, Indulging in a trancelike dream Of money for her eggs and cream; When direful clamour from her broke: 'A raven on the left-hand oak! His horrid croak bodes me some ill.' Here Dobbin stumbled; 'twas down-hill, And somehow he with failing legs Fell, and down fell the cream and ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... the many plans he had formed to make a man of his nephew, of the sacrifices which he had made, and of the manner in which he was disappointed. And he wrote off a letter to Doctor Portman, informing him of the direful events which had taken place, and begging the Doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox old gentleman preserved the regular routine in all things, and was of opinion that it was more correct to "break" a piece of bad news to a person by means of a (possibly maladroit and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distressing scene is here before us? America, I start at your situation! These direful effects of slavery demand your most serious attention. What! shall a people who flew to arms with the valor of Roman citizens when encroachments were made upon their liberties by the invasion of foreign powers, now basely descend to cherish the ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... po'ly, an' thar'll be a mighty lot fer you to do now." So with this direful prophecy in her ears the girl hesitated. The old woman ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... The rising majesty of Rome could no longer brook the insolence of a rebel; and Michael Cerularius was excommunicated in the heart of Constantinople by the pope's legates. Shaking the dust from their feet, they deposited on the altar of St. Sophia a direful anathema, [10] which enumerates the seven mortal heresies of the Greeks, and devotes the guilty teachers, and their unhappy sectaries, to the eternal society of the devil and his angels. According to the emergencies ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... a mad dog, published by the gentleman who first made use of the plant in South America, as an antidote to that scourge of human nature, hydrophobia; his words are, "I shall simply state, that during my residence in South America, I had frequent opportunities of witnessing the direful effects of hydrophobia, without having in any one case that came under my care been successful in its cure by the usual modes prescribed in Europe. It fortunately occurred to me, that the guaco, so celebrated for curing the bite or sting of all venomous snakes, might prove equally efficacious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... and away where ranks were now clashing the thickest, Onward rushed, and with him rushed all of the bright-greaved Achaians. Foot then footmen slew, that were flying from direful compulsion, Horse at the horsemen (up from off under them mounted the dust- cloud, Up off the plain, raised up cloud-thick by the thundering horse- hooves) Hewed with the sword's sharp edge; and so meanwhile Lord Agamemnon Followed, chasing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dare say That heaven ever scowls on earth? The earth that laughs up to its blue, The earth that owes it joy and birth? Oh, may the wine from vines it warms, May holy love thence fluttering down, Lend my philosophy their charms, To drive away care's direful frown! So, firm let's stand, Full glass in hand, And all evoke The God ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... was so sudden and direful in its results that the warders gave way right and left, while the convicts stooped, literally glided over the edge of the path, and began to descend the horribly ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... in the Courts prevented his then disposing of. His friends saw with pain how grievously he was over-tasking his strength, and earnestly importuned him to give himself more intervals of relaxation—but in vain. For nearly two years before his death, his haggard countenance evidenced the direful havoc which he was making of a constitution never of the strongest. Sir William Follett and he were both sitting at the bar of the House of Lords, on one of the latest days of the hearing of Mr. O'Connell's case, each ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... striking sign and the surest pledge of peace between Catholicism and Protestantism. The political expediency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more urgent in proportion as the religious war had become more direful and the desire for peace more general. Charles IX. embraced the idea passionately. At the outset he encountered an obstacle. The young Duke of Guise had already paid court to Marguerite, and had obtained ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... little space between was for both as an open grave filled with dead things—hopes, ambitions, future days and months and years—days and months and years when they should be for ever mindful of his crime! For henceforth they were to dwell in the chill of this direful shadow that would tower above all the concerns of life whether great or small; that would add despair to every sorrow, and take the very soul and substance ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... DEADLY NIGHTSHADE.—Webfer has given us an account of some children that were killed in consequence of having eaten the berries of this plant for black currants. And others have spoken of the direful effects of the whole plant so much, that, from the incontestable proofs of its deleterious qualities, persons cannot be too nice in selecting their pot-herbs, particularly those who make a practice of gathering from dunghills and gardens Fat-Hen, &c. as there is some distant similitude betwixt ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... Talbot came into the room. The three men knew that she brought momentous, perchance direful, intelligence. She was deathly pale. Her eyes were unnaturally brilliant, her mouth set ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... true to strain. As explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook and corner of the Pacific before merchant vessels had found their way thither. They discovered uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages or suffered direful shipwreck. The chase led them into Arctic regions where their stout barks were nipped like eggshells among the grinding floes, or else far to the southward where they broiled in tropic calms. The New Bedford lad was ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... the Saints and all the devils, don't speak like that, my friend," exclaimed Catherine. "As sure as that pie stands on this table God exists! And if you want a proof of it, let me say, that when, last year, on a certain day, I was in direful distress and penury, I went, on the advice of Friar Ange, to burn a wax candle in the Church of the Capuchins, and on the following I met M. de la Gueritude at the promenade, who gave me this house, with all the furniture it contains, the cellar full of wine, some of ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... inhabitants we saw looked gloomy, as we did so; and on arriving at the inn, from whence my master's friend had dated his letter, we were informed, with little ceremony or preparation, that he expired the day but one after he had despatched the messenger to the castle. Too soon we learned the direful cause, a malignant epidemic disorder was raging in the place, and daily sweeping off scores of its inhabitants. The poor gentleman, they told us, when he found himself dying, sent for a priest to pray by him, to whose care he consigned ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... War, loosing the direful threefold plague of Iron, Fire, and Disease to scourge and brand and desolate the once smiling face of your Mother Earth, pause as you roll onwards in desolating cataclysms of armed and desperate men, and forgetting the bloodstained she-devil you misname Glory, look here, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... ever a fiend incarnate, that man is one," she muttered. "Heaven help poor Bernardine if she carries out her intention of marrying him! He will surely kill her before the honeymoon is over! Poor girl! what direful power has he over her? Alas! I tremble for her future. It would be the marriage of an angel and a devil. Poor Bernardine! why does she not elope with the young lover whom she loves, if there is no other way out of the difficulty, ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... her early breakfast, had seen through an open door the room up-stairs which was appropriated to Phil, with a lamp still burning in the daylight, cards lying strewn about the floor, and all in that direful disorder which a room so occupied overnight shows in the clear eye of the day. The aspect of the room had given her a shock almost more startling than any moral certainty, as was natural to a woman used to all the decorums and delicacies of a well-ordered life. There is no sin in going ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... become a lion, and the tables of the neighboring gentry were soon open to him, as the houses of the great had been in Edinburgh. Those were the days of conviviality, and Burns took his part in the hilarity of the table, soon with very direful consequences to himself and his family. He made many resolutions of amendment; but temperance was a very rare virtue in those days, and Burns, who could not bear it, was expected to drink just as much as those who could bear it, and who could afford it. His genius suffered from ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... commandant, yet the interior arrangement of the camp, the disposition of his forces, and above all, the perfect discipline which had ever been maintained by him, now offered a silent barrier which caused the conspirators to entertain direful apprehensions, as to the disaster to themselves when they should make the undertaking, for the movements of the camp were noticed from the observatories near by, and on one occasion Brig. Gen. Walsh, accompanied by an attache of the Chicago Times, made a personal visit to the camp, and being received ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... had been suffered to remain on deck was close enough to overhear the direful news. Her hands to ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... measures like his own, together with the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events, stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that there was nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, silly subtlety, jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonistic elements; threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressure there, like an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth, and no master hand on the spot to fuse and point ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bringing a towel and a lotion for Betty's face, hot water for her wrist, and "butter-thins" spread with delicious strawberry jam to keep her courage up. Before she knew it, Betty was telling her all about her direful experiences during examination week, how frightened she had been, and how sleepy she was now,—"not just now of course"—and how she had been all ready to go home when the spill came. And Miss Ferris nodded knowingly at Mary and laughed ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... left in his charge the only manly thing to do, he argued, was to go directly to Mr. Crowninshield and himself acquaint him with the direful tidings. It would be cowardly to shunt this wretched task off on somebody else. It was his duty and his alone. Nevertheless, as he stood for a moment summoning his courage, he would have given all he possessed to escape ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Do you fancy some direful calamity has befallen me, because I have not written to you for more than a week? Away with your fears, then, for nothing worse has come upon me than a badly broken limb, which will probably keep me a prisoner here for two months or more. Now don't be frightened, Rosa. I am not crippled ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... people afoot, were thrown violently to the ground; "it seemed as if the rocky ribs of the mountains, and the granite walls and pillars of the earth were breaking up." At Kilauea the shocks were as frequent as the ticking of a watch. In Kau, south of Hilo, they counted 300 shocks on this direful day; and Mrs. L.'s son, who was in that district at the time, says that the earth swayed to and fro, north and south, then east and west, then round and round, up and down, in every imaginable direction, everything crashing about them, "and the trees thrashing ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... impel him to do the very thing his whole nature protested against doing and was afraid of doing. "Cooky's sharpening his knife for Hump," was being whispered about among the sailors, and some of them twitted him about it. This he took in good part, and was really pleased, nodding his head with direful foreknowledge and mystery, until George Leach, the erstwhile cabin-boy, ventured some rough pleasantry ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... more probable that extreme poverty and hopeless indigence, the frequent experience of direful famines, and the scenes of misery and calamity occasioned by them, acting on minds whose affections are not very powerful, induce this unnatural crime which common custom has encouraged, and which is not prohibited by positive law. That this is the case, and ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... not yet touched the cause they knew, And are wrangling over its direful flood, They promise to build me better than new, And stop the drain on my famished blood; But lest they're careful while building the dam They'll scoop out a grave ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... Charybdis holds her boisterous reign, Midst roaring whirlpools, and absorbs the main. Thrice in her gulphs the boiling seas subside; Thrice in dire thunders she refunds the tide. Oh! if thy vessel plough the direful waves, When seas, retreating, roar within her caves, Ye perish all! though he who rules the main Lend his strong aid, his aid he ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... eat thy Thanksgiving dinner with us, and we expect also a friend from the West. I think she will treat thee civilly. At any rate we have a right to invite whom we please. We drew up a petition to Emily, and all signed it. Father added a direful postscript. He said, 'If thee won't come quietly, I will go after thee. Thee thinks I am a man of peace, but there will be commotion and violence in Ohio if thee doesn't come; so, strong-willed as thee is, thee has ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... come again to the Persians. And a little later Chosroes summoned them, and when they came before him, he recounted how many Roman towns he had previously enslaved and in what manner he had accomplished it; then he threatened that the inhabitants of Edessa would receive more direful treatment at the hands of the Persians, unless they should give them all the wealth which they had inside the fortifications; for only on this condition, he said, would the army depart. When the envoys heard this, they agreed that they ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... ye indeed, mindful of valour, not of direful flight, will preserve the people of the Greeks. For in any other place, indeed, I do not dread the audacious hands of the Trojans, who in great numbers have surmounted the great wall, because the well-greaved Greeks will sustain ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... facts, and not see that a great and powerful engine was at work to effect the object of re-establishing the Catholic religion throughout these kingdoms? And if once established should we not revert to a state of ignorance, with all its barbarous and direful consequences? Let the house consider what had been the result of those laws, what had been the effects of that fundamental principle of the British constitution which they were now called upon to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... worn out, so much money made. But, less inexorable than iron, steal, and brass, it brought its varying seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only stand that ever was made in the place against its direful uniformity. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... fear takes two main forms. First, the worry over the life situation in general, that is to say, fear concerning business; fear concerning the health and prosperity of the household; fear that magnifies anything that has even the faintest possibility of being direful into something that is almost sure to happen and be disastrous. This constant worry over the possibilities of the future is both a cause of neurasthenia and a symptom, in that once a neurasthenic state is established, the liability to worry becomes ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish. In the past the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit, the growth of the spirit which tends to make a man subordinate the welfare of the public as a whole to the welfare of the particular class to which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... think that the historian writing at the present day need fear any such direful calamity, for the past century has shown most instructively how, in such a society as ours, the sense of political dangers slowly makes its way through the whole mass of the people, until movements at length are made to avert them, and the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. The ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... angry with before for choking her, protected from the pattering strokes. And soon the Brook heard a sound, like that made by her ambitious sister in the spring-time;—nearer and nearer it came; through the trees; over the rocks; tearing, splashing, dashing, and foaming at a direful rate. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... with if not in advance of the other fellows. The promised spurt, however, had not been made. Instead he had drifted along, studying only enough to keep his head above water and putting all his zeal into tennis or baseball until the present climax with its direful calamity ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... changes her aspect," exclaimed Donatello, "to know that she is but a jointed figure! When my eyes first fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as if beckoning me to help her in some direful peril." ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been roused from the nuptial bed to hear of the terrible calamity that had befallen his friends. Isaac, on the present occasion, did not disgrace his training, the land which gave him birth, nor the country he now inhabited. When the messenger came with the direful news, although somewhat late in the morning, Isaac had been found in his bed, closely folded in the arms of the god of sleep. On being awakened and told of what had taken place, he slowly rose up into a sitting ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... would have forced its way onward, far beyond the speed which human contrivances may create, to the side of the man whom she longed to see and to save. The fever of her fierce anxiety, the vehemence of her desire, the intensity of her anguish, all worked upon her delicate organization with direful effect. Her brain became confused, and thoughts became dreams. For hours she lost all consciousness of surrounding objects. Yet amidst all this confusion of a diseased and overworked brain, and amidst this delirium of wild thought, there was ever prominent her one idea—her one purpose. How ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Comet brings, When it on high doth horrid range: Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings, War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change." ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... there are all sorts of attempts," and I told him of model cottages, ragged schools, and the like, and promised to find him the accounts; but he gave one of his low growls, as if this were but a mockery of the direful need. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contemptuous snorts, flourished his heels vigorously in the air, and was soon prancing away towards the lower end of the lawn, followed by Bill and Jerry, whom Andy had not failed to let loose, according to contract, speeding them off with various direful ejaculations. And now ensued a miscellaneous scene of confusion. Sam and Andy ran and shouted,—dogs barked here and there,—and Mike, Mose, Mandy, Fanny, and all the smaller specimens on the place, both male and female, raced, clapped hands, whooped, and shouted, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... allegiance, not to aid, abet, or give countenance to the said Patrick Henry, or any other persons concerned in such unwarrantable combinations, but on the contrary to oppose them and their designs by every means; which designs must, otherwise, inevitably involve the whole country in the most direful calamity, as they will call for the vengeance of offended majesty and the insulted laws to be exerted here, to vindicate the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... they might succeed in getting from the diamond makers were real gems, a set of testing apparatus was taken along. Mr. Parker had had some experience in this line, and, in spite of the fact that he might make direful predictions, Tom was rather glad, after all, that the scientist was going ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... and a few minutes later he and his nephew, hunger-sharpened and weary-legged, were seated facing one another in the widow's pleasant little parlour, hard at work, and risking all the direful symptoms upon which the elder had discoursed, and thoroughly enjoying hearty draughts ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... stranger a glass of water, unless he were prepared to pay for it. At Leon he was seized by a fever that prostrated him for a week. He also experienced marked antagonism from the clergy, who threatened every direful consequence to whosoever read or purchased "the accursed books" which he brought. A more serious evidence of their displeasure was shown by the action they commenced in the ecclesiastical court against the bookseller whom ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the war spirit, which is one of the most direful traits of our fallen race, there is but little difference between the civilized and uncivilized man. I was once breakfasting with one of the most distinguished officers of a European army. To my question whether the officers generally wished for ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... Requesens, had only furnished the "preludia" of that which was to ensue. For these desperate views his main reason, as usual, was the comet; that mischievous luminary still continuing to cast a lurid glare across the Landgrave's path. Notwithstanding these direful warnings from a prince of the Reformation, notwithstanding the "olla podrida" and the "comet," Count John had nevertheless accepted the office of Governor of Gelderland, to which he had been elected by the estates of that province on the 11th of March. That important bulwark of Holland, Zealand, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stiff and mangled, Paid, upon that bloody field, Direful, cringing, awe-struck homage To the sword our heroes yield; And who felt, by fiery trial, That the men who will be free. Though in conflict baffled ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... and parrots are all uttering inauspicious cries.[12] Certain women are bringing forth four or five daughters (at a time), and these as soon as they are born, dance and sing and laugh. The members of the lowest orders are laughing and dancing and singing, and thus indicating direful consequences. Infants, as if urged by death, are drawing armed images, and are running against one another, armed with clubs, and desirous of battle are also breaking down the towns (they erect in sport). Lotuses of different kinds and lilies are growing on trees. Strong winds are blowing fiercely ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the shopping district for the day's work of pricing real lace and buying hairpins. And I always look around me and think of what a vast deal of work there is in this great, big, sorrowful old world, and what direful need there is of every one pitching in and helping. To me, the useless woman is not a pretty woman. She is an ornament, like the shepherdess on the mantelpiece or the Spanish lady in the picture frame that hangs in the hallway. ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... alarming, direful, frightful, majestic, solemn, appalling, dread, grand, noble, stately, august, dreadful, horrible, portentous, terrible, dire, fearful, imposing, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... for the beginning of this direful programme was the day when the senators and the troops should assemble to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas. The soldiers, who knew nothing of the plot, were incited to refuse to take the oath on the ground that Constantine's resignation was false, and that he ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... turkeys fair their last have breathed, And now this world forever leaved; Their father, and their mother too, They sigh and weep as well as you; Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched, Into eternity theire laanched. A direful death indeed they had, As wad put any parent mad; But she was more than usual calm: She did not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... woodland road homeward, while happier wights on horseback galloped past, leaving clouds of dust in the rear and a grewsome premonition of being hindmost in a flight that to the simple minds of the mountaineers had a pursuer of direful reality. ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Another method of augury was performed by the feeding of chickens specially kept for this purpose. This was done just before sunrise by the pullarius or feeder, strict silence being observed. If the birds manifested no desire for their food, the omen was of a most direful nature. On the other hand, if from the greediness of the chickens the grain fell from their beaks and rebounded from the ground, the augury was most favourable. This latter augury was known as tripudium solistimum. "Any fraud ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... days did Fred repeat the story of his night adventure and his theft of her picture, of his narrow escape, and of his subsequent visit to the cottage. Only gradually had her mother revealed to her the circumstances of Jerrold's wager with Sloat, and the direful consequences; of his double absences the very nights on which Fred had made his visits; of the suspicions that resulted, the accusations, and his refusal to explain and clear her name. Mrs. Maynard felt vaguely relieved to see how slight an impression the young man had made on her ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... nature, in which each white will be charged with guarding a black, can afford a long career? The South, divided, weakened, bearing in its side the continually bleeding wound of slavery, reduced to choose in the end between the direful plans which must destroy after having dishonored it, and the Union which consolidates its interests while thwarting its passions—is it possible that the South will not ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... Chord. It served no purpose; it accomplished nothing. The little old villain was really as innocent as a lamb. He had no dream of wronging people. His prattle was the prattle of an unsophisticated maiden lady. He did not know what he was talking. These direful intelligences ran as easily off his tongue as water runs off the falling wheel. When I had indirectly informed him that he was more or less of a dangerous scandal-monger, he had cried: "The man is mad!" Yes; he was an innocent ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... boldly offered battle to Valdivia, who had advanced to meet him on the banks of the Andalian. The brave Araucanians sustained the first discharges of musquetry from the Spaniards with wonderful resolution, and even made a rapid evolution under its direful effects, by which they assailed at once the front and flank of the Spanish army. By this unexpected courageous assault, and even judicious tactical manoeuvre, the Spaniards were thrown into some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... proclamation. One by one the windows in the public square were lighted up from within. The citizens of Boulogne wanted to think over the strange events which had occurred without their knowledge, yet which were apparently to have such direful or ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination—the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... owl the bedstead keeps, With direful notes to fright your sleeps; No furies here about To put the tapers out, Watch or did make the bed: 'Tis omen full of dread; But all fair signs appear Within the chamber here. Juno here far off doth stand, Cooling ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... masterly strokes what the matrons and the fast young ladies of the imperial city had become, it was not from such as these, he continues, that the noble youth sprang "who dyed the seas with Carthaginian gore, overthrew Pyrrhus and great Antiochus and direful Hannibal," concluding in words which contrast by their suggestive terseness at the same time that they suggest comparison with the elaborated fulness ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Peleus' son, the direful spring Of all the Grecian woes, O Goddess, sing, That wrath which hurled to Pluto's gloomy reign The souls ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... in so doing thou impliest, that mercy thou deservest; and that is next door to, or almost as much as to say, God oweth me what I ask for. The best that can be put upon it is, thou seekest security from the direful curse of God, as it were by the works of the law, Rom. ix. 31-33; and to be sure, betwixt Christ and the law, thou wilt drop into hell. For he that seeks for mercy, as it were, and but as it were, by the works of the law, doth not altogether trust ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... nakedness and famine would prefer To all the wealth divine thou canst confer. What carest thou for earthly royalty? The cup of poison shall thy lovers see. Thou sawest me within a haunt away From men. I lingered on that direful day, And took thee for a beauteous zi-re-mu[1] Or zi-ar-i-a or a zi-lit-tu[2] And thou didst cause to enter love divine. As zi-cur-un-i, spirit of the wine, Thou didst deceive me with thine arts refined, And love escaped upon the passing ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... Ares, to decide the strife, between them rudely dash'd in ire, And waving high his falchion keen, he cleft in twain the golden lyre. Loud Hermes laugh'd maliciously, but at the direful deed did fall The deepest grief upon the heart of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Quadroon saw Helen and Charles thus together, she saw the delight that this meeting caused to both, she was witness to the eloquent language of the eyes that beamed into each other, and then she hastened from the spot, crazed with bitterness of feeling, and fall of direful purpose. Had she been observed at that moment, it would have been seen that there was danger in her. To her father's kind salute, she turned a deaf ear, and hastened into the dwelling ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Cedric, pursuing with animation his tale, though it interested not the listener, "retreated, to carry to Tosti and his ally the ominous answer of his injured brother. It was then that the distant towers of York, and the bloody streams of the Derwent, [26] beheld that direful conflict, in which, after displaying the most undaunted valour, the King of Norway, and Tosti, both fell, with ten thousand of their bravest followers. Who would have thought that upon the proud day when this battle ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... days! O direful deadly dump! O wicked world, and worldly wickedness! How can I hold my fist from crying, thump, In rue of ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... Moffat and Waterboer found a young woman belonging to the Mantatees, whose whole appearance denoted direful want. Food was given her, and some tobacco, and she was sent with a message to her people that the strangers wanted to speak with them and not to fight. An old man and a lad were also found dying of ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... and direful forebodings Aun' Jinkey declared loudly: "I doan know what he be. He ain' say not'n ter me ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Demon Direful!" he addressed the white Wolf Hound. "Drop that, Orion!" he shouted to the Irish Setter. "Cut it out, John!" he thundered at ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... powder was to preserve its inflammability. And surely it was a business full of direful interest, to be buried so deep below the sun, handling whole barrels of powder, any one of which, touched by the smallest spark, was powerful enough to blow up a whole street ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Herbert Kelcey followed. Their first venture with him, "Manon Lescaut," was a direful failure, but it was followed up with "My Lady Dainty," which ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... it was long ere Una dared draw near, dreading lest the direful fiend should stir. But when at last she knew him dead, she came joyfully forth, and, bursting into happy tears, faltered her gratitude for the good ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... Indian is: to dethrone his; reason; cloud, even narcotize, his reasoning faculties; annul his self-control; confine and fetter all the gentler, enkindle and set ablaze, all the baser, emotions; of his nature, inciting him to acts lustful and bestial; and, with direful transforming power, to make the man the fiend, to leave him, in short, the mere sport of demoniac passion. It may be thought that this is an overdrawn picture, and that, even if it were true, which I aver that it is, to have withheld a ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... departure eastward early in the morning; the myriads of locusts followed, so that in a quarter of an hour not one was to be seen. The depredations of these devouring insects was too soon felt, and a direful scarcity ensued. The poor would go out a locusting, as they termed it: the bushes were covered; they took their (haik) garment, and threw it over them, and then collected them in a sack. In half an hour they would collect a bushel. These they ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the Aurora joined the Toulon fleet. When she was first seen it was imagined by those on board of the other ships that she had been in action, but they soon learnt that the conflict had been against more direful weapons than any yet invented by mortal hands. Captain Wilson waited upon the Admiral, and of course received immediate orders to repair to port and refit. In a few hours the Aurora had shaped her ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... has put a direful question and given us scant time for thought," he replied. "Yet but two courses seem possible: either to proclaim the Princes dead by natural causes and give them public burial; or to conceal the death, and by letting the world fancy them life prisoners ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... it is a terrible necessity that makes it true," continued Adams. "War is serious business, and under its direful necessities you may never see your loved ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... from a direful experience," said Van Berg, "that this would be worse than all the other fractures put together; and perhaps it would. An additional cause for gratitude, Miss Burton, that you, and not I, were ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe |
