"Mess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... minutes to sailing time, and the passenger was in the cabin mess-room, when he heard the exclamation. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... be done here, and a hundred more that can only be done properly at my office in Holborn. Come to think of it—we had better see to that first of all,' he went on, unlocking the door. 'Get hold of Powl, and see. And be quick back, and clear me up this mess.' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lifelong lover of Italy may perhaps be permitted to state his personal view of her action. While the negotiations lasted, her position was scarcely a dignified one. It seemed that she was willing, not, indeed, to sell her birthright for a mess of pottage, but to buy her birthright at the cost of complicity in monstrous crime. Neither Italy nor Europe would have profited in the long run by the substitution of "Belgia Irredenta" for "Italia Irredenta." But now that she has repudiated the sops offered ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... of way, which seemed to excite Mac still more, for, turning to his young host, he said, in a low voice, and with a look that made the gentlemen on the chairs sit up suddenly: "I beg pardon, Van, for making a mess, but I can't stand by and see my own brother tempt another man beyond his strength or make a brute of himself. That's plain English, but I can't help speaking out, for I know not one of you would willingly hurt Charlie, and you will if you ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... from Newcastle's quill In the noisome mess distil, Brimming high our Brunswick broth Both with venom and with froth. Mix the brains (tho' apt to hash ill, Being scant) of Lord Mountcashel, With that malty stuff which Chandos Drivels as no other man does. Catch (i. e. if catch you can) One idea, spick and span, From my Lord ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... drained and sliced for eating, beaten biscuit, soda biscuit, egg bread, salt-rising bread, or rolls raised with hop-yeast—only a few attempted them—every manner of pie, tart, and tartlet that did not drip and mess things, all the cakes in the calendar of good housewifery—with, now and then, new ones specially invented. Even more than a wedding, a bran-dance showed and proved your quality as a cake-maker. Cakes were looked at in broad daylight, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... up nimbly, and backing away from the mud-bedaubed figure of the girl. "Your feet are wet! Did—did you dare get into such a mess, just to get ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... the day. The town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is market-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided, run into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red- eyed and foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt the innocent, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I run into a situation that the Med Service should have caught and cleaned up generations ago! But it's not only a Med Service obligation, it's a current mess! Before I could begin to get at the basic problem, those idiots on Orede—. It'd happened before I reached Weald! An emotional explosion triggered by a ship full of dead men ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... hall-kitchen two clerks, a clerk-comptroller, and a surveyor over the dresser, with a clerk in the spicery, which kept continually a mess together in the hall; also, he had in the kitchen two cooks, labourers, and children, twelve persons; four men of the scullery, two yeomen of the pastry, with two ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... other knights that sought after Sir Tristram many divers parts of this land. And some yede into Cornwall; and by adventure Sir Gaheris, nephew unto King Arthur, came unto King Mark, and there he was well received and sat at King Mark's own table and ate of his own mess. Then King Mark asked Sir Gaheris what tidings there were in the realm of Logris. Sir, said Sir Gaheris, the king reigneth as a noble knight; and now but late there was a great jousts and tournament as ever I saw any in the realm of Logris, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... hands. He will say, "You see how I have had Hylas beaten! Either content me or die at once!" We are forced to give, for else the old man tramples on us and makes us spew forth all our body contains. There must be an end to it, friend. Let us see! what can be done? Who will get us out of this mess? ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... We can never get a clean print in this mess. But wait! How far along the alleyway did ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... you get meat for money, into the shoe store and you get shoes for money, but go into the saloon and the bargain is all on one side. It's bar-gain on one side and bar-loss on the other; ill-gotten gains on one side, mis-spent wages on the other, a mess of pottage on one side and the birthright of some mother's ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... know that, I know that all right. Tut! tut!" inspecting the damaged brush. "That's a nice mess, ain't it? Now what do you suppose I did that for? I'm scared to death, when I have one of those go-to-sleeptic fits, that I'll pick my head to pieces. Not that that would be as big a loss as a good ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... heating their brains. Out of bed at seven for a final swift review of the subject, Mason would sail over to class with a great unbreakfasted hollow beneath his sweater, to pass freely and gloriously, and to forget the whole mess by the time he had finished his ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... is to preach, and, as ordinarily written, preach it does in the most determined way. Its plot is usually just sufficient to introduce the moral. It is susceptible of a high literary polish in the hands of a master; but when attempted by a novice it is apt to degenerate into a mess of moral platitudes. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... past for affairs of the heart. She pointedly had him alone, and her intimation was that he might talk freely, as to a woman of understanding and broad sympathy. But Bean made a wretched mess ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... my lord—methinks it makes you look still more like the good old lord your father; and it emboldens me, besides, to bring out a small request—that you would take a homely dinner with me to-morrow. I lodge hard by in Lombard Street. For the cheer, my lord, a mess of white broth, a fat capon well larded, a dish of beef collops for auld Scotland's sake, and it may be a cup of right old wine, that was barrelled before Scotland and England were one nation—Then for company, one or two of our own loving countrymen—and maybe my housewife may find ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of officers by Gordon, who commanded the castle of Eger, where Wallenstein was residing. He himself being indisposed, had retired from the table to his chamber. He was roused by loud cries proceeding from the mess-room, where his faithful officers were being murdered by the traitors. He opened the window to inquire the cause of the disturbance, when Devereaux entered, with thirty Irishmen at his back. The cowards shrank at the sight of their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... was then history professor at Sandhurst and had introduced the book to him, should write a preface. That preface discussed the Public School system in the light of contemporary events. The system, Seccombe wrote, "has fairly helped, you may say, to get us out of the mess of August 1914. Yes, but it contributed heavily to get us into it." The preface encouraged and helped a journalist to use the book as the text for a general article. Within a month it had received twenty-four columns of reviews and was in its third impression. Grant Richards told ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... —with what feelings I penned these words; yet any thing was better than the attack I looked forward to: and I should rather have changed into the Cape Rifle Corps, or any other army of martyrs, than meet my mess with all the ridicule my late proceedings exposed me to. Having disburthened my conscience of this dread, I finished my breakfast, and set out on a stroll through ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... explosives of imperialism, nationalism, and internationalism, and, having added to their destructiveness, passed them on to the peoples of the world as represented by the League of Nations. Some of them deplored the mess in which they were leaving the nations, without, however, admitting the causal nexus between it ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a friend to Major Hoskyns of his regiment, a veteran laughed at by the youngsters, for the major was too apt to look coldly upon billiard-balls and cigars; he had seen cannon-balls and linstocks. He had also, to tell the truth, swallowed a good bit of the mess-room poker, which made it as impossible for Major Hoskyns to descend to an ungentlemanlike word or action as to brush his ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... post-mortems—on my own cases," interrupted Kennedy brusquely. "To-morrow will be time enough to clear up this mess. Meanwhile, let us get this ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... "What a mess we would be in," said Sam, "if as the ice froze in chunks it sank to the bottom and kept at it all winter. Sure then, before spring, in such a land as this, the lakes and rivers would all be one solid mass of ice, and then what would become of the ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... morning the young man arose early, for the tide was then low, and started forth with basket and clam hoe on his arm. Aunt Lucretia had promised him, by a smiling nod, a mess of fritters for dinner if he would supply the necessary clams. Alongshore the soft clam is the only clam used for fritters; the tough, long-keeping quahog is shipped ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... it!" her husband said; "I couldn't have Edith in such a mess. Morally speaking, of course he has a right to marry; but he can't have my girl! Let him marry some other man's girl—and I'll give them my blessing. He's a dear fellow—but he can't have ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... of course, the editor knows. And the spring offensive! I have seen that kind of vernal gladness. What an advent! When you find the first blue egg in the shrubbery behind your billet in Artois; when the G. S. O. 2 comes into the mess with a violet in his fingers, and shows it to every doubter, then you know the time has come for the testing of the gas cylinders, and you wonder whether this is the last time you will be noteworthy because you had the earliest news of the chiffchaff. The spring offensive! ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... come therefore to the next ingredient in the soup I am providing; for, as the housewife said, "there's mutton intilt," and it is the most important ingredient in the mess. But the animal which produces it, like the kindred animals that produce the like, serves other purposes as well, and these no less essential to the exigency of the race; and it is of them I propose ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... drew closer they saw Georgiades lying on his back under a cedar, the whole front of his shirt from chest to belly a sopping mess ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... of a righteous Judge we leave him, who, for the wealth that perisheth,—who, for worldly honor and selfish gratification, could barter his honesty and integrity, as "Esau, who sold his birth-right for a mess ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... be living in the heart of a whirlwind, for the Squire is fighting everybody all round, and as he is the least reticent of men, and I have to write his letters, I naturally, even by now, know a good deal about him. Shortly put, he is in a great mess. The estate is riddled with mortgages, which it would be quite easy to reduce. For instance, there are masses of timber, crying to be cut. He consults me often in the naivest way. You remember that I trained for six months as an accountant. I assure you that it comes ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... promise, but I will believe only when I see it that a Cape Ministry and Legislature will oppose the Boers in earnest. They will encourage us to entangle ourselves, as they did with the Diamond Fields, and then leave us to get out of the mess as we can. South Africa cannot be self-governed in connection with this country, except with the good-will of the Dutch population. Enough may have been done, however, to quiet Parliament (which knows nothing about the matter) in the approaching ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the matter over last evening, and Phil would have come to speak to you about it, but he said you looked so wretchedly—and so you do—that just to look at you made him break down, and he was afraid he'd get rattled and make an a—a mess of it. Then Felix, he couldn't come, because, well, because—I guess he felt badly, too, about your being ill. So I thought I'd better come down and have a talk with you, though I must say I was afraid I might do something awkward,—I'm so stupid in a sick-room; but so far all's ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... was a heavy, thick-set man; and one day, when endeavouring to obtain a stand for his theodolite, he felt himself suddenly sinking. He immediately threw himself down, and rolled over and over until he reached firm ground again, in a sad mess. Other attempts which he subsequently made to enter upon the Moss for the same purpose, were abandoned for the same reason—the want of a solid stand for ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... daughters of this Protestant hero was being bred up with no religion at all, as yet, and ready to be made Lutheran or Roman, according as the husband might be, whom her parents should find for her? This talk, very idle and abusive much of it was, went on at a hundred mess-tables in the army; there was scarce an ensign that did not hear it, or join in it, and everybody knew, or affected to know, that the commander-in-chief himself had relations with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick ('twas by an Englishman, thank ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the loss of a handle or two, and the frying pans succeed in scorching the pork and ham to an unwholesome black mess. The potato kettle does better. It is not easy to spoil potatoes by cooking them in plenty of boiling water; and, as there is plenty of bread with fresh butter, not to mention canned goods, the hungry party feed sufficiently, but not satisfactorily. Everything seems pervaded with ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... and the flagstaff, where the descent was intended. Abreast was one whose duty was to guard the back part of the magazine and a pile of firewood which was there corded up, and also to prevent soldiers from going to the canteen. Another stood opposite the door of the officers' mess-room. There was room enough in the darkness to pass these sentinels, and Theller and his companions no longer crawled, but walked upright, one by one, quietly, but passing along as quickly as possible. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... that mess worse than it is," said Meldon, "and covering your own fingers all over with ink in such a way that it will take days of careful rubbing with pumice-stone to get them clean, perhaps you'll go on telling me why you call this fellow ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... silence. "But your true friend is the Sub-Warden! Day and night he is brooding on your wrongs—I should say your rights— that is to say your wrongs—no, I mean your rights—" ("Don't talk no more!" growled the man under the window. "You're making a mess of it!") At this moment the Sub-Warden entered the saloon. He was a thin man, with a mean and crafty face, and a greenish-yellow complexion; and he crossed the room very slowly, looking suspiciously about him as if be thought there might be a savage dog hidden somewhere. "Bravo!" he ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... was he poor, very poor, owning naught save his net. Every day he used to go to the sea a-fishing, and if he caught little, he sold it and spent the price on his children, after the measure of that which Allah vouchsafed him of provision; but if he caught much, he would cook a good mess of meat and buy fruit and spend without stint till nothing was left him, saying to himself, "The daily bread of to-morrow will come to-morrow." Presently, his wife gave birth to another child, making a total of ten, and it chanced that day that he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... confusion as much as possible; and he intrusted the force to Hortensius.[518] Caesar himself passed the day in public, standing by some gladiators who were exercising, and looking on; and a little before evening after attending to his person and going into the mess-room and staying awhile with those who were invited to supper, just as it was growing dark he rose, and courteously addressing the guests, told them to wait for his return, but he had previously given notice to a few of his friends to follow him, not all by the same route, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... an experiment, Don. Sandy is young and he may make a mess of things—not because he does not mean well, but because he lacks experience. He has been here a long time, to be sure, but he never has taken any care ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... whom we have always so hated and despised that we have never turned the lions about on the Siegesthor, should be the prime offenders, humiliating as it may be that we fell for their lies and got into this rotten mess. But go ahead, Mrs. Prentiss. What's your next? Gee, but you can hand it out. You must have kept tab since ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... would suit him so well," Starling continued, "as to see me down at the bottom of the Thames, with a stone around my neck. I tell you I'm frightened of him. If I can get out of this mess," he went on, "I'm off back to New York. Any job there is better than this. What are we stopping ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... uniform, cross-belts, boots, ammunition, etcetera, don't, after all, form an easy night-dress. "After a cup of coffee I fell in with a lot of our fellows, and was told off for fatigue-duty. Worked away till 7:30. Then breakfast. After that I had to clear up the mess; then got ready for inspection parade at 9:30, after which I had to scrub belts, and clean up generally. Dinner over, I was warned to go on night-guard; but, for some reason which was not stated to me, that was changed, and I'm not sorry for it, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... families with them, and they foregather at the main post every Sunday. On Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and Christmas there is always a big rally which includes a dance and vaudeville show in the men's mess hall. The Stars and Stripes are unfurled to the African breeze and the old days in the States recalled. It is real community life on ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... that," said Danglar, with his short, grating laugh. "We've as good as got the stones now, and we're going through to-night for a clean-up of all that old mess. We stake the whole thing. Get me, Bertha—the whole thing! I'm showing my hand for the first time. Cloran's the man that's making you wear those clothes; Cloran's the only one who could go into the witness box and swear that you were the woman who murdered Deemer; and Cloran's ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... that little, rat-eyed lawyer's office. I was glum as mud. I felt as though Tom and myself were both flies caught by the leg—he by the law and I by the lawyer—in a sticky mess; and the more we flapped our wings and struggled and pulled, the more we hurt and tore ourselves, and the sooner we'd ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... meal Patty did not know, but to her surprise and disgust, realized that she had actually consumed a considerable portion of the unappetizing mess. Watts arose, stretched prodigiously, and sauntered to his chair which, true to calculation was already just within the shadow of the east ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... there utterly helpless, and worn out till sunrise. Worse was to come. The natives now deserted them, and they were alone and helpless, with a wilderness of rank grass hemming them in on every side. Their meals consisted of a mess of black porridge of bitter mouldy flour "that no English pig would notice" and a dish of spinach. For nearly two months they existed here, until they became ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... woman, 'tain't moral," said Bainton, with a chuckle; "You ain't got ten to bet agin one—we couldn't spare so much. If she doos nothing else, she'll dekrate the church at 'Arvest 'Ome an' Christmas—that's wot leddies allus fusses about— dekratin'. Lord, Lord! The mess they makes when they starts on it, an' the mischief they works! Tearin' down the ivy, scrattin' up the moss, pullin' an' grabbin' at the flowers wot's taken months to grow,—for all the wurrld as if they was cats out for a 'oliday. I tell ye it's ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... illogical minds? But the people? Would they be likely to have their appetite aroused by the fumes of this thin decoction? Where a Chinaman is cook, one is apt to be a little suspicious; and if the Address in which the Convention advertised their ingenious mess had not a little in its verbiage to remind one of the flowery kingdom, there was something in that part of the assemblage which could claim any bygone merit of Republicanism calculated to stimulate rather than to allay any dreadful surmise of the sagacious ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... up too much with other folks's concerns anyhow. Leastways, she says I let their troubles weigh on me more'n I'd ought. But to save my life I can't seem to help it. Don't you believe those on the outside of a tangle sometimes see it straighter than them that is snarled up in the mess?" ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... mess kits and emergency rations, and a canteen of water for each, had been sent forward on the burros in charge of the Chinaman, Ping Wing, whom the Overland girls ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... other people! Imagine Constance ...! Truly Constance was most unjust, and quite unlike her usual self! And Sophia encouraged in her breast the feeling of injustice suffered. But a voice kept saying to her: "You've made a mess of this. You've not conquered this time. You're beaten. And the situation is unworthy of you, of both of you. Two women of fifty quarreling like this! It's undignified. You've made a mess of things." And to strangle the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... cowpuncher, not sent as usual to the men's bunk house? It could not be possible that Old Man Hooper extended this sort of hospitality to every chance wayfarer. Arizona is a democratic country, Lord knows: none more so! But owners are not likely to invite in strange cowboys unless they themselves mess with their own men. I gave it up, and tried unsuccessfully to shrug it off my mind, and sought distraction in looking about me. There was not much to see. The one door and one window opened into the court. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... we're awlus for patchin' th'Almeety's work; and if He leet us, we's mak' a sorry mess on ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... said Cairns. "Still, you might be decently civil to the man that gets you out of a mess." ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Only it ain't. Very bad, more like. It's a nasty mess, and no mistake! and there's the cause of it!" pointing his brawny hand towards the door, upon which was marked, "Office. Private," and sniffing as though he smelt something bad in ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... not "kink" under any circumstances—which latter is a consideration, as sometimes a paltry trout may come on, and you have only to haul him in hand-over-hand without running the risk of your line getting into a mess. This saves the trouble and waste of time in reeling up many yards of line every time a "smout" comes on. The line to which we refer is somewhat expensive, but will be found to be cheap in the long-run. An ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... very turbid. More watchful than ever, since submarines had been sighted in the neighborhood, we finally arrived at Medua. Almost blocked off by the sand bars, the little harbor was further encumbered by a dozen wrecks, boats which the Austrians had sunk. The question was where to pass through this mess, on the top of the water, with masts and spars pointing every way. After having rounded the line of mines and the Brindisi, an Italian vessel that had struck a mine some days before, we made the port. Ten houses and a wretched wharf ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... army I already knew well—of course I knew well the officers of both army and navy. But the enlisted men of the navy I only grew to know well when I was President. On the Louisiana Mrs. Roosevelt and I once dined at the chief petty officers' mess, and on another battleship, the Missouri (when I was in company with Admiral Evans and Captain Cowles), and again on the Sylph and on the Mayflower, we also dined as guests of the crew. When we finished our trip on the Louisiana ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... see her sister-in-law enjoying life, gave her attention to Garvington's affairs, and found them in a woeful mess. It really did appear as if she would have to save the Lambert family from ever-lasting disgrace, and from being entirely submerged, by keeping hold of her millions. But she did not lose heart, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... breakfasted. The mess shacks were those other open-sided buildings on the drill-field which I had already seen; their construction, being merely tarred roofs on posts and walled with mosquito netting, promised no elegance of fare. Nor ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... sent him, and, on Hart's suggestion, the famous Yellow Jacket was added. Gordon afterwards had his portrait painted in the full regalia, and, like a glorified Chinese Field-Marshal in his quaint garb, he still looks down from over the mantelpiece in the Royal Engineers' mess-room ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... starboard midshipman's berth—one of the darkest holes of a cockpit I ever was yet in—on board the Queen, a ninety-eight gun ship. My messmates, ten in number, were the poorest of all poor mids. I was welcomed to the mess by the master's mate, who held in his hand a dirty, empty bottle, with a farthing candle lighted in the neck of it. "Take care," said he, "you don't break your shins over the youngsters' chests." "Thank you," said I; "but I always thought ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... splendid new play! Can I really cook at the dear stove, and have parties and mess, and sweep, and make fires that truly burn? I like it so much! What ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... I might as well tell you," he said almost savagely. "You know so damn much now, you better know it all. You're in too deep already to wiggle out. We made rather a mess of it in New York, and only a bit of luck helped us through. We had the plans ready for three months, but nothing occurred to give us a chance. Then all at once Cavendish got his first telegram from Westcott, and decided to pull out, not telling any one where he was going. That would ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... judiciously, "we shall have as good a chance as any one, I think. Look at Norman and Dolly. I positively trembled for them—after Norman getting into that mess over in England. He never exactly shone as a real he-man, that brother of mine, you know. But they are really happy, Jack. They ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... him every day, a mess of grain in the husk, in a truck—a small railway truck, like one of the trucks he was perpetually filling with chalk, and this load he used to char in an old limekiln and then devour. Sometimes he would mix with it a bag of sugar. Sometimes ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... clapper, lad," said the smith, who was at the moment busily engaged with a mess of salt pork, and potatoes to match. "Who's ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... with unusual luxuriance. The men then went to their lodges, leaving me with the chief. He seemed to have taken a fancy to me from the first, and now invited me into his lodge, where his wife brought me a mess of broth, which, hungry as I ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... "you be in a mess, ain't you? Come right in and make yourselves to home. Abel, take the men folks up chamber, and fit 'em out with anything dry you kin lay hands on. Phebe, see to this poor little creeter, and bring her down lookin' ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... still, I hope I may say that I've as much common sense as most people. You see, sir," he went on, turning to Quest, "the spots where he could emerge from this track of country are pretty well guarded, and he'll be in a fine mess, when he does put in an appearance, to show himself upon a public road. Yet by this time I should say he must be nigh starved. Sooner or later he'll have to come out for food. I've a little scheme of my ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the front of Grant Hall by this time and were strolling slowly along, their voices hushed for the moment by the cheery hum of boyish talk and the clatter of mess furniture, as the Corps sat at their late supper. Then several officers, gathered about the steps of the club rooms in the south end, lifted their caps to Mrs. Graham and smiled ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... and sprained his ankle. He told the story all over Hot Springs, and when his arm healed a man named Barley who liked me fought him and broke it over again. Oh, it was all an awful mess. He threatened to sue Barley, and Barley—he was from Georgia—was seen buying a gun in town. But before that mama had dragged me North again, much against my will, so I never did find out all that happened—though I saw Barley ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... they had ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at Bald Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to you—those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will only make all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their German heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in their hearts the one thing needed tomorrow—that which Timokhin has. They have yielded up all Europe to him, and have now ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... had ham, fish, pigeon's eggs and some things I didn't know the name of. The host took up a little mess of sunthin' on his chop stick and handed it to me. I dassent refuse it, for he meant it as a honor, but I most know it wuz rat meat, but couldn't tell for certain. I put my shoulder blades to the wheel and swallered it, but it ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Cousin; if any skins are to be pricked it can't be helped, and at least you won't have to wipe up the mess. I am not going to run away from the man, more likely he will run away from me. I look well in this fine dress of yours, and I mean to wear it out. Now begone—begone, before some of them come to seek me. Don't you grieve for me; I'll lie in the bed that ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... my father, "Captain Byng took aboard out of hospital another small midshipman, who on his first night no sooner climbed into his hammock than the entire mess bundled him out of it. 'We would have you to know, young man,' said they, 'that private devotion is the rule on board our ship. It's down on your knees this minute or you get ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... only trouble was that our prize, the Markomannia, didn't have much coal left. We said one evening in the mess: 'The only thing lacking now is a nice steamer with 500 tons of nice Cardiff coal.' The next evening we got her, the Burresk, brand-new, from England on her maiden voyage, bound for Hongkong. Then ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... showed his curiosity in all he saw, he was allowed to go over the whole of the ship. Great was his wonder as he examined her polished guns, the decks, white as snow, one below the other, the ropes on the upper deck so beautifully flemished down. The men were at breakfast, between decks. The tin mess utensils were spread out before them. Dermot was shown how the hammocks were hung up at night, and where they were stowed in the hammock-nettings in the day time. He gazed aloft at the symmetrical ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... to himself, climbed laboriously, one steep step at a time, to the elevation of the roofless porch before the mess house. The floor he examined, as always, with the greatest interest. The sharp caulks of the rivermen's shoes had long since picked away the surface, leaving it pockmarked and uneven. Only the knots had resisted; and each ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... at the end of the war will be effected, let us hope, not by a regimental mess of fire-eaters sitting around an up-ended drum in a vanquished Berlin or Vienna, but by some sort of Congress in which all the Powers (including, very importantly, the United States of America) will be ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... practice, she picked up an egg and gave it a sharp crack on the edge of the pan, expecting it to part evenly into halves and its contents to glide properly into the butter. It looked so alluringly simple and easy that she had always resented Tippy's saying she would make a mess of it if she tried to do it. But mess was the only name which could be given to what poured out on the top of the stove as her fingers went crashing through the shell and into the slimy feeling contents. The broken yolk dripped from her hands, and in the one instant she stood holding ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... for your man on horseback. The slaves won't stand for it. They are too many, and willy- nilly they'll drag down the would-be equestrian before ever he gets astride. You can't get away from them, and you'll have to swallow the whole slave-morality. It's not a nice mess, I'll allow. But it's been a- brewing and swallow it you must. You are antediluvian anyway, with your Nietzsche ideas. The past is past, and the man who says history repeats itself is a liar. Of course I don't like the crowd, but what's a poor chap to do? We can't ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... enjoy it. It was supper-time. In the square a great fire of brush-wood had been kindled, and around it squatted a ring of negroes, busy with bowls of loblolly and great chunks of corn bread. They chattered like monkeys, and one who had finished his mess raised a chant in which one note was a yell of triumph, the next a long-drawn plaintive wail. The rich barbaric voice filled the night. A figure, rising, tossed aside an empty bowl, and began to dance in the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... him and making him drunken, questioned him of his work. Quoth the kitchener, "Every day I cook five dishes for dinner and the like for supper; and yesterday they sought of me a sixth dish,[FN237] yellow rice,[FN238] and a seventh, a mess of cooked pomegranate seed." Ali asked, "And what is the order of thy service?" and the slave answered, "First I serve up Zaynab's tray, next Dalilah's; then I feed the slaves and give the dogs their sufficiency of meat, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... I know, but having tried my own way and made a dreadful mess on 't, I concluded that the Lord knows what's best for us, and things go better when He manages than when we go scratchin' round and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... feace as black as a boggart, sooty shiny hewr loike a mowdywarp, an' een loike a stanniel. Boh for running, rostling, an' throwing t' stoan, he'n no match i' this keawntry. Ey'n triet him at aw three gams, so ey con speak. For't most part he'n a big, black bandyhewit wi' him, and, by th' Mess, ey canna help thinkin he meys free sumtoimes wi' yor ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... To each rider was assigned a mount of five horses, and the loose horses were driven with the herd by day and guarded by the "horse wrangler" by night. The cook drove a team of six small Spanish mules hitched to a mess wagon. In the wagon were carried provisions, consisting principally of bacon and jerked beef, flour, beans, and coffee; the men's blankets and "war sacks," and the simple cooking equipment. Beneath the wagon was ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... responsibility of administering the Government in the true spirit of its institutions. The alarm, which pervaded all political circles so soon as this was understood, is remembered well. It was a bomb exploded under the mess-table, scattering the mess and breaking to fragments all their cunningly devised machinations for rule and preferment—an open declaration of war against all cliques and all dictation. His inaugural was startling, and his first message explicit. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... big fellow too, and so did Pennington. Fortune, after wavering in her choice, decided to favor all three about equally, and they were content. The silvery heaps grew and they rejoiced over the splendid addition they would make to their mess. The colonels would enjoy this fine fresh food, and they were certainly ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fuerit? ovum [731]prius extiterit an gallina! &c. et alia quae dediscenda essent scire, si scires, as [732]Seneca holds. What clothes the senators did wear in Rome, what shoes, how they sat, where they went to the close-stool, how many dishes in a mess, what sauce, which for the present for an historian to relate, [733]according to Lodovic. Vives, is very ridiculous, is to them most precious elaborate stuff, they admired for it, and as proud, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... since I had met him had I seen him so perturbed—he was at all times singularly calm. I was not, however, surprised at his anxiety, for it seemed more than likely that quite unwittingly, and with the best intentions, Dick Challoner had not merely landed us in a terrible mess, but that he had certainly turned the tables upon us, leaving Dulcie and myself at the mercy of this desperate gang. On board the boat I had mentioned Dick to the detective, and told him about the cypher, and the part that Dick had played. He had not seemed ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... what funny questions you do ask!" said the Countess, smiling. "The Earl's room was swept out about half-past eleven that noon, as soon as I came down and ordered Natalie to do it, after I saw the mess of cigar-ashes the Earl ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... there's no chance here. There isn't a woman on the Street who knows real clothes when she sees them. They don't even know how to wear their corsets. They send me bundles of hideous stuff, with needles and shields and imitation silk for lining, and when I turn out something worth while out of the mess they think the dress ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... despoiled of everything, perhaps having borrowed money at 9 or 10 per cent., was no longer able to get his living from the land on which so many generations of his ancestors had laboured. It was no longer possible for him to get the mess of maize and miserable bread, the strips of repulsive-looking flesh that were his luxury, the medicine for his underfed children who were moaning on the naked earth of his cabin, and at the same time to make the necessary ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... abstemious life. He broke his fast on bread-and-water and a few grapes. He sometimes dined off bread, the yolk of an egg, and a little wine, and would take for supper a mess of beetroot and rice and a chicory salad. The catalogue of his favourite dishes seems to exhaust every known edible, and it will suffice to remark that he was specially inclined to sound and well-stewed wild boar, the wings of young ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... period the gods really went at it, using humanity as players in their battles, like a game of chess, actually. Come to think of it, chess did originate in the realm of the gods after the laws. Things were quite a mess back then, though, with a whole horde of demi-gods walking the earth, and it ended up snuffing out the first flames of democracy and leaving monarchies for ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... might drive wounded soldiers down to Margate in his car if he liked. Baxendale said he'd think it over, but when Postlethwaite had gone he asked Peter Knott in confidence if he didn't think it was taking advantage of people to mess up their ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... and three companions were, on the third day, put on board the Baltic-Merchant, a hospital ship, then lying in the sound. The wretchedness of his situation was in some degree alleviated by a small pittance of pork and parsnip which a good- natured sailor spared him from his own mess. The fourth day of their captivity, Rawlings, Hanson, M'Intire, and himself, all wounded officers, were put into one common dirt-cart and dragged through the city of New York as objects of derision, reviled as rebels, and treated with the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the firstborn according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth; and the men marveled one at another. And he took and sent messes unto them from before him, but Benjamin's mess was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank, and were merry ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... helped to raise my spirits, which had been depressed by Mrs. Arthur's fretful anticipations of evil. I bustled hither and thither, laughed and sung, and cooked father's mess of fresh fish so much to his satisfaction, that he declared I should make a jewel of a wife, and that he had not made up his mind whether he would part with such a good cook. Without he married again, he was afraid he would not ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... mess. But there's the Foundlings'[6] for that sort of thing. Whoever likes may drop one there; they'll take 'em all. Give 'em as many as you like, they ask no questions, and even pay—if the mother goes in as a ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... But if so, you've never attended a girls' college, Daddy dear. Six friends dropped in to make fudge, and one of them dropped the fudge—while it was still liquid—right in the middle of our best rug. We shall never be able to clean up the mess. ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... manage the smile which should have greeted this sally. She looked down soberly at the white-pine top of the kitchen table and said, "I guess there is enough sparrow-grass up in the garden for a mess, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... and said, "Here comes the man with the iron nerve." I answered him, "No, here comes the man with a little good common sense and faith in God Almighty." "Yes," he said, "common sense, but I thought it could not be done, when it was in such a mess and had been broken so long." I answered him, "Yes, but a good arm is better than an iron hook on it." He said, "Indeed, but I did not think it could be done." (I have nothing against doctors, but the Lord can do ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... afraid, poor girl, she'll be more likely to find Bacchus than Ceres if she sticks in London); but the plain fact is, I don't dare—that's the long and the short of it. If I did, Selah'd be tracking me to earth here in Oxford, and a nice mess that'd make of it! She doesn't know my name, to be sure; but as soon as she called at college and found nobody of the name of Walters was known there, she'd lie in wait for me about the gates, as sure as my name's Herbert Le Breton, and sooner or later she'd take it out of me, one ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... he had finished, the mess caterer touched my elbow and whispered: "Better get your lunch now, Mr. Ramsay. It will be your last chance. The galley-fires must be put out when ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... parried Doctor Dexter, sarcastically. "You go up there and see if the cast isn't off and the fracture being fomented with pennyroyal tea or some such mess." ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... which tempted me to the door. It was a fine old kitchen, though now the tiles were mostly gone from the floor, and the cracked walls were smeared with uncouth paintings, the work of some childish soul—some German mess sergeant, perhaps, who had been installed there, but today Jeanne reigned again, bending her philosophic face over the smoking stove, and evoking with infallible arts aromatic and genial vapors from her casseroles. At her side, Therese, pink and cream in the abundance of her eighteen ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... rather a mess of it, but as soon as he came to an end of his well-meant blunders, she stood up and began her poses and paces. It was all very innocent, with something courageous as well as appealing. She had a kind of tender dignity in her dance, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... said Montgomery; "it's just the way with carnivores. After a kill, they drink. It's the taste of blood, you know.—What was the brute like?" he continued. "Would you know him again?" He glanced about us, standing astride over the mess of dead rabbit, his eyes roving among the shadows and screens of greenery, the lurking-places and ambuscades of the forest that bounded us in. "The taste of ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... me, viewing it all round, a wonderful good chance. An opening that isn't likely to come in one's way twice. Mr. Bates' son has bin and got himself into such a mess over a horse-racing transaction that he's had to make a bolt of it. I can't tell you the facts, because I don't rightly know them; but it's bad—something to do with checks that'll put him to hidin' for a long day, if he doesn't want to answer for it ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... 'quite unpleasant,' as Yermolai expressed it. 'No, Piotr Petrovitch,' he cried at last; 'we can't go on like this....There's no shooting to-day. The dogs' scent is drowned. The guns miss fire....Pugh! What a mess!' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... will have to cook some of it the best we can, although I expect we'll make a sorry mess of it without Chris. I guess broiling some of it will be ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... will sell. Cutt & Slashem are in this business to make money, and my thoughts must be directed to the saleable quality of the manuscripts submitted. If I was running the concern, though, I would touch the mooney, maundering mess. It makes my flesh creep, sometimes, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... food. We read of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of red pottage, or a mess of red dal. Then later we read of the Hebrew children refusing to eat the king's meat, and growing rosy and fat on their ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... very Loveby. Another time, when we had sate up very late at ombre in the country, and were hungry towards morning, he plucks me out (I vow to gad I tell you no lie) four ten-penny nails from the dairy lock with his teeth, fetches me out a mess of milk, and knocks me 'em in again with ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... cried Captain Lake to Larcom. 'This is your d—d work. A nice mess you have made ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that he understood what this meant, by a very unprofessional choice of words. "We are in a mess," he began, "and the sooner we are ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... things were puzzling him. Finally a light burst upon him all of a sudden—seemed to, at any rate—and he said to himself, "I've got the clew at last—this man's mind is off its balance; I don't know how much, but it's off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess of perplexities, anyway. These dreadful chromos which he takes for old masters; these villainous portraits—which to his frantic mind represent Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... confess too when I dine The pulse is Thine: And all those other bits that be There placed by Thee: The wurts, the perslane, and the mess ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... easy. A cheap outfit will make excellent postcards, modern methods having got rid of the dark room and much of the mess, and postcard-size prints can be pasted ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs |
