Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
Rhetoric is content to borrow force from simpler methods; a good orator will often bring his hammer down, at the end of successive periods, on the same phrase; and the mirthless refrain of a comic song, or the catchword of a buffoon, will raise laughter at last by its brazen importunity.
He laughed in his silent, mirthless way, as at something that amused him. "A good deal less," he thought. "And Dunn shall drive." He laughed again, and for a moment or two stood there in the darkness, laughing silently to himself, and then, speaking aloud, he called out: "You can come in, Dunn." Dunn, whom a creaking board had betrayed, came forward unconcernedly in his sleeping attire.
He watched it all until the ruffle of drums at the grave told that the body was being lowered four ruffles for an admiral. As the people began to disperse and the church bell ceased tolling, Dormy turned to another bell at his elbow, and set it ringing to call the Royal Court together. Sharp, mirthless, and acrid it rang: Chicane chicane! Chicane chicane! Chicane chicane!
He was watching Nayland Smith, and revealing his irregular yellow teeth the teeth of an opium smoker in the awful mirthless smile which I knew. "God!" whispered Smith "the Six Gates!" "The knowledge of my beautiful country serves you well," replied Fu-Manchu gently. Instantly I looked to my friend... and every drop of blood seemed to recede from my heart, leaving it cold in my breast.
"I have an extra pistol here, that the beggars didn't discover," and, removing the cover of a compartment, he drew forth an automatic. Bertha Kircher leaned back in her seat and laughed aloud, a mirthless, half-hysterical laugh. "That popgun!" she exclaimed. "What earthly good would it do other than to infuriate any beast of prey you might happen to hit with it?"
The confused lack of understanding was gone, too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting, mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For the moment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was very still. It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship.
He had shaved and prepared himself for his singular duties, and Said had brought him his breakfast as usual. The day had passed uneventfully, and once, meeting Ho-Pin, he had found himself greeted with the same mirthless smile but with no menace. Perhaps they had believed his story, or had disbelieved it but realized that he was too closely bound to them to be dangerous.
And in that black hour, primitive of its kind in his brief span, he became conscious of a sinister apparition taking shape at his elbow a shade of darkness which, clouting him on the back with a skeleton hand, croaked hollow salutations in his ear. "Come, Mr. Kirkwood, come!" its mirthless accents rallied him.
He went to the table, poured himself a drink, and gulped it down. His laugh was sinister and mirthless. "Please yorese'f, sweetheart," he jeered. "Only you won't be dead in yore grave. You'll be keepin' house for Dug Doble. I'm not insistin' on weddin' bells none. But women have their fancies an' I aim to be kind. Take 'em or leave 'em." She broke down and wept, her face in her hands.
It was of course a trifle, but it tipped the beam, as trifles often do, and the man who was tired of all it symbolized straightened himself with a little mirthless laugh. "On your word of honor there is nothing beyond the risk of a few days' detention which can affect me?" he said. "No," said Courthorne solemnly, knowing that he lied. "On my honor. The troopers could only question you.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking