"Heartrending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the same spot, but there was a change in their positions. The prisoner was now kneeling with clasped hands before the cut-throats, begging for his life for the sake of his wife and children, in heartrending accents, to which his executioners replied in mocking tones, "We have got you at last into our hands, have we? You dog of a Bonapartist, why do you not call on your emperor to come and help you out of this scrape?" The unfortunate man's entreaties became more pitiful and their mocking ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of conscience. In spite of the dullness and the formality of the Court, his relationship with the Queen had come to be the dominating interest in his life; to have been deprived of it would have been heartrending; that dread eventuality had been—somehow—avoided; he was installed once more, in a kind of triumph; let him enjoy the fleeting hours to the full! And so, cherished by the favour of a sovereign and warmed by the adoration of a girl, the autumn rose, in ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... deliverer!" he cried as he rose from the floor, where he had been grovelling in heartrending paroxysms of grief. Seizing the old man's hand, he kissed it and pressed it to his bosom. Then, bursting into tears, he added: "God Himself will reward you for having come to visit ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... fro; a heartrending, whimpering cry from one of the women; and groans and curses farther up the street. None of the poor terror-stricken old people were hurt, thank God! but three of the drivers had been hit and two mules killed outright. The men were quickly ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... indifferent,—in a single line,—that all the trouble hitherto taken as to her own disposition had entirely been thrown away. "Everything has been broken off between me and Mr. Gilmore." It was a cruel and a heartrending postscript! ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... for help; servants came round. Sebalt took the count by the shoulders; we removed him to a bed near the window; but just as I was loosening the count's neckerchief—for I was afraid it was apoplexy—the countess came and flung herself upon the body of her father, uttering such heartrending cries that the very remembrance of ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... to inquire if there were any funerals requiring my attention, I found the whole place in extreme excitement; Uhlans were advancing in force. Every hedgerow and wall was lined with our men; the scared inhabitants, utterly unnerved by shell fire, were fleeing from the place. Their appearance was heartrending, and revealed the unutterable horror of war as carried into the midst of a ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... Europe. There were no discomforts, no difficulties, in her position. She had no conflicting duties, no occasion to decide between her father and her husband, between the country of her birth and that of her adoption, none of those struggles and heartrending perplexities which so cruelly beset her afterwards. At that time the Emperor Francis was well contented with his son-in-law, and corresponded with him in a most friendly way. At that happy moment the Frenchwoman could be an Austrian without injury ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... maniac; in his moments of delirium he would imagine that he was escaping from slavery; that the pursuers were upon his back; that they had caught him, and were rebinding him about to take him back to slavery, and then it was heartrending to hear him beg, and plead to be carried ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age. It is difficult to believe that a man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures, from courtship to tobacco. It is difficult to believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born air of man, the essential kinship of a human being, ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... meeting one day in a Northern town a care-worn-looking woman invited me home with her. Here she related another heartrending story of a lost girl, an only child, for whom she had toiled day and night at the wash-tub, so as to send her to school dressed as finely as the other girls. "I have had to work very hard as long ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... evicted tenants. "You will see the shells of the cottages to-morrow," he said, "and you will judge for yourself what they were worth." But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently before the public in connection with his failure to appear ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... now beginning his first year's tutorship at college without salary; and Gottfried, the clerk, was out of situation for several months every year. The two wrote begging letters in every possible key, from the jovial "Fork me out thirty thalers immediately," to the heartrending supplication, "If you don't want me to be ruined, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... position in which they now found themselves. All who had sat patiently through trouble and trial, working with might and main, suffering from endless ills, in peril of their lives, and deprived of property and home, now joined in one heartrending wail of woe and disappointment. The consternation that followed the announcement of the ignoble surrender is thus described by Mr. Nixon, who was an eye-witness and sharer of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... head took to ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it; and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no better—and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were broken with as little warning,—so I thought it best to forego all hopes of seeing ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the head by a falling crane. He lived right up in the attics. When they opened the door a woman who lay there in child-bed raised herself up on the iron bedstead and gazed at them in alarm. She was thin and anemic. When she perceived the condition of her husband she burst into a heartrending ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... this tirade until she uttered the last sentence, when with a heartrending groan of anguish he sprang up and caught ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... whither Professor Tyndall hopes to go. A similar fatality, we may remember, affected Sir Isaac Newton through his little dog Diamond: and my friend in old days, Gilbert Burnett, the botanist, had to rewrite his index, a heartrending labour, because a careless housemaid ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... up in the big chair; his legs were thrust out stiffly in front of him. He looked a heartrending interpretation of discomfort in his evening clothes, for he hadn't even loosened the collar. He had thought of it, but felt it might be disrespectful to Jan. Besides, there was something of the ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... enemy for many years. But one day the great poet died, in Greece, the death of a hero. His body was taken back to England for burial, and Caroline Lamb stood at her window and saw the procession go by. The coffin was followed by a dog, howling piteously. Caroline uttered a heartrending cry, and sunk to the floor insensible. They raised her and placed her in her bed, from which she never rose; she was borne from it ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... very terrible, heartrending thought, for a man to find out that what he will receive is not punishment, but wages; not punishment but the end of the very road which he is travelling on. That the wages of sin, and the end of sin, to which it must lead, are death; ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... no doubt and aunts), prick up their ears, and M. Kangourou translates to them, softening as much as possible, my heartrending decision. I feel really almost sorry for them; the fact is, that for women who, not to put too fine a point upon it, have come to sell a child, they have an air I was not prepared for: I can hardly say an air of respectability (a word in use with us, which is absolutely ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... influence of their besetting sins. The superficial and interested vices of Egerton vanished before these awful and deeply seated offences of Denbigh, and the correct widow saw at a glance, that he was the last man to be intrusted with the happiness of her niece; but how to break this heartrending discovery to Emily was a new source of uneasiness to her, and the carriage stopped at the door of the lodge, ere she had determined on the first step ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... finery, and upon entering Noo-koom's lodge, I seized Ojistoh by the hair of her head, and dragged her out. Her struggles to escape from me were quite edifying in their propriety. Her shrieks were heartrending—or rather, they would have been had they not alternated with delighted giggles. By that time the wedding march had begun; for as we struggling lovers led the way, the children, bubbling with laughter, followed; and the old people brought up the rear of the joyous procession. We, the happy couple, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... starvation make life a burden, and poison the health of the coming generations; those whom fortune has placed above the masses make use of their advantages to harden their hearts, and extract means of selfish enjoyment from the sufferings of their fellow-creatures. What is the source of this heartrending discord? The abuse of men's freewill; that is, of the mysterious power which enables us to act contrary to the dictates of nature. What is the best name for the disease which it generates? Luxury and corruption—the two cant objects of denunciations ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... middle of the room Hippolyte remarked a card-table ready for play, with new packs of cards. For an observer there was something heartrending in the sight of this misery painted up like an old woman who wants to falsify her face. At such a sight every man of sense must at once have stated to himself this obvious dilemma—either these two women are honesty itself, or they live by intrigue and gambling. ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... calamity had visited these enlightened Christians—if two of their children, instead of two of their horses, had met with a sudden death,—their grief could not be more heartrending or despairing than on this occasion. The whole family was in an uproar. There were wringing of hands, lamentable cries, and bewailings the most bitter, of the death of the best team in the town of Greenditch. The very children, down to the youngest of six years old, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... Hindustan; he called the name of the one woman he had loved. In death, as in life, his thought was for others, for Clive, dear, dear Clive. He said, 'Take care of him when I 'm in India;' and then, with a heartrending voice, he called out, 'Leonore, Leonore!' She was kneeling by his side now. The patient voice sank into faint murmurs; only a moan now and then announced that he was not asleep. At the usual hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome's hands, outside the bed, feebly beat ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... a sad sight to watch the ethical degradation of one of the most remarkable intelligences among the men of his generation; it was heartrending to see him fall every day more and more into the power of unscrupulous people who did nothing else but exploit him for their own benefit. South Africa has always been the land of adventurers, and many a queer story could be told. That of Cecil John ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... been made to the god, when those who were following the case and were looking out for some grim evidence that the god was at work in bringing retribution on the man whom everyone suspected of being the thief, were startled by a heartrending catastrophe. ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... earth its motion appeared to be accelerated, and it then became of dazzling whiteness, elongating in form till, dashing on the ground, it splashed around like molten lead or quicksilver and disappeared. The next instant the hurricane again burst forth, rushing amid the trees with the sound of a heartrending and piercing scream, so loud as entirely to drown the human voice. The whole building shook and trembled as if an earthquake was taking place and it was about to be hurled to the ground. Mr Ferris, seizing Ellen's arm, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... poverty too dreadful to relate. As already intimated, the prospects of both had been blighted through oppression and villainy, brought to bear upon them by distant relatives, who were the infamous agents of a still more infamous government. The case of Nick, although sore enough in its way, was not so heartrending as that of Kate. He was of a sex fitted to wrestle with the storms of life, but she, proud and brave as she was, occupied a different position. Fortunately for both, however, through the instrumentality of a small pittance set aside by ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... could appoint any other than Mr Harding. Mr Harding himself, when he heard how the matter had been settled, without troubling himself much on the subject, considered it as certain that he would go back to his pleasant house and garden. And though there would be much that was melancholy, nay, almost heartrending, in such a return, he still was glad that it was to be so. His daughter might probably be persuaded to return there with him. She had, indeed, all but promised to do so, though she still entertained an idea that the greatest of mortals, that important atom of humanity, that little god upon earth, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... nothing in the contract about this—save only as it protected the engineer. What was indeed produced was a list of costs for the development often of several designs of a given idea that to say the least were heartrending. ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... agitators in the council-general of the Commune threaten, with fearful consequences, whoever is discovered to have written to you."[3272]—Such is the ever-present menace under which the gentry live, even when veterans in the service of freedom; Roland, foremost in his files, finds heartrending letters addressed directly to him, as a last recourse. Early in 1789, M. de Gouy d'Arcy[3273] was the first to put his pen to paper in behalf of popular rights. A deputy of the noblesse to the Constituent Assembly, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a Christian dog and other vile names. Finally it was deemed best to set him and the other Moors ashore; and when the old man saw the ship sail away with his daughter, he began to sob and cry aloud in the most heartrending way, threatening to kill himself if she did not return to him. The last words that she heard were, "I forgive you all!" and they made her weep so bitterly that it seemed as if her ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... diner: "This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque—far from it!—but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... directions. Then he joined the brave fellows who were fighting for the lives of those still imprisoned in the wrecked caboose. Among these were Rod Blake, Conductor Tobin, and the sheriff. Snyder Appleby had turned sick at the heartrending sights and sounds to be seen and heard on all sides, and had gone back to his car to escape them. He did not believe a soul could be saved, and he had not the nerve to listen to the pitiful cries of those whom he considered ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... this frank declaration of the inestimable value and glorious results of American medical education, the writer draws the logical(?) sequence that it (American medical education) is responsible for a case of most heartrending malpractice, which he relates, compared to which the Japanese hari-kari were merciful mildness, and approaching more nearly the tortures by crucifixion as administered by this same kind-hearted people. With about as much reason and justice might he conclude that the American system ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the inhabitants, each asking his neighbour what had occurred. When the confusion had somewhat abated, it was announced that the Amphion had blown up, and then every one hastened to the dock, where a most heartrending scene presented itself. Strewed in all directions were pieces of broken timber, spars, and rigging, whilst the deck of the hulk, to which the frigate had been lashed was red with blood, and covered with mangled limbs and lifeless trunks, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... any one's power to refute the sinister and prosaic verse. The contrast with 1914 is painful and striking. In the existing war the holocaust of victims, poets and historians, painters and sculptors, musicians and architects, has been heartrending, and it can never in future years be pretended that the Muses have this time spared us their most poignant sacrifices. A year ago the Revue Critique, one of the most serious and original of the learned journals of Paris, announced the losses it had endured. It was conducted by ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Closed chairs had been provided for the ladies, and these were carried in the midst, Bulger on one side, Toley on the other, and Desmond behind. One person whom Desmond had expected to take with him was absent: Scipio Africanus, on seeing the dead body of his master, had uttered one heartrending howl and fled. Desmond never saw him again. He reflected that, villainous as Diggle had proved to be, he had at least been able to win the affection ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... to take her away from that heartrending sight; they begged her to go to her room; but she insisted upon staying. They tried to remove her by force; but she clung to the bed, and vowed that they should tear her to pieces sooner than ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... to know these countries it is almost heartrending to hear such nonsense, and worse still to see it repeated in serious papers, which reproduce and comment upon it gravely for the benefit ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... sought her father in his room. He could not conceal from her that he had something heartrending on his mind. Then there was more than tragedy in his expression. Lenore felt a leap of fear at what seemed her father's hidden anger. She appealed to him—importuned him. Plainer it came to her that he wanted to relieve himself of a burden. Then doubling her persuasions, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... admit that if we regulate our stories entirely on this basis, we lose the real value of the fairy tale element. It is the one element which causes little children to wonder, simply because no scientific analysis of the story can be presented to them. It is somewhat heartrending to feel that "Jack and the Bean Stalk" and stories of that ilk are to be handed over to the critical youth who will condemn the quick growth of the tree as being contrary to the order of nature, and wonder why Jack was not playing ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... of the White House from the National Theater, where he knew the manager, and some of the company, had made a great pet of him. He had often gone there alone or with his tutor. How he had heard the terrible news from Ford's Theater is not known, but he came up the lower stairway with heartrending cries like a wounded animal. Seeing Thomas Pendel, the faithful doorkeeper, he wailed from ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... comical to see the smug, Pharisaical way in which many journals ignored all these things, and held up their hands in horror at American shortcomings. Some trials, too, which at various times revealed the brutality of sundry military officers toward soldiers, were heartrending; and especially one or two duels, which occurred during my stay, presented features calculated to shock the toughest American rough-rider. But all this seemed not for a moment to withdraw the attention of our Teutonic censors from ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... fair sex. We are told that to obtain the delicate and beautiful spiral plume called the "Osprey," the old birds "are killed off in scores, while employed in feeding their young, who are left to starve to death in their nests by hundreds." Their dying cries are described as "heartrending." But they evidently do not rend the hearts of our fashionable ladies, or induce them to rend their much-beplumed garments. Thirty thousand black partridges have been killed in certain Indian provinces in a few ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... "Many heartrending scenes were witnessed along the route, as the torrential rain and the vast zone of mud increased the misery of the moving multitude. Food was scarce and many went without it for days, while sleep was impossible as the throng ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Sebastien's shoulders, while Phellion gave him some water to drink. The poor lad no sooner opened his eyes than he began to weep. He laid his head on Phellion's desk, and all his limbs were limp as if struck by lightning; while his sobs were so heartrending, so genuine, that for the first time in his life Poiret's feelings were stirred by ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... I was washing my hands before dinner and cheerfully whistling Hiawatha, I became conscious that Jones was lolling back on a sofa at the dark end of the room. What particularly arrested my attention was a groan—preceded by a pack of heartrending sighs. It worried me—when everything seemed to be going so well. He had every right to be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... under the Point, apparently for the purpose of anchoring, as was afterwards reported by the crew of the tugboat which was at anchor. They saw the steamer moving about for some time. Then a crash was heard, followed by most heartrending cries. The steamer went out to sea, and did not heed the signal rockets which were sent up by the "Northfleet." The little tugboat had only four men and a small boat, which was at once launched, and the mate and the engineer, with one sailor, went to the rescue. ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... heartrending story, to come so late, so bootless now, to the poor boy who had slept all these years in the nameless grave, even its ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the ground. He could not rise until I came to his assistance. Then we two tottering wrecks attempted to carry our heavy loads, but Jerome could not make it; he cast from him everything he owned, even the smallest personal belongings so dear to his simple, pure soul. It was heartrending to see this young man, who in health would have been able to handle three or four of his own size, now reduced to such ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... their names and wore cheap clothes, that, presto! they were as workers and could pass on to an uninformed reading public the trials of the worker. (Incidentally they were all trials.) I had read in the past those heartrending books and articles and found it ever difficult to hold back the tears. Sometimes they were written by an immigrant, a bona-fide worker. The tragedy of such a life in this business-ridden land of ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... break the seal of this when I am dead.' This was most heartrending, coming from a man I loved better than any one in the world excepting my wife. He died that night, in silence, and without a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... door. Agnes opened it herself. Dorothy had indeed rushed to do it, but fortunately Agnes contrived to reach it before her. It was evident that Cicely was loth to tell her terrible news, though Dorothy begged her, over Agnes' shoulder, to relieve her heartrending suspense. Was it from one faint throb of womanly feeling in her usually hard heart, that Mistress Winter, in sharp tones, summoned Dorothy within, and left Agnes to hear ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... went to the hovel of poor Madelon Dreux, the cobbler's widow, and nursed her and her children through a malignant fever, sitting early and late, and leaving her own peaceful hearth for the desolate hut with the delirious ravings and heartrending moans of the fever-stricken. "How ought one to dare to be happy if one is not of use?" she would say to those who sought to dissuade her ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... His companions searched for him in vain, and finally recognized his agonizing cries from the opposite shore where the cannibals were torturing him. In his delirium he had swum across the narrow inlet which separated them from their enemies; his heartrending cries told of the reception accorded him. "Oh, if he had only repented!" cried the boys with a shudder, as ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... employ against his fellow man. The genius of Schiller, lucid as it was comprehensive, seems to have revealed all the phenomena which certain ideas bring to light in the human organization by their keen and penetrating action. A man may be put to death by a thought. Such is the moral of those heartrending scenes, when in The Brigands the poet shows a young man, with the aid of certain ideas, making such powerful assaults on the heart of an old man, that he ends by causing the latter's death. The time is ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... Embassy, placed beside these gentlemen, made a fine figure with the Due and Duchesse de Montebello at its head, accompanied by M. Lutteroth and his wife, the sister of that Count Batthyani who was executed in Hungary under such heartrending circumstances in the year 1848. The general public of France was represented among the spectators by M. Glais-Bizoin, who made a less fine effect, as those who have known the triumvir of Tours in 1870 will readily believe. He was one of the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... sure I wish people were preserved from them!" ejaculated Mrs Clarissa. "The uncharitableness, and misunderstanding, and unkind words that people will allow themselves to use! 'Tis perfectly heartrending to hear." ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... mockery; the Mitchell Place, as a farm, became a hissing, and a proverb, and an astonishment: a circumstance so singularly at variance with remembered thrift of the reputed owner as to keep green that owner's name. Nor was that all. As youth became mature and wise, in the sad heartrending fashion youth has, or flitted to new hearths, in that other heartbreaking way of youth, it was noted that leases were not to be renewed on any terms; and the new tenants, in turn, were ever such light and unthrift folk as the old, always with ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... heartrending feature of it all—in these homes of the mothers who work at night—is the expression in the faces of the children; children of chance, dressed in rags, undernourished, underclothed, all predisposed to the ravages of ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Scripture authority for their infernal deeds. Far into the eighteenth century in England, the clergy dragged innocent women into the courts as witches, and learned judges pronounced on them the sentence of torture and death. The chapter on witchcraft in Lecky's History of Rationalism, contains the most heartrending facts in human history. It is unsafe to put unquestioned confidence in all the vagaries of mortal man. While women were tortured, drowned and burned by the thousands, scarce one wizard to a hundred was ever ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... death!" Two of the executioners at once rushed upon the beggar, and began beating him with their long sticks, Theodore all the while exclaiming, "Beat him, beat him, by my death!" The poor old cripple, at first in heartrending terms, implored for mercy; but his voice grew fainter and fainter, and in a few minutes more there lay his corpse, that none dare remove or pray for. The laughing hyenas that night caroused undisturbed on ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... woo less than to be wooed; and at all times and through all moods he remains the primeval sentimentalist. He will detach his life entirely from the catchwords which pretend to govern his actions; he will sit and croon the most heartrending ditties in celebration of home-life and a mother's love, and then set forth incontinently upon a well-planned errand of plunder. For all his artistry, he lacks balance as flagrantly as a popular politician or an advanced journalist. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous storm of fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed ridiculous. But in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of death, and his heartrending cries might well have called Heaven to his help. Perhaps they did. So hidden before, he was now transparent, and one could see the workings of his heart and mind like the movements of a clock out of its case. His voice and gestures, hopes and fears, were so perfectly human that none could mistake ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... William Irwin, of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and his party, as related in the Paris Herald, were heartrending. On leaving Switzerland for France they were forced to carry their own luggage, all the porters apparently having selfishly marched off to die for their country, and the train was not lighted, nor did any one collect their tickets. ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... that." She gave him her eyes in what seemed to him to be a questioning stare. "In a deep, heartrending sorrow like his he will scarcely remember my words from one day to another. Do you know what I think, Jarvis? Down inside of him he has a deeply religious nature, and I predict that he will now simply have to turn to God. After all, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... is monstrous, it is heartrending!" gasped Tricotrin, when he grasped the enormity of his failure; "but, light of my life, why should you blame me for this ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... as if the day were breaking! Almost immediately two other windows flew into fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part of my house was nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible, shrill, heartrending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through the night, and two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw the terrorstruck faces, and their ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... ran hastily down to the beach to seize what boats they could. Here they met a heartrending obstacle in the refusal of the owners. The chief, however, signified that it was his will; and, moreover, he commanded that the fishermen should handle the oars. They would be paid. That was different. Why did not the white people say so at once? They would go anywhere for money. Not ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... fortunate enough to be able to lay hold of a floating spar, and contrived to keep himself afloat; and, after a long struggle with the winds and waves, he was cast upon a strange island. But what was his surprise, on reaching the shore, to hear sounds of the most heartrending distress, mingled with the sweetest songs which had ever charmed him! His curiosity was instantly roused, and he advanced cautiously till he saw two huge dragons guarding the gate of a wood. They were terrible indeed to look upon. Their bodies ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... of this outburst was obviously not what he had hoped. Mrs. Ellis stared first at the egg quivering before her face, then at the captain. Then she rose and marched majestically to the kitchen. The door closed, but a heartrending sniff drifted in through the crack. Olive laid down her knife ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... was no wonder that Cargrim preached a stirring sermon. He repeated his warning text over and over again; he illustrated it in the most brilliant fashion; and his appeals to those who had secret sins, to confess them at once, were quite heartrending in their pathos. As most of his congregation had their own little peccadilloes to worry over, Mr Cargrim's sermon made them quite uneasy, and created a decided sensation, much to his own gratification. If Bishop Pendle had only been seated on his throne to hear that sermon, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... himself, and to all who listened to him that day, the heartrending question was whether they could suffer a separation to be made between the Loyalists in the six counties and those in the other three counties of the Province. It could only be done, Carson declared, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... dead!—if he were lyin' under the hillock yonder beside his brothers, I would say nothing. He gave, and He has a right to take away! But, Almighty God!"—-And the man uttered a cry so frightful, so heartrending, that the knives and forks fell from our hands, and a number of negro women and children came rushing in to see what was the matter. We gazed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... 399 The rebel chiefs being in exile, the people are goaded to fresh revolt. 400 The tragedy of the Calle de Camba. Cebu Island rises in revolt. 401 The Cebuanos' raid on Cebu City; Lutao in flames; piles of corpses. 402 Exciting adventures of American citizens. Heartrending scenes in Cebu City. 404 Rajahmudah Datto Mandi visits Cebu. Rebels in Bolinao (Zambales). 406 Relief of Bolinao. Father Santos of Malolos is murdered. 408 The peacemaker states his views on the reward he expects from Spain. 409 Don Maximo Paterno, the Philippine ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... stop to describe the heartrending scenes connected with this war, but merely inform the reader that Warsaw was taken by assault; and in this is included a whole chapter of misery. On this fatal day many thousand Poles as well as Russians lost their lives. In the course of the evening after the battle, the superior officers of ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... was very sad, and had a great desire to see her poor child, but she was so old, and found herself so weak and sensitive, that she entreated the king to spare her a heartrending spectacle. She threw herself into the arms of Charming, who tenderly embraced her, and withdrew, saying that she placed all her hope and trust in the love of the king and the talent of the chief ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... terrific mountain of remorseless liquid was seen galloping with mad pace until it lashed over her and she became reduced to atoms. Nothing but wreckage was seen afterwards. The crew all perished. It was a heartrending sight, which sent the onlookers into uncontrollable grief. The sailor was right: "It ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... these into associations for the battle against oppression. Very unhappily they preached their doctrine to the colored people, and collected these into societies.[261] To this mixed and excitable multitude, minute, heartrending descriptions of slavery were given in the piercing tones of passion; and slaveholders were held up as monsters of cruelty and crime." p. 136. "The abolitionists often speak of Luther's vehemence as a model ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... turnpike to a point about a quarter of a mile from the place designated by the anonymous writer. Tying his horse to a tree, he walked through the woods, and hid the note under the stone mentioned in the letter. It was after nightfall when he reached home, where he was met with the heartrending and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... realist dip his falcon in the boiling blood of life, Tracing in heartrending horror all the hoary wrongs and strife, Till the world shall sick and sadden of its folly and its sin, Hearkening through the roar of traffic to the still ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... me woefully sad, and I had a queer, heartrending prevision I would never see her more. Garry was supporting her, and she seemed to have suddenly grown very frail. He was pale and quiet, but I could see he was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... words very gently but very firmly. He was deeply, tenderly sorry for the poor, deformed, fragile girl, doomed to be a witness of that most heartrending of human tragedies, the passing away of her own scarce-hoped-for happiness. But he felt that at this moment the kindest act would be one of complete truth. He knew that Paul Deroulede's heart was completely given to Juliette de Marny; he too, like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... iligant figure even now," says Mrs. Moloney, in her depressing voice. "But time an' throuble is cruel hard on some of us. I had a figure meself when I was young," with a heartrending sigh. ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Elector to furnish them some redress for their affliction and want, and besought him, even now, to make peace with the Swedes, and to command the Stadtholder in the Mark to institute a milder government in the unhappy province. In heartrending words, they pictured the distresses of both wretched cities, which had so far declined that they had now hardly seven thousand inhabitants, while ten years ago they had numbered more than twenty thousand. "But fire, pillage, and oppressions," so the writing wound up, "have reduced us to the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... of the day the second attack came on. The crisis was terrible. Herbert felt himself sinking. He stretched his arms towards Cyrus Harding, towards Spilett, towards Pencroft. He was so young to die! The scene was heartrending. They were obliged to ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... in Grey'! Now I wonder what that means? Do you think it's a disguised love message to some forlorn damsel in the east, or does it conceal the heartrending cry of a lost soul to some fond but angry parent?" Then, as the man did not immediately answer, she went on with a pucker of thought upon her brow. "'Yellow'—that might mean gold. 'Booming'—ah, yes, the Kootenai mines, or the Yukon. There is going ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... plague began to break out among the rest of us, and as fast as the symptoms appeared, we sent the stricken ones to these segregated rooms. We compelled them to walk there by themselves, so as to avoid laying hands on them. It was heartrending. But still the plague raged among us, and room after room was filled with the dead and dying. And so we who were yet clean retreated to the next floor and to the next, before this sea of the dead, that, room by room and floor ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... imagined that the storming of the place would be an easy matter. But despair had suggested to the Carthaginians means of defence in every direction. All assaults were repelled. Everybody was engaged day and night in the manufacture of arms. Nothing can be more heartrending than this last struggle of despair. Every man and every woman labored to the uttermost for the defence of the city with ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... he put his hand to his cheek as though he still felt the smart of the blow, and in his eyes was a pain that was heartrending and an amazement that was ludicrous. He looked like an overblown schoolboy, and though I felt so sorry for him, I could ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Risler wrote Sidonie a farewell letter, at once laughable and touching, wherein, mingling the most technical details with the most heartrending adieux, the unhappy engineer declared that he was about to set sail, with a broken heart, on the transport Sahib, "a sailing-ship and steamship combined, with engines of fifteen-hundred-horse power," as if he hoped that so considerable a capacity would make an impression on his ungrateful betrothed, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... recourse to self-destruction sets an example of unseemly revolt against one of the most beautiful and comforting of all the laws of nature. Moreover, suicide was a waste of force on which it was simply heartrending to have to look. There were so many great deeds to be done which called for the laying down of life. In a thousand different ways one might benefit mankind by Winkelried-like actions. If one was determined to die, one should at least render thereby to those left behind one of those ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... and so I am told they are, but the cremation of the poor lacks every element of this nature. My heart bled for a poor widow whose husband had just been taken to the pile. She was of a very low caste, but her grief was heartrending; not loud, but I thought I could taste the saltness of her tears, they seemed so bitter; but she has this consolation to comfort her after the outburst, that she insured the eternal happiness of her mate by having his ashes mingled with the sacred river of God. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... bien aimee, I am starving. You who are at ease, let me come and eat with you"—and so on and so on. Her heart grieved for them; but que veux-tu?—one was not a charitable institution. So it was all very sad and heartrending. To say nothing of her hourly anxiety. If only the sale guerre would cease and they could go on tour again! Ah, those ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Indian dies, and in some cases even before death occurs, the friends and relatives assemble at the lodge and begin crying over the departed or departing one. This consists in uttering the most heartrending, almost hideous wails and lamentations, in which all join until exhausted. Then the mourning ceases for a time until some one starts it again, when all join in as before and keep it up until unable to cry longer. This is kept up until the body is removed. This ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... either from Europe or from Anatolia. Both on account of the recruiting of their employees, and of shortage of coal, the companies operating electric tramways of the city have reduced their service to the minimum, as no power is available for the running of the cars. Heartrending scenes are witnessed in front of the closed doors of the various banking establishments, where large posters are to be seen bearing the inscription 'Closed temporarily ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... hysteria that seized some and caused them to jump into the flood and death; the torture of despair that gripped those who, imprisoned in their homes by the water, waited in vain for help until the advancing flames came and destroyed them. The most heartrending feature of the situation was the pitiable terror of the women and children. Many of them sat up and sobbed through the night refusing to believe that their fathers had been drowned in ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... through the dark regions below I had mounted from torture to torture, from crime to crime, from punishment to punishment, from awful silence to heartrending cries, till I reached the uppermost circle of Hell. Already, from afar, I could see the glory of Paradise shining at a vast distance; I was still in darkness, but on the borders of day. I flew, upheld by my Guide, borne along by a power akin to that which, during our dreams, wafts us to ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... up! It came from the breasts of those who waited with limitless courage, and those who worked feverishly to save. It was the heartrending, bloodcurdling cry of people doomed—for the ship had begun to settle! Through his ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... chill horror; her face took a wild, death-like expression; she locked herself up in her bedroom, and her maid, putting her ear to the keyhole, could hear her smothered sobs. More than once, as he went home after a tender interview, Kirsanov felt within him that heartrending, bitter vexation which follows on ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... made the background, and on the shore little Mary Morrison bade little Jimmie Jones "Good-bye" with heartrending sobs. But this Bobbie Shafto never went to sea. As picture followed picture, he was shown pulling at a rowing machine, sailing toy ships in a tub, fishing in a pail, and digging for treasure in a tiny sand pile—and after each funny scene, the curtain would drop, and tiny Mary Morrison would ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... in the saddle when a heartrending war-whoop sounded on their flank, and she knew that they were surrounded! Instinctively she reached for her husband's second quiver of arrows, which was carried by one of the pack-ponies. Alas! the Crow warriors ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... Experience in Oregon. All Alone with the Wolves. A Woman's Instinct in the Hour of Danger. Dr. White's Dilemma and its Solution. A Clean Pair of Heels and a Convenient Tree. A Perilous Voyage and its Consequences. A Heartrending Catastrophe. A Mother's Lost Treasure. A Savage Coterie and the White Stranger. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding. A Murderous Suspicion. The ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... his Esquimaux dogs. The trio were evidently a mother and twins. The captain was anxious to secure the cubs alive as trophies, and was cautious in shooting at the mother. All three fell, and were brought on board the Isabel. He records that it was quite heartrending to see the affection that existed between them. When the cubs saw their mother was wounded, they commenced licking her wounds, regardless of their own sufferings. At length the mother began to eat the snow, a sure sign that she was mortally wounded. "Even then her care for the cubs ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... chair and buries his face in his hands over the blotter. Balsquith continues remorselessly, stooping over him to rub it in.) He has three aunts in the peerage; and Lady Richmond's one of them; (Mitchener utters a heartrending groan) and they all adore him. The invitations for six garden parties and fourteen dances have been cancelled for all the subalterns in Chubbs's regiment. Is it possible you havent heard ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... station. He determined to pursue his march to the battle ground to bury the dead, if he could not avenge their fall. He was joined by many friends of the killed and missing, from Lexington and Bryant's station. They reached the battle ground on the 25th. It presented a heartrending spectacle. Where so lately had arisen the shouts of the robust and intrepid woodsmen, and the sharp yell of the savages, as they closed in the murderous contest, the silence of the wide forest was now unbroken, except by birds of prey, as they screamed and sailed over the carnage. The heat was so ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... for the girl beside her, the girl who has toiled so patiently, watched so faithfully, sacrificed all so generously, for mother and for Richard. Even in delirium, her thoughts are only for the absent one; her words, that insistent, heartrending cry for "Richard, Richard, Richard." Jane bows her head in anguish but whispers ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... upon his closed eyes and noble gray head. Just behind him they led his riderless black horse, with his master's boots reversed in the stirrups and the empty saddle knotted with crape. It was at once majestic, heartrending, and terrible. It unnerved me, and yet it was not surprising to have such a moving spectacle greet me on my return ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... her timbers were ravished, and ruin came to them all! Poor Columbus! had he but sailed with his son Diego and his noble brother Bartholomew, for his only crew and companions, not forgetting the help of a good woman, America would have been discovered without those harrowing tales of woe and indeed heartrending calamities which followed in the wake of his designing people. Nor would his ship have been less well manned than was the Liberdade, sailing, centuries after, over the same sea and among many of the islands visited by the great discoverer—sailing, ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... repeat, is in the eye of the observer. What is farce to you is often tragedy to the actual performer. The man who slips over a piece of orange peel, or chases his hat along the muddy pavement, is rarely conscious of the humour of the situation. On the other hand, you shall see persons involved in heartrending tragedies to whom the thing shows as farce, like little children playing in churchyards or riding tombstones astride. To the little imps of comedy, who, according to Mr. Meredith, sit up aloft, holding their sides at the spectacle of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Comparing it hastily with the first-class compartment being held by Francesca, I found that it differed only in having no carpet on the floor, and a smaller number of buttons in the upholstering. This was really heartrending when the difference in fare for three persons would be at least twenty dollars. What a delightful sum to put aside for a rainy day!—that is, be it understood, what a delightful sum to put aside and spend on the first rainy day! for that is ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... A more heartrending alternative has never been imposed on any body of politicians, and John Redmond, unlike his younger brother, was not of those to whom decision came by an instinctive act of allegiance. His nature forced him to see both sides, but when he decided it was with ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... law of the land, they seized the girl and arraigned her before the judge, who condemned her to death. The people smeared her with honey from top to toe, and exposed her where bees would be attracted to her. The insects stung her to death, and the callous people paid no heed to her heartrending cries. Then it was that God resolved upon the destruction ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Seigneur of Jauioz by his purchase of their countrywoman became so unpopular among the freedom-loving Bretons that at length they magnified him into a species of demon—a traditionary fate which he thoroughly deserved, if the heartrending tale concerning his victim has any ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Hall looked as if they had reached the stage of being dreadfully bored with each other when we arrived. They did not hear us immediately, and as my momentary dream dissolved I had an impression of them all as being on the verge of a heartrending yawn. They perked up instantly, however, when they saw us, turning towards us with a movement that looked concerted and was in itself ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... a heartrending letter from Aunt Ju. She was very sorry that Lady George should have been so troubled;—but then let them think of her trouble, of her misery! She was quite sure that it would kill her,—and it would certainly ruin her. That odious Baroness had summoned everybody that had ever befriended ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... of misfortune. He locked the doors of his house, mounted his horse, and with a broken spirit set out on his journey; but he had hardly gone half-way when, harassed by his reflections, he had to dismount and tie his horse to a tree, at the foot of which he threw himself, giving vent to piteous heartrending sighs; and there he remained till nearly nightfall, when he observed a man approaching on horseback from the city, of whom, after saluting him, he asked what was the news ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... wounded. One of the men killed was found with his tongue cut out. The members of Butler's party finally entered the homes of most of the prominent Negroes in the town, smashed the furniture, tore books to pieces, and cut pictures from their frames, all amid the most heartrending distress on the part of the women and children. That night the town was desolate, for all who could do so fled ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... said: "I'll be ready." She was of a firm, daring nature—I did not fear to tell her all my plans. As my wife was so timid, I said as little as possible to her. George and I hurriedly said our farewells to our wives. The parting was heartrending, for we knew the dangers were great, and the chances were almost even that we should not meet again. I could hardly leave my wife, her agitation and grief were so great. But we were off in a few moments. We crept through the orchard, ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... long and anxiously awaited, and the time which has elapsed has cost England and India very dear. Many precious lives have been lost, and much heartrending suffering has been endured, for which there can be no compensation. The reputation of England's power, too, has had a rude shake; and nothing but a long-continued manifestation of her might before the eyes of the whole ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... struggle, and the distracted attempts to find a place of concealment for the victim, are too heartrending to be repeated here. James fell, it is said, with sixteen wounds in him, hacked almost to pieces, yet facing his murderers so desperately that some of them bore the marks of his dying grip when they were brought to the scaffold to be ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... carefully curled ringlets of colourless hair contrasted strangely with the sudden havoc in her complexion. Perhaps she was conscious of it, for she tried to turn her face away, so that Greif should not see it. Then all at once, with a heartrending sob, she let her head fall forward upon his shoulder, while her nervous, wasted hands grasped his two ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the future pastor was not, therefore, a very happy one, for at school there are no feeble women to be captivated by heartrending revelations of a noble nature at war with universal wickedness, and all but shattered by the assaults of an unfeeling world. Nor, strange to say, do schoolmasters, as a rule, value the boy who ranges himself on their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... their knees, described with tears and sobs the lamentable condition of those whom they most loved, and besought the intercession of the magistrates. The pulpits resounded with invectives and lamentations. The press poured forth heartrending narratives and stirring exhortations. Avaux saw the whole danger. He reported to his court that even the well intentioned—for so he always called the enemies of the House of Orange—either partook of the public feeling or were overawed by it; and he suggested the policy of making ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I stooped low but he relaxed suddenly and seemed to shrink. I felt his heart but it was still. I tried his eyes and they were sightless. Patsy sent up a heartrending wail and crawled over behind his master's gun and knapsack, so I knew my old friend ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... utterance to those commonplace but heartrending words. The door shut once more, and he went down ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... gaucho cuts your throat he does it like a gentleman: even as a small boy I knew better—that he did his business rather like a hellish creature revelling in his cruelty. He would listen to all his captive could say to soften his heart—all his heartrending prayers and pleadings; and would reply: "Ah, friend,"—or little friend, or brother—"your words pierce me to the heart and I would gladly spare you for the sake of that poor mother of yours who fed you ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... held in relation to the coming Presidential election. The whole field of the nation was scanned, and all is high hope and confidence. Illinois is expected to better her condition in this race. Under these circumstances, judge how heartrending it was to come to my room and find and read your discouraging letter of the 15th. We have made no gains, but have lost "H. R. Robinson, Turner, Campbell, and four or five more." Tell Arney to reconsider, if he would ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... been made of glass. Not a soul escaped. One or two bodies, with a few planks and casks, were all that ever reached the shore." Well might Mr. Traill add, "I was haunted for months by the remembrance of that heartrending sight." ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Antoinette was separated from her sister, her daughter, and her son, by virtue of a decree which ordered the trial. Weber, in his memoirs of her, states, that the separation from her son was so touching, so heartrending that the very gaolers who witnessed the scene confessed, when they were giving an account of' it to the authorities, that they could not refrain ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... review of corpses it seemed to Langethal as if Death were singing a deep, heartrending choral, and he longed to pray for these young, crushed human blossoms; but his companion led the way into the guard's little room. There lay the poet, "the radiance of an angel on his face," though his body bore many traces of the fury of the battle. Deeply ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mouth without sending something to put in it, and that is very true, but it is just possible that the food sent to put in it is appropriated to some other mouth, that has already got above its share. If this was not so, we should be spared the pain of reading the heartrending accounts that are so frequently brought under our notice of ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... the roar of the waters And the tempest's continuing wail. The "Storm Power" loudly was sounding Their funeral dirge as they passed, And the white-crested waters around them Re-echoed the voice of the blast. The surges will show to the morrow A fearful and heartrending sight, And bereaved ones will weep in their sorrow When they ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... lingered longest was outside those heavenly places where you saw far off a flutter of white in the windows, which turned out to be absurd, tiny, short-waisted frocks and diminutive under-garments, and little heartrending shoes; things of desire, things of impossible dream, to be approached with a sacred dumbness ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the glen sorrowful from Camus to Kincreggan. A sound pleasant in the ears of Cameron the shepherd, who read no grief in it, but the comfortable tale of progress, growth, increasing flocks, but to Gilian almost heartrending. The separation for which the ewes wailed and their little ones wept, seemed a cruelty; that far-extending lamentation of the flocks was part of some universal coronach for things eternally doomed. Never seemed a landscape so miserable as ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... admired than in our family; we feel afflicted painfully at what to our human vision looks like an unmitigated calamity. But if it is so hard for us to bear, to whom in no sense she belonged, what a heartrending event this is to you, her mother! What an amazement, what a mystery. But it will not do to look upon it on this side. We must not associate anything so unnatural as death with a being so eminently formed for life. We must look beyond, as soon as our tears will let us, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... more compelling than the exhaustion of grief, and it is the most restless temperaments that usually suffer from it the most keenly. It is those who have watched constantly, tirelessly, selflessly, for weeks or even months, for whom the final breakdown is the most utter and the most heartrending. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... not returned too soon to the small room at the top of the house on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying on the bed. She smiled through her tears,—a really heartrending smile. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... died the day before his term would have expired. This poor fellow piteously begged of the doctor to try and extend his life so that he could die a free man; but all in vain! On the day which would have brought liberty he was borne through the large gate and buried in the prison graveyard. It is heartrending to hear those men dying in the hospital, call for their mothers, wives or sisters! The convict nurses are as kind and sympathetic as possible, but in sickness and death there is no one that can take the place of mother, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... daughter! If any one will give me back my daughter, I will be his servant, the servant of his dog, and he shall eat my heart if he will.' She met M. le Cure of Saint-Remy, and said to him: 'Monsieur, I will till the earth with my finger-nails, but give me back my child!' It was heartrending, Oudarde; and IL saw a very hard man, Master Ponce Lacabre, the procurator, weep. Ah! poor mother! In the evening she returned home. During her absence, a neighbor had seen two gypsies ascend up to it with a bundle ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... formidable sides of night. Dea had that shadow in her, Gwynplaine had it on him. There was a phantom in Dea, a spectre in Gwynplaine. Dea was sunk in the mournful, Gwynplaine in something worse. There was for Gwynplaine, who could see, a heartrending possibility that existed not for Dea, who was blind; he could compare himself with other men. Now, in a situation such as that of Gwynplaine, admitting that he should seek to examine it, to compare himself with others was to understand ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... I can for them—I do that for all prisoners," answered Colonel Lyon, soberly. "I do not believe in making war any more heartrending than is necessary." ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... in continuous lines, a vast pilgrimage of the hopeless, many laden with household possessions which they had been able to gather at almost a moment's notice. Numbers were empty-handed and burdened at that in dragging their weary bodies along the miles which seemed never ending. It was a heartrending spectacle. Infinite pity must go out to those broken victims of the war, bowed veterans driven from home, going they knew not where; women with their crying children, famished for lack of food, all or nearly all leaving behind men folk who were still fighting their ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... to believe that their troubles were over, and had induced them to settle down in peace and comfort aboard the yacht, and also to ease their aching hearts by telling him what they had undergone since that day when they so blithely parted from him at the railway station at Havana, it was a really heartrending story of cruel oppression and shameful, irresponsible tyranny to which he felt himself obliged to listen. There is no need to give the full details here; it is sufficient to simply state that upon their arrival at Bejucal, the first station beyond Santiago, they were ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... sea of the old poets and philosophers, on the sea whose voice has rocked the thought of the world, that he cast into the shadow that long lament, so heartrending and sublime, that posterity will long shudder at the remembrance of it. The bitter strophes of this lament seem to be cadenced by the Mediterranean itself and to be in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... nakedness, and an unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole dwelling-place—abject poverty begs a copper from "his honour" for the love of God and the glory of the Blessed Virgin, telling meantime a heartrending story of privation and oppression. Abject poverty points to all the outward signs and circumstances of its woe; but it forgets the good stone house in which live the son and the son's wife—the dozen or more of cattle grazing free on the mountain side—that bit of fertile land where the very ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton |
