"Musty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... misty figure in a lap-robe. The rain streaked the mica lights in the side-curtains. A distant train whistled desolately across the sodden fields. The inside of the car smelled musty. The quiet was like a blanket over the ears. Claire was in a hazy drowse. She felt that she could ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... possess. Narrow, slit-like windows in perfect keeping with the architecture and the needs of the period in which it was built—if not with modern ideas of hygiene and health—kept the rooms dark and musty. When Nigel first entered the place through the great front door thrown open by the solemn-faced butler, who he learned had been kept on from his uncle's time, he felt as though he were entering his own tomb. When the door shut he shuddered ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... from old conservative England, and I had been among its most conservative people. I had caught something of its old musty-parchment ideas, and the cricket-like manners of Harriet Hosmer rather troubled me. It took some weeks for me to get over the impression of her madcap ways; ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Education must be direct and scientific. Train men for efficiency and prepare them for defense. Otherwise they will have no chance of making a living or of keeping what they make. Your classics are musty and rusty ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... silver, plate, furniture, goods and ornaments, as [6423]Weever calculates, and esteems them at the dissolution of abbeys, worth a million of gold. How many towns in every kingdom hath superstition enriched? What a deal of money by musty relics, images, idolatry, have their mass-priests engrossed, and what sums have they scraped by their other tricks! Loretto in Italy, Walsingham in England, in those days. Ubi omnia auro nitent, "where everything shines with gold," saith Erasmus, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... other door. A cool draft told him this was the cellar, and he listened intently, then flashing his light, went down the steps. A few moments' investigation showed him that there was no living person down there. The air was musty, and the cellar ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... decency's sake had become superfluous. He felt that "to be naked is to be so much nearer the being man than to go in livery." He wore no hat, no boots. Pyjama trousers of cotton composed his entire workaday costume; dungaree trousers and a musty coat his Court dress. Yet he was clean and glowing with health and cheerfulness; self-reliant, splendidly independent. Had he allowed his mind to dwell on clothing his independence would have been less. He might ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... expose human imperfections in order to rectify them, their methods have differed. Those moralists who have inveighed magisterially against man's vices generally have been "abandon'd to the ill-bred Teachers of Musty Morals in Schools, or to the sowr Pulpit-Orators." Those who, by "nipping Strokes of a Side-wind Satyr, have endeavour'd to tickle Men out of their Follies," have been welcomed and caressed by the very people who were most abused. Since self-love waves the application, satire, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... vermilion and blue. In the middle of the triangle formed by the streets and the garden was a round pool of jade water. Martin leaned back in his chair looking dreamily out through half-closed eyes, breathing deep now and then of the musty scent of Paris, that mingled with the melting freshness of the wild strawberries on ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... been sea-cuny and bravo, scholar and recluse. I have pored over hand-written pages of huge and musty tomes in the scholastic quietude and twilight of cliff-perched monasteries, while beneath on the lesser slopes, peasants still toiled beyond the end of day among the vines and olives and drove in from pastures the blatting goats and lowing kine; yes, and I have led shouting rabbles ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... cripple, sitting crouching in a corner of the room. It was all miserably desolate. The paper shields kept out the light of the sunbeams; and though the place was tolerably clean, it had a close, musty, disagreeable, shut-up smell. But all Daisy thought of at first was the cripple. She went ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... than his willingness to undergo severe mental drudgery in pursuit of knowledge concerning the old storied days which had enthralled his imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library, poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, tracing genealogies, and unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. By the time he was twenty-one he had made himself, almost unconsciously, an expert paleographer and antiquarian, whose assistance ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... "isn't it nice to find everything in such good condition? I remember after our last long trip it was really dreadful for a week or two—everything yellow and musty; mice and cockroaches camping in the library and bedrooms, and spiders everywhere. By the way, Sara, have you had ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... I'll look a little further. Mass, he is a little slave, if a be here; why here's nobody. All this goes well yet; but if the old trot should come for her pot?—ay, marry, there's the matter. But I care not; I'll face her out, and call her old rusty, dusty, musty, fusty, crusty firebrand, and worse than all that, and so face her out of her pot. But ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... insult our masters?" she screamed out in her lisping voice. "What is it to you that they took me in, brought me up, and gave me meat and drink? Can't you bear to see another's good fortune, eh? Who asked you to come here? You fusty, musty, black-faced villain with a moustache like a beetle's!" Here Pufka indicated with her thick short fingers what his moustache was like; while Nurse Vassilievna's toothless mouth was convulsed with laughter, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... good size, and smelled shut up and musty, as spare rooms in the country usually do. It was furnished with a bureau, washstand, and two chairs, each painted in a robin's egg blue with sprays of yellow roses. There were several pictures on the walls, their subjects religious ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I