"Mess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... late at all times and all occasions: he was late for drill, he was late for mess, he was late for church; and when sent for he was always found in his room, either learning a part or writing a play. His one passion was theatricals; and wherever the regiment was stationed, he very soon discovered those who were disposed to get up ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... engineer, and he was to do—well, anything that came along. But he had the talent for engineering; I hadn't. I liked it, same as any boy does, but while I couldn't do a simple division sum without making a mess of it, he could do it in his head, and standing on his head for that matter. Whatever he tried, that he could do, whereas my range has always been quiet and limited. I liked reading. He never seemed to be in the house long enough to read ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Linguae Latinae, Compendiarius: Or, A Compendious Dictionary of the Latin Tongue, Mess. Knapton, ...
— The Annual Catalogue (1737) - Or, A New and Compleat List of All The New Books, New - Editions of Books, Pamphlets, &c. • J. Worrall
... coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers' mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury and exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain of it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then, touching ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Tung-chow and Pekin. I accompanied the infantry and artillery during the day's proceedings. We encamped after the battle, where we now are, among some trees. We sleep in tents, but we have a house where we mess. I am living with the General, as my establishment has not yet been brought up from Ho- see-woo. I rode over yesterday to see the Russian Minister, who, with his sixteen Cossacks, is occupying the village, or rather town, of Chin-kia-wan, which ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Canonists, say Pollock and Maitland (loc. cit.), "made a capricious mess of the marriage law." "Seldom," says Howard (op. cit., vol i, p. 340), "have mere theory and subtle quibbling had more disastrous consequences in practical life than in the case of the distinction between sponsalia de ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the robins? Oh, yes! oh, yes! I would get the cat now into a mess! Who was it put An old stocking-foot, Tied up with strings And such shabby things, On to the end of a sharp, slender pole, Dipped it in oil and set fire to the whole, And burnt all the way from here to the miller's ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... overtures to me, which I had declined, and that I could not bear the humiliation of going to her and confessing my ingratitude. When she came to spend the evening with us just after her return from Europe, her first remark to me had been: "Well, a pretty mess you and your Aunt Helen have made of it!" Beyond this she made no allusion to what had occurred, but she answered all my questions regarding her travels with the curtness of one who mistrusts the interest of ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... morasses of the Chickahominy, on the banks of the Antietam, at the foot of those fatal heights at Fredericksburg, in the wilderness of Chancellorsville, on the glorious ridge of Gettysburg. Comrades of the bivouac and the mess! ye are not forgotten in that sleep upon the fields where swept the infernal tide of battle, obliterating so much glorious life, leaving so much desolation! Even amid the roar of cannon, exulting in their might for destruction, amid the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bowl, and a bowl full of sliced apples, and a big board, and a rolling-pin, and eggs, and butter, and sugar, and cloves, and of course flour. We broke eggs and put them into a bowl—you can't think what a mess an egg makes when it misses the bowl. Then we stirred them up with flour and butter and things. I stirred until I was perfectly exhausted. No wonder a cook has usually a great thick arm. Then when it ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... a mess! You'll have to clear that out, old man. Your rabbit could never get through ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... youth and his comrade Wolfgang, to the astonishment of everybody at their impudence, they came to the archers' mess that night, as if nothing had happened; got their supper, partaking both of meat and drink most plentifully; fell asleep when their comrades began to describe the events of the day, and the admirable achievements of the unknown warrior; and turning into their hammocks, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we've been doing our best to get you out of this mess. Your remarks to O'Connell ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... of the Blank-blank Blankshires exclaimed (as all proper Colonels are expected to do), "Ha!" Carefully marking with a blue pencil a small paragraph on the front page of The Times, he threw it on the table among the attentive Mess and snorted. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... tale, he commanded his boy to lay his cloth, which done, he served them with fifteen messes of meat, having three dishes in a mess; in the which were all manner of venison, and dainty wild-fowl; and for wine there was no lack, as Italian wine, Hungarian wine, and Spanish wine; and when they were all made drunk, and that they had eaten ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... now, falsh Mess John, To the green leaf of the tree; It does not fit a mansworn man A naked woman ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... think that she had retired under the guns of the fort. He was soon undeceived. At ten minutes before nine, when the crew had hardly got seated at their breakfast, the Tennessee was reported approaching. The mess-gear was hustled aside, and the flag-ship at once got under way, as did the other vessels that had anchored, and signal was made to the monitors to destroy the ram and to the Monongahela, Lackawanna, and Ossipee to ram the enemy's principal vessel. These ships took ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... would let you, but that if Miss Blake objected she thought it would be best not to have Lu join. She said she made Lu's going entirely conditional on yours. So, you see, if you back out you'll not alone be breaking your promise, but you'll be breaking up the party and making a mess of it all round. I told Mrs. Hawes you were going, and Lu's heart is set on it. If she has to stay back now, at the last minute like this, it will disappoint her dreadfully, and I wouldn't blame her if she never ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... taste arising from decomposition, or no more flavor than starch. When intended to be used as food, this meal is stirred into boiling water: they put in as much as can be moistened, one man holding the vessel and the other stirring the porridge with all his might. This is the common mess of the country. Though hungry, we could just manage to swallow it with the aid of a little honey, which I shared with my men as long as it lasted. It is very unsavory (Scottice: wersh); and no matter how much one may eat, two hours afterward he is as hungry as ever. When less meal is employed, the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... declared Christina at last, examining the dreadful mess, and thinking of what her mother would do with it, "they're too dirty to use, Gavin. Never mind," she added comfortingly, "she won't ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... you look like!—without a sou, and dreaming of going into housekeeping! A nice mess I should make of it, by giving you my daughter! It's no use your insisting. You know that when I have said 'No,' nothing under the sun can ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... said the Jew, 'we have our regular contractors; a nice mess we should be in, if we had to buy every sack of barley ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... trap; so he will walk right into it. And then, if he has anything to eat there, I'll show him how to cook it woodsman fashion. I'll teach him how to dress a salmon; roast, boil, or bake. How to make a bee-hunter's mess; a new way to do his potatoes camp fashion; and how to dispense with kitchen-ranges, cabouses, or cooking-stoves. If I could only knock over some wild-ducks at the lake here, I'd show him a simple way of preparing them, that would make ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a mess of Boston baked beans. Besides this they had some soda biscuits which had been purchased from a woman in the town; some cheese; and a can of sardines; the whole to be topped off with a dish of prunes, cooked on the preceding ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... Fleet which keeps its silent watch on the seas, under Admiral Jellicoe, did not, we may be sure, relax any of its vigilance. One of the Christmas customs in the Navy is to decorate the mastheads with holly, mistletoe, or evergreens. The mess-room tables are also decorated, and the officers walk in procession through the messes, the Captain sampling the fare.—[Photos. ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... creature! You should have been a preacher. But look at that bin of potatoes— Grown in all singular shapes— Red and in clusters, like grapes, Or more like tomatoes. Those are Merinoes, I guess; Very prolific and cheap; They make an excellent mess For a cow, or a sheep, And are good for the table, they say, When ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... spitting a leaf on the pavement with his stick. "Afterward she had various adventures with various wealthy men, and always won. Her particularly spectacular adventure was posing, at the instigation of the Duke of Lotzen, as the wife of the Archduke Armand of Valeria; and she stirred up a mess of turmoil until the matter ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... in the mess-house, the officers, both his seniors in rank and those of his own age, vied with each other in pleasant speeches. But it ended just as it had done a year before; when all had greeted him, he was left standing alone in the doorway ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... may have them still, but you saw just now what an awful mess all my letters and papers are in," replied Celia, almost tearfully. "I always do get things like that into hopeless confusion—I never know what to destroy and what to keep, and they accumulate so. It would take hours upon hours to look for those ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... bad mess at the second line shanty-hospital where they were dumping the wounded as fast as they could bring them in. At first we were told that none were fit to be carried farther that night; and after we had done what we could we ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... fair price. I never thought much of Jacob buying poor Esau out for a mess of pottage. It was a mean trick. I will put ten thousand pounds at Bunder's in Threadneedle Street, London, for you. Draw it all if you find it just and necessary. The rental ought to determine the value. I want you to have Seat-Sandal, but I do not want you to steal it. However, my brother William ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Dagonet also became silent; and Ralph perceived that what annoyed him most was the fact of the "scandal's" not being one in any gentlemanly sense of the word. It was like some nasty business mess, about which Mr. Dagonet couldn't pretend to have an opinion, since such things didn't happen to men of his kind. That such a thing should have happened to his only grandson was probably the bitterest experience of his pleasantly uneventful life; and it added a touch of irony ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... village," she said, "and while I've been gone, someone has been through the house, opened every drawer, pulled out the contents and strewn them on the floor, and made a general mess that I've worked an hour to clear up. Have you noticed ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... behind when I go, and get white and round and beautiful, as you will see. The Gingerbread family have never been as foolish as some of the other cakes. Wedding is the worst; such extravagance in the way of wine and spice and fruit I never saw, and such a mess to eat when it's done! I don't wonder people get sick; serves 'em right." And Snap flung down a pan with such a bang ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... precious life-truths that so often fell from your lips. Not a word that you ever said about the sacredness of marriage has been forgotten. I believe with you that it is a little less than crime to marry when no love exists—that she who does so, sells her heart's birthright for some mess of pottage, sinks down from the pure level of noble womanhood, and traffics away her person, is henceforth meaner in quality if not ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... of cold water for the purpose of condensation; and the water so distilled escaped at the nipple of the gun-barrel, and was conducted into a bottle placed to receive it." The accompanying sketch is taken from a model which I made, with a soldier's mess-tin for a boiler, and a tin tube in the place of a gun barrel. The knob represents the breech; and the projection, through which the water is dropping, the nipple. I may remark that there is nothing ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... has a finer taste in fruit than could be distilled from many successive committees of the Horticultural Society, and he eats with a relishing gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and freely exercises his right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess of green peas; his all the mulberries I had fancied mine. But if he get also the lion's share of the raspberries, he is a great planter, and sows those wild ones in the woods, that solace the pedestrian and give a momentary calm even to the jaded victims of the White Hills. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... you please. I have warned you. Only I will tell you quite in confidence: at the time of that incident I very nearly got into the same damnable mess myself. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... knew—wa'n't it my business to know? I reckon he was off skylarking, and when he'd seen the mess he'd made, the trifling fool took to the woods. Well, he catches it when I ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... them the vote. Seeing what a mess the members of my own sex so often make of the job of trying to run the country, I don't anticipate that the Republic will go upon the shoals immediately after women begin voting and campaigning and running for office. At the helm of the ship of state we've put some pretty sad ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... too. But many lost the number of their mess, and I lost all my beauty. Just hand me the 'baccy, messmate; and, Jack, go for the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... arm," he said. "I was practising with a pistol yesterday, and it went off and the bullet grazed the skin, and the damned thing has begun bleeding again. I know you are a trained nurse, Tantine. Serge, who is with me, has tried and made a ridiculous mess of it, so I brought the bandage ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... almost incredible scene took place. It was at a regimental mess banquet, to which William, at that time only a captain, had invited Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, then on a visit at Berlin. During the course of the dinner, the conversation turned upon some projected reforms in ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... I was coming downstairs from giving my master his physic, I met Elizabeth Binfield with the water gruel in a basin which he had left. I said to the charwoman, Ann Emmet, "Dame, you used to be fond of water gruel; here is a very fine mess my master left last night, and I believe it will do you good." The woman soon sat down on a bench in the kitchen and ate some of it, I cannot ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Roland. And then, take these letters to the post. Put the desks straight first; what a mess you get them into. Is that ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... his way up from the ranks, and the men of his company thought that he thought, God help him, that he was too good for them, and made his life hell. Do you suppose I'd show my musket to men of my old mess, and have the girls I've danced with see me marching up and down a board walk with a gun on my shoulder? Do you see me going on errands for the men I've hazed, and showing them my socks and shirts at inspection so they can give me a good mark for being a clean and tidy soldier? ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Cross on the Carso, at Gorizia and among the Carnic and Julian Alps. Resisting sternly the temptation to embroider his theme with the distractions of scene and circumstance (of course he had to tell us of that dinner at the mess of an Alpine regiment where he met the man who had discovered the "Venus of Cyrene"), he keeps as closely as may be to his main subject, but cannot escape from infusing it with his own sense of colour and romance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... returned her smile. "Mine are not quite so bad as yours; for yours are really, my dear man, in a state I can't see through at all. But mine will do—for a mess." ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... spell o' worthy Mess John Quackleben's Flower of a Sweet Savour sawn on the Middenstead of this World," said Andrew, closing his book at my appearance, and putting his horn spectacles, by way of mark, at the place where he had ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bed and took stock of his position. "It doesn't seem to me," thought Johnny, "that I'm ever going to get out of this mess." Johnny, still muttering, unfastened his stays. "Thank God, that's off!" ejaculated Johnny piously, as he watched his form slowly expanding. "Suppose I'll be used to them before I've finished ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... bridle, made Diablo rear, took that cut on his shoulder, and threw him fair and square. Finest, coolest, headiest thing I ever seen done with a hoss in a pinch. And he saved your skin, Dunbar. You'd be a mess this minute, if it wasn't for Hunter! He threw Diablo and turned around and picked you up as if you was a baby and packed you over here. Then he went back—and you see what's ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... handbook on field tactics to guide him. There he splutters about, makes an ass of himself in various ways, and either hammers out some plan for getting at his job by many bitter failures, or subsides into the kind of man who sits in the mess-room with his feet on the stove, reading novels and smoking cigarettes—either learns to swim after a fashion ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... went through the place that would be the front hall when it was done, with the front stairs going up out of it; and some carpenters were working there now and there was a great mess. ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... into the Pullman affair, quite unwarrantedly, according to the corporation, which was comfortably out of the mess. And there were minor disputes over the injunctions against Debs, and a languid stirring of dead bones in the newspapers. Every one was tired of the affair and willing to let it drop, with its lesson for this party or that. Sommers, having nothing more ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... produce hash.[30] 'Bout kirk an' market eke their tales gae on; How Jock woo'd Jenny here to be his bride; An' there, how Marion, for a bastard son, Upo' the cutty-stool was forced to ride; The waefu' scauld o' our Mess John to bide. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... on—to a quiet country house in a town garden—the Headquarters Mess of the Intelligence Department. Here I find, among our kind hosts, men already known to me from my visit of the year before, men whose primary business it is to watch the enemy, who know where every German regiment and German Commander are, who through ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an officers' mess or have a mess of their own with similar service; they might provide their own horses which would be cared for with the other horses of the unit to which they were attached. They were to stay where they were put, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... about painting furniture, Adams. I have painted the whole of my bedroom at Blandings and am now engaged on the museum. You would be surprised at the fascination of it. It suddenly came back to me the other day that I had been inwardly longing to mess about with paints and things since I was a boy. They stopped me when I was a boy. I recollect my old father beating me with a walking stick—Tell me, Adams, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... called female Bohemians. They are going to settle the preliminaries of this party, and if you happen to be present they will invite you; not that they particularly care for your company, but because, as I said, you happen to be there. Only don't get yourself into a mess by tramping on any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Whoever supposes that Mess. Heber and Pond, or even Mr. John Cheney, were the first who published accounts of Horse-racing, will find himself much mistaken, for there lived others above a hundred years before them, who not only ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... others of ephemeral interest, was composed by Lockhart, to be sung at the mess of the Mid-Lothian Yeomanry, of which he was a member. Of the songs produced for these festive occasions, a collection for private circulation was printed in 1825, at the Ballantyne press, with the title, "Songs of the Edinburgh Troop," pp. 28. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... humor to-night," said he. "His wife's caught on to a little game he's been up to, and she's the only human being he's afraid of. She came in here, one night, and led him out by the ear. What a fool a man is to marry when there's a chance of running into a mess like that! But—you made a hit with him. Besides, he needs you. Your family—" Buck checked himself, feeling that drink was ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... getting just the same now as they did twenty years ago, when living was much cheaper. There ought to be a rise all round, and so there would be, if the Army, following example of other organised bodies of day labourers, were to strike; think I'll mention it at Mess; should begin at the top. Why shouldn't the Colonels and Generals assemble in their hundreds, march to Hyde Park, where H.R.H. would address them from a stoutly-made tub? Moral effect would be enormous; shall certainly mention it at Mess. Perhaps, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... arcade behind us. There was but one man,—a tall warrior, strayed aside from his band, perhaps, or bound upon a warpath of his own. The musket that he carried some English fool had sold him for a mess of pottage. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... head at this, for it was my own vanity that had led me into the mess. I could only fall back on ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... his work, the man turned back and took the bird to his children, who gave him a warm mess to eat and put him in a box by the fire, and when they came back from school he was much more comfortable than he had been since he had left the old woman's cottage. They were kind little children, and wanted to play with him; but, alas! the poor ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... and within the same twenty-four hours you may fairly surmise that some green mountain volunteer, on the wrong side of the Rio Grande, has lighted a pine-knot, and is reading one of the Marlborough articles to his mess, with extemporary paralellisms in favour of General Taylor, which the shade of the great Churchill must not venture to overhear. Swinging in his hammock, the midshipman holds Blackwood to the smoky lamp of the orlop, as he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... despatched a body of cavalry into the plain. Their orders were to gallop down and scour the plain, making a clean sweep (19) of all they could lay their hands on. Thibron, as it befell, had just finished breakfast, and was returning to the mess with Thersander the flute-player. The latter was not only a good flute-player, but, as affecting Lacedaemonian manners, laid claim to personal prowess. Struthas, then, seeing the disorderly advance of the supports and the paucity of the vanguard, appeared suddenly at the head of a large body ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... garrison mess table that evening the occurrences of the day naturally formed a chief topic of conversation; and a variety of conjectures, more or less probable, regarding the American lady, were hazarded by the officers, to some of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... he said disgustedly. "Was any one ever in such an infernal mess? Can't you get back to your ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... night it occurred to me that we should be in a mess if after exploration and information from the natives we could find no path, and when I mentioned this, Lieutenant Garforth suggested that we should proceed to Kilwa, so at 5 A.M. I went up to the dhow with ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... and the gun-barrel, which serves as the coil, leads from this tin through the tub, which is kept filled with cracked ice. A fire is then built under the tin, and as the vapour rises from the heated mess it is condensed in the gun-barrel by the ice in the tub, and the liquor comes out at the end of the gun barrel drop by drop, and is caught in a drinking cup. This process is necessarily slow, and it took a long time to ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... wished to gain West European sympathy for their country, involved in potential bondage to Russia since the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (1833), and recently afflicted by Ibrahim Pasha's victory at Nizib; and they looked to Great Britain to get them out of the Syrian mess. Partly also Abdul Mejid had been influenced by enthusiasts, who set more store by ideas or the phrases in which they were expressed, than by the evidence of facts. There were then, as since, 'young men in a hurry' among the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... Dinner was a mess, as usual, consisting of fried mullet and rice, and a sort of chowder in which the only ingredients I recognised were sections ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... upon Asnieres. What matters! quick, eighty pens and eighty inkstands. To work, men of letters; painters and shoemakers, to work! Franckel, who is Hungarian; Napoleon Gaillard, who is a cobbler; Dombrowski, who is a Pole; and Billioray, who writes omelette with an h, will make perhaps rather a mess of it. But, thank heaven! We have amongst us Felix Pyat, the great dramatist; Pierre Denis, who has made such bad verses that he must write good prose; and lastly, Vermorel, the author of 'Ces Dames,' a little book illustrated with photographs for the use of schools, and 'Desperanza,' a ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... that the surface indications showed that there was a woman in there. Then he thought that the engine had probably struck a female, and tore her all to pieces, and of course he knew that the company would expect him to bring home enough for a mess, or a funeral. Spitting on his hands he called a brakeman with a transom hook out of the sleeper, to fish with, they rolled up their trousers and waded in, after telling a porter to bring a blanket to put the pieces in. The brakeman got there first and took hold of one foot, when ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... meaning to lie there, it being late, and he not being at home, I walked to him to my Lord Bruncker's, and there staid a while, they being at tables; and so by and by parted, and walked to his house; and, after a mess of good broth, to bed, in great pleasure, his company being ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Julian Calendar). This may be true or not, but the ancient Chinese certainly seem to have divided the circle into 365 degrees. To learn the length of the year needed only patient observation—a characteristic of the Chinese; but many younger nations got into a terrible mess with their calendar from ignorance ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... of which we knew nought. There was a monastery, too, at Milan, full of good brethren, outside the city walls, under the tutelage of Ambrosius, and we knew nothing of it. He went on still speaking, and we listened intently; and it befell that he told us how, I know not when, he and three of his mess companions at Treves, while the emperor was engaged in an afternoon spectacle in the circus, went out for a walk in the gardens round the walls; and as they walked there in pairs, one with him alone, and the two others by themselves, they parted. And those two, straying about, burst ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... BEN. Mess, that's true; marry! I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you say. Well, and how? I have a many questions to ask you. Well, you ben't married ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... at Porthleah, like a wise man, and sat watching Phoby Geen like a cat before a mousehole. Phoby had turned up at the Cove in the Nonesuch on the fourth day after the lugger was lost, and at once began crying out, as innocent as you please, upon the mess that Dan'l had made through his wrongheadedness. Also the crew of the Nonesuch couldn't make out where the plan had broken down. But Tummels, piecing their information with what Dr. Chegwidden had told ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... once, in her quickest, briskest tone, "I've got something to tell you. Laura Lathrop came over to Dicky's house the other day while the W.M.N.T.'s were meeting and she told us the greatest mess of stuff about you. I told her I was coming right over and tell you about it and she said, 'All right, you can.' Laura said that you said that last summer you had a birthday party that you invited five hundred children to. She said that you said that you had a May-pole ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... we 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 ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... not going to—to turn into a bat and fly away. I'm just a poor devil of a doctor who's gotten himself into one unholy mess." There was no reason, he was thinking, to take out his own misery and despair by shouting at this poor kid. God knew what she'd been through with his irresponsible other self—Forth had admitted that that damned ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... sword in it, of course, and the pommel hit me right on the nose; and before I could get over it, he was off along with the rest, full gallop, and I was sitting on the ground, thinking about my mother and what a mess I was in, and my horse looking as if he was ashamed of me, as I was of myself. I wonder he didn't gallop off, too; but I s'pose he thought he wouldn't ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... stitches whole, 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 ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... Street fills me with a conviction that if I don't make haste I shall be jeopardising the national welfare. The Strand utterly unmans me, leaving me with only two sensations: (1) a regret that I have made such a mess of my life; (2) a craving for alcohol. These are but a few instances. If I had time, I could show you that every street known to me in London has a definite effect on me, and that no two streets have exactly the same effect. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Thistle had often told at the mess table; and I remarked with some pain in a future part of the voyage, that every time my boat's crew went to embark with me in the Lady Nelson, there was some degree of apprehension amongst them that the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... you—in suit of white. Old white man to Wilderness Plantation. Parish old man name. Treat his wife bad. Come to house, ain't crack. Come right in suit of white. Drag him out—right to Woodstock there where Mr. Dan get shoot. Put a beating on that white man there till he mess up! Oman never gone back ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... fact is I've won a First Prize! 'Twas not that I have any drag, Nor excel in the officers' eyes. It was close, but I won, never fear; My home training helped me, I guess; I beat every man about here; At being the first in, at "Mess"! ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... as she heard John's step under the alley window and then at the door. She turned, with an iron spoon in one hand and a candlestick in the other, from the little old stove with two pot-holes, where she had been stirring some mess in a tin pan. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... prosecuted without being condemned," he gasped. "You will use your influence, I know, and you will get me out of this mess. I shall be grateful to you for ever, and will do anything you like! But don't leave me, it would ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... fruits of our industry would be lost, and our own safety would be imperilled. You will readily see that, of course. 'Tis a pity so many will have to die at once, for it will mess up the place very badly, and I always endeavor to be neat. But why, why did so many of you come at once? Couldn't you have come, say two at a time? It would have made so ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... "To make a mess of the whole affair!" he growled. "No, sir; the die is cast. Eleanore Leavenworth knows the one point which fixes this crime upon her cousin, and she must tell us that point or suffer the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... exclaimed. "The blast was from in front of us, he didn't double back! Must be another colony near our own, and he stumbled out of this overgrown mess and right into it. There was ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... father," she said, setting down a basket. Then taking up a spoon that lay on the ground, she stirred the mess that was simmering over the fire. The dog lay ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... 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 own ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... with all the pomp and ceremony a guard should have, so that our guard mounting is really as impressive as that at Buckingham Palace, and it keeps the men smart. Tea time, visitors from other companies; afterwards the others go shopping. I am cook and mess president of our little lot, and I give them a housekeeping list of what to purchase. Then having nothing else to do I sit down and write the largest and most drivelling letter I have ever written in my life, I call it No. ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... three messes each for dinner, and one for supper. That beside these thirteen poor, a hundred other poor, of modest behaviour and the most indigent that can be found, shall be received daily at dinner-time, and shall have each a loaf of coarser bread, one mess, and a proper allowance of beer, with leave to carry away with them whatever remains of their meat and drink after dinner." They were to dine in a hall appointed for the purpose, and called Hundred Mennes Hall, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... tired, subsiding into mutterings. He got breakfast, bringing to her some of the mess he cooked. She ate it, though it nauseated her, determining that she would endeavor to keep her strength ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... poor pig dealer, and this morning I left the village to sell (saving your presence) four pigs, and between dues and cribbings they got out of me little less than the worth of them. As I was returning to my village I fell in on the road with this good dame, and the devil who makes a coil and a mess out of everything, yoked us together. I paid her fairly, but she not contented laid hold of me and never let go until she brought me here; she says I forced her, but she lies by the oath I swear or am ready to swear; and this is the whole truth and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... so satisfactory to Dick Turpin, that, upon tasting a mouthful, he absolutely shed tears of delight. The dish was indeed the triumph of gipsy cookery; and so sedulously did Dick apply himself to his mess, and so complete was his abstraction, that he perceived not he was left alone. It was only when about to wash down the last drumstick of the last fowl with a can of excellent ale that he ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... blind astray, does she make her sport To brazen and chance it out? I watched when her captains passed: She were better captainless. Men in the cabin, before the mast, But some were reckless and some aghast, And some sat gorged at mess. ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... 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 and ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... don't believe there is or has been another fellow! I'd bet my bottom dollar that you two young folks care for each other. You've gone and made a mess of things between you, and damned if I don't think ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... it hold for some of us others, I wonder," said one of the dinner-guests, a moody-looking civilian, of Semitic features, whose evening clothes made a dull contrast with the mess-dress of the Staff officers gathered about their Chief's table in his quarters at Nixey's Hotel on the Market Square, "before ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... "Hank, you're a coward. I've got a mind to kick you. You got me into this blamed mess, and now you want to craw-fish. You jest tech one of these 'ere fastenings, and I'll lay you out flat of your back afore ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... nature or in human experience to warrant hope of pardon. Nature never forgives a trespass against her law. The opportunity that is lost does not return. The mistake by which a life is marred cannot be undone. The constitution shattered by intemperance cannot be restored, the birthright bartered for a mess of pottage is gone for ever, and no bitter tears or supplications have power to bring it back. Whether we repent of it or not, every sin we commit leaves its dark mark behind, and in this life at least the stain can never be effaced; and yet we believe in the ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... sounded reveille Jeb fell out with the others. This taste of the military was decidedly acceptable to him. He regretted that his unit did not fall in for mess, as the Canadian veterans, for instance. He regretted keenly his ignorance of army matters, the manual, even, and the habit that came with constant discipline of keeping oneself smart, straight, clear-eyed and ever courteous—as a good soldier is. There were several pretty nurses ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... been properly cared for all this time. The gunner's wife lived on board, and, being a respectable woman, Cuffe had the delicacy to send the poor girl forward to the state-room and mess of this woman. Her uncle was provided for near by, and, as neither was considered in any degree criminal, it was the intention to put them ashore as soon as it was certain that no information concerning ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... completed, and the men immediately proceeded to make the most infernal uproar, hammering on metal and shouting for food and brandy. A huge cauldron full of beef and potatoes was dragged in. Pelle was told off to join a mess of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and so—so hard, I'm afraid I'm making a mess of it," she whispered to herself anxiously, as she hurried down-stairs ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Emily, you've got us in a pretty mess! It so happened I was looking for a letter myself," he snapped, as he jerked himself to his feet. "See here, Teddy, where did that rascally little dog go to? Come, let's go find Rover," he finished, stooping and lifting the small boy to his shoulder. The next moment ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... Nonsense is all the Hurry of this World to those who are above it? In these, or not much wiser Thoughts, I had like to have lost my Place at the Chop-House, where every Man according to the natural Bashfulness or Sullenness of our Nation, eats in a publick Room a Mess of Broth, or Chop of Meat, in dumb Silence, as if they had no pretence to speak to each other on the Foot of being Men, except they were of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Wally repeated. "Aunts haven't much sympathy, you know. They don't like mess, and I was no end messy. We won't talk about it, I think, thank you." Wally rolled over on his back, produced an apple and ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... and blew all night, so stiff that at two miles' distance, which I kept by guess, I could smell the stink of swamps. I ought to say here that, before starting, I had climbed aboard the Mary Pynsent and provisioned the boat. The niggers had left a few stores, but the mess on board ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... may go on in and mess 'em up." But there was no whine of a glancing bullet that followed his shot; the softened wall had ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... Our mess wished to celebrate Christmas by a dinner at which a few of our comrades might share the luxury of some canned vegetables and other stores we had brought from Ohio, and we sent a man with a foraging party that was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the wet mess of hair and red and flesh was old Shep, stone-dead. And as Saunderson pulled the body out, his face was working; for no man can lose in a crack the friend of a dozen years, and ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the clash of glasses and the bubbling of wine, the excited and voluble Gascons were discussing in one breath the war, the council, the court, the ladies, and whatever gay topic was tossed from end to end of the crowded mess-table. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is Leslie's right, I should say. No doubt he will use it. As far as I can see, there is only one way by which you can make a decent exit from the mess you're in." ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Jim a candidate for a job. It didn't take him long to decide that the Lord would attend to keeping up the visible supply of poetry, and that he had better turn his attention to the stocks of mess pork. Next morning he was laying for me with a letter of introduction when I got to the office, and when he found that I wouldn't have a private secretary at any price, he applied for every other ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the officers and they certainly gave no suggestion of men contemplating retreat, for the mess-hall in which dinner was served had been completed only that afternoon. It was of rough stones and cement, and the interior walls were covered with whitewash. The cement was not yet dry, nor, as John McCutcheon later discovered when he drew caricatures on it, neither was the whitewash. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... He made a mess of my service last night, but I suppose he was rattled, and then no one could be more disgusted than he, which is not a bad sign. His heart's all right, and he will work, but he's slow. He's undoubtedly slow. Those fellows ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... chuckled at the younger man's discomfiture. "But I got her story out of her, you bet! Nothing to it, though. One of my boys—Collins, it was—found her in that short, dark hall that runs between the Selim woman's bedroom and the kitchen. Sicker'n a pup she was; it was a mess. Said she'd—" ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... of the mess he had stirred up the more roundly Aldous cursed his imprudence. And this mess, as he viewed it in these cooler moments, was even less disturbing than the thought of what might have happened had he succeeded in ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... in problems. Juvenile delinquents, climbing crime and suicide rates, the loony-bins full of the balmy, unemployed, threat of war, spending all their money on armaments instead of things like schools. All the bloody mess of it. Why, a man from ...
— I'm a Stranger Here Myself • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... forecastle bulkhead is the small booby hatch, the only entrance to the men's mess deck in bad weather. Next comes the foremast, and between that and the fore hatch the galley and winch; on the port side of the fore hatch are stalls for four ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott |
