"Wailing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If she weren't my own, then I shouldn't be weeping and wailing, and my heart wouldn't ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... about this when she heard something that made her first stop her work to listen and then jump up hurriedly, spilling the peas out of her lap. The wailing of a terrified child was coming nearer and nearer. Elliott set down the peas that were left and ran out on the veranda. There was Johnny stumbling up the path, crying at the top ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... assure his people of his safety by showing himself daily to them at a certain window, and some musicians, thinking to arouse his sympathy, brought beneath this window a funeral bier, and set up a doleful wailing. Distracted by the noise, the emperor appeared and demanded what it all meant? 'Melody is dead,' was the dejected reply, 'and we are taking it to the graveyard.' 'Very good,' answered the annoyed ruler; 'make the grave so deep that neither voice nor echo may ever again be heard.' And so ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... filled with tears—tears of compassion for himself! He looked at me and spoke to me with the wailing, querulous entreaty of a sick child wanting to be nursed. I was utterly at a loss what to do. It was perfectly ridiculous—but I was never ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... parties were pretty equally matched—about fifteen men in each. The noise now became deafening; shouts of defiance, insulting expressions, and every kind of abusive epithet were bandied about, and the women and children in the bush kept up a wailing cry all the while rising and falling in cadence. The pantomimic movements were of various descriptions; besides the singular quivering motion given to the thighs placed wide apart (common to all the Australian dances) they frequently invited each other to throw at them, turning ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... just waited outside and gave me the trouble of opening it myself. Then in her offish way she asked if we were through with her lexicon. After I had hunted it up for her, she happened to notice that Lila was wailing over the disappearance of ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... thin blade and all those present covered their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called on the executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered his eyes and saw that a woman had approached driving a ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... father. "Oh, Jemmy, Jemmy, I see it in your face!" He fell back into his own corner of the cab, with a faint, wailing cry. "They're married," he moaned to himself; his hands falling helplessly on his knees; his hat falling unregarded from his head. "Stop them!" he exclaimed, suddenly rousing himself, and seizing his son in a frenzy by the collar of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of my propensity, penniless and unsuccessful. It was a dreadful and a sleepless night with us all; or if I did slumber upon the hard floor for a moment (for we had neither seat nor covering), it was to startle at the cries of my child wailing for hunger, or the smothered sighs of my unhappy partner. Again and again I almost thought them the voice of the Judge, saying, 'Depart ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... at truth—or very near the truth—as near as any circumstantial evidence can do. I have not studied de Barral but that is how I understand him so far as he could be understood through the din of the crash; the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the newspaper contents bills, "The Thrift Frauds. Cross-examination of the accused. Extra special"—blazing fiercely; the charitable appeals for the victims, the grave tones of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... seem'd good in Thy sight, By Thy loving mercy prevailing, Lord! let her stand in the light of Thy face, Cloth'd with Thy love and crown'd with Thy grace, When I gnash my teeth in the terrible place That is fill'd with weeping and wailing. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... then. It's just as 'propriate, I guess. Come over here, and get into line, Eunice. You go first and I'll follow, and the children will come on behind. We must go up with weeping and wailing and gnashing our teeth," said Cricket, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... building there were men and boys singing; this was the only disturbing feature, for as the gamut was still unknown, there was no music in the country which could be agreeable to a European ear. The singers seemed to have derived their inspirations from the songs of birds and the wailing of the wind, which last they tried to imitate in melancholy cadences which at times degenerated into a howl. To my thinking the noise was hideous, but it produced a great effect upon my companions, who professed themselves much moved. As soon as the ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... some woman wailing her dead, Turlough," he said at length, although doubtfully. "Yet I have never heard a caoine like it; but onward, ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... than eight feet away. He closed the distance in a bound, swung the heavy oak table leg, and stretched Carlson on the floor. Mrs. Carlson began wailing and moaning, bending over her fallen tyrant, as Mackenzie could gather ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... crumples up its knees unto its breast, With the feign'd posture stirring ruth unfeign'd In the beholder's fancy; so I saw These fashion'd, when I noted well their guise. Each, as his back was laden, came indeed Or more or less contract; but it appear'd As he, who show'd most patience in his look, Wailing exclaim'd: "I ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... blindly through the storm, amid the rushing of the wind and the rattling of the hail, and the crackling and creaking of the dry trees in the forest, and the rush of waters, and all the din of the tempest, Marian's ear caught the sound of a child wailing and sobbing. A pang shot through her heart. She listened breathlessly—and then in the pauses of the storm she heard a child crying, "Marian, Marian! ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... time of unwonted and mysterious sounds in the country. The migrating cranes fly so high that by day they are scarcely visible. By night they are only heard, and their hoarse wailing voices, lost in the clouds, sound like the parting cry of souls in torment, striving to find the road to heaven, yet forced by an unconquerable fate to wander near the earth about the haunts of men; for these errant birds have strange uncertainties, and many a mysterious anxiety in the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... her pathway, began to roar at her. "I ain' ga no money!" he shouted, in a dismal voice. He lurched on up the street, wailing to himself: "I ain' ga no money. Ba' luck. Ain' ga ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... knew the futility of it, while they stumbled onward through the dark. Behind them the night was hideous with noise as the great palace gave forth an eruption of shrieking, inhuman forms that scattered with whistling and wailing calls ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... and I, who am a member of the clan, have both seen and heard it several times. As it appears to me, it resembles the decapitated head of a prehistoric woman, and I shall never forget my feelings one night, when, aroused from slumber by its ghastly wailing, I stumbled frantically out of bed, and, groping my way upstairs in the dark, without venturing to look to the left or right lest I should see something horrible, found every inmate of the house huddled together on the landing, paralysed with fear. I did not see it on that occasion, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... was overcast and the clouds hung sluggishly overhead. As I walked, suddenly I heard a melancholy voice singing a peasant song, a malaguena. I paused to listen, but the sadness was almost unendurable; and it went on interminably, wailing through the air with the insistent monotony of its Moorish origin. I struck into the olives to find the singer and met a swineherd, guarding a dozen brown pigs, a youth thin of face, with dark eyes, clothed in undressed sheep-skins; and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... bares his breast unto the dart the daring spearsman sends, And dying hears his cheering foes, the wailing of his friends, So Albert Sidney Johnston, the chief of belt and scar, Lay down to die at Shiloh and turned ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... direction of Bath. And my Celtic melancholy swept down upon me again, and even my father's bier appeared before me with the pale candle-flames swaying in the gusty room, and now indeed my ears heard the loud wailing keen of the ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... been from the beginning of the world a ridiculous and inadequate object. A man could not possibly conceive, even if he gave all his time to it, of a more futile, reckless, hapless expression of or pointer to an immortal soul than a week-old baby wailing at time and space. The idea of a baby may be all right, but in its outer form, at first, at least, a baby is a failure, and always has been. The same is true of our other musical instruments. A horn caricatures music. A flute is a man rubbing a black stick with his lips. A trombone player ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... but a short time from his "fatherland," whose spirit the cowardly overseer had labored in vain to quell, said in a calm, clear voice, that we had better stand our ground, and advised the females to lose no time in useless wailing, but get their things and repair immediately to a cabin at a short distance, and there remain quiet, without a light, which they did with all possible haste. The men were terrified at this bold act of their leader; ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... feed on blood. Her festive bowls Should be rank gall: and round her haunted room Wild, wailing ghosts and monitory owls Should flit forever shrieking death ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... high-reaching spirits, the unrestrained language of admiration and worship, the unrestrained yielding to the impulses, the anxieties, the pitiable despair and agonies of love, the subordination to it of all other pursuits and aims, the weeping and wailing and self-torturing which it involves, all this is so far apart from what we know of actual life, the life not merely of work and business, but the life of affection, and even of passion, that it makes the picture of which it is so necessary a part, seem to us in the last ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... extricate themselves by being vigorously bombarded with stones. No sympathy appears to be given on the part of the spectators, and evidently nothing of the kind is expected by the tenants of the tumbling house; the wailing women, and the look of consternation on the face of the men who barely escaped from the falling roof, seem to be regarded by the spectators as a tomasha (show), to be stared at and enjoyed, as they would stare at and enjoy anything not ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... when Xerxes our free shores to tread Rush'd in hot haste, and dream'd the perilous main With scourge and fetter to chastise and chain, —What see'st? Wild wailing o'er their husbands dead, Persia's pale matrons wrapt in weeds of woe, And red with gore the gulf of Salamis! To prove our triumph certain, to foreshow The utter ruin of our Eastern foe, No single instance this; Miltiades and Marathon recall, See, with his patriot ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... against this wall—washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish—seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... brittlest of vegetable matter. The upper portion started aside with a monstrous groan, dropped in a standing posture to the earth, and then toppled slowly, sublimely prostrate, its branches crashing and all its leaves wailing. Ere long, a little further to the front, another Anak of the forest went down; and, mingled with the noise of its sylvan agony, there arose sharp cries of human suffering. Then Colonel Colburn, a broad-chested and ruddy man of thirty-five, with a look of indignant anxiety ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... different ways as wine. Some are exalted,—their feet spurn the earth, their heads are in the clouds; some pugnacious, walking about with a chip on the shoulder; others are stupidly happy,—their faces wearing a sickly smile that becomes painful to look at; others again, like you, melancholy as a wailing tenor in the last act of 'Lucia.' Like learning, a little draught of love is dangerous; drink largely and be sober. The charmer will not cast so powerful a spell upon you the next time, and you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." There will be separations at the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... opening up a communication between them and spirits, they are still far behind the Russian peasants, who have their house spirits, who are of considerable use. These spirits take persons, houses, cattle, and chattels of every description under their care. They are heard wailing before a death. One of them rouses the inmates of a house if fire or robbery be threatened. Pestilence and war are foretold by such spirits lamenting in the meadows. Here we have useful spirits, worth having—not like our ones, capable of communicating only by means of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... weeping, and the wave of the ocean was cleft around for them.[574] But when they reached fertile Troy, they in order ascended the shore, where the fleet ships of the Myrmidons were drawn up round swift Achilles. Then his venerable mother, shrilly wailing, stood near to him deeply lamenting, and took the head of her son, and, mourning, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... flags, the city's black shrouds, processions, torches, silent seas of faces and bared heads, the dirges and the bells, the dim-lit churches, wailing organs, fierce invectives from the altar, and the perfume of flowers piled in heaps by silent hearts—to all ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... should open it. We sat for over an hour, without exchanging a word. We could hear the shells as they burst upon the housetops, the crashing of torn timbers, and the rumbling of walls rolling over, struck by the heavy shot. We could hear the shouts of men and the wailing of women, with now and then a shriek louder than all others, as some missile carried death into ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... the sound of the tools ceased and there fell a crystal quiet. All about the green compound men would be sauntering in their Sunday's best, walking with those lax joints of the reposing toiler, thoughtfully smoking, talking small, as if in honour of the stillness, or hearkening to the wailing of the gulls. And it was strange to see our Sabbath services, held, as they were, in one of the bothies, with Mr. Brebner reading at a table, and the congregation perched about in the double tier of sleeping bunks; and to hear the singing of the psalms, "the chapters," the inevitable Spurgeon's ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eyed the body with searching suspicion. Then he turned to the Kid. The Kid, careless of the blood and wounds, kissed him fervently on the nose, called him "Poor Sonny! Dear, good Sonny!" and burst into a loud wailing. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... believe that art is in Queer Street if new buildings are not being raised, if official recognition of merits is not proclaimed, and if the newspapers do not teem with paragraphs concerning the homes of the Academicians. The wailing and gnashing of teeth that were heard when an intelligent portion of the Press induced Mr. Tate to withdraw his offer to build a gallery and furnish it with pictures by Messrs. Herkomer, Fildes, Leader, Long, are not ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... no bones beneath it, on the ground there? Because, Jackies all, the man that did that murder walks! It is not always deadly still here; sometimes there 's a clanking of chains! And a bodkin through the tongue can't keep the dead from wailing! And the murdered man walks, too; in his shroud he follows the other—Is n't that something white in ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... wash their faces until they were real dirty and black with fire smoke." Crying at a funeral was expected and in fact positively sanctioned. At a funeral conducted while I was present the sheriff arrested a drunken Washo who was wailing quite loudly. The Indians were all bitter about this because: "All of us cry at a funeral whether we are drunk or not. That's the way the Washo do it." (This funeral was that of a murder victim and the sheriff was present ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... all along the border. He had power, likewise, over the border hawks not directly under his leadership. During the weeks of his enforced stay in the canon there had been a cessation of operations—the nature of which Joan merely guessed—and a gradual accumulation of idle wailing men in the main camp. Also she gathered, but vaguely, that though Kells had supreme power, the organization he desired was yet far from being consummated. He showed thoughtfulness and irritation by turns, and it was the subject of gold that drew his ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the gazers, and they looked on Morven with a deeper awe than the boldest warrior would have called forth: and they bore him back to the council-hall of the wise men, wailing and clashing their arms in woe, and shouting, ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... girl, don't agitate yourself; consider yourself," he cried, and followed, with Lady Louisa sobbing and wailing behind him. Geraldine had not left her room yet. The ill news was to find her on the threshold, calm and lovely in the splendour of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... howling for the corpse of the slain Lord. Then, with more pathos and tenderness than can be seen in Rubens' picture, "Descent from the Cross," in the cathedral at Antwerp, is the dead Christ lowered, and there rises the wailing of crushed motherhood, and with solemn tread the mutilated body is sepulchred. But soon the door of the mausoleum falls and forth comes the Christ and, standing on the shoulder of Mount Olivet, He is ready for ascension. Then the "Hallelujah Chorus" ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... they never passed the door, nor entered in through it. Old Oliver would stand for a few minutes leaning heavily on Tony's shoulder, and trembling from head to foot, as his eyes wandered over all the front of the building; and then a low, wailing cry would break from his lips, "Dear Lord! there was no room for my little love, but thou hast ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... feel with him, judge, behold with him; but we think of him as little as of ourselves. Do we think of Aeschylus while we wait on the silence of Cassandra,[G] or of Shakspeare, while we listen to the wailing of Lear? Not so. The power of the masters is shown by their self-annihilation. It is commensurate with the degree in which they themselves appear not in their work. The harp of the minstrel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it records. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... home, as was sooth indeed. She threw the door open, and unladed the ass of all his wares, and first of the youngling, whom she shook awake, and bore into the house, and laid safely on the floor of the chamber; nor did she wait on her wailing, but set about what was to be done to kindle fire, and milk a she-goat, and get meat upon the board. That did she, and fed both herself and the child plenteously: neither did she stint her of meat ever, from that time forward, however else she dealt ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... dense, cold rain was sighing and knocking at the panes. The rain and the drippings from the roof filled the air with a doleful, wailing melody. The whole house appeared to be rocking gently to and fro, and everything around her seemed aimless ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... how can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of God? There will be wailing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field throughout the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the land of bondage, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... made no speech to fire his men. There was no wailing, no crying to the gods, no curses upon the tardy ephors at Lacedaemon who had deferred sending their whole strong levy instead of the pitiful three hundred. Sparta had sent this band to hold the pass. They had gone, knowing she might require the supreme sacrifice. Leonidas had spoken for all his ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... adown the dying sunset sailing, And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing, She fluttered back, with broken-hearted wailing, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... a baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shore of the great unknown, Blind, and wailing, and alone, Into the light of day?— Out from the shore of the unknown sea, Tossing in pitiful agony,— Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, Specked with the barks of little souls— Barks that were launched on the other side, And slipped from Heaven on an ebbing tide! What does he think ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... and Shorty shoved and thrust and threw back. Then they used the butt of the dog-whip and their fists on the food-mad crowd. And all this against a background of moaning and wailing women and children. Here and there, in a dozen places, the sled-lashings were cut. Men crawled in on their bellies, regardless of a rain of kicks and blows, and tried to drag out the grub. These had to be picked up bodily and flung back. And such was their weakness that they fell continually, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... knocked about like a shuttlecock, until, finally, like Johnson, he was beaten and kicked as he lay helpless on the deck. And no one interfered. Leach could have killed him, but, having evidently filled the measure of his vengeance, he drew away from his prostrate foe, who was whimpering and wailing in a puppyish sort of way, and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... side, as they formed a hasty group in the open space by the door, and, with Griffin beating time, stretched their mouths to the utmost and gave the Academy Howl with a vim that was deafening, drawing out the final deep growling notes to a weirdly wailing finish that sent Patricia and ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... P. M. the softness of that job departed, as far as Sergeant Walpole was concerned. At that moment he heard a thin wailing sound high aloft. It was well enough known nearer the front, but the Eastern Coast Observation Force had had no need to become unduly familiar with it. With incredible swiftness the wailing rose to the shrillest of shrieks, descending as lightning might be imagined to descend. Then there ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... on him before he knew it. Its glaring eyes blinded him. And if it had not screamed at him Fatty would never have escaped. It was the terrible screech of the monster which finally made Fatty jump. It was a frightful cry—like six wildcats all wailing together. And Fatty leaped to one side of the road just before ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... whereon they dwell, And all the heavens they are inhaling, And powers, whereof I cannot tell— Dark miscreants, supine and wailing, Until ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... The wailing of his voice had drawn a crowd of idlers and brother shopkeepers, who seemed vastly to enjoy the knave's discomfiture. Amongst them I recognized my old acquaintance, Weld, now a rival butcher. He pushed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a prelude more sweetly and profoundly melancholy than even the wailing of the night wind among the leafless trees of the forest. This was followed by—an ode shall I call it?—or a hymn?—for it was not what we mean by a song. Nor was the music like any other music I had ever heard, but much more full of passion; broken, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... against a huge block, absorbed in his thoughts, the low wailing of a woman's voice reached his ears. The sound proceeded apparently from no great distance, but the tone was very soft and low. Gradually, as he listened, he thought he distinguished words, but such words as he had not expected to hear, though they expressed ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... blowing fiercely on the square of buildings which stood naked and undefended against weather from that quarter of the heaven, while protected by the hills and the woods from the northeast. And mingled with the noisy or wailing gusts came the shrieking from time to time of one of the little brown owls that are now multiplying so ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his hands in his pockets, marching up and down the long room. Polly, who was swallowing hard, as if her throat hurt her, wouldn't look at one of the boys. Little Dick was openly wailing in his ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... wife—that girl. Posh! it had only been taken four years ago. He held it close to him, bent forward and kissed it. Then rubbed the glass with the back of his hand. At that moment, fainter than he had heard in the passage, more terrifying, Andreas heard again that wailing cry. The wind caught it up in mocking echo, blew it over the house-tops, down the street, far away from him. He flung out his arms, "I'm so damnably helpless," he said, and then, to the picture, "Perhaps it's not as bad as it sounds; ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... others rolling up in their blankets among the luggage. It occurred to me for the first time that we had a phonograph under the cargo. I went down after it. At random I chose a record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin Nocturne played on a 'cello—a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a brushing of sick wings across the gates of heavens never to be entered; and then the finale—an insistent, feverish repetition of the human ache, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the end between them. She thanked him for it; an act whereby she was: instantly melted to such softness that a dread of him haunted her. Coward, take up your burden for armour! she called to her poor dungeoned self wailing to have common nourishment. She knew how prodigiously it waxed on crumbs; nay, on the imagination of small morsels. By way of chastizing it, she reviewed her life, her behaviour to her husband, until ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I must have gone on blindly for some time, for when I again became conscious I stood beside a river, while tall trees waved their leafless branches overhead. Strange noises filled the air. Sometimes wailing sounds were wafted to me, which presently changed into hisses, until it seemed as if a thousand serpents were creeping all around me. The waters of the river looked black, while above me were weird, fantastic forms leaping in the stillness ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... Drake found his way into it nearly four hundred years ago. The finger of Providence still points to it amid wreck and ruin and smoldering ashes as the place where a teeming city with every mark of a splendid civilization shall be the pride of our Western shores. Her wailing Miserere shall be turned into a joyful ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... interior and piling them into breastworks at the three doors, the one opening into the corral being provided in addition with a high "traverse" to protect its guard against shots that might come through from Moreno's room. All this was accomplished amidst the wailing of the Mexican women and the fusillade begun by the assailants in hopes of terrorizing the defence before venturing to closer quarters. Like famous Croghan, of Fort Stephenson, Feeny had kept up a fire from so many different ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... presence Rose the peewits, just as all those years back, wailing soft and loud, And revealing their pale pinions like a fitful phosphorescence Up against the ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... see baby et up afore yer eyes?" he continued sternly, hiding a grin beneath the sandy droop of his big mustache. And with the baby kicking and wailing and stretching out her arms to the all-unheeding cub, he rowed rapidly away just as the old bear dragged herself up ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... God!" muttered Van der Kemp as he left the market-place, where the relatives of those who had been murdered were wailing ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the old woman, and burst into the tearless wailing of a child; "there is a home for me no more! My house was all that was left me of my people, and it is your own that make a house a home! In the long winter nights, when I sat by the fire and heard the wind howl, and ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... eve I hear the wailing Of the uncomforted sad mourning dove, Whose grief, like mine, seems deep as unavailing, What will I do with all this ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... while in Moscow, the largest bell I heard sounded was far inferior in size and weight to that of the Ivan Tower, which is rung only on state occasions, yet the sounds were so deep and powerful that they produced a reverberation in the air resembling the distant roar of thunder, mingled with the wailing of the winds in a storm. When all the bells of the tower, save the largest, were tolled together, the effect was absolutely sublime, surpassing in the grandeur and majesty of their harmony any thing I had ever heard produced through human agency. Judge, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... gnaws off the very bough upon which he is sitting; hence, when it gives way, he falls upon the sharp rocks below. Behold the great Pontiac, whose grave I saw near St. Louis; he was murdered while an exile from his country! Think of the brave Black Hawk! Methinks his spirit is still wailing through Wisconsin and Illinois for his lost people! I do not say you have no cause to complain, but to resist is self-destruction. I ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... was desolated, for he put his hands to his eyes and rocked himself back and forth with wailing groans of despair. He was funny, and Dolly had a great desire to know who he might be, but she did not like the familiarity of his manner, and she turned away to ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... the best of a not too brilliant bargain. Instead of screaming we must study; instead of wailing we must reflect; and eventually, as we gain a deeper knowledge of the secrets of Nature, and a greater mastery over her forces, we shall be better able to foresee the approach of evil and to take precautionary ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... the great square, officers were busy drawing up the men who had been brought in, in order of their regiments. The inhabitants issued from their houses, collected the bodies of those who had been killed in the streets, and carried them into their homes; and sounds of wailing and lamentation rose ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... prison even for a large reward. The question resolves itself, therefore, into how to get the client off when he is actually on trial. First, how can the sympathies of the jury be enlisted at the very start? Weeping wives and wailing infants are a drug on the market. It is a friendless man indeed, even if he be a bachelor, who cannot procure for the purposes of his trial the services of a temporary wife and miscellaneous collection of children. Not that he need swear that they are his! They are merely lined up along a bench ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... the spectral form of Famine, bestriding the dusty plains of the Carnatic. By the glint of her eyes the splendours of Delhi shone pale, and the viceregal eloquence was hushed in the distant hum of her multitudinous wailing. The contrast shocked all beholders, and unfitted them for a proper appreciation of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... done. Immediately after the burial, the crowd return to the house of the deceased, where a sumptuous table awaits them, and all the relatives, friends, and strangers eat their fill. After eight days, the wailing, assembling, crowding, and eating are repeated, for the consolation of the distracted relatives. And these crowds and turbulent proceedings occur, not simply at Syrian funerals, but also at marriages and births, in case the child ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... woman clad in black rushed down the center of the stage, weeping and wailing and clasping a small child to her breast. An older woman, covered with rags and similarly shaken with sobs, followed her, both of them waving olive branches as they passed around the bier on which lay the covered bodies of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... motionless bodies outstretched on the grass spring up, yelling defiance. Then he gripped himself firmly, realizing the truth—it was over with for the present; away off there in the haze obscuring the river bank those indistinct black smudges were fleeing savages, their voices wailing through the night. Just in front, formless, huddled where they had fallen, were the bodies of dead and dying, smitten ponies and half-naked men. He drew a deep breath through clinched teeth, endeavoring to distinguish ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... importunate cries hastened his father and mother. "Peter!" they shrieked in alarm, "Peter!" and evermore "Peter!"— Ran from the house to the barn, ran from the barn to the garden, Ran to the corn-crib anon, then to the smokehouse proceeded; Henhouse and woodpile they passed, calling and wailing and weeping, Through the front gate to the road, braving the hideous vapor— Sought him in lane and on pike, called him in orchard and meadow, Clamoring "Peter!" in vain, vainly outcrying for Peter. Joining the search ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... led forth without Carlisle, and she prepared herself for death. There was weeping and wailing and wringing of hands of many lords and ladies, and few in comparison there present would bear any ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,— But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild flowers who will stoop to number? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them;— Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... to-day is the condition of the country? From every corner of it comes the wailing cry of patriotism, pleading for the preservation of the great inheritance we derived from our fathers. Is there a Senator who does not daily receive letters appealing to him to use even the small power which one man ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... was spent in feasting and rejoicing among the relations of the successful warriors; but sounds of grief and wailing were heard from the hills adjacent to the village: the lamentations of women who had lost ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... miserably within the town, or have hindered him from saving it for his sovereign; but to them it was dreadful to be driven out of house and home, straight down upon the enemy, and they went along weeping and wailing, till the English soldiers met them and asked why they had come out. They answered that they had been put out because they had nothing to eat, and their sorrowful, famished looks gained pity for them. King Edward sent orders that not only should they ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the head; there are no tears, they are stunned; but, ah, sir, I tell you they will awake after awhile and then the tears will flow down the hills of this valley from thousands of bleeding hearts, and there will be weeping and wailing such as ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... escape in. When the South Fork basin gave way mountains of water twenty feet high came rushing down the Conemaugh River, carrying before them death and destruction. I shall never forget the harrowing scene. Just think of it! thousands of people, men, women and children, struggling and weeping and wailing as they were being carried suddenly away in the raging current. Houses were picked up as if they were but a feather, and their inmates were all carried away with them, while cries of 'God help me!' 'Save me!' 'I am drowning!' ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Ganges was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people. Every minaret was a clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as heat and terror overcame them. The whole land seemed a-wailing and suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out of the cooling air. Men looking up, near blinded, at the star, saw that a black disc was creeping across the light. It was the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... ever His presence on all lifeless things: the winds Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, A querulous mutter, or ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... are evil—for behold, they have no part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord; for behold, they chose evil works rather than good; therefore the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house—and these shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and this because of their own iniquity, being led captive by ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... into the creeping dusk, but a few minutes later a haze of snow whirled across it and cut the dreary scene in half. Then the light died out suddenly, and she and the little girls drew their chairs close up to the stove. The house was very quiet, but she could hear the mournful wailing of the wind about it, and now and then the soft swish of driven snow upon the walls and ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... No wailing ghost shall dare appear To vex with shrieks this quiet grove; But shepherd lads assemble here, And ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... fullness and the ripeness of the year; All the work of earth is finished, or the final tasks are near, But there is no doleful wailing; every living thing that grows, For the end that is approaching wears the finest garb it knows. And I pray that I may proudly hold my head up high and smile When I come to my September ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Then a wailing rose around the Peace Stead. It was from the Asyniur and the Vana. Baldur was dead, and they began to lament him. And while they were lamenting him, the beloved of Asgard, Odin came ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... wilds, whilst lying in your hammock you will hear this goat-sucker lamenting like one in deep distress. A stranger would never conceive it to be the cry of a bird. He would say it was the departing voice of a midnight murdered victim or the last wailing of Niobe for her poor children before she was turned into stone. Suppose yourself in hopeless sorrow, begin with a high loud note, and pronounce "ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," each note lower and lower, till the last is scarcely heard, pausing a moment or two ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... misery, rushing furiously toward the avenues of egress, falling back baffled and crushed, in the struggle where only the very strongest prevailed, laboring to escape from death, and fighting for life, fluctuating and rushing, and wailing in maddening excitement like a raging ocean. Oh! all this wrought a direful sublimity, with those cries of agony and that riot of desperation. And all this while the wolf pursued its furious career, amid the mortal violence of a people thrown into horrible ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... mountain scenery. He is carried away by an almost passionate rapture when he broods over the grandeur and loveliness of the earth and air; his verse lingers with fond reluctance to depart on the wild flowers, the misty lake, the sound of the wailing blast, or the gleam of sunshine breaking through the passes among the hills, and the thoughts and feelings these objects suggest flow forth with an enthusiasm of expression which in a man less pious and rational might be interpreted as a raising of the inanimate world to a level with human ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the burden prevailing Long since in the chant of a home-faring crew; And the heart in us echoes, with laughing or wailing, Farewell and adieu. ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Miss Norah play, and she rose to get her violin with the usual ready acquiescence. Norah had made immense strides during the three last years, and was now a performer of no mean attainments. It was always a treat to hear her play, and this afternoon the wailing notes seemed to have an added tenderness and longing. Lettice bit her lips to keep back the tears, while she watched Rex's face with fascinated attention. He had pushed his chair into the corner when Norah began to ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... round to Arthur with a wailing cry, and threw his arms round him—as if their weak protection could retain him in its shelter. Arthur gently unwound them, and bent down till his lips touched the yearning face held up to ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... souls. Once they sang madrigals, once they danced on the green, they revelled in their lusty humours, without having recourse to the pun for fun, an exhibition of hundreds of bare legs for jollity, a sentimental wailing all in the throat for music. Evidence is procurable that they have been an artificially-reared people, feeding on the genius of inventors, transposers, adulterators, instead of the products of nature, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Here and there a strangled sob was rent from overstrained lungs; here and there the wailing voice of a baby whined up ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... around a fireplace, flanked by shelves of books. His observations are of the outside, but they are informed by reflections made beside a fire. They are not bookish at all, but the spirits of great writers mingle with echoes of coyote wailing and ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices, laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around, beyond, the dark sky, and the dark mountains, and the dark sea, like some great dark flower to whose ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his joy at beholding them in various pleasing, expressive ways. But Edith pushed him away and told Sylva to put him to bed again. So the brisk little fellow was carried off, looking very sorry, and wailing piteously, as if he pleaded permission to remain by ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... girl recognised them at once, but they did not know who she was. She brought them water on their arrival, and afterwards set cooked rice before them. Then sitting down near them, she began in wailing tones to upbraid them on account of the treatment she had been subjected to by their wives. She related all that had befallen her, and wound up by saying, "You must have known it all, and yet you did not interfere to save me." And that was all the ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... of the great unknown, Blind and wailing and alone, Into the light of day. * * * * *. "From the unknown sea that reels and rolls, Specked with the barks of little souls, Barks that were launched on the other side, And slipped from Heaven on an ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... ran away, saying, "Williams, you are a thief!" and then a chorus of voices took up that awful cry, voices of expostulation, voices of contempt, voices of indignation, voices of menace; they took up the cry, and repeated and re-echoed it; but, most unendurable of all, there were voices of wailing and voices of gentleness among them, and his soul died within him as he caught, amid the confusion of condemning sounds, the voices of Russell and Vernon, and they, too, were saying to him, in tender pity and agonized astonishment, "Eric, Eric, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... gunwale of the boat. The sea, though still calm, was beginning to be moved by that queer restlessness which comes on it at sunset. The tide eddied in mysteriously oily swirls. The rocks to the eastward of us had grown dim. A gull flew by overhead uttering wailing cries. The graceful terns had disappeared. A cormorant, flying so low that its wing-tips broke the water, sped across our bows to some far resting-place. I fell into a mood of real sympathy with stories about mermaids. I think Peter felt the change ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... door-posts, though they were plated with bronze, making, as it were, a great window, through which a man might see the palace within, the hall of King Priam and of the kings who had reigned aforetime in Troy. But when they that were within perceived it, there arose a great cry of women wailing aloud and clinging to the doors and kissing them. But ever Pyrrhus pressed on, fierce and strong as ever was his father Achilles, nor could aught stand against him, either the doors or they that guarded them. Then, as a river bursts its banks and overflows ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... no doubt, you are good people, and you may be, as the world goes, but your righteousness is as filthy rags, you are all wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; the devil will have you if you don't turn to the Lord, and you will go down to the bottomless, brimstone pit, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth for ever and ever. Believe,' he roared, 'now is the accepted time, now is the ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... ecstatic joy of the wasted prisoner, when he rose from his hard couch in the dungeon, seeming to fuel, in his maniac brain, the presentiment of a bright being who would come to unbind his chains—and. the sobbing and wailing, almost-human, which came from the orchestra, when they dug his grave, by the dim lantern's light. When it was done, the murderer stole into the dungeon, to gloat on the agonies of his victim, ere he gave the death-blow. Then, while the prisoner ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... have to go to the township to get a feeding-bottle for the baby; he was inclined to dispute the necessity for it, but he set off at once, for the child, fed with sugar and water in a spoon, kept up a dissatisfied wailing. Marcella forgot to be anxious about him, so completely had she sponged fear from her mind. When, at breakfast-time next morning, Jerry came in with the bottle, she guessed that Louis was washing off the dust of his swift travel before he came to see her. In the absorption of feeding ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... writing. Told, indeed, as I have sometimes been called upon to tell it, to a circle of intelligent and eager faces, lighted up by a good after-dinner fire on a winter's evening, with a cold wind rising and wailing outside, and all snug and cosy within, it has gone off—though I say it, who should not—indifferent well. But it is a venture to do as you would have me. Pen, ink, and paper are cold vehicles for the marvellous, and a "reader" decidedly a more critical animal than a ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was a German custom. We read in the Germania that in battle 'they keep their dearest close at hand, where the women's cries and the wailing of their babies can ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... eye shall now behold Him, Robed in dreadful majesty; Those who set at nought and sold Him, Pierced and nailed Him to the tree, Deeply wailing, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... twice did I receive, as it were, a whiff of the highway. The first reached my ears alone. I might have been anywhere. I only knew I was walking in the dark night and among ruts, when I heard very far off, over the silent country that surrounded us, the guard's horn wailing its signal to the next post-house for a change of horses. It was like the voice of the day heard in darkness, a voice of the world heard in prison, the note of a cock crowing in the mid-seas—in short, I cannot tell you what it was like, you will have to fancy for yourself—but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flesh with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth, compared with one of these? Mere pastime! There were a hundred thousand shoutings, hoarse cries, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing and horrible outcry answering them, and the howling of a dog is sweet, delicious music when compared with these sounds. When we had proceeded a little way onward from the accursed beach, towards the wild place of Damnation, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... a few moments' silence, during which I could hear the wind beating against the window-panes, and rush, sighing and wailing, through the loopholes ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... chocolate; gaselier with opal-tinted globes; two cast-iron Cavaliers holding gas-lamps on the mantel-piece. Oil-portrait, enlarged from photograph, of Mrs. TIDMARSH, over side-board; on other walls, engravings—"Belshazzar's Feast," "The Wall of Wailing at Jerusalem," and DORE'S "Christian Martyrs." The guests have just sat down; Lord STRATHSPORRAN is placed between Miss SEATON and his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... great black mouth of the chimney, impending high over the hearth, received as into a mysterious gulf murky coils of smoke and brightness of aspiring sparks; and beyond, in the high darkness, were muttering and wailing and strange doings, so that sometimes the smoke rushed back in panic, and curled out and up to the roof, and condensed itself to invisibility among the rafters. And then the wind would rage after its lost prey, and rush round the house, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the youth started and looked to one side, expecting to see the animal steal forward from the gloom, but a moment's reflection told him the brute was a mile or more distant. Then, some time later, a mournful, wailing cry rose and fell from some remote point. He suspected that that, too, came from the throat of a wolf, but ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... then a wailing howl came from a distance, to be answered here and there by the prowling animals which scented the food of the camp, and hung about waiting till the caravans had passed on to make a rush in safety for the scraps that were left, with the result that the neighbourhood of the pools and wells was ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Thomas in the pantry, alternately wailing for Mr. Arnold, as he called him, and citing the tokens that had precursed the murder. The house seemed to choke me, and, slipping a shawl around me, I went out on the drive. At the corner by the east wing I met Liddy. Her skirts were draggled with dew to her knees, and her ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... how the boy remembers! Gretel, child, take that knitting needle from your father, quick; he'll get it in his eyes maybe; and put the shoe on him. His poor feet are like ice half the time, but I can't keep 'em covered, all I can do—" And then, half wailing, half humming, Dame Brinker would sit down and fill the low cottage with the whirr of ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... families—old families. They were always spoken of as the "old families," and, to be a member of one of them, even a second or third cousin of weak mind and feeble understanding, was to be enclosed within the magic circle outside of which was darkness, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. There were the Stornaways, who had owned the button factory for nearly a generation and a half—which was a long time; the Downings, who had kept the feed-store for quite thirty years, and the Burtons, who had been doctors for almost as long, not to mention ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mother had no power to speak; she could only lay herself down by her wailing baby, quite exhausted. Sophy took up the child, and cared for it and soothed it. She shut the door, to keep her brothers out of the room, and in a little while ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... the Scottish Lowland "coronach," characteristic and expressive as the wailing of the pipes to the Gael or the keening of women among the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... What the fastenings were Thurstane could guess from the fact that he saw blows given, and heard the long shrill scream of a woman in uttermost agony. Then there was more hammering around the sufferer's feet, and more shrill wailing. She was spiked through the palms and the ankles to the tree. It was ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... out into the park. She went down the avenue and turned into a coppice. There, among the wet bracken, she sank down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree and huddled herself in a small heap, her head on her arms, actually wailing. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... one the names were told, each greeted with cries of joy, till the last name was spoken; and then came a burst of wailing and lamentation from those who had listened in vain for the names of ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... the path. If she has made blunders in the past, if she has weighted herself with a burden which she must bear to the end, she must but bear the burden bravely, and labour on. There is no use in wailing and repentance here: the next world is the place for that; this life is too short. By our errors we see deeper into life. They help us." She waited for a while. "If she does all this—if she waits patiently, if she is never cast down, never despairs, never forgets her end, moves straight ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... transfer to these pages as a good specimen of the way in which Confucius turned occurring matters to account, in his intercourse with his disciples. As he was passing by the side of the Tai mountain, there was a woman weeping and wailing by a grave. Confucius bent forward in his carriage, and after listening to her for some time, sent Tsze-lu to ask the cause of her grief. 'You weep, as if you had experienced sorrow upon sorrow,' ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... seeing this, broke out into bitter wailing, swaying slowly forward and backward, while her husband sat with his head bowed on his knees. Their first thought was of utter bereavement, for to these two lonely ones, and especially to the woman, the grandparent had been not only the sole member of their tribe they had known for years, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... was the sound of wailing. Casey tried not to guess what that meant. He tied William and went to the door ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... upon his wife one look of silent despair. Wife and children threw themselves upon his neck, weeping and wailing. 'Thanase bore the sight a moment, maybe a full minute; then drew near, pressed the children with kind firmness aside, pushed between his father and mother, took her tenderly by the shoulders, and said in their antique dialect, with his ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... wailing of the violin her soul grew hungry and sad, and a strange, unchildish fear crept over her, a fear of the years to come—so long and endless they would be, always coming, coming, one after another; and here she was, never to stop living, and every day doing something that she ought ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... fetters round thee creeping; O'er the cheerless, withered plain, Woefully and hoarsely calling; Pelting hail and drenching rain On thy scanty vestments falling. Sad and mournful are thy ways, Grieving, wailing, Autumn days! ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... broke off, because a new sound was coming from the speaker. It was a voice that was unhuman and queerly horrible and somehow machine-like. Hoots and howls and whistles came from the speaker. Wailing sounds. Ghostly noises, devoid of consonants but broadcast on a wave-length close to the G.C. band and therefore produced by intelligence, though unintelligible. The unhuman hoots and wails and whistles came through for nearly a ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... book there is struck at times a note of the doom he feared was overhanging us. He heard "Islam crying from the turret and Israel wailing from the wall," and yet he seemed too to hear a voice from all the peoples of Jerusalem "bidding us weep not for them, who have faith and clarity and a purpose, but weep for ourselves and for our children." In his fighting articles he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... bidding of Love. I sinned against heaven in marrying a woman I did not love. I am willing to sin against the laws of man by living with the woman I do love; will you go with me, Joy?" There was silence save for the beating of the rain against the stained window, and the wailing of the wind. ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... footsteps had hardly died away when Tess dropped into a chair and began to cry, the baby wailing in sympathy. Deforrest put ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... in the forlorn streets of a Puritan city—when for one day the cheating tradesmen leave their barbarous shops—to the wailing of unlovely hymns, empty of everything except a degraded sentimentality that would make an Athenian or a Roman slave blush with shame, is enough to cause one to regard the most scandalous levity of Voltaire as something ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... still more helpless; the two little ones you see there," pointing to two young children, "have been born since we came hither. That yellow-haired lassie knitting beside you was a babe at the breast;—a helpless, wailing infant, so weak and sickly before we came here that she was scarcely ever out of her mother's arms; but she grew and throve rapidly under the rough ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... brilliantly illuminated and great crowds pouring in. In the lower hall wailing and cries of grief; the throng surged back and forth before the bulletin board, where was posted a list of yunkers killed in the day's fighting-or supposed to be killed, for most of the dead afterward turned up safe and sound.... Up in the Alexander Hall the Committee for Salvation held forth. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... they tore the youth from her arms, and stabbed him, but with a cry she snatched the dagger from his belt, and drove it into her snowy breast, home to the heart, and down she fell, and then, with cries and wailing, and every sound of lamentation, the pageant rolled away from the arena of my vision, and once more the past shut ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Brooks. She has seen the ravages of cholera before. There is nothing to do but to be careful about diet, keep cheerful, and surrender to no fears. I am not in the least alarmed. But the negroes are panic stricken. They are calling upon the Lamb to save them. They are singing and wailing. They are congregating at the hut of Aunt Leah, an aged negress, who is sanctified and gifted with supernatural power. Zoe is not in fear, and Sarah goes about the duties of the day ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... of Guise, were pursuing him to the death, and that, in his breathless doublings to escape, he had been forced to turn upon his natural protector. And now Joyeuse was defeated and slain. "Had it been my brother's son," exclaimed Cardinal de Bourbon, weeping and wailing, "how much better it would have been." It was not easy to slay the champion of French Protestantism; yet, to one less buoyant, the game, even after the brilliant but fruitless victory of Contras, might have seemed desperate. Beggared and outcast, with literally ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not for himself alone, but sometimes for a dozen helpless relations in addition to his own family; for those people are astonishingly unselfish, and admirably faithful to their ties of kinship. Among us I think there is nothing approaching it. Strange as some of these wailing and supplicating letters are, humble and even groveling as some of them are, and quaintly funny and confused as a goodly number of them are, there is still a pathos about them, as a rule, that checks the rising laugh and reproaches it. In the following ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on this subject of our philosopher Mr. Carlyle. If he be right, we are all going straight away to darkness and the dogs. But then we do not put very much faith in Mr. Carlyle,—nor in Mr. Ruskin and his other followers. The loudness and extravagance of their lamentations, the wailing and gnashing of teeth which comes from them, over a world which is supposed to have gone altogether shoddy-wards, are so contrary to the convictions of men who cannot but see how comfort has been increased, how ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... her women, for they thought that mourning was to be made for the Cid. But when they came within half a league of Osma, they saw the banner of the Cid coming on, and all his company full featly apparelled. And when they drew nigh they perceived that they were weeping, but they made no wailing; and when they saw him upon his horse Bavieca, according as ye have heard, they were greatly amazed. But so great was the sorrow of the Infante that he and all his company began to lament aloud. And Doa Sol, when she beheld her father, took off her tire, and threw it upon the ground ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... been class orator and a debater of power. Now he stood on a block of wood, and gazed upon a hundred bearded faces, on which the flickering firelight played eerily. In the hush he could hear the big winds wailing ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... is sending a storm. The wind is wailing, and the rain is pouring down, pouring down. All down the roof and into the windows like dried peas. Do you hear? The windows of heaven are opened... ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... forest, thicker the gloom that hung over the mountains. Still he sat, silent, listening. To him, softly and timidly at first, came the sounds of the night: the chuckling notes of birds that awakened when the earth masked itself in darkness, the hoot of an owl, the faint wailing echo of a far-away lynx cry, the plunge of a mink in the lake. And now the wind began whispering in the balsams, singing gently its age-old song of loneliness, of desolation, of mystery, and Mukoki straightened himself and looked to where the red glow of the moon was rising ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... high credit, to borrow trouble, and the future shall be well nigh drained of its myriad sorrows. She becomes fancy-bankrupt. An incident of recent occurrence, illustrates the transition from one to the opposite of these conditions. A young lady was seen wandering by the banks of the Hudson, wailing, and wringing her hands for grief. She related to a spectator the occasion of this grief. A sister-in-law, to whose dwelling the death of her mother had compelled her to resort, had treated her so cruelly, that she had fled from her face, and had now no home or friend on earth. Touched with her troubles, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... even by us who were on shore, much more to those who were on the sea, and exposed to its fury. During this dreadful storm, above 12 ships were dashed to pieces on the coasts and rocks of the island of Tercera all round about, so that nothing was to be heard but weeping, lamenting, and wailing, now a ship being broken in pieces in one place, then another at a different place, and all the men drowned. For 20 days after the storm, nothing else was done but fishing for dead men that were continually driving on shore. Among the rest, the Revenge was cast away ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr |
