United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then, because the child had no playmates, and her little life was almost as joyless and as solitary as his own, he would wait with her till the long line of canoes passed by, so that she could see the bronzed, half-naked figures of the paddlers, and the bright gleam and shimmer of the fish as they were swept up by the deadly net, and hear the warning cry from the torch-bearers, as in the depths beneath they saw the black shadow of a prowling shark rushing to seize the net, or perchance the outrigger of the canoe, in his cruel, murderous jaws.
The winds never reach it and its surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you fancy it in communication with the capricious and treacherous forces of nature. Its very colour is of a joyless beauty, a blue as cold and opaque as a solidified sheet of lava.
In Aalst the mutineers received him with eager joy, harsh and repellent as he appeared, they cheerfully obeyed him; for he could hold out to them a prospect, which lured a bright smile to the bearded lips of the grimmest warrior. If power was the word, he scarcely understood how to use it aright, for wholly absorbed in himself, he led a joyless life of dissatisfied longing and gloomy reverie.
The first part of Ned's speech was taken up with the examination of the economic causes, and proving that these were not the origin of the evil. The country was joyless; man's life is joyless in Ireland. In every other country there were merry-makings. "You have only to go into the National Gallery," he said, "to see how much time the Dutch spent in merry-makings."
He had learned, too, from Fraulein Eva that the Redeemer Himself promised the crown of eternal life to those who remain faithful unto death. In this confidence he awaited the jailers, who perhaps would come very soon to lead him into the most joyless of all apartments the Nuremberg torture chamber. Then he told the ladies what he knew of the love which united Heinz and Eva.
From the table he returned to the library, and shut himself up till the next bell summoned us to our now joyless and uncomfortable meals. I cannot describe the tortures I endured during this season of unnatural and horrible constraint. It sometimes seemed as if I should grow crazy; and poor Edith was scarcely less unhappy. It was now that Mrs.
Without a word Byrne handed him the second message and waited until he had read, then asked: "Can you start at dawn?" "I can start now," was the instant reply. "Our best team can make it in ten hours. Order out the Concord, Mr. Doty." And Doty vanished. "But Mrs. Plume " began the colonel tentatively. "Mrs. Plume simply needs quiet and to be let alone," was the joyless answer.
"My life has not been useful, it has been but joyless, and clouded with the shadow of death from my childhood." Her voice was broken, and tears trickled over her emaciated face. She put up her thin hand and brushed them away, as if ashamed of her emotion.
The chances are that at the end of his seven days he will not have entered seven faces in his note-book without being aware at the moment of some conscientious difficulty in permitting himself to call them positively and unmistakably cheerful. The truth is, this wretched and joyless expression on the American face is so common that we are hardened to seeing it, and look for nothing better.
"What," he asks, "are we to make of the gloomy, joyless, and mournful sacrifices, if it is wrong either to omit the established rites or to confuse and disturb our conceptions of the gods by absurd suspicions? For the Greeks also perform many rites which resemble those of the Egyptians and are observed about the same time.
Word Of The Day