forsake My native wood for gloomy walls? The silver stream, the limpid lake, For musty ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... renewed, with hot sal soda water followed by a cold bath and a thorough drying. The drain pipe must not be overlooked, but given the same sal soda treatment, otherwise it becomes coated and a fruitful source of germs. If, after this has been done, a musty odor still clings about the refrigerator, remove the shelves and boil in the clothes boiler for twenty minutes. Pieces of charcoal placed in the corners of the refrigerator and frequently renewed will absorb much of the ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... happened to bring his young friend Boccaccio, the story teller, with him, so much the better. They were both men of their time, full of curiosity, willing to read everything once, digging in forgotten and musty libraries that they might find still another manuscript of Virgil or Ovid or Lucrece or any of the other old Latin poets. They were good Christians. Of course they were! Everyone was. But no need of going around with a long face and wearing ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... they be idle tales," said he; "though I doubt not, in former days, the place was infested by some unquiet spirit. But this good house of ours hath modern stuff too strong upon it. The smell of antiquity alone hath a savour delicate enough for your musty ghost." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... in the back rooms, and shafts of dusky light, preceded by hammerings and thumpings, began presently to band the inside of the house. Felicia stepped upon the painted floor of the bare hall, glanced up the narrow stairs, and then stood in the musty, half-lit emptiness of what she guessed to be the living-room, waiting for Ken. Kirk did not explore. He stood quite still beside his sister, sorting out sounds, analyzing smells. Ken came in, very dusty, rubbing ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Congressional Library now became my grandiose work-shop. All through the winter from nine till twelve in the morning and from two till six in the afternoon, I sat at a big table in a special room, turning the pages of musty books and yellowed newspapers, or dictating to a stenographer the story of the Reconstruction Period as it unfolded under my eyes. I was for the time entirely the historian, with little time to dream of the fictive material with ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... (it's queer) Used to patronise the seer And pay cash down for magic spell Perchance a Horoscope as well. Or open wide at special rate That musty tome the Book of Fate; Or seek the Philtre's subtle aid To win the hand of some fair maid. We mus'nt miss the Troubadours Who went forth on their singing tours, Twanging harps and trilling lays To maids of medieval days. And Oh! the right good merry ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... and Agnes should have got married and let Garvington get out of his troubles as best he could. That's what I should have done, as I'm not an aristocrat, and can't see the use of becoming the sacrifice for a musty, fusty old family. However, Agnes made her bargain and kept to it. She's all right, although other people may be not of ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... out through the musty curtains before I went to bed. But the whole world was dark, packed down in the thick mist. Once, in the direction of the open sea, I thought I saw the flicker ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... hall was filled with sombre shadows; the motionless air was heavy with a musty, choking odor. In the dimness a few tattered hangings were visible on the walls; a rope, with bits of crumbling evergreen clinging to it, trailed from above one of the low windows. The panelled double door of the ballroom was shut; no sound came ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... a desecration! They are going to sell one of the foundation stones of the Byrd family pride for this vulgar money they need for the doctor from Cincinnati. I can't bear to think about it, though I have never seen the ancestral stone, and it is only a few musty papers, kept in the vault at the Byrdsville County Bank. They are letters from George Washington and other generals to one of the Byrd ancestors, written during the Revolution about some of the great stratagems they wanted him to execute for them with his regiment, which was ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... till, at last, it is wholly silenced, and the man lives in this world, a stranger to its real life, deluded like the maniac who fancies he has attained his throne, while in reality he is on a bed of musty straw. Yet, if the voice finds a listener and servant the first time of speaking, it is encouraged to more and more clearness. Thus it was with me,—from no merit of mine, but because I had the good fortune to be free enough ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... be welcome to him in his present situation. He walked out upon the deck, intending to open it and test its contents. So he sat down, and, taking his knife, he pushed the cork in. Then he smelled the supposed liquor to see what it might be. There was only a musty odor. He looked in. The bottle appeared to be filled with paper. Then the whole truth flashed upon his mind. He struck the bottle upon the deck. It broke to atoms, and there lay a scroll of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... corpse lay, was scarcely used once in a year, and many of the neighbors had never before had occasion to enter it. The shabby, antiquated furniture looked cold and dreary from disuse, and the smell of camphor in the air hardly kept down the musty, mouldy odors which exhaled from the walls. The head and foot of the coffin rested on two chairs placed in the centre of the room; and several women, one of whom was Miss Betsy Lavender, conducted the visitors back and forth, as they ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... little old-fashioned garments were musty and faded. A frock of blue merino braided in an elaborate pattern in black lay on top. There was a cape to match, and a little cloth cap. Beside these lay a funny pair of leather boots with red tops—almost like a ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... comfortable chairs, flowers in a window-box, a table with a book or two and some magazines. Through a half-open door, an inner office showed—all very different from the picture her memory showed her of the musty, cumbