"Broken-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... major as he blew a ring of smoke between himself and the shrewd eyes, "what on earth have a lot of broken-down old Confederate soldiers got to do with the management of the affairs of the city? You young men are to attend to that—give us a seat in the sun and ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... occurs to the mind of the sensitive visitor, whose conscience has been made tender by much talk of brotherhood and equality, that she has no right to say these things; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to cope with actual conditions than those of her broken-down family. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... little sideboard and cupboard contained a slender stock of knives, forks, and glasses, and part of a broken-down dinner set, while the fireplace easily held ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... and, here and there, an attempt at representing an overhanging rock with a hole through it; but merely in order to divide the light behind some human figure. Lakes! No, nothing of the kind,—only blue bays of sea put in to fill up the background when the painter could not think of anything else. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part very complete and well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all, but to give place or explanation to some circumstance of human conduct." And then he would ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... was sufficiently odd picking up an American girl in the street with her luggage, to say nothing of the broken-down car; the circumstances were unusual enough to impress themselves on a man's memory for a couple of days at any rate. I have even looked up two chauffeurs who were home ill, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... be unearthed as Miss Melvyn, grand-daughter of Mrs Bossier of Caddagat, and great friend and intimate of the swell Beechams of Five-Bob Downs station. At Goulburn I was only the daughter of old Dick Melvyn, broken-down farmer-cockatoo, well known by reason of his sprees about ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Lowndes? No. Broken-down and out of the world. He couldn't advise to any purpose. I fancy Argenter has been ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... hated the hotels frequented by artistes, but she was very glad to be in one this time. She, poor little broken-down thing, was not left to the care of a common servant; she had nice, kind nurses.... And she had no lack of friends who took interest in her, very sincerely, for that matter, for she was a favorite with all of them, that pretty Miss Lily, who ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... back again, loading six carts on the way, and distributing all Sunday. Then in the evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying the people where he is might be 'advantageously employed on relief-work,' and suggesting that he put 'em to work on some broken-down old reservoir he's discovered, so as to have a good water-supply when the Rains break. 'Thinks he can cauk the dam in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches—aren't they clear and good? I knew he was pukka, but I didn't know he was as ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... sir," yelled the man in desperation—a fresh hand who had come on duty to relieve Atkins at six bells. "The steam steering gear has broken-down, sir, and I can't make ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... get themselves and few belongings conveyed to a fair hotel by means of a vehicle drawn by a broken-down horse; all of the best animals as well as such automobiles as were deemed worth taking having been commandeered by the Government for cavalry, ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... one-and-sixpence a day old Joe Mutters would have been, and how injudicious it was on the part of Mr Harding to allow a radical from the town to get into the concern. Probably Dr Grantly forgot, at the moment, that the charity was intended for broken-down journeymen ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... hawk, breaking its wing. That was the first in the collection. He was a lovely pet. When you gave him a piece of meat he said 'Cree,' and clawed chunks out of you, but most of the time he sat in the corner with his chin on his chest, like a broken-down lawyer. We didn't get the affection we needed out of him. Well, then Wind-River found a bull-snake asleep and lugged him home, hanging over his shoulder. We sewed a flannel collar on the snake and picketed him out until he got used to the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... coast to Barton, tip the servants heavily to keep them from murdering her, and twiddle your thumbs in your garage as you await her further pleasure. By the way, are those ancient freaks still on the place—those broken-down hotel employees who were your uncle's ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... Chambers, E.C. The firm did all sorts of work, provided only that it paid; the highest class under their style, and the other sorts—the money-lending and "speculative business"—through their own "jackals," that is to say seedy and broken-down solicitors who had made a failure of their own business, but had managed to keep on the Rolls and were not above doing "commission work" for ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... venerable, dominos, to which society continues to bow. But how she could have loved such a hollow, stony-hearted piece of crockery, Vedrine did not understand. Was it his title? But her family was as good as his. Was it the English cut of his clothes, the frock coat closely fitted to his broken-down shoulders, and the mud-coloured trousers that made so crude a bit of colour among the trees? One might almost think that the young villain, Paul, was right in his contemptuous remarks on woman's taste for what is low, for deformity ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... inside the mouth on the gum for two days in succession. There are two kinds of leeches known as Bhainsa-jonk, the large or buffalo-leech, and Rai-jonk, the small leech. They are found in the mud of stagnant tanks and in broken-down wells, and are kept in earthen vessels in a mixture of black soil and water; and in this condition they will go without food for months and also breed. Some patients object to having their blood taken out of the house, and in such cases powdered turmeric is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... and the hard lines of allegory; the moralist is more than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal lampoon, especially of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears unworthily to have used his influence at court against the broken-down old poet. And now disease claimed Jonson, and he was bedridden for months. He had succeeded Middleton in 1628 as Chronologer to the City of London, but lost the post for not fulfilling its duties. King Charles befriended him, and even ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... he will. His excellency has too great an esteem for these gentlemen to allow them to languish in prison when no stronger proof than the story which a broken-down gambler can invent is ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... had been far enough in the rear to escape this general stampede, but they, too, saw the dark object trying to skirt the newly broken-down embankment, and they slid quickly down the wet weedy bank to get away from this ghostlike creature that crept ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... man, with courier beside the driver and a vettura dog on top of the baggage, at the very sight of which, beggars spring from the ground as if by magic, and the customhouse officers assume airs of state. No, no, NO! What is meant by a vettura is a broken-down carriage, seats inside for four English or six Italians, a seat outside along with the driver for one American or three Italians, and places to hold on to, for two or three more, Italians. The harness of the horses consists ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 8 A.M., and got a miserable meal at Richmond at 12.30. At this little town I was introduced to a seedy-looking man, in rusty black clothes and a broken-down "stove-pipe" hat. This was Judge Stockdale, who will probably be the next governor of Texas. He is an agreeable man, and his conversation is far superior to his clothing. The rival candidate is General Chambers (I think), who has become very popular by the following sentence in his manifesto:—"I ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... dropped into sheet-iron in the ports; the burnt, deserted cities become the ruinous hiding-places of gangs of robbers. We might have been brigands in a shattered and attenuated world. Ah, you may smile, but that had happened before in human history. The world is still studded with the ruins of broken-down civilisations. Barbaric bands made their fastness upon the Acropolis, and the tomb of Hadrian became a fortress that warred across the ruins of Rome against the Colosseum.... Had all that possibility of reaction ended so certainly ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... quarter of New York, and its spaciousness and former elegance now served rather to increase the squalor as well as to accentuate the barrenness of its furnishings. The latter consisted of two wooden boxes, one of which I sat upon; an empty sugar-barrel, with a board laid across the top; a broken-down bed in an uncurtained alcove; a very large, substantial-looking trunk, iron-bound and brass-riveted; and last, but not least, a rusty stove, now red-hot, which might well have been the twin sister of my own "Little Lottie" at the ill-fated Fourteenth-street house. This stove, connected ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... vanward. He has no actual life save in power of imagination. He has to learn this fact, the great lesson of all men. Furthermore there may be a future closed to him if he has thrown too extreme a task of repairing on that bare machine of his. The sight of a broken-down plough is mournful, but the one thing to do with it is to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... service, and honour, the prisoner would get two years, to be served in India, and - there need be no demonstration in Court. The Government Advocate scowled and picked up his papers; the guard wheeled with a clash, and the prisoner was relaxed to the Secular Arm, and driven to the jail in a broken-down ticca-gharri. ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... he was winning his first laurels in the squared ring. He leaped lightly to the raised platform and ducked through the ropes to his corner, where he sat down on a folding stool. Jack Ball, the referee, came over and shook his hand. Ball was a broken-down pugilist who for over ten years had not entered the ring as a principal. King was glad that he had him for referee. They were both old uns. If he should rough it with Sandel a bit beyond the rules, he knew Ball could be depended upon to pass ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... deafened by rival butchers, shouting, "Buy, buy, buy!" to audiences of ragged women, who fingered the meat doubtfully, with longing eyes. A little farther—and there was a blind man selling staylaces, and singing a Psalm; and, beyond him again, a broken-down soldier playing "God save the Queen" on a tin flageolet. The one silent person in this sordid carnival was a Lascar beggar, with a printed placard round his neck, addressed to "The Charitable Public." He held a tallow candle to illuminate ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... positively black in their intensity and depth. Intermingled with them were firs, whose great, straight stems were covered with lichen and mosses of beautiful variety, and some looking strangely like green ice-crystals. Presently we came to a little broken-down rude kind of chapel in the midst of the wood. It was built of stone; and masses of stone, shapeless and moss-grown, were lying scattered about on the ground around it. At a little rough-hewn altar within it stood a Christian priest, blessing the elements. ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... even though the process is most painful, because they know that to heal really they must heal from the inside. Healing over on the outside only means decay underneath, and eventual death. This is in most cases exactly synonymous with the healing of broken-down nerves. They must be healed in causes to be permanently cured. Sometimes the change that comes in the process is so great that it is like ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... with a little gentle road-work; and it was while jogging along the highway a couple of miles from his training-camp, in company with the two thick-necked gentlemen who acted as his sparring-partners, that he had come upon the broken-down taxi-cab. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... accept everything from us and return nothing, is being resented, not by the lower classes for they read in our papers how the King shook hands with Jack Johnson; not by the nouveaux riches, for they are perfectly satisfied with the notoriety they get at the hands of your broken-down aristocracy who spend their money,—no not by these classes, but by our ladies ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... by report, ere long, the accident which has happened to M. de Monsoreau; we had together, by the old copse, a discussion on broken-down walls and horses that go home alone. In the heat of the argument, he fell on a bed of poppies and dandelions so hard that he ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... Glover, in Marengo Co., Alabama. Most of his memories are of his later boyhood in Sunnyside, Texas. He lives in an unkempt, little lean-to house, in the north end of Beaumont, Texas. There is no furniture but a broken-down bed and an equally dilapidated trunk and stove. Gus spends most of his time in the yard, working in his ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... at Dresden, and hurrying on the arrangements for the transport of stores, Napoleon journeyed to the banks of the Niemen. On all sides were to be seen signs of the passage of a mighty host, broken-down carts, dead horses, wrecked villages, and dense columns of troops that stripped Prussia wellnigh bare. Yet, despite these immense preparations, no hint of discouragement came from the Czar's headquarters. On arriving at the Niemen, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... whatever Nofre might think. Another idea, which she refrained from expressing, for she did not believe Nofre capable of understanding her, helped the young girl to make up her mind. She threw off her languor, and rose from her armchair with a vivacity quite unexpected after the broken-down attitude she had preserved during the singing and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... at arms' length over his head. So he thrilled to a moment he had sought for two years. The last herd of American bison was near at hand. The cow would not venture far from the main herd; the eight stragglers were the old broken-down bulls that had been expelled, at this season, from the herd by younger and more vigorous bulls. The old monarchs saw the hunter at the same time his eyes were gladdened by sight of them, and lumbered away after the cow, to disappear in the gathering ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... pupils of sculptors. When we see these vigorous lovers of nature, these heroic searchers after truth, suddenly pushing aside the decrepit Giottesque allegory-mongers, we ask ourselves in astonishment whence they have arisen, and how those broken-down artists of effete art could have begotten such a generation of giants. Whence do they come? Certainly not from the studios of the Giottesques. No, they issue out of the workshops of the stone-mason, of the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... would be made. And so on through the entire day. At night my men had no rest. We marched through the night in order to get a little respite from fighting. All night long I would see my poor fellows hobbling along, prying wagons or artillery out of the mud, and supplementing the work of our broken-down horses. At dawn, though, they would be in line ready for battle, and they would fight with the steadiness and ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... which must have come to her from some Russian ancestor. Her last words lingered in his mind. He was to talk to her about art! A fleeting vision of the youth in the yellow oilskins mocked him. He remembered his morning's tramp and the broken-down motor-car under the trees. The significance of these things was beginning to take shape in his mind. He resumed his ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for going to Southampton, where she and her daughter had both caught the plague, imported in some Eastern merchandise, and had died. The only son had turned out wild and wicked, and had been killed in a broil which he had provoked: and John, a broken-down man, with no one to enjoy the wealth he had accumulated, had given up his office as verdurer, and retired to an estate which he had purchased on the skirts of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... detestable, execrable story. At first all went merrily. Then she fell ill in Paris. It was her first acquaintance with the northern winter. Her throat proved to be delicate and she was laid up with bronchitis. To men of Pasquale's type, a woman ill is of no more use than a spavined horse or a broken-down motor-car. More than that, she becomes an infernal nuisance. It was in his temperament to perform sporadic acts of fantastic chivalry. It appealed to something romantic, theatrical, in his facile nature. But to devote himself to a woman in sickness—that was different. The ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... so completely disguised his appearance that they need have no fear of his being recognized; and it was therefore decided he should do the talking. As Donna Inez came up he commenced calling out: "Have pity, gracious ladies, upon two broken-down soldiers. We have gone through all the dangers and hardships of the terrible voyage of the great Armada. We served in the ship San Josef and are now broken-down, and have no means of ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... taste. It consists, on the average, of about 97 per cent of water and 3 per cent of solids.(60) The solids include bile pigments, bile salts, a substance called cholesterine, and mineral salts. The pigments (coloring matter) of the bile are derived from the hemoglobin of broken-down red corpuscles (page 27). ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... Maggie was an ancient, broken-down draft horse. Strange vicissitudes had brought her up into the mountains via the logging camp. She was kept, not because there was any real hauling to be done for Bill Campbell, but because, having got ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... queer lot out on that desolate southwest African coast, in charge of the various trading stations that were scattered along the coast, from the Gaboon River, past the mouth of the mighty Congo, to the Portuguese city of St. Paul de Loanda. A mixture of all sorts, especially bad sorts: broken-down clerks, men who could not succeed anywhere else, sailors, youths, and some whose characters would not have borne any investigation; and we very nearly all drank hard, and those who didn't drink hard took more than ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... prepare one for the desolation of the place itself. Imagine a gigantic ash heap, a place where dust and rubbish have been cast for years outside some dry, derelict, God-forsaken up-country township. Imagine some broken-down creek bed in the driest of our dry central Australian districts, abandoned for a generation to the goats, in which the hens have been scratching as long as men can remember. Then take away the hens ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... it. She brightened for a few moments, and looked almost handsome, when she spoke of his bravery and goodness. Her father and lover have both died in this war. Her only brother has returned from it a broken-down cripple, and she has him and her poor old mother to care for, and so she seeks work. I told her to come again to-morrow, and I would look about for ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... they ascended and presently came to the top of the stairs. Bob was in the lead, his pistol gripped tightly in one hand. With his free hand he pushed the door open gently and looked within. The kitchen was deserted, a broken-down stove in one corner, a water heater covered with dirt and rust, a sagging sink, and two battered chairs and a table completing the furnishings. A soft breeze entered through a broken window ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... Cetywayo, and so on ad infinitum. Such is the state of affairs with which our unfortunate Resident has to contend. Invested with large imaginary powers, he has in reality nothing but his personal influence and his own wits to help him. He has no white man to assist him, but living alone in a broken-down tent and some mud huts built by his son's hands (for the Government have never kept their promise to put him up a house), in the midst of thousands of restless and scheming savages, amidst plots against the peace and against ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... not as beautiful as Italy or Ireland, and it isn't as tidy as England. If you keep away from the big manufacturing towns and their outskirts you may go by motor or railway through shire after shire in England and never see anything unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at-elbows, or ill-cared-for; no broken-down fences or stone walls; no heaps of rubbish or felled trees by the wayside; no unpainted ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... conclusion, 'don't you see the confounded absurdity of ever wasting a thought on a broken-down, bandy-legged, beggarly dragoon? Just look at him, with an old taffeta whigmaleerie tied to his back, like Paddy from Cork, with his coat buttoned behind! Isn't he a pretty figure, now, to go a-courting? You would never forsake the like ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... life, he did not wire from the station of his arrival, but hired a two-horse country coach. The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen regulation coat, belted below the waist, sitting sidewise on the box. He was the more willing to carry on a conversation because the broken-down, lame, emaciated, foaming shaft-horse could then walk, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... lot of laughs, anyway, you big ape!" Sophia was saying to Charlie, when Roy Harder, the mailman with broken-down feet, shuffled up, puffing. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... better classes in their own. Broken-down gentlemen are not likely to succeed at work that needs the strength and endurance of a bull and the ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... are chaste, while, as rakish young Swedes have coolly informed me, many girls of respectable parentage, belonging to the middle class, are not much better. The men, of course, are much worse than the women, and even in Paris one sees fewer physical signs of excessive debauchery. Here, the number of broken-down young men, and blear-eyed, hoary sinners, is astonishing. I have never been in any place where licentiousness was so open and avowed—and yet, where the slang of a sham morality was so prevalent. There are no houses ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... nothing," in them; a carrier's cart, pedestrians innumerable, and then—then, at last, a solitary big brown horse, ridden at a steady canter by a slender girl in a brown habit (worn by her mother in her youth, and borrowed from her wardrobe without permission for the occasion). The horse was a broken-down racer with some spirit left, which Beth had hired, as she had procured the provisions, on a promise to pay. In passing, she waved a white handkerchief carelessly, as if she were flicking flies from ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... had long been waiting for something of this kind to turn up; broken-down miners, who hoped to retrieve their fortunes in new gold-fields yet to be discovered in the north; and returned soldiers thirsting for fresh excitement,—all hastened to offer their services as pioneers in the great work. Trained and skilled engineers were in active demand; but the supply of only ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... it would be black night in there directly the sun went down; but it was a long way, and Rob was growing weary of seeing his companion keep on halting in doubt, before, with a look of triumph, he stopped short and pointed to a broken-down creeper, a kind of passion-flower, which had been dragged at till a mass of leafage and flower had been drawn down from high up in the tree it climbed, to lie in ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... however, the face of the country changed. The timber gradually diminished, until they could scarcely find fuel sufficient for culinary purposes. The game grew more and more scanty, and finally none was to be seen but a few miserable broken-down buffalo bulls, not worth killing. The snow lay fifteen inches deep, and made the travelling grievously painful and toilsome. At length they came to an immense plain, where no vestige of timber was to be seen, not a single quadruped to enliven the desolate ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... House, and she in those white kid slippers! How in the name of Heaven was she to get back? Jay Gardiner would return on the midnight train, and when he found she was not there, he would institute a search for her, and some one of the scouting party would find her in that broken-down coach by the road-side, with ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... opportunities were afforded him for being as democratic in spirit as he liked, but he left such opportunities alone. His cab-runners run about in rain-shrunken suits that were obviously made in Savile Row; everyone of them, they are broken-down gentlemen. Coachmen, gardeners, footmen, pages, housekeepers, cooks, ladies' maids, and all those who move in the domestic circle of the upper classes he could draw, but his taste in life is a marked one, and that means it is a limited one. It ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... hear of a wife, for I thought he was a hatter—I had always heard so; but perhaps I had been mistaken, and he had married lately; or had got a housekeeper. The farm was an irregularly-shaped clearing in the scrub, with a good many stumps in it, with a broken-down two-rail fence along the frontage, and logs and "dog-leg" the rest. It was about as lonely-looking a place as I had seen, and I had seen some out-of-the-way, God-forgotten holes where men lived alone. The hut ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... much too big for it; a huge chest of drawers, of oak with brass fittings; a broken-down couch as big as a bed, covered with a dingy shawl, a man's greatcoat, a red flannel petticoat; a table cumbered with the remains of wretched meals never cleared away, and the poor cooking utensils of impoverished, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... diamonds." The transaction here referred to—though, strangely enough, it is looked on as one that had a political interest—was, in fact, a scheme of a broken-down gambler to swindle a jeweller out of a diamond necklace of great value. The Court jeweller had collected a large number of unusually fine diamonds, which he had made into a necklace, in the hope that the Queen would buy it, and the Cardinal ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... or shelters, and in the freshness of straw, grain, dung or the entrails of slaughtered animals. Abandoned clothing, equipments or harness will give a clue to the arms and regiments composing a retreating force. Dead horses lying about, broken weapons, discarded knapsacks, abandoned and broken-down wagons, etc., are indications of the fatigue and demoralization of the command. Bloody bandages lying about, and many fresh graves, are evidences that the enemy is heavily burdened with wounded ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... ghostly enough, that broken-down steamer, rolling in that snowstorm—a dark apparition in a world of white snowflakes to the staring eyes of that whaler's crew. Evidently they didn't believe in ghosts, for on arrival into port her captain unromantically reported having sighted a disabled steamer in latitude ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... plunges in, furious, trembling, blinking in the blinding light, and stands there, a magnificent creature, centre of those multitudinous and admiring eyes, brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge. He sees his enemy: horsemen sitting motionless, with long spears in rest, upon blindfolded broken-down nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and sacrifice, then ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... labor his hands must turn to, now that he had proved himself a fool in the profession he loved. His education might, possibly, be found of some account. There were such things as army coaches, he believed:—poor, broken-down creatures, living upon broken possibilities and the sale of their commissions. Then there recurred the memory of his old tutor, Ludmillo. He had not always been unhappy. His life had been dull enough, certainly; but ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... departure (presumably en route to the Bermudas), she requires the vigorous assistance' of a large detachment of Her Majesty's Guards to support her in her bereavement. Of the actors, Mr. CHARLES GLENNEY, as a broken-down gentleman, is certainly the hero of the three hours and a half. In Act III., on the night of the first performance, he brought down the house, and received two calls before the footlights after the Curtain had descended. He ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... been nursing his wrath all night long while being bumped over a rough road in an old broken-down stagecoach, required but the sight of his nephew to cause an explosion. He had not closed his eyes during the entire night, and like his sister, Mrs. Forest, was in a state of collapse. His usually florid complexion had turned to a brilliant crimson, giving ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... clock was pointing to eleven, and a broken-down fly was waiting to convey the travellers to their destination. In the dim light the surroundings looked both poor and squalid, but porter and flyman vied with one another in a welcome so warm that it went far to dissipate ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... M. d'Orleans was less public and less dangerous, but was not less good. He secretly gave away many alms to the poor, in addition to those he gave publicly. Among those whom he succoured was a poor, broken-down gentleman, without wife or child, to whom he gave four hundred livres of pension, and a place at his table whenever he was at Orleans. One morning the servants of M. d'Orleans told their master that ten pieces of plate were missing, and that suspicion fell upon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and a few more—but the general run of guests is by no means remarkable for birth, wealth, or respectability; and we are shockingly off for ladies. As a set-off against this deficiency, it would seem that all the aged, broken-down courtesans of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin have agreed to make Wiesbaden their autumn rendezvous. Arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow, painted up to the roots of their dyed hair, shamelessly decolletees, prodigal of "free" talk and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... sounded as they passed through the village, and all eyes sought Jean—"little Jean"-for to the old people of Longueval he was still little Jean. Certain wrinkled, broken-down, old peasants had never been able to break themselves of the habit of saluting him when he passed with, "Bonjour, gamin, ca ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... there loomed the Ritz—the name of the broken-down, shell-battered house which served his late companion as an O.P. The Sapper gave the message as requested, and stepped down three stairs into the communication trench, which passed close under one of the crumbling walls. There was no necessity, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... they were astounded to see the threatening aspect of the capital. Around a broken-down carriage the people were uttering imprecations, whilst the persons who had attempted to escape were made prisoners—that is to say, an old man and two women. On the other hand, as the two friends approached to enter, they showed them every kind of civility, thinking them deserters ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... through them into the foreign and the potential, and back again into the future actual, accounting for innumerable particulars by a single cause. As in those circular panoramas, where a real foreground of dirt, grass, bushes, rocks and a broken-down cannon is enveloped by a canvas picture of sky and earth and of a raging battle, continuing the foreground so cunningly that the spectator can detect no joint; so these conceptual objects, added ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... under the sun—stuff that would send the sugar-cane shooting sky-high. The making of Queensland! The making of Queensland! And in Brisbane, where I went to have a last try, they gave me the name of a lunatic. Idiots! The only sensible man I came across was the cabman who drove me about. A broken-down swell he was, I fancy. Hey! Captain Robinson? You remember I told you about my cabby in Brisbane—don't you? The chap had a wonderful eye for things. He saw it all in a jiffy. It was a real pleasure ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with them as a cat does with a mouse. They try to reform, just as your robin tried to get away from the cat; but their bad habits pounce on them and drag them back. And so, when the time comes that they want to begin life, they are miserable, broken-down creatures, like ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... from them as we passed near. Others lay in the middle of the harbour ready for sea, but waiting for their crews to be collected by the press-gangs on shore, and to be made up with captured smugglers, liberated gaol-birds, and broken-down persons from every grade of society. Altogether, what with transports, merchantmen, lighters, and other craft, it was no easy matter to beat out without getting athwart hawse of those at anchor, or being run down by the still greater number of small craft under ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... group of willow trees by the bank of the turbulent Maros—nothing except the stubble—stumps of maize and pumpkin and hemp, and rigid lines of broken-down stems of sunflowers, with drooping, dead leaves, and brown life still oozing out of ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... word John Ward turned into the curb. Tenderly he helped her to the ground. Reverently he lifted aside the broken-down gate and led her through the tangle of tall grass and weeds that had almost obliterated the walk to the front porch. Over the rotting steps and across the trembling porch he helped her with gentle care. Very softly he pushed open ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... death of Hiram Bodley, Joe and two of the lake guides had managed to repair one room of the broken-down cabin, and from this the ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... war or for the chase; ridiculous powder-horns, and also musical instruments; guitars covered with snake-skin, pipes and tambourines. To keep the rubbish which they are selling in countenance, no doubt, the dealers are mostly all broken-down, worn-out, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... newspaper man. "A Senator, a United States Senator, hugging a broken-down old 'has-been!' What is the world coming to?" Haines suddenly paused. "I wonder if it can be a pose;—merely for effect. It's getting harder every day to tell what's genuine and what isn't ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... All that could be done was done for him; but the little, active feet were never to walk again, and the spine was so injured that he could not even sit upright. When all that could be done had been done and failed, the boy was sent back to his broken-down and widowed mother. ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... small, round oil heating stove, and an assorted lot of chairs completed the furnishings. The one decorative spot in the room was on the wall over the bed, where hung a large framed picture of Christ in The Temple. The two rooms beyond exhibited various broken-down additions to the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... respects—the only being whose respect he covets; sent back to die in his loneliness, to perish like a friendless beast, as he is, to the funereal music of his own irrepressible snarling! To growl himself out of the world, like a broken-down old tiger in the jungle, after scaring away all possible peace and happiness and help with his senseless growls! Ugh! It is perfectly just, it is absolutely right and supremely horrible to think of! A fool to the last, Keyork, as you always ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... galloping with the stiff, short-legged jumps of the broken-down cow pony, stopped short as the boy riding him pulled sharply on the reins, and after looking hard at something which lay in a bare spot in the grass, slid ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... of human bodies. In the centre stood the helepolis covered with armour; and from time to time huge fragments broke off from it, like stones from a crumbling pyramid. Broad tracks made by the streams of lead might be distinguished on the walls. A broken-down wooden tower burned here and there, and the houses showed dimly like the stages of a ruined ampitheatre. Heavy fumes of smoke were rising, and rolling with them sparks which were lost in the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... road was barred. And then a half finished painting standing on an easel at the rear of his den had brought him inspiration. It was one of his hobbies—and it swung wide again for him the door of the underworld. None, in a broken-down, disappointed, drug-shattered artist, would recognise Larry the Bat! The only similarity between the two—the one thing that must of necessity be the same in order to explain plausibly his intimacy with the dens and lairs of Crimeland, the one thing that would, if nothing more, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the road was smooth and delightful, and our old broken-down steed supplied by the Government, derisively dubbed "Pegasus" by Mrs. C——, achieved something approaching a trot. Poor thing! its hide had become so hardened by former cruel treatment, that there was no ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... and its efforts at colonization (on what is now the Maine coast), in 1607 and later, had proved abortive, largely through the character of its "settlers," who had been, in good degree, a somewhat notable mixture of two of the worst elements of society,—convicts and broken-down "gentlemen." ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... FEEL broken-down, nervous and weak sometimes? Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound is excellent to take at such a time. It always helps and if taken regularly and persistently ...
— Food and Health • Anonymous
... the curtain rises CAMILLE enters with a rather broken-down cardboard box containing flowers. She is a young woman with a good figure, a pale face, the warm brown eyes and complete poise of a Frenchwoman. She takes the box to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... true. The Army was advancing to the House—the broken-down, ragged, wasted remnant of an Army of Heroes. Sent forth, too late, to 'smash' Prester John, and relieve the Equator, they had all but overcome the Desert, and had only been defeated by space. Too many of them lay like the vanished legions of Cambyses, swathed by the sand and lulled by ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... feelings of compassion and distrust—of compassion that strengthened in spite of him; of distrust that persisted in diminishing, try as he might to encourage it to grow. There, perched comfortless on the edge of his chair, sat the poor broken-down, nervous wretch, in his worn black garments, with his watery eyes, his honest old outspoken wig, his miserable mohair stock, and his false teeth that were incapable of deceiving anybody—there he sat, politely ill ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the broken-down dam. That is a haunted place, such a haunted place, and so lonely. All round there are pits and quarries, and there are always ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... our part of the country as Jack the Killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad at poor old Jack's broken-down condition and rejoicing that he had by chance found him there and had been able ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... presents a charming coup d'oeil. The court which it encloses with its broken-down walls is the ancient cemetery of the monks. No inscription distinguishes these tombs...The graves are scarcely indicated by the swellings of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... (called "alley-taws" in the Vale), screws, birds' eggs, whip-cord, jews-harps, and other miscellaneous boys' wealth. Poor Jacob Doodle-calf, in floods of tears, had pressed upon him with spluttering earnestness his lame pet hedgehog (he had always some poor broken-down beast or bird by him); but this Tom had been obliged to refuse, by the Squire's order. He had given them all a great tea under the big elm in their playground, for which Madam Brown had supplied the biggest cake ever seen in our village; and Tom was really as sorry ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... his fists raised towards the ceiling, Salvat seemed to be protesting against the abomination of a world and a Providence that allowed old toilers to die of hunger just like broken-down beasts. However, he did not speak, but relapsed into the savage, heavy silence, the bitter meditation in which he had been plunged when the priest arrived. He was a journeyman engineer, and gazed obstinately at the table where lay his little leather tool-bag, bulging with something ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... I expected. But he just went down below again. So, not seeing him, I said: "Let me help you on board, sir." "On board!" says he in a silly fashion. "On board!" "It's not a very good ladder, but it's quite firm," says I, as he seemed to be afraid of it. And he didn't look a broken-down old man, either. You can see yourself what he is. Straight as a poker, and life enough in him yet. But he made no move, and I began to feel foolish. Then she comes forward. "Oh! Thank you, Mr. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... pendulum,' said I. 'Oh,' said Jones, 'he is a member of the Third House!' Here was a new thing to me. I evidently had not learned all the machinery of legislating. I asked for an explanation, and soon learned that the 'Third House' consisted of old ex-members of either House or Senate, broken-down politicians, professional borers, and other vagrants who had made themselves familiar with the modus operandi of legislation, and who negotiated for the votes of members on terms to be agreed upon by the contracting parties—in short, these were the Lobby members ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... come, but neither Mr. Hyams nor myself felt well," said the white-haired broken-down old woman with her painfully slow enunciation. Her English words rarely went ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to be sure," laughed the youthful gentleman. "See his long, yellow hair behind; he looks like a Chinaman. Some broken-down Mandarin. Pity he's no crown to his old hat; if he had, he might pass it round, and make eight pennies of ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... see my wife or my mother or my sister laboring twelve to sixteen hours a day as Japanese force their women to labor. I would not care to contemplate the future mothers of our race drawn from the ranks of twisted, stunted, broken-down, and prematurely aged women. Did you ever see a bent Japanese girl of twenty waddling in from a day of labor in a field? To emulate Japanese industry, with its peonage, its horrible, unsanitary factory conditions, its hopelessness, would ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... small ground-floor room that was only lighted from the staircase. The furniture could not have been simpler—a rickety chair, a poor bed, and a broken-down table. At the end of the room there was a fireplace with a lighted fire; but the fire was painted, and by the fire was a painted saucepan that was boiling cheerfully and sending out a cloud of smoke that looked exactly like ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... of hills lay between us and our destination. At the top the valley of the Moraca could be seen with a magnificent background of rugged mountains. A breakneck descent of two and a half hours, most of it on foot, brought us to the river, which was crossed by a picturesque and broken-down bridge. On a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... into a broken-down patio littered with alfalfa straw and debris, all clear in the sunlight. Upon a bench, back toward her, sat a man looking out through the rents in the broken wall. He had not heard her. The place was not quite so filthy and stifling as the passages Madeline had come through ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and one's a baby, an' his wife is a poor broken-down little thing near always in the hospital. You'd wonder how he married her, he's such ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... us now, Mr. Nabbem, in a state of broken-down opposition; but our spirits are not broken too. In our time we have had something to do with the administration; and our comfort at present is the comfort ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mule. Fortunately the people at the fort were so anxious to get rid of him that they were willing to make some sacrifice to effect the object, and he succeeded in getting a tolerable mule in exchange for the broken-down steed. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... simple Borderers, who cut each other's heads open with their long spades and worshipped impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines. They crowded to see him, pointing at him, and diversely comparing him to a gravid milch- buffalo, or a broken-down horse, as their limited range of metaphor prompted. They laughed at his police-guard, and wished to know how long the burly Sikhs were going to lead Bengali apes. They inquired whether he had brought his women ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... palace: one of those which are attractive on account of their containing good works of art. The Pisani are an illustrious family: and the representative still lives in this fine old mansion, or at least occasionally occupies it; but he is a broken-down old man, who has survived wife, children, and other relatives, and his death must speedily close the many-centuried history of his name. It was with melancholy feelings that we stepped into the hall or vestibule, whose broken plasters are still graced with coats-armorial ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various |
