"Nondescript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes which gleamed beneath his shaggy eyebrows showed all the fire of youth, and seemed to have no part in the seventy years which had bent the tall form, and rounded slightly the broad and massive shoulders. The Captain wore a rough pea-jacket and long boots, while his head was adorned with a nondescript covering which might have begun life either as a hat or a cap, but would now hardly be owned ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... none to any tincture of European blood. Her voice is truly wonderful, both in its compass and truth. A more correct intonation, so far as our ear can decide, there could not be. She strikes every note on the exact centre, with unhesitating decision.... She is a nondescript, an original. We cannot think any common ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... man, but was evidently very strong and active. His dress was of the most nondescript character, consisting mainly of a tattered fur cap, with a woolen muffler tied over his ears; a patched and parti-colored coat belted at the waist with a frayed rope. His legs disappeared into the wide tops of a pair ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... about of the occupant's love of the sweet science; for there were a tuning-fork, a pitch-pipe, and a metronome on the chimney-piece, a large musical-box on the front of the book-case, some nondescript pipes, reeds, and objects of percussion; and, to show that other tastes were cultivated to some extent, there were, besides, several golf-clubs, fishing-rods, a cricket-bat, and ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... This was a leggy, weedy chestnut, half-racehorse, half-nondescript, ridden by a terrified amateur, who went at the fence with a white, set face. The horse raced up to the fence, and stopped dead, amid the jeers of the crowd. The rider let daylight into him with his spurs, and rushed him at it again. This time he ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... lodgers got courage enough to come back. Then we went to the house of the Blazers, in 'Cow Bay,' and used to lodge there with Yellow Bill. They said Bill was a thief by profession; but I wasn't old enough to be a judge. Little Lizza Rock, the nondescript, as people called her, used to live at the Blazers. Poor Lizza had a hard time of it, and used to sigh and say she wished she was dead. Nobody thought of her, she said, and she was nothing because she was deformed, and a cripple. She was about four feet high, had ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... dog. A little dog, yellow, nondescript, pathetically delighted. With a sharp, eager bark, it leaped up at Thad, pawing at his armor and licking it, standing on its hind legs and reaching toward the visor of ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... excitement amongst the nondescript group gathered upon the pavement. Despite the efforts of a constable on duty, men, women and children persistently gathered before the gates of the drive peering up at the empty house as if they anticipated seeing the face of the murderer or an apparition of the victim appear ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... White homestead was a large, low room whose southward windows were shaded at this season with a cloud of gold-green young grape leaves. The paper was a nondescript pattern, a large satin scroll on white. The room was wainscoted in white, and the panel-work around the great chimney was beautiful. A Franklin stove with a pattern of grape-vines was built into the chimney under the high mantel. Sylvia ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that he walked slowly and always more slowly, and at last stood still. Then, however, when he opened his eyes, he saw something sitting by the wayside shaped like a man, and hardly like a man, something nondescript. And all at once there came over Zarathustra a great shame, because he had gazed on such a thing. Blushing up to the very roots of his white hair, he turned aside his glance, and raised his foot that he might leave this ill-starred ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... police, seeing that Parker was through with the dog, moved in and squatted to examine it. The one with the triple chevrons on his sleeves took it by both forefeet and flipped it over on its back. It had been a big brute, of nondescript breed, with a rough black-and-brown coat. Something had clawed it deeply about the head, its throat was slashed transversely several times, and it had been disemboweled by a single slash that had opened its belly from breastbone to tail. They looked ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... up to Hannibal and enlisted with a company of young fellows who were recruiting with the avowed purpose of "throwing off the yoke of the invader." They were ready for the field, presently, and set out in good order, a sort of nondescript cavalry detachment, mounted on animals more picturesque than beautiful. Still, it was a resolute band, and might have done very well, only it rained a good deal, which made soldiering disagreeable and hard. Lieutenant Clemens resigned at the end of two weeks, and decided to go to Nevada ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a nondescript lunacy than of heretical pravity. A child may explicitly know that 5 5 10, yet not see that therefore 10 - 5 5; but when he has seen it how he can refrain from believing the latter as much as the former, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long rapier-like instrument which he handled ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... closed. Sartor struggled into half life in parts of the Magazine to which the writer had already contributed several of his German essays, and it was even then published with reluctance, and on half pay. The reception of this work, a nondescript, yet among the finest prose poems in our language, seemed to justify bookseller, editor, and readers alike, for the British public in general were of their worst opinion. "It is a heap of clotted nonsense," pronounced the Sun. "Stop that stuff or stop ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... festivities, the moon, as though specially engaged to do duty on this honored occasion, stood right over farmer Charest's house, and with jovial countenance beamed into the faces of the arriving guests, and threw such a kindly light over the farmer's rough, nondescript garments as to make them look almost like good, soft broadcloth. It also paid flattering attention to Madame Charest, and so beautified her thin face and silvered her grey hair, as she stood in the ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... of a French cit, when that nondescript animal condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts—he talks about the opera—likes to know artists and authors—and, though living up five or six pairs of stairs in a narrow lane, gives ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... spine shivers at the sight of the endless, green snake which crawls along, insinuating its greedy length into the gardens of plenty. This morning four new officers came to the chateau; three of them were nondescript, but the fourth, to all appearances, was an Englishman, pure blood. He spoke English absolutely without accent and had a perfect English drawing-room air. It was as funny as an impersonation and as he had appeared on the scene alone, I believe his ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... scraps and fragments, which in any other house would have been flung away, but which were so artistically and scientifically handled by the young ladies, and so tossed up, and titivated, and eked out with gravies, and sauces, and strange devices of nondescript pasty, that Happy Jack, feasting upon these wonderful creations of ingenuity, used to vow that he never dined so well as when there was nothing in the house for dinner. To their wandering, predatory life the whole family were perfectly ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... depressed than usual. The last shreds of romance were gone from his adventure long ago, and yet his obstinacy held firm. But he found he could not talk much. He watched Gertie listlessly as she, listless too, began to spread out nondescript garments to make a bed in the corner. He hardly spoke to her, nor she ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... foot-boards and open lockers fore and aft. From these hiding-places they took a curious assortment of articles—a blanket and towel, armour in plenty, a knife, fork, plate, and mug; two candles, a box of matches, and a basket of nondescript victuals. Stowing these into two keschies brought for the purpose, they slung the baskets on to their backs, and marched confidently up the hill, assured that Yaspard would give the alarm if danger was ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... "Oh! that the letter had but arrived before the bird!" Then holding up some of the feathers, and letting them fall into the basket to display them to the company, he relieved their apprehensions, while he revealed the cause of his own grief, "we have eaten a nondescript." Though no blame could attach to him, there was something in all appearance so disreputable in the untoward accident by which, under his auspices, a scientific object had been treated in so vulgar a manner, that Hartley did not quickly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... unloading ramp and descended to the ground. He was the only passenger. He had barely reached a firm footing when objects followed him. His own ship bag—a gift from the ambassador—and then parcels, bales, boxes, and such nondescript items of freight as needed special designation. Rolls of wire. Long strings of plastic objects, strung like beads on shipping cords. Plexiskins of fluid which might be anything from wine to fuel oil in less than bulk-cargo quantities. For a mere five minutes the flow ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... when timely relief arrived in the shape of two policemen and a gentleman volunteer, who managed to rescue her and get them into a hansom cab, which started for Hanover-square, pursued by a shouting crowd of nondescript individuals. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... spider, unable to eat and digest more than about half a dozen to a dozen flies every month, was forced to spend his whole time cutting and dropping his useless captures from the web. As a rule Merton did not talk in this strain: the editors had cut away too many of his own nondescript dipterous contributions to their webs for him to love them; but for some mysterious reason it suited him just now to take the side of the enemy in the old quarrel of author ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... for swimming, diving, and flying, as well as a compass, a hygrometer, etc. etc. In a combination from the attributes of the toads, lizards, bats, etc. etc., with which his studies in natural history had made him familiar, he painted a nondescript monster, which he showed suddenly to his father, whom it filled with horror. But the horror did not prevent the old lawyer selling the wild phantasmagoria for a large sum of money. As something beyond ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... that entered Barry's breast now they were face to face. The trader had the frame of an athlete and a head and face that must in years gone by have caused many a flutter in feminine hearts: But now the eyes were bleary and sunken from alcohol, the high forehead was hidden under a mat of dirty, nondescript hair that was once undoubtedly a glorious tawny blond. The wide shoulders stooped, the back bent forward from the waist, and the hands, yet retaining hints of care, trembled at the ends of bony, jerky arms. And, in the half-light of the veranda, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... scymetar, with bows, quivers, and other warlike weapons; musical instruments of several different kinds; a silver crucifix, a sepulchral antique vase, and several of the little brazen Penates of the ancient heathens, with other curious nondescript articles, some of which, in the superstitious opinions of that period, seemed to be designed for magical purposes. The library of this singular character was of the same miscellaneous description ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... which to the stumbling reader reduce his books to collections of disconnected essays and instances, gave to German mediocrity a sanction to publish a mass of multifarious, unrelated, and nondescript thought and incident. It is to be noted that the spurious books such as the Koran, which Germany never clearly sundered from the original, were direct examples in England of such disjointed, patchwork books. Such a volume with ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... began life young. He was not a week over twenty-one when, between two voyages, he married Lily Harrison, simply because she was a poor, pretty, homeless little girl, who had to earn her living as a nondescript lady-help in hard situations, and never had a holiday. He saw her in a Sandridge boarding-house, slaving beyond her powers, and made up his mind that she should rest. With sailor zeal and promptitude, he got the consent of her father, who was glad to be rid of her out of the way of a new wife; ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... of looking immediately before my nose, and there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity were inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Catholics. He had, however, not so learnt his Catechism or his Prayer Book as to understand that the Reformation, if not a crime, was at least a blunder, and therefore, like other plain Englishmen, he was not prepared to admit the pretensions and assumptions of a new race of nondescript priests. Thirteen prelates took the unusual course of requesting the Prime Minister to reconsider his decision, but Lord John's reply was at once courteous and emphatic. 'I cannot sacrifice the reputation of Dr. Hampden, the rights of the Crown, and what I believe ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... possible old facts took on a new meaning. It was recalled that Cuvier had been obliged to establish a new order for some of the first fossil creatures he examined, and that Buckland had noted that the nondescript forms were intermediate in structure between allied existing orders. More recently such intermediate forms had been discovered over and over; so that, to name but one example, Owen had been able, with the aid of extinct ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... are the most insipid of all beings, real or imaginary, the heroes of Plutarch always excepted. Indeed, the manner of Plutarch in this respect reminds us of the cookery of those continental inns, the horror of English travellers, in which a certain nondescript broth is kept constantly boiling, and copiously poured, without distinction, over every dish as it comes up to table. Thucydides, though at a wide interval, comes next to Tacitus. His Pericles, his Nicias, his Cleon, his Brasidas, are happily ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has made love before, after a fashion. For he has shared his tent with more than one Indian squaw, drank and danced with those nondescript damsels who now and then find their way to the forts of the fur-traders scattered among the Rocky Mountains and along the border-land of the prairies. To all this ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... because it converts the preposition and participle into I know not what; and it may be observed, in passing, that the want of it, in such as "the going on," leaves us a loose and questionable word, which, by the conversion of the participle into a noun, becomes a nondescript in grammar. I dissent also from Dr. Murray, concerning the use of the preposition or prefix a, in examples like that which he has here chosen. After a neuter verb, this particle is unnecessary to the sense, and, I think, injurious to the construction. Except in poetry, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... arrived first, having chartered the station hack for the evening. As the minds of both were above such minor details as clothes, their attire was of the nondescript variety, but their exuberant youth and high spirits gallantly concealed all defects and the tact of their hosts quickly set them ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... An abject nondescript cringed at Mary 'Liza's feet, whimpering piteously. The devil's broth concocted by Uncle Ike, according to my receipt, was warm starch, made blue with indigo. A few red peppers were boiled in it to dissuade the cats from licking it off before it could dry. It adhered to every individual hair of ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... His costume consisted of a small piece of dirty rag round his loins; and whenever we were going through dense undergrowth, or wading a swamp, he wore that filament tucked up scandalously short. Whenever we were sitting down in the forest having one of our nondescript meals, he always sat next to me and appropriated the tin. Then he would fill his pipe, and turning to me with the easy grace of aristocracy, would say what may be translated as "My dear Princess, could you favour me with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... primitive development, there is considerable evidence to show that it was the first essay at a recorded language. The Egyptian hieroglyphics, those mysterious etchings upon the rock, representing animals, men, and nondescript characters, were unquestionably rude attempts to hand down to posterity some account of the great events of those forgotten ages. The next remove in the history of this art is its employment in the production of the images of idolatrous worship; and, when confined to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... apartments at any price: a very neat room, for instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters, with fat father and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was thick, bushy, unkempt; sun-bleached to a nondescript blend of pale colors. Hers—long, heavy, meticulously middle-parted and dressed—was a startling two-tone job. To the right of the part it was a searingly brilliant red; to the left, an ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the dress of the North Russian peasant is, after five years of wartime, rather a nondescript collection of garments, often pitiful. In the winter the clothing problem is somewhat simplified because the four items of apparel which are customary and common to all for out-of-doors wear are made ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... round-arched door, transom windows filled with stained glass, and carvings of shields, animal heads, colonnettes and other devices between and above these windows. The council-house or town-hall has a beautiful colonnade supporting arches, and a quaint nondescript creature whose abyss-like maw opens wide and gapes horribly at the beholder each time the clock strikes. A bas-relief in the hall represents a curious incident in the civic history of the town, the successful struggle of Burgomaster Gryn with a lion, the show and pet of some treacherous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... a little out of breath but he seemed, after the first uncomfortable minute, collected enough. He mounted the running-board and directed the chauffeur to drive on across the bridge and fork to the right with the main road up to a small nondescript building on ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... tunnels entered from underneath the old river bed, and again they had a startling experience. Something huge, elongated, and spotted, and provided with expanding claw-like limbs, slowly withdrew as their light streamed upon the reddish ooze covering the great floor. The nondescript retreated backward into the mouth of a tunnel. They endeavored, cautiously, to follow it, turning a magnifying window in its direction, and obtaining a startling view of glaring eyes, but the creature ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... Philosophical-Speculative: but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections are of a debatable rubric or even quite nondescript and unnameable; whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster-sauce, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the well-fed plutocrat. He scarcely seemed the same man who, nearly two years before, had absently bestowed upon MacRae a dollar for an act of simple courtesy. He wore nondescript trousers which betrayed a shrunken abdominal line, a blue flannel shirt that bared his short, thick neck. And in that particular moment, at least, the habitual sullenness of his heavy face was not in evidence. He looked placid in spite of the fiery redness which sun and wind ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Balonda men consists of the softened skins of small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle round the loins. The dress of the women is of a nondescript character; but they were not immodest. They stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on. But, while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity at the sight of the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road, filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul with disgust. But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It carried the mail ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... with a start, rubbing her eyes. Gaunt and grey in the first dim light of morning, Aunt Matilda stood over her, clad in a nondescript dressing-gown. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... reptile. I observed, too, in the slightly curved articulations of not a few of the vertebrae, the gentle convexity in the concave centre, which, if not peculiar to the Plesiosaurus, is at least held to distinguish it from most of its contemporaries. Among the various nondescript organisms of the shale, I laid open a smooth angular bone, hollowed something like a grocer's scoop; a three-pronged caltrop-looking bone, that seems to have formed part of a pelvic arch; another angular bone, much massier than the first, regarding the probable position of which ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and been unto him as a daughter. Mr. Russel had one, which he milked twice a day, and drove in a curricle to visit the Queen of Madagascar. Doctor Lyall is writing a quarto from Madagascar, to deny the statement in toto; admitting, however, that there is a rumour of the being of some nondescript of the kind in the mountains, somewhat between the size of the elephant and the Shetland pony; but that he and we think the subject-matter will turn out asinine. But now a Mr. Ruppell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... stood a large and rather nondescript gray structure built by Flood, the Comstock millionaire. It had served for varied purposes, but now it housed the Palais Royal, an immense saloon and gambling rendezvous. In the massive, barn-like room, tile-floored and picture-ornamented, were ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... masquerading in a French commis-voyageur's modest garb, was seated at ease in Etienne Garcin's death-trap at the Cor d'Abundance, in foggy Granville. His darkened locks and nondescript garb thoroughly effaced the "officer and gentleman." One of the old French villain's wickedest and prettiest woman decoys was coquettishly serving Hawke's breakfast as he read the burning words of Justine Delande's message from the heart. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... is hot work!" exclaimed Lawless, flinging himself down on a sofa so violently as to make an old lady, who occupied the farther end of it, jump to an extent which seriously disarranged an Anglo-Asiatic 123nondescript, believed in by her as a turban, wherewith she adorned her aged head. "If I have not been going the pace like a brick for the last two hours, it's a pity; what a girl that Di Clapperton is to step out!—splendid action she has, to be sure, and giving tongue all the time too. She's in first-rate ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... entrance of Madame Filomel was heard at the door, and Herr Hippe replied with a hoarse, guttural cry. The next moment two men entered. The first was a small man with very brilliant eyes. He was wrapt in a long shabby cloak, and wore a strange nondescript species of cap on his head, such a cap as one sees only in the low billiard-rooms in Paris. His companion was tall, long-limbed, and slender; and his dress, although of the ordinary cut, either from the disposition of colors, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the Stauntons' was a nondescript sort of meal. It consisted of meat and vegetables, and tea and cakes and puddings, all placed on the table together. It was the one hearty meal Dr. Staunton allowed himself in the twenty-four hours. At the children's ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... the opera she was sitting at her Sheraton desk in the small nondescript room which opened off the dining-room. In front of her lay a large tablet with innumerable names of things printed on it in three columns; opposite each name a little hole had been drilled, and in many of the holes little sticks ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... too, (observe please, this is a joke), the idea may have intruded itself upon his mind that there was a sort of vagabondism in having no fixed place of abode. At any rate, during the early spring of 1794 he erected a rustic, nondescript sort of log chateau on the steep acclivity overlooking the valley of the Don, rather more than a mile from the river's mouth. The situation is one of the most picturesque in the neighbourhood, even at the present day, and there must have been a wild semi-savagery about it in Governor Simcoe's ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... as to whether I had not better bag some of the birds that were fluttering over my head, and get out of the swamp as fast as I could, when I heard the distant report of a gun, and said to myself, "Well, I'll give the nondescript five minutes more, and if it doesn't turn up by then, I'll blaze away at the pigeons." Half the allotted time had barely elapsed, when another report broke the stillness of the morning, and immediately afterwards I heard a rustling among the mangrove-leaves, and a slight crackling, as though ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... sat at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded—every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the catalogues, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... operating for a syndicate of rich Indians taking a flier in lottery tickets. In a manner almost, lordly he announces that he will take four hundred thousand oysters. Then a sale of two thousand follows at an advanced price to a nondescript said to have come all the way from Mecca; a towering Sikh from the Punjab secures twenty thousand at a reduced rate, and so on. In ten or twelve minutes the day's product is disposed of to greedy buyers for the sum of 62,134 good ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... refused him, an involved tortuous epistle, which implied that the daughter was seriously attached to him, and hinted that if he were to come forward again he would not be refused a second time. There was also a short, wavering, nondescript note with nothing in particular in it from the girl herself. The mother ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... wagons, the carts, the nondescript vehicles of every description; but a moment before she had been there,—so near; he had caught beneath filmy white the glitter of gold,—her hair, the only bright thing in that murk and gloom. He recalled how he had once sat beside her at the opera. How different was this babel, this grinding ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... for he was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say, and not too much of either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through thirty years ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... climbing upon omnibuses which were bound for Notting Hill, Ealing and Acton, drifting towards the wide and gloomy spaces of the Park. He crossed the great roadway and went into the Park, too. Attracted by a small gathering of dark figures he joined them, and standing among nondescript loungers he listened for a few minutes to a narrow-chested man with a long, haggard face, a wispy beard and protruding, decayed teeth, who was addressing those about him on the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... was just a homely, nondescript, untidy, riotous type of schoolgirl, with a very strong capacity for affection, and an unmanageable predilection for scrapes and adventures, that made her more likely to fall under the sway of Lorraine, should it promise ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... and unutterably dirty hands of the custom-house officials I was accosted by a man dressed in the garb of a Tyrolese mountaineer—short leathern breeches reaching to the knee, gray stockings, heavy hobnailed shoes, a nondescript species of jacket of the roughest frieze, and a battered hat adorned with two or three feathers of the capercailzie and a plume of the royal eagle. Old Hansel was one of the gamekeepers on a large imperial preserve close by, with whom some years previously I had on more than one occasion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... their flank and rear. I believe that retreat was then the proper thing. The wild panic that ensued resulted naturally from the condition of the men and officers, and especially from the presence of a lot of nondescript people that came to see the thing as a spectacle, a sort of gladiatorial combat, upon which they could look at a safe distance. Two most excellent results have been attained: I don't believe we shall ever send out another mob of soldiers; and I am sure that a mob ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... their great double-ender boats that tell a tale of boisterous sea-beaches. These steal out and in again, unnoted by the world or even the newspaper press, save for the line in the clearing column, "Schooner So-and-so for Yap and South Sea Islands"—steal out with nondescript cargoes of tinned salmon, gin, bolts of gaudy cotton stuff, women's hats, and Waterbury watches, to return, after a year, piled as high as to the eaves of the house with copra, or wallowing deep with the shells of the tortoise or the pearl oyster. To me, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... found sitting up, in a nondescript invalid's attire of an old cloak and a summer waistcoat; and warm as the day was, with a little fire burning, which was not unnecessary to correct the damp of the unused sitting-room. He was, as he said, "fallen away considerable, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Grant, a political nondescript, not Wade, the uncompromising extremist, came after; and inevitably four years of Grant had again divided the triumphant Republicans. This was the situation during the winter of 1871-72, when the approaching Presidential election brought the country face to face ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... very different person he looked from the neat, well-groomed Peterby of a week ago, what with the rough, ill-fitting clothes he wore and the fur cap pulled low over his brows; the gentleman's gentleman had vanished quite, and in his stead was a nondescript character such as might have been met with anywhere along the River, or lounging in shadowy corners. He carried a bundle beneath one arm, and cast a swift look round the room before turning to ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... is, were immediately so derived, for remotely the Ziph language may ascend to Nineveh) from Winchester. Dr. Mapleton, a physician in Bath, who attended me in concert with Mr. Grant, an eminent surgeon, during the nondescript malady of the head, happened to have had three sons at Winchester; and his reason for removing them is worth mentioning, as it illustrates the well-known system of fagging. One or more of them showed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the road again, and went on with sharp eyes glancing emotionless. His daughter-in-law died soon after, and he assumed sole charge of the young Ellington whom we have seen making a forlorn pilgrimage under the trees. The young man had received a queer sort of nondescript education. All the Ellingtons for a generation or two back had gone in due course to Eton and Oxford, but no such conventional training was vouchsafed to the latest of the family. The hand of the private tutor ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... of these cases besides the ones labeled "Camp Outfit," "Medical," "Armory Chest," "Grub Chest," and several nondescript ones containing the odds and ends that an expedition of the kind they planned would find indispensable. In some smaller boxes also were packed yards and yards of bright-colored cloth and calico, spangles, cheap jewelry and brass ornaments for ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... accompanied by a band of music: fortunately, this remained in the regal barge. It consisted of a flute with four holes, a nondescript instrument, seemingly made of stones; a drum made out of the hollow trunk of a tree, covered at each end with skin, of what kind it is needless to inquire. The sounds emitted by this orchestra were of an ear-rending nature, and of a kind graphically termed ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Pinky's room had been done over in cream enamel and rose-flowered cretonne. She said the chromos in the hall spoiled the entire second floor. So the gold frames, glittering undimmed, the checks as rosily glowing as ever, found temporary resting-places in a nondescript back chamber known as the serving room. Then the new sleeping porch was built for Ted, and the portraits ended their journeying in ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the Earl of Dorminster, was one of those young women who had baffled description for some years before she had commenced to take life seriously. She was neither fair nor dark, petite nor tall. No one could ever have called her nondescript, or have extolled any particular grace of form or feature. Her complexion had defied the ravages of sun and wind and that moderate indulgence in cigarettes and cocktails which the youth of her day affected. Her nose was ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... guessing even what the outside world looked like, but from it she was quite aware that a beard was a most unusual thing for a young modern man of the world, and that John Derringham for that reason must always be distinguished from his fellows. Carpenters and hedgers and ditchers wore them, and nondescript young fellows she remembered seeing when she went into Upminster with her aunts; but these excursions had been discontinued now for the past five years, so the villagers of Sarthe-under-Crum and the denizens of the rather larger Applewood were the only ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... fanfare) towards the gates where the horses were to enter from their stalls in the basement was a hussar-like shape that filled my romantic soul with joy; and the other figures of the management I thought very fortunate compromises between grooms and ringmasters. At any rate, their nondescript costumes were gay, and a relief from the fashions in the boxes and the promenade; they were costumes, and costumes are always more sincere, if not more effective, than fashions. As I have hinted, I do not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... entirely innocent of shades or mantles. Wooden tables, their surfaces stained with the marks of countless wet glasses, were ranged about the place, cafe fashion; and many of these tables accommodated groups, of nondescript nationality for the most part. One or two there were in a distant corner who were unmistakably Chinamen; but my slight acquaintance with the races of the East did not enable me to classify the greater number of those whom I now saw about me. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the castle, which we reached by going across the causeway that bridges the valley, and has some edifices of Grecian architecture on it, contrasting strangely with the nondescript ugliness of the old town, into which we immediately pass. As this is my second visit to Edinburgh, I surely need not dwell upon describing it at such length as if I had never been here before. After climbing up through various wards ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... November, 1803: "You may remember a trailing plant with a small yellowish flower and a seed vessel of an oblong form, containing one seed; the whole plant resembling much the caout-chouc. To this, finding it wholly nondescript, I have taken the liberty to attach your name. It has no relationship to a genus yielding a similar substance, of which I sent a specimen to Dr. Roxburgh at Bengal, who published an account of it under the name of urceola. It is called jintan by the Malays, and of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... which forms an angle of the Place, blazed in front of me. A few hardy souls, a Zouave or two, an Arab, a bored Englishman and his wife, and some French inhabitants were sitting outside in the chilliness. I entered. The cafe was filled with a nondescript crowd, and the rattle of dominoes rose above the hum of talk. In a corner near the door I discovered the top of a silk hat projecting above a widely opened newspaper grasped by two pudgy hands, and I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... haven't seen them, but friends tell me that a great difference is felt between the two plays: that "The Medal" in comparison with "The Hare" seems something clean, artistic, and having form and semblance. There you have it! Literary men are swept out of the theatre, and plays are written by nondescript people, old and young, while the journals and newspapers are edited by tradesmen, government clerks, and young ladies. But there, the devil ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Good Hope is a far journey to the north, over and beyond the Circle, in a place where the feet of few men have trod; and when a nondescript ragamuffin comes in out of the night, from nowhere in particular, to sit by one's fire and discourse on such in terms of "trapsing" and "a little run," it is fair time to rouse up and shake off the dream. Wherefore I looked about me; saw the fly and, underneath, the pine boughs spread ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... hot sleeper. Bates accepted the suggestion without comment. We walked to the end of the platform, where the hackman was already tumbling my trunks about, and after we had seen them piled upon his nondescript wagon, I followed Bates down through the broad quiet street of the village. There was more of Annandale than I had imagined, and several tall smoke-stacks loomed here and there in the ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... was a fairly fine sight, Tamara thought, but driving through the streets took such a ridiculously long time, the crowd was so great. The palace itself was, and probably is still, like all other palaces that are decorated in that nondescript style of Third Empire France—not a thing of beauty. But the leve uniforms of the officers gave an air of brilliance contrasted with the civilians of the Government of Egypt. Tamara thought their dress very ugly, it reminded her of a clergyman's ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... volcanic overflowings. I am sitting on a block of lava making an outline sketch of Ararat, when a peasant happens along with a bullock-load of cucumbers which he is taking to the Koordish camps; he is pretty badly scared at finding himself all alone on the Aras Plain with such a nondescript and dangerous-looking object as a helmeted wheelman, and when I halt him with inquiries concerning the nature of his wares he turns pale and becomes almost speechless with fright. He would empty his sacks as a peace-offering at my feet without venturing upon a remonstrance, were he ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Winona. She wondered if Patricia's people shouldn't be warned. She was now persuaded that golf endangered the morals of the young. It had been bad enough when it seemed merely to encourage the wearing of nondescript clothes. But if ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... at right angles, formed one side of the inclosure. It had been built at a period when castles were no longer necessary, and when the Scottish architects had not yet acquired the art of designing a domestic residence. The windows were numberless, but very small; the roof had some nondescript kind of projections, called bartizans, and displayed at each frequent angle a small turret, rather resembling a pepper-box than a Gothic watchtower. Neither did the front indicate absolute security from danger. There were loop-holes for musketry, and iron stanchions on the lower windows, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... proportions. Two slender, smooth columns and corresponding pilasters on the wall of the house support a pediment rather too flat for good appearance. Except for the Ionic capitals, the detail is rather nondescript as to its order. The round-arched, deeply recessed doorway has the usual paneled jambs and soffit, but the reeded casings and square impost blocks are of the sort that came into vogue about the beginning ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... can be deemed uncouth, she was an uncouth little atom of humanity. Her blue checked homespun dress, graced with big horn buttons, descended almost to her feet. Her straight, awkwardly cropped hair was of a nondescript shade pleasantly called "tow." As she came into the light of the fire, she lifted wide black eyes deprecatingly to ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... to from time to time in this narrative, we shall give the reader a short sketch or outline of his physical appearance and moral character. In three words, then, he had all his father's vices multiplied tenfold, and not one of his good qualities, such as they were; his hair was of that nondescript color which partakes at once of the red, the fair, and the auburn; it was a bad dirty dun, but harmonized with his complexion to a miracle. That complexion, indeed, was no common one; as we said, it was one of those which, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... of trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and recruited the summer visitor. Never was so brilliant a lecture-room as his evening banqueting-hall; highly connected students from Rome mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable to his deserts. Herod was noted for his repartees; and we have instances on record of his setting down, according to the emergency, both the one ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... "a dozen Chinks on the job", and that they all slept in rooms directly above the restaurant. The persons who sat at the inlaid tables and leaned heavily on their elbows as they scanned the much-fingered menus were a nondescript lot—some the riff-raff of the town who found it cheaper to eat at Kai's than to eat elsewhere, others, more respectable in appearance, who doubtless had been drawn to the ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... Museum of Madrid. To imagine a sloth of the size of a large bear, somewhat baffles our imagination; especially if we ponder upon the size of trees on which such a huge animal must have lived. To have placed near him a nondescript branch (!!) of a palm, as has been done in the Museum here, is a terrible mistake. Palms there were none at that period of telluric formation; besides, no sloth ever could ascend an exogenous tree, as the simple form of the coma of leaves precludes every hope of motion, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... enchanting possession to me their humble disciple. Once you get into it you never want to get out, and, once out, you are miserable until you get back again. On one side stretches a row of rookeries—a maze of hanging clothes, fish-nets, balconies hooded by awnings and topped by nondescript chimneys of all sizes and patterns, with here and there a dab of vermilion and light red, the whole brilliant against a china-blue sky. On the other runs the long brick wall of the garden,—soggy, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the privet hedge behind him. It was thick and bushy, and in its full summer green, but it seemed to him that he saw a nondescript shape behind. "Who's there?" he demanded. ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... habitation. As we went along, indications of the new power, which had already effected the easy transit of the desert, were visible in small patches of coal, scattered upon the sand; presently we saw a dark nondescript object, that did not look at all like the abode of men, civilized or uncivilized; and yet, from the group hovering about an aperture, seemed to be tenanted by human beings. This proved to be an old boiler, formerly belonging to a steam-vessel, and appearing, indeed, as if some ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... the youngsters, to work our mongrel hounds; but eventually Joker's death from the bite of an adder put an end to their pastime, for the bobtail and the terrier were the only possible leaders of the nondescript pack. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... European sojourn the Gorgeous Girl went in for Hanover society and proved herself a valuable asset. She was nearly twenty-four, almost as slight of figure as a child, as dainty as Watteau's most delicate imaginings, with tiny, nondescript features, lovely sunshine hair, and big dove-coloured eyes with pale-gold lashes. Meantime, the question of a husband for this lovely young person was before the household. She had had a dozen offers of marriage but accepted none of them because she had plenty ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... be north of Clinton, so of course the horses took the road south. Then I decided on a white cottage to the left of the road, and about two miles out, found that it was to the right, not painted, and no cottage at all, but a nondescript building, besides. "'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour!" When did I ever fancy anything exactly as it was? But the appearance does not affect the house, which is really very comfortable, though apparently unfinished. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... shabby red sofa and looked about her. What a horrible room! Its darkness was tainted with a creeping coldness that seemed to steal in wavering gusts from wall to wall. The carpet was faded to a nondescript colour and was gashed into torn strips near the fireplace. No pictures were on the walls from which the wall-paper was peeling. He had done nothing whatever to make ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that a small crowd had collected round the aeroplane. Mr. Daventry and Mr. Van Kloof were there, with several other Englishmen, and a number of Chinese coolies and nondescript natives stood at a little distance, gazing in wondering silence. Rodier had his watch in his hand, and looked reproachfully at his employer. Smith pressed through the crowd, shaking hands with the ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... about two hours before they reached the fisherman's hut, a nondescript, low-ceilinged shelter of logs, driftwood and untarnished metal plates off some wreck. Several times they were hailed by other fishermen, who addressed the old man as "Deacon" and asked jocularly about what kind of a fish he ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... horse, is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... some two and twenty, A- by name, goes out in a nondescript capacity as part purser, part telegraph clerk, part generally useful person. A- was a great comfort during the miseries [of the gale]; for when with a dead head wind and a heavy sea, plates, books, papers, stomachs were being rolled ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... turned it distinctly: for the Dickensian novel is a species by itself—neither strictly novel nor strictly romance, but, as Polonius might say, a picaresque-burlesque-sentimental-farcical-realist-fantastic nondescript. Not till Vanity Fair did the novel of pure real life advance its standard once more: while the historical novel-romance of a new kind may date its revival with—though it should scarcely trace that revival to—Esmond, or Westward ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... sheets of paper scattered on the deck around him, checked the date, 27 September, 1982, and rolled them up to fit in the slim round mailing container. Ten minutes later he was shouldering his way through the crowd of khaki-clad men, scowling up at the sky, his nondescript fedora jammed down over his eyes to keep out the rain, slicker collar pulled up about his ears. At the gangway he stopped before a tired-looking lieutenant and flashed the small fluorescent card in his ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... the patient was put to bed Cutty changed. A nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... comment, but stood awhile by the window in a brown-study, twisting his lip, and frowning slightly. His nondescript features and boyish manner scarcely allowed him at any time to play the magnate with success. But his position as master of Coryston Place, the great family house with its pompous tradition, and the long influence of his mother, had by now asserted, ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will send it on the instant to the formidable man; but I will not repeat to him every month, that there are no news. Thank me for my resolution, and for keeping it through the long night.—One book, last summer, came out in New York, a nondescript monster which yet had terrible eyes and buffalo strength, and was indisputably American,—which I thought to send you; but the book throve so badly with the few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals so much, that I never did. Yet I believe now again, I shall. It is called Leaves ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... mystery to me. The Kaffir drivers always have it, too, though there are no visible trees. We always seem to sit up late, short though our nights are. A chilly little group gathers sleepily round the embers, watching mess-tins full of nondescript concoctions balanced cunningly in the hot corners, and gossiping of small camp affairs or large strategical movements of which we know nothing. The brigade camp-fires twinkle faintly through the gloom. A line ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... who should have welcomed him, and who was responsible for the Yukon stove and hot tea aforementioned, was busy with his guests. There were a dozen or so of them, as nondescript a crowd as ever served the Queen in the enforcement of her laws or the delivery of her mails. They were of many breeds, but their common life had formed of them a certain type—a lean and wiry type, with trail-hardened muscles, and sun-browned faces, ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... represents anything of the sort to the probably hypnotic or automatic consciousness of the cricket? What does it really represent, as seen from below? A twig, terminating in a bud, with two branching twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously is the next best thing to not moving at all. It ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... nerves was so great that I sank helplessly upon one of the benches, which ran, divan-like, the whole length (ten feet!) of the building, and laughed till I cried. There was, of course, no floor. A rude nondescript, in one corner, on which was ranged the medical library, consisting of half a dozen volumes, did duty as a table. The shelves, which looked like sticks snatched hastily from the woodpile, and nailed up without the least alteration, contained quite a respectable array ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... had kept the little border hamlet free of an establishment for distillation of the fiery cactus drink. A good many Americans drifted into Forlorn River—miners, cowboys, prospectors, outlaws, and others of nondescript character; and these men, of course, made the saloon, which was also an inn, their headquarters. Belding, with Carter and other old residents, saw the need of a sheriff ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... received a blow, a curse, and an insult, from the maccudam or foreman of the gang that worked in the boat which he steered. Neither blows nor curses were of any particular account to Moussa, but this man Sulemani, a nondescript creature of no particular race, and only a man in the sense that he was not a woman nor a quadruped, had called him "Hubshi" Woolly One. Had called Moussa Isa of the Somal a Hubshi, as though he had been a common black nigger. And, of course, it was intentional, for even this eater of dogs and ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... took a childish pleasure in ducking his head suddenly and seeing the little stream of water spouting from his hat-brim. How healthy they looked, these East-end workers, these Italian dock-hands, these Jewish tailors, these nondescript, greasy beings who sometimes saw the sun. Many of them, he knew well, labored in cellars; but he had learnt that there are cellars and cellars. Ah! it was glorious, this gray, ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... off all manner of calamities, make provision for protecting the boundary line against infractions of the customs regulations, and generally see that law and order should prevail all over the wide area that was soon teeming with a nondescript heterogeneous population of excited gold-hunters. Two of the big men of the Force, Superintendents A. B. Perry, a masterly organizer, and S. B. Steele, a determined enforcer of law, were called on to go up to the north and meet the unprecedented situation. That these ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... the bow of a tall, somewhat hard-featured matron who looked dignified even in the somewhat nondescript costume which most of the ladies were wearing. But her eyes were kindly, and ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... one of our great manufactories. But in the early days of the Western Railroad it was far otherwise, and the locomotive which should successfully and economically operate the hitherto unheard of grade of over 80 feet to the mile was yet to be seen. The Messrs. Winans, of Baltimore, had built some nondescript machines, which had received the name of "crabs," and had tried to make them work upon the Western road. But after many attempts they were given up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... to appropriate a front attic as the only chance of possessing that luxury dear to every girlish heart—"a bedroom to herself!" It was not a luxurious apartment, but it was pretty, as every girl's bedroom may easily be, if she has the will to make it so. The hemp carpet had long since faded to a nondescript grey, but the pink-washed walls were hung with pictures and photographs, and the owner's love of beauty and order showed itself in the arrangement of the furniture, and the careful setting out of a ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... slightly flurried. His attenuated back is rounded off with a stoop between the neck and shoulders. He can hardly keep his hands from shaking. His signature is a work of art. He can stick at his desk for six hours without stirring. While we lunch at a restaurant, he consumes at the office some nondescript provisions which he brings in the morning in a paper bag. On Sundays he fishes, for a change; his rod takes the place of his pen, and his can of ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... This nondescript personage was pitched upon by government as the very man to command a vessel fitted out to cruise against the pirates, since he knew all their haunts and lurking-places: acting upon the shrewd old maxim of "setting a rogue to catch a rogue." Kidd accordingly ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the wall; a receptacle for old newspapers and odds and ends. He drew something from his rather capacious coat pocket, and, satisfying himself that Hosmer slept, thrust it in the bottom of the basket, well covered by the nondescript ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... of indescribable prosperity that rose off Mr. Becker, in the nondescript but excellent quality of the gray suiting, the polished, square-toed, custom-made shoes, the little linen string of necktie, one for each day, the kind, despite family suasion, he had always worn. But it was difficult ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... flash his light over the floor, walls, and contents of the cellar. The latter consisted principally of barrels, boxes and a nondescript pile of scrap lumber. Most of this was heaped ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... two hundred worshipers—a few substantial citizens in gold-fringed tunics, artisans in tunics without gold fringe, soldiers in mail hauberks and plain steel caps, one officer in ornately gilded armor, a number of peasants in nondescript smocks, and women of all classes—were beginning to prostrate ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zooephyte and a caterpillar have brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang outang. Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses instincts like them: all we can with any show of reason deny them is moral sense, and in our arbitrary refusal of this, and our summary ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... refused on occasion to believe that she was the wife of Anson Merrill, even though she herself declared it—those old chestnuts of the social world which must have had their origin in Egypt and Chaldea. Mrs. Simms herself was of a nondescript type, not a real personage, clever, good-looking, tasteful, a social climber. The two Simms children (little girls) had been taught all the social graces of the day—to pose, smirk, genuflect, and the like, to the immense delight of their elders. The nurse in charge ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... malbonodora. Noisy (of children) petola. Nomad migranto. Nomadic migranta. Nom-de-plume pseuxdonomo. Nomenclature nomaro. Nominal nominala. Nominative nominativo. Nonchalance apatio. Nonconformist nekonformisto. Nondescript nepriskriba. None neniom. Nonentity neestajxo. Nonsense sensencajxo, malsagxeco. Non-success malprospero. Nook anguleto. Noon tagmezo. Noose ligotubero. Nor nek. Normal normala. North nordo. Northerly norda. Northern ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... table. "Now, gentlemen—I do not mean to bully—I am only, God help me, a weak civil arm of the service,"—and whining a little—"still very far from well. Now I'll state my case to you, for your satisfaction, and to prevent any little mistakes. I was lately afflicted with a sort of nondescript atrophy, a stagnation of the fluids, a congestion of the small blood-vessels, and a spasmodic contraction of the finitesimal nerves, that threatened very serious consequences. At the survey, two of the surgeons, ignorant quacks that they are, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess the ability to intelligently wage the battle in the interest of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... a refreshing air from the quarter where the thunder-cloud had exhausted itself last evening. This day the doctor found the tree mentioned as bearing a nondescript fruit in my former journal, Vol. I. page 82., but this tree bore neither flower nor fruit. Thermometer at sunrise, 80 deg.; at noon, 103 deg.; at 4 P.M., 108 deg.; at 9, 100 1/2 deg.; with wet bulb, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... indicating where we should sit by many motions of her fat, brown wrists and many shrugs of her still fatter shoulders. Unlike other Moro women, our hostess's hair was neatly arranged, her teeth were beautifully white, and her costume, which consisted of a nondescript skirt and loose dressing sacque, much affected by Spanish women throughout the islands, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... on which wise and profitable observations will be found in this book would be superfluous. The wine is good, and needs no bush. So much may be said that the book is one to interest that nondescript person, the general reader in Europe or America, as well as the Anglo-Indian official. Besides good advice and sound teaching on matters of policy and administration, it contains many charming, though ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... passed by, and in the open middle of the shed under which we slept. The question of arms was more obscure. We had a good many tools, indeed, which we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of the combatants. At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined twine—the twine coming I know not whence, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... journeying, during the years of painful probation. The property of my mother had been chiefly invested in good bonds and mortgages; her protector, patron, benefactor, and legalized father, having an unconquerable repugnance to confiding in that soulless, conventional, nondescript body corporate, the public. The first indication that was given by my ancestor of a change of purpose in the direction of his energies, was by calling in the whole of his outstanding debts, and adopting ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Williams makes his entrance. Yes, suh, it took that long to find just the right make-up. To get just the right kind of ill-fitting white gloves and floppy shoes and nondescript pants. But it's an important entrance. The lazy crooked grin is a bit nervous. The dolorous eyes peer sadly through the opening ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... paper, and as he read the letters danced before him. He blinked his eyes and started again, slowly. In plain black and white and nondescript-coloured finger-marks, Mr. Lister, after a general statement as to his bodily and mental health, left the whole of his estate to the cook. The will was properly dated and witnessed, and the cook's voice shook with excitement and emotion ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... "Wall, I should surmise that I want between fifty and sixty hands, ef yew kin lay me onto 'em; but, kem along, every dreep's a drop, an' yew seem likely enough." With that he turned and led the way until we reached a building around which were gathered one of the most nondescript crowds I had ever seen. There certainly did not appear to be a sailor among them. Not so much by their rig, though that is not a great deal to go by, but by their actions and speech. One thing they all had in common, tobacco chewing but ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... inhabited? From time immemorial, perhaps; ever since the days of those others. And, after all, how little have they changed in the intervening thousands of years! The wild-eyed young wench, with her dishevelled hair, ferocious bangle-ornaments, tattooings, and nondescript blue rags open at the side and revealing charms well fitted to disquiet some robust savage—what has such a creature in common with the rest of us? Not even certain raptures, misdeemed primeval; ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... three also have their eyes upon it, though with very different expressions. That upon the face of the Irishman is of sadness, as if for the loss of an old shipmate; the Malay looks on with the impassive tranquillity peculiar to his race; while in the sunken orbs of the nondescript can be detected a look that speaks of a horrible ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... slight sallow nondescript man of about fifty—the kind of man of whom one is sure to see a specimen in any crowd. "Just the type of the successful detective," Granice reflected as he shook ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... moment doubt. His extravagance knew no limit, and in six months he must have got through as many years' income. Wherever pleasure was to be had, no matter at what price, Oakley was to be seen.—Upon a revenue overrated at five hundred a-year, he kept half a dozen horses, a cab, and a strange nondescript vehicle, made after an eccentric design of his own, and which everybody turned to look at, as he drove down Piccadilly of an afternoon, on his way to the Park. He had his stall at the opera, of course, and an elegant set of apartments in the most expensive street in ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... the vast and empty avenue he had left seemed as narrow as a lane and absolutely riotous with life. The walls of the houses were blue; the shops of the Chinamen yawned like cavernous lairs; heaps of nondescript merchandise overflowed the gloom of the long range of arcades, and the fiery serenity of sunset took the middle of the street from end to end with a glow like the reflection of a fire. It fell on the bright colors and the dark faces of the bare-footed crowd, on the pallid yellow backs of the half-naked ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the parlor could be knocked through and a hanging of some pleasing character put in its place. A bay-window could be built to replace the two present oblong windows—a bay which would come down to the floor and open out on the lawn via swiveled, diamond-shaped, lead-paned frames. All this shabby, nondescript furniture, collected from heaven knows where—partly inherited from the Semples and the Wiggins and partly bought—could be thrown out or sold and something better and more harmonious introduced. He knew a young man by the name of Ellsworth, an architect ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... "prophesy, that at the same time that I marry and settle as you have described, Miss Emma Percival will yield up her charms to some long-legged black nondescript sort of a fellow, who will set up a whisky-shop and instal his wife as barmaid to attend upon ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... large bodies of men standing silent in their ranks, waiting the call of duty and the word of command. Here were the vigorous journeymen of the different trades, and the stalwart country-people; there the trusty miners, some with nondescript weapons, others armed with pick-axes, mattocks, and long guns, or provided with ladders and great buckets of water, in readiness for an alarm of fire. In the streets adjoining the Erbis and Kreuz Gates, bustling activity was the order of ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... title of the earliest edition of the famous book now familiarly known as "Holbein's Dance of Death." It is a small quarto, bearing on its title-page, below the French words above quoted, a nondescript emblem with the legend Vsus me Genuit, and on an open book, Gnothe seauton. Below this comes again, "A Lyon, Soubz l'escu de Coloigne: M. D. XXXVIII," while at the end of the volume is the imprint "Excvdebant Lvgdvni Melchoir et Gaspar Trechsel fratres: 1538,"—the Trechsels being ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-hill, stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea and shore had equally contributed. It was built partly of logs and partly of driftwood and tarred canvas. Joined to one end of the main building—the ordinary log-cabin of the settler—was the half-round ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Purt's wits. Here was a store where was sold rope and other ship-chandlery. He marched in and bought a fathom of strong manilla line, called the foolish dog to him, found that he wore a nondescript collar, and hastily fastened the line to the ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... see two modest-looking and obviously embarrassed men come out to seat themselves in the half-circle of chairs that lined the stage, and a moment later applause broke out for the Mayor and his wife, and the members of the Flower Parade Committee of Arrangements, and for the nondescript persons who invariably fill in such a group, and for the kindly, smiling Governor, and the ladies of his party, and for the Willard Whites, who, with the easiest manners in the world, were in actual conversation with the great people as ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... of his mouth when the cavalcade began to appear in front of the window, led, as Jantje had said, by Frank Muller on his black horse, accompanied by Hans Coetzee on the fat pony, and the villainous-looking Hendrik, mounted on a nondescript sort of animal, and carrying a gun and an assegai in his hand. Behind these were a body of about fifteen or sixteen armed men, among whom Silas Croft recognised most of his neighbours, by whose side he had lived for years in ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Crondall's letter recalled, but as yet there had been no sordidness in my own life. All that was far otherwise now, I felt. Cambridge and Dorset were a long way from the office of The Mass. I thought of the greasy Teuton nondescript for whom I had kept Miss Grey waiting, and I felt colour rise in my face as ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... firm were very intimate indeed; and having an only child, upon whom he doted, and who had early lost his mother, he placed him, at the age of fifteen, in T. O. Schroeter's house, in a nondescript capacity. The boy was a universal favorite, knew every hole and corner, collected all the nails and pieces of packthread, folded all the packing-paper, fed Pluto the watch-dog, and did sundry other odd jobs. Up to every ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... pairs of coyotes born in Sand Coulee Basin; the dog coyote with his timber-wolf mate and several of Breed's and Shady's conglomerate pups; all were there to feed. And when the bones were picked Breed led his nondescript band on into the unmapped wilds of the British ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... lavender in the store chest of the past, a score or more bands of freebooters were cruising along the Atlantic seaboard in armed vessels, each with a black flag with its skull and crossbones at the fore, and with a nondescript crew made up of the tags and remnants of civilized and semicivilized humanity (white, black, red, and yellow), known generally as marooners, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle |
