"Muddy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is very potent in shaping the minds of men and retarding human progress. Thus we find, in this so-called enlightened age, millions of men defending the rights of certain scorbutic families of indifferent minds and muddy morals, to sway the sovereign's scepter. Mental colossi—men who tower up like Titans in the world of intellect—are proud to acknowledge themselves the "dutiful subjects" of some brainless fop or ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... In a more recent day, Lord Althorpe was able to bear down the hostility of some of the most powerful orators of his time by a bluff manliness which no rhetoric could withstand. And so also with Jimmy—his sheer audacity carries him along the slow, dull, inept, muddy tide of his ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Paul caught her in time to save her from a fall upon the muddy pavement. "I am sincerely sorry," he said with real solicitude. "I know ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... tail, the meaty root of which kept the whelps busy for hours afterwards. The whole pack fed full, and in the neighbourhood of that range they scattered and slept; for in the gully on the other side of it there was a little muddy water, and round about there was pleasant cover which had sheltered the kangaroos for a week or more. Old Tufter forbore to growl, and the young members of the pack were enthusiastic regarding the advantages ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... intimately with the world because he may be influenced by others instead of influencing others. But one need not fear when his morality derives its energy from connection with the Heavenly Father. Just as the water from a hose, because it comes from a reservoir above, will cleanse a muddy pool without danger of a single drop of pollution entering the hose, so the Christian can go into infected areas and among those diseased by sin without fear of contamination so long as he is prompted by a sincere desire to serve and is filled with ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... in anxious expectation, they waited for the passage of certain birds which was to settle the question between them. We can imagine them as they waited. The two hills are still to be seen in the city, and probably the two groups were about half a mile apart. On one side of them rolled the muddy waters of the Tiber, from which they had been snatched when infants, and around them rose the other elevations over which the "seven-hilled" city of the future was destined to spread. From morning to evening they patiently watched, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Especial care should be taken of the legs and fetlocks, that no dirt remain to cause that distressing disease, grease or scratches, which results from filthy fetlocks and standing in dirty stables. When a horse comes in from work on muddy roads with dirty legs, they should be immediately cleaned, the dirt brushed off, then rubbed with straw; then, if very dirty, washed clean and rubbed dry with a piece of sacking. A horse should never stand in a ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters." Patrick's version is as follows: "For as a good shepherd leads his sheep in the violent heat to shady places, where they may lie down and feed (not in parched but) in fresh and green pastures, and in the evening leads them (not to muddy and troubled waters, but) to pure and quiet streams; so hath he already made a fair and plentiful provision for me, which I enjoy in peace ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... camp at Ouderdom. It was called 'Canada Huts' and consisted of a cluster of wooden huts erected just off a narrow muddy road. At one time I am told, the mud was thigh deep; but now duck boards had been laid down, and though decidedly muddy the camp was quite passable. When we arrived it was quite late, and we found the camp in total darkness and every ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... afloat, Mandy Ann was delighted. She felt doubly secure, now, from pursuit. Pulling a muddy carrot from her pocket she held it up to the woodchuck, which was nuzzling affectionately at her curls. But the smell of the fresh earth reminded the little animal of something which he loved even better than Mandy Ann—even better, indeed, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... spending the few pence I had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,—which, in that night's aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah's arks,—crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... figure it out, exactly. However, it seems like they're something that slows you up the way a muddy road slows up a hoss. And then she begun talking about the mountains, ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... a hard, forced march over muddy roads, through the damp, close night. Soon after the start from our bivouac, a brigade of infantry had filed into the road ahead of us, and we could hear, behind us on the road, though we could not see for the darkness, the sound of other troops marching. The Brigade ahead of us, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... discouragement he must have come to it for strength and consolation. The beauty of a river depends very much on its clearness and purity. The Rhine and the Tiber are more famous than the Merrimac; but their water is muddy and undrinkable. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... poured out you are at liberty to drink it boiling and muddy, or cold and clear. Real amateurs drink it without waiting. Those who allow the sediment to settle down, do not do so from contempt, for they afterwards collect it with the little ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling, the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness overhead; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled with sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The trees were covered with leaves; a ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... journey to the milking ground, took prompt steps, in conjunction with moor men, to drag horse and vehicle out of the mud and mire. Fortunately, the mailbags were uninjured, and the postmaster of Clevedon, who had set out on a search, had them conveyed back to his office. Dazed contractor Dawes, the muddy mail cart, and horse coated with mud from head to hoofs, were got back into the town at about 11 a.m. It would seem that the contractor fell asleep and tumbled from his box into the road, and that his horse wandered on, grazing from side to side of the road, till eventually ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... out with this thick muddy liquid, and from the mark upon the sides of the hole had evidently consumed more than half of the total supply. I first of all took some of this moist mud in my mouth, but finding a difficulty in swallowing it, as ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... words with hidden and dreadful meaning; a black cloud covered the sun for a while, and the water near the side of the boat began to grow muddy and rise in a mighty wave. When he finished, the sun had grown bright again; but the river was disturbed, as if a new inundation ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... browns, and grizzlies came out of their winter's sleep, and left huge, muddy tracks on the trails; the timber wolves at dusk mourned their hungry calls for life, for meat, for the wildness that was passing; the coyotes yelped at sunset, joyous and sharp ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... lamp. Perhaps his faithful dog watches him, and runs about quite pleased to be going for a walk, even if it is in the middle of the night. Then the man starts off on his long, slow journey into London. Mile after mile over muddy or dusty roads, through villages where everyone is asleep, where not even a dog barks, on and on to London. It may be very cold, and the horse only goes slowly, so it cannot be very comfortable; but ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... his fellow-pirates was short but to the point, saying "that since he had dipped his hands in muddy water, and must be a pyrate, it was better being a commander than a common man," not perhaps a graceful nor grateful way of expressing his thanks, but one which was no doubt understood by ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... as they hurdled over artificially raised obstructions, or slid along the firm-packed snow, or grated on the muddy cross-streets, Princess Split told her plan—with reservations. She was not prepared to admit to so humble a worshiper the secret of her birth, but the magnanimous self-sacrifice of a beautiful nature, the heroine concealed beneath a frivolous exterior—these she ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... tap on the head with her chopstick. There is but one dish, rice, of a very ordinary sort and of a pink color, but all seem to thrive upon it. The meal over, the men smoke their pipes, and the wife washes her cooking utensils with water drawn from the muddy river, and then, strapping her infant to her back, overhauls the scanty wardrobe and mends the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... of Damascus I cross the headwaters of the Pharpar River, whose clear, sparkling water Naaman considered much more suitable for a general's bath than the muddy water of the Jordan. At my place of crossing an athlete could clear the stream at ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... post-chaise every day. He has an elderly woman, whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, and jogs his elbow when his glass has stood too long empty, and encourages him in drinking, in which he is very willing to be encouraged; not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy[1351]. He confesses to one bottle of port every day, and he probably drinks more. He is quite unsocial; his conversation is quite monosyllabical: and when, at my last visit, I asked him what a clock it was? that signal of my departure had so pleasing an effect on ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... moment, from behind a bush where he had been thriftily burying a yesterday's bone, Smith the bulldog waddled out on to the lawn. He drank in the exhilarating air through an upturned nose which his recent excavations had rendered somewhat muddy. Then he observed Mr. Bennett, and moved gladly towards him. He did not recognise Mr. Bennett, for he remembered his friends principally by their respective bouquets, so he cantered silently across the turf to take a sniff at him. He was half-way across ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... with all our pride of learning, that we choose to derive the little we know from the under currents, perhaps muddy ones too, when the clear, the pellucid fountain-head, is much nearer at hand, and easier to be come at—slighted the more, possibly, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... I was once returning from the palace late one evening in November, after an experimental practice of music for a special festival in the Temple of Kamo. Sleet was falling heavily. The wind blew cold, and my road was dark and muddy. There was no house near where I could make myself at home. To return and spend a lonely night in the palace was not to be thought of. At this moment a reflection flashed across my mind. 'How cold must she feel whom I have treated so coldly,' thought ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... round muddy streets of Rione Monti, and entered some churches. S.S. Cosmae Damiano in Forum: it has got lost, so to speak, in the excavations, and you seek it through blind alleys and a long dark passage—a ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... bottom of the hollow, squeezed my way through a hedge, and got out into a lane. Having turned to the right on leaving the road, I now turned to the left, on the chance of regaining the line from which I had wandered. After following the muddy windings of the lane for ten minutes or more, I saw a cottage with a light in one of the windows. The garden gate was open to the lane, and I went in at once to inquire ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... planted they present a clean and beautiful appearance — even the tips of the rice blades twisted off are invariably crowded into the muddy bed to assist in fattening ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... dear, don't," she protested. "I hate long descriptions of places; besides, I can imagine it perfectly—a muddy old stream with a lot of sad looking trees sticking about in a wilderness miles away from any human being anyone in his or her right mind would ever care to see. As for your Holcomb and the other two tramps, they would simply bore me ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... Mr. Stewart, sat upon a stack of baggage and was dreadfully concerned about something he calls his "Tookie," but I am unable to tell you what that is. The road, being so muddy, was full of ruts and the stage acted as if it had the hiccoughs and made us all talk as though we were affected in the same way. Once Mr. Stewart asked me if I did not think it a "gey duir trip." I told him he could call it gay if he wanted to, but it didn't ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... its length. In places, plank had to be set up on edge to keep the mud out of the houses, which were lower than the road. It contained numerous shops, where potato whisky was sold to men, women, and children. It depends on a dirty, muddy creek for its supply of water. Its houses were generally one-story, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... inside a coffer dam about which the river frothed and roared, when a man brought him word that Miss Savine waited for him. He hurried to meet her, and presently halted beside her horse—a burly figure in shapeless slouch hat, with a muddy oilskin hanging from his shoulders above the stained overalls and ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Lawrence. He was still a week's journey from Three Rivers, but chance befriended him. Algonquin canoes were on the way up the river to war on the Iroquois. Joining the Indian canoes, he slipped past the hilly shores of the St. Lawrence and in five days was between the main bank on the north side and the muddy shallows of the Isle of Orleans. Sheering out where the Montmorency roars over a precipice in a shining cataract, the canoes glided across St. Charles River among the forests of masts heaving to the tide below the beetling ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... were refusing to carry her, leaden and weighty as they seemed. Her knees were trembling and her head swimming. Yet she retained consciousness, for, in front of her, De Launay was crumpling forward, and sinking to the muddy shambles in which ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... fishermen, while the swamps and morasses which surrounded it rendered it filthy in the extreme. A spot near the church of San Francisco de Paulo had been cleared for a square, but scarcely a dozen houses had risen round it, and a muddy pond filled up the centre, into which the negroes were in the habit of throwing all the impurities from the neighbourhood. This was now filled up. On one side of the square a theatre was begun, not inferior to those of Europe in size and accommodation, and placed under the patronage ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... muddy put my linen safeguard petticoat on him, Patty, the better to conceal his long legs, for it will be somewhat awkward riding woman-fashion, but my saddle is broad. Now my bedgown of paduasoy. Alack! how short the sleeves are! Here are the long cuffs. That will do. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... no parade on the courthouse steps for the benefit of a wondering village, as there would have been had the day been fine. Instead, the men, steaming with wet, stood about uncomfortably in the corridors, muddy with the mud from their feet, wet with the drip from their umbrellas. The air in the court house was close, and every one ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... The muddy waters of the stream had parted, and dead fish were rising about the body of Juan. But not about the dying man so much as close to the spot where the broken tube had fallen. White bellies up, the fish died ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... veering to E.S.E., we could look up to the head of the bay; but as the breeze was faint, a N.E. swell hurtled us over to the west shore; so that, at half past four o'clock p.m., we were no more than two miles from it, and tacked in one hundred and twenty fathoms water, a soft muddy bottom. The bluff-head, or east point of the bay, bore north ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... my arms I bounded over the muddy pathway; and just as I set down my little charge, the bundle slipped from her grasp, or rather its contents, leaving the empty paper in her hands, and an embroidered vest on the sidewalk. I picked up the vest, and in doing so unrolled the same, when lining, sewing-silk ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... expect that the water being dammed back just here, it would be shallow below the dam, it was just the opposite. Had the bottom been hard, it would have been shallow; but as the bottom was soft and muddy, the rush of the water over the dam in the winter-floods had here made a great hollow. There was besides another weir a very little way below which again dammed the water back; so that the depth was greater here than in almost any other part within the ken of the ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... in the winter, a bright and dry morning. All the better, you will say—of course everybody must like nice clean streets and pavements much more than sloppy rain and mud. But no; not quite everybody. Think of the crossing-sweepers! Dirty, muddy days are their harvest-time, especially Sundays, when in the better parts of the town there are so many more rich and well-to-do foot passengers than on other days. It was a real disappointment, and worse than a disappointment—a real serious trouble ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... now full and hiding its muddy banks which, revealed, had their own opalescent beauty, went its way between the cliffs, clothed on one hand with trees, save for a big red and yellow gash where the stone was being quarried, and on the other with bare rock, topped by the Downs spreading far out of sight. Landwards the river ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... next day a man, very splashed and muddy, and obviously just in from the gulches, stopped, in going by ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... this one to the more famous Florio's—there seems to me to arise from these rambling discourses, a singularly wholesome savour. I seem to see Montaigne's massive and benignant countenance as he jogs home, wrapped against the wind in the cloak that was once his father's, along the muddy autumn lanes, upon his strong but not over-impetuous nag. Surely I have seen that particular cast of features in the weather-beaten face of many a farm labourer, and listened too, from the same lips, to just as relishing a commentary ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Macham were ordered to be taken off. December 17th, Mr. Philpot received intimation that he was to die next day, and the next morning about eight o'clock, he joyfully met the sheriffs, who were to attend him to the place of execution. Upon entering Smithfield the ground was so muddy, that two officers offered to carry him to the stake, but he replied, "Would you make me a pope? I am content to finish my journey on foot." Arrived at the stake, he said, "Shall I disdain to suffer at the stake, when my Redeemer did not refuse to suffer ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... (But he's so like you that he fares the worse for't) Because he loves his booke and doates on that, And onely studies how to know things excellent, Above the reach of such course braines as yours, Such muddy fancies, that never will know farther Then when to cut your Vines, and cozen Merchants, And choake your ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... for good. The General had been wont to say that the cheerfulness of his house was within it, not without it. He had come home from London fog and rain with a happy sense of its bright fires and spaciousness, its carpets and furniture, not so new that a muddy foot or a stray shower of tobacco-ash was a thing to be feared—old friends every one of them. The love and loyalty within his doors were something that came out to welcome the General's home-coming like a sudden firelight streaming out ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... was very tortuous, but still I in vain traced the channel for water, even in the sharpest of its turnings, until long after it was quite dark. We encamped at length near a small muddy hole discovered with the assistance of our female guide, after having travelled nineteen miles. I found the latitude of this camp to be 33 degrees 52 minutes 59 seconds, which was so near that of Mr. Oxley's lowest point according ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... to that excellent poet, that he was an enemy to the writings of his predecessor Lucilius, because he had said, Lucilium lutulentum fluere, that he ran muddy; and that he ought to have retrenched from his satires many unnecessary verses. But Horace makes Lucilius himself to justify him from the imputation of envy, by telling you that he would have done the same, had he lived in an ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... and just as another wave surged in I reached her side and sank down on the sand. After resting a few moments we rose and began picking our way toward the village, half a mile distant. Our route led along a narrow path between the muddy, watery road on one side and a still more muddy, watery taro-patch on the other. Without a light to guide our steps, we slipped, now with one foot into the road, now with the other into the taro-patch, and by the time we emerged into the level cactus-field ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... came to the head of the Canadian Corps a man named Byng, who could stroll casually into a billet or a training field to inspect "the muddy trench hounds" in canvas leggings and with three buttons loose. Until Byng came the Canadian Corps was a semi-disciplined and marvellous mob of men who could swear as hard as they could fight and fight like wildcats. Byng gave then the massive and complex mechanism of an army competent to conduct ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... see the palace," she said, "because, when you look right down into it, the water seems muddy. But sometimes, when it is still, you can see the Upside-Down Country where the King of the Eels lives. There the trees all grow with their heads down and the sky is 'way, 'way below the trees. You see the sky might as well be down as up for the ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the little river that went slowly through the meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of its French neighbours on the watershed, and was called by some such epithet as hangs to all the waters in that gap of Belfort, that plain of ponds and marshes: for they are called 'the Sluggish', 'the Muddy', or 'the Laggard'. Even the name of the Saone, far off, meant ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... threw Broadhurst from his feet, but he saved himself by a quick jump to the side and, a slipping lurch which shook a foot loose from the last frantic grab of the tackler as he dived head foremost into a muddy sheet of water. ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... to go straight from the Market-place, to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... stalking along the road; it was Abbe Tolbiac, who seemed to be watching for them to go by. He stopped to let the carriage pass. He was holding up his cassock with one hand, to keep it out of the mud, and his thin legs, encased in black stockings, ended in a pair of enormous muddy shoes. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... which was to serve as a model, we travelled due south along the coast, over a hard, stoneless, and alluvial plain, here dry, there muddy (where the tide reaches), across boggy creeks, broad water-courses, and warty flats of black mould powdered with nitrous salt, and bristling with the salsolaceous vegetation familiar to the Arab voyager. Such is the general formation of the plain between the mountains and the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... our horses were exhausted. They had now for three days been obliged to plough their way through the wet, muddy paths. We had no forage to give them, and the grass was so young as yet that it did not seem to strengthen them ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... just in time, not fifteen feet from where the two had fallen, was a deep, saucer-like depression in the ground. In its center, where the ground was soft, and muddy, was a writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... its junction with the Missouri, is a troubled stream, meandering through low grounds, and margined by muddy banks, is here a clear and rapid river, flowing over beds of rock and gravel, and bordered by the most lovely shores. Nothing of the kind can be more attractive, than the scenery at the upper rapids. On the western shore, a series of slopes are ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... in the end to over eight thousand acres, was, with the exception of a few outlying tracts, subdivided into five farms, namely, the Mansion House Farm, the Union Farm, the Dogue Run Farm, Muddy Hole Farm and the ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... resolution (resignation?) by giving my answer about Braithwaite. Though the sins of my General Staff have about as much to do with the real issues as the muddy water had to do with the death of the argumentative lamb, I begin by pointing out to the War Office wolf that "no Headquarters Staff has ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... scan the blistered brown stone front, the windows draped with discoloured lace, and the Pompeian decoration of the muddy vestibule; then he looked back at her face and said with a visible effort: "You'll let me come and see you ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... feature about Sydney is, that there is a thoroughly untidy look about the place. It is in a perennial state of deshabille; whereas Melbourne nearly always has its dress-clothes on. In keeping with the wretched pavements, the muddy crossings, and the dust, are the clothes of the people you meet in the streets. Nobody seems to care much how they dress, and without being exactly countrified in their apparel, the Sydneyites ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Fort Erie on the memorable 13th of October, 1812. At daybreak, having returned with my escort as visiting rounds, after a march of about six miles in muddy roads through the forests, and about to refresh the inward man, after my fatiguing trudge, I heard a booming of distant artillery, very ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... of the balance at his banker's—how is he to introduce the ideal element which must, in some degree, be present in all genuine art? What precisely is meant by 'ideal' is a question which for the moment I pretermit. Anyhow a mere photographic reproduction of this muddy, money-making, bread-and-butter-eating world would be intolerable. At the very lowest, some effort must be made at least to select the most promising materials, and to strain out the coarse or the simply prosaic ingredients. Various ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... in relief against the muddy background, his features dimly lighted by the ray from the galley lamp, wisps of fog eddying about his gray head and beard, his features wild and passion-working. And he cursed the Fire Mountain. It was unreal, unearthly, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... river. One of his officers tells us that the river was so wide at this point that if a man on the other side stood still, it could not be known whether he were a man or not; that the river was of great depth, and of a strong current; and that the water was always muddy. ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... all this before, but to Simon it was a marvel of beauty. In England the streets were muddy, and a yellow fog hung over London, and yet in forty-eight hours we were beneath sunny skies, we were breathing a comparatively ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... wagons began to move into Richmond over the mud-cut roads. Every hospital was filled. The empty wagons rolled back in haste over the cobble stones and out on the muddy ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... too; good-night, dear," she said, and turned to the door, her torn and muddy wedding-dress dragging after her ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... Joe, into whose head an idea had just popped. "I'm going to drive all the fish out of the little pools and muddy the water all up. Then we'll see how many fish he will get! Just you watch me ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... down her bowls, looked at the two stamps, and then at the boy. She was a woman of experience and discernment She saw the muddy, tattered clothes. She read the look of desire ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... space several yards square, where the entire surface of the shale was irregular and jagged, owing to the number of the footsteps, not one of which could be distinctly traced, as when a flock of sheep have passed over a muddy road; but on withdrawing from this area, the confusion gradually ceased, and the tracks became more and more distinct.'[6] Professor Hitchcock had, up to that time, observed footprints of thirty species of birds on these surfaces. The formation, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... idee that Walworth is about the loveliest place in the world. But it ain't, Mr Jack, you may believe me, it really ain't, not even when the sun shines; while when it don't, and it happens to be a bit muddy, or it rains, or there's a fog, it's—well, I don't think there's anything short of a photo to show what it really is like, and one of them wouldn't do it credit. But this isn't Walworth, sir, and the next thing I want to do is to go ashore and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... one end of the island, at a point where the bushes were still two feet under water. The evidences of the flood were on every hand, and the water was muddy and filled with ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... himself quite up to the mark, and was ashamed of seeming afraid of her. He went into the stable, and abused the groom; into the kitchen, and swore at the maid; and then into the garden. It was a nasty, cold, February day, and he walked up and down the damp muddy walks till he was too tired and cold to walk longer, and then turned into the parlour, and remained with his back to the fire, till the man came in to lay the cloth, thinking on the one subject that occupied all his mind—occasionally grinding his teeth, and ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... wood-craft, and called my attention to many beauties which would have otherwise escaped me. But soon his whole attention was required to guide the restive mule through a labyrinth of stumps and ruts and horrible muddy holes, which he called "hog wallows;" my own endeavors were addressed to "holding on," and devising means to ease the horrible joltings which racked me from head to foot. After riding about two miles we came to a small clearing, and were informed that the road for ten miles was "tolerbal ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... thickliest with gore, Of some stray bomber that belonged to none, But none more fierce or flung a fairer bomb, Who ran unscathed the gamut of the Somme And followed Freyberg up the Beaucourt mile With uncouth cries and streaming muddy hair; But after, when they sought his name and style And would have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar's wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battleston car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... built on an island, one kilometer and a half long, extending from north to southeast, and varying in width at different points from two to six or seven hundred metres. Its height above the sea-level is about sixty feet. This little island is composed entirely of glacial muddy deposit, containing scratched pebbles mixed with larger boulders or blocks, and covered also with a considerable number of boulders of divers forms and dimensions. At East Boston you cannot see ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... just blackened his own boots (he did not charge himself anything—he only did it so as to have the air of being busy), his dog came running up to him from the muddy street, and accidentally put his dirty paw on his master's bright boots. The man, who was of an amiable disposition, did not scold much, but as he was brushing off the mud ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... intervals of three or four feet, and upon these supports thin "rails," likewise of wood, were laid lengthwise. So effectually did this arrangement reduce friction that a single horse could now draw a great wagon filled with coal—an operation which two or three teams, lunging over muddy roads, formerly had great difficulty in performing. In order to lengthen the life of the road, a thin sheeting of iron was presently laid upon the wooden rail. The next improvement was an attempt to increase the durability of the wagons ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... here," he said to Adam Colfax, and the scout nodded. All the boats anchored, and the divers dropped silently into the muddy stream. Henry watched eagerly, and in a minute or so they came up sputtering. Their hands had touched nothing but the bottom. Adam Colfax and Major Braithwaite looked disappointed, but both Henry and the scout insisted that it was the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a domestic scene that you might witness in any of the old towns of Holland to this day. The insides and outsides of the houses are still scrubbed with soap and water; rows of clogs stand outside the front doors on muddy days; the women wear the same bright coloured gowns fully gathered round the waist, with the cleanest of white aprons; their faces are placid and unruffled as they pursue the even tenour ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... is in a similar position to the good grape brandy which Victorians produce, and which drinkers of some imported stuff (described as one part cognac and three parts silent spirit) fail to recognise as real brandy. If coffee is not muddy and thick and does not possess a mawkish twang of liquorice, it is suspected. The delicate aromatic flavour, the fragrant odour, the genial and stimulant effects are now almost unknown, except in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... among the stars. Every new planet, or subplanet, or sun or blasted asteroid seemed to call for some revision of known laws. Sometimes an entirely new co-ordinate system had to be resolved. Oh, science was easy, a veritable snap, while man crawled around on the muddy bottom of his ocean of air and concluded that throughout all the universe things must conform to his then notion of what they must be. As ignorant as a damned halibut must be of the works and ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... must life always be like this? I could die—indeed, I would willingly jump into this cold and muddy river now, if by so doing I could stick a stiff dead hand through all these things—into the future; a dead commanding hand insisting with a silent irresistible gesture that this waste and failure of life should cease, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... must understand, moments of real liking for this outrageous little man and streaks of an absurd maternal tenderness for him. They had been too close together to avoid that. She had a woman's affection of ownership too, and disliked to see him despised or bettered or untidy; even those ridiculous muddy hands had given her a twinge ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of fire roused the neighboring inhabitants, and they rushed out through the unpaved muddy streets, toward the blazing building. As they approached it, they saw, to their amazement, in the red light of the flames, a band of negroes standing in front, armed with guns and long knives. Before the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... near her, with one in particular, a lady of enormous girth, whose achievements in eating and drinking at meals had seemed to him amazing. Almost all the middle-aged women in the hotel were too fat, and had lost their youth thereby, prematurely. Must the fairy herself—Euphrosyne—come to such a muddy vesture in the end? Twenty ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... break of a mesh. He had given his word—and in justice to Doggie, be it said that he held his word sacred—he had given his word to join the Army if he should be passed by Murdoch. He had been passed—more than passed. He would have to join. He would have to fight. He would have to live in a muddy trench, sleep in mud, eat in mud, plough through mud, in the midst of falling shells and other instruments of death. And he would be an officer, with all kinds of strange and vulgar men under him, men like Chipmunk, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... red-tiled floor of the conservatory, lay an overturned watering-can, whose contents had formed a muddy puddle, in which were about a dozen broken pots just as they had been knocked down from the stand, the bulbs snapped, beautiful trusses of blossom shivered and crushed, and the whole display ruined by the gap made in ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... years, how dull was he, who having a read motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little moved, that his revenge all this while had seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness! and while he meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered the instance of some murderer, who seeing a murder on the stage, was by the mere force of the scene and resemblance ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The road from the post-office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... Rhone, which has been attributed to various causes, is due to the comparative purity of the water. The yellow and muddy stream, during its passage through the lake, is enabled to purge itself to a very great extent of the solid matter held in suspension—the glacial and other detritus—-and so, on leaving its vast natural filtering-bed, it flows out clear ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... follow the creeping body and the fascinatingly swinging bag indoors. But his one effort to enter the house,—with muddy paws,—by way of an open window, had been rebuked by the Lawgivers. He had been led to understand that really well-bred little dogs come in by way of the door; ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... was headlong," he said, "or the warrior would not have lost the frame and feathers that he valued so much. It fell then, before the storm, as the muddy and broken condition of the feathers shows that it was lying on the ground when the ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... trees on the banks of the Lake of Como. It appears that the place was not very vast, but I was unable to perceive its limits. Shortly before we turned into the park the rain had renewed itself, so that we were awkwardly wet and muddy; but, being near the house, my companion proposed to leave his card in a neighborly way. The house was most agreeable: it stood on a kind of terrace in the midst of a lawn and garden, and the terrace looked down on one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... manner, as in most of the lower classes. Audubon remarks that he often mistook the musk-rat (35. Fiber zibethicus, Audubon and Bachman, 'The Quadrupeds of North America,' 1846, p. 109.), whilst sitting on the banks of a muddy stream, for a clod of earth, so complete was the resemblance. The hare on her form is a familiar instance of concealment through colour; yet this principle partly fails in a closely-allied species, the rabbit, for when running to its burrow, it is made conspicuous ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... enemy might draw a great advantage; that for above the length of a front, or two or three hundred yards, there was no rampart, or even intrenchment, but only small ditches, in the low and marshy grounds next the river, which, however, were dry at low water, yet the bottom remained muddy and slimy. Towards the river, no rampart, no batteries, no parapet, on either side appeared, and on the land-side he observed some high ground within the distance of one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards of the town; in which condition, the colonel was told ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... front door bell and wondered what it might mean. The parlourmaid managed to whisper to her without attracting attention. The servants had been frightened by the invasion of that wild girl in a muddy skirt and with wisps of damp hair sticking to her pale cheeks. But they had seen her before. This was not the first ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the picturesque personality from which the book emanated, Leaves of Grass bears a unique story margined on its pages. The sprawling types whose muddy imprint on the ill-proportioned pages made up the uncouth first edition of the book, were put together by the author's hands, and the sorry press work was his handiwork as well. The unusual preface and the twelve poems that followed he ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... opera house in the muddy street Jack goes home to his third floor back, or his chambers in the Albany, according to his caste, and wonders when the time will come when he will be able to support a wife. And Jill climbs on a penny 'bus, or steps into ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... life. Our city civilization is always in a process of decay, and would, in a few generations, become emasculated and effeminate were it not for the pure, crystal stream of country youth flowing steadily into and purifying the muddy, devitalized stream of city life. It would soon become so foul and degenerate as to threaten the physical and moral ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... they put the turtles in the corn crib until morning, for they didn't have enough empty water barrels for them to swim in. They then went into the house and got rid of their muddy clothes. ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... colour of the wilderness changes from muddy grey to deep black, and the sun soared up, white-hot, in a clear blue sky. The empty, level distances trembled in the heat, and seemed to be preparing for all sorts ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... language you have used over that Jonesville road in muddy times has been enough to chill the blood in my veins. Tell ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... known as the Diklat). They begin their course amidst the snows of the mountains of Armenia where Noah's Ark found a resting place and slowly they flow through the southern plain until they reach the muddy banks of the Persian gulf. They perform a very useful service. They turn the arid regions of western Asia into a ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... says "hard rowing," but it takes on more significance when one is reminded that those oars were 18 feet long, 5 inches through, and weighed about 20 pounds each; the boat was 30 feet long, a demasted schooner indeed, and rowing her through shallow muddy water, where the ground suction was excessive, made labour so heavy that 15 minute spells were all any one could do. We formed four relays, and all worked in turn all night through, arriving at Chipewyan. 4 A.M., blistered, sore, and ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... all their skill, the ball-cock in the cistern won't work, and when the water has been turned on an hour it overflows. The gutters and pipes to roof are not up, and the night before last a heavy flood of rain washed a quantity of muddy water into the back entrance, which flowed right across the kitchen into the back passage and larder, leaving a deposit of alluvial mud that would have charmed a geologist. However, we have stopped that for the future by a drain under the doorstep. The new breakfast-room ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... come about. It was arranged that in the spring of the following year there would be a double marriage, and that the day that saw Edward united to Helene would also see the union of Allan and Rose. Even now, preparations for the interesting event had been set on foot, and society in "Muddy Little York" was on the tip-toe of excitement over the ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... gave him a thrill. A battalion of the 128th, which he had ordered that afternoon to the very garrison at South La Tir that he had once commanded, was marching through the main avenue. Youths all, of twenty-one or two, they were in a muddy-grayish uniform which was the color of the plain as seen from the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... patronised him and asked him whether he found London was changed. As soon as possible he ended the interview with his step-brothers, and drove back to Ludgate Hill, where he dismissed his cab and walked across the muddy pavements of Smithfield, on his way back to the old school where his son was, a way which he had trodden many a time in his own early days. There was Cistercian Street, and the Red Cow of his youth; there was the quaint ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Josie's afternoon off it had set in for a cold spring drizzle, disagreeable enough to dampen the ardor of anybody but Josie O'Gorman, who scorned the excuse of dreary weather for the doleful dumps. Well protected with rubbers and raincoat, the girl paddled along the muddy road, busily going over in her mind a plan of action. She realized she must get from Mrs. Waller letters to her friends in Atlanta and they must be fully informed of the injustice that was being done her and take legal action for her release from this durance vile to which she had been subjected. ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... They had slept in fields, eaten berries, carrots dug from the earth by their hands; drunk from muddy pools, always with those beings behind them who had driven them at the point of their bayonets from their poor homes. Looking back, they had seen flames against the sky, heard screams for pity from those too ill ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... brought about by a contingency which no human power or judgment could have obviated, and at which, therefore, it would have been unreasonable, as well as useless, to repine. We lay here in rather less than five fathoms, on a muddy bottom, at the distance of one cable's length from the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... like Ruskin and many other of the nineteenth-century philosophic artists, idealised warfare. His warriors are not clad in khaki; they do not crouch behind muddy earthworks. They are of the days before the shrapnel shell and Maxim gun; they wear bright steel armour, wield the sword and lance, and by preference they ride on horseback. Indeed, they are of no time or country, unless of the house of Arthur ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... belongs to it, another mystery, more profound and graver floats amid these thick mists, perhaps the mystery of the creation itself! For was it not in stagnant and muddy water, amid the heavy humidity of moist land under the heat of the sun, that the first germ of life vibrated and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... warmed-over chile con carne, the half-cooked tortillas and the muddy coffee accounted for Slade's praises of Elsie as a cook. The Indian girl slunk and cowered under his curses. Whenever she passed him she cringed as if expectant of a blow. Lennon was doubly relieved when Slade's impatience to be off on the search ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... bay was no more than a quarter of a mile across, nor was there any sign of human presence other than that presented by the schooner and her crew. She was anchored mid-stream, and Ralph could perceive a sluggish, muddy current making towards an inlet that was partially concealed by several small islets, densely covered ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... was soon obviated. O'Regan obtained a large gimblet from a next door neighbour, and a hole being bored in one of the ends, the liquor began to flow very freely into the measure which was held to receive it. Higgins remarked that it looked very muddy, and on the pint being full, lifted it up to have another sup; but he had no sooner taken a gulp, than, to the dismay of O'Regan, he exclaimed, "Oh, Holy Paul, it's bilge!" mentioning a very unsavoury liquid. "Brother," says O'Regan, and snatching the measure from his partner, took a mouthful himself, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan |
