In the Main Street and Market Place there is no striking outward sign of distress, and yet here, as in other Lancashire towns, any careful eye may see that there is a visible increase of mendicant stragglers, whose awkward plaintiveness, whose helpless restraint and hesitancy of manner, and whose general appearance, tell at once that they belong to the operative classes now suffering in Lancashire.

It is the kind of music which has been the practice and pleasure of their lives, and it is a fortuitous thing that now, in addition to its natural plaintiveness, the sad necessity of the times lends a tender accompaniment to their simplest melody.

But the notes of the Robin are all melodious, all delightful,loud without vociferation, mellow without monotony, fervent without ecstasy, and combining more of mellowness of tone, plaintiveness, cheerfulness, and propriety of execution, than those of any other bird.

plaintiveness &c adj.

Much of it is in minor keys, and a strain of plaintiveness mingles with all its majesty and power.

Jag Ear's bells had a faint plaintiveness at intervals and again their jingling was rapid and hysterical, as he tried to make up the distance lost through a lapse in effort.

Mlle Volnais did the part of Andromaque; but the monotonous plaintiveness of her voice, which never changes, wearies me.

He is more sensitive to rebuke and punishment than most dogs, and will nurse resentment to those who are unjust to him; not viciously, but with an almost human plaintiveness which demands an immediate reconciliation.

It had, I think, an elegiac plaintiveness in it, like a song of old liberty sung in captivity.

We do not, however, remember Leigh Hunt, although his pleasantries would relieve the plaintiveness of some of the poetical contributions.

The Tatler and the Spectator leave you with a sense of artifice; Hazlitt and Lamb leave you with a grip of a real personalityin the one case very vigorous and combative, in the other set about with a rare plaintiveness and gentleness, but in both absolutely sincere.

And when Marcia, having sent away the youth, explained: "His air, his voice, his looks, and honest soul Speak all so movingly in his behalf, I dare not trust myself to hear him talk," the apology came with such delicious grace and plaintiveness that the house forgot her coldness in sorrow for her woes.

Listen to him whileand don't, oh, I say, don't stare at me like that,' he continued hurriedly, plaintiveness suddenly taking the place of grandiloquence.

Her poems are sympathetic and charming, full of tender plaintiveness and full of impassioned warmth, which, however, in no instance oversteps the bounds of womanly gentleness.

He went on from this with many pauses and gropings after words and idiom, to tell, with a plaintiveness that seemed to Frowenfeld almost unmanly, the reasons why the people, a little of whose blood had been enough to blast his life, would never be free by the force of their own arm.

The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness.

Then he sang, in a shrill and piercing voice, so that the plaintiveness reacted upon the listener, "Knowest thou the land?"

Her voice matched the expression of her face; there was a natural tone of plaintiveness in it.

There is a limpid softness, an appealing plaintiveness in their expression which drags at your sympathies like the look in the eyes of a hunchback.

There is in it a certain wild plaintiveness and naïveté extremely interesting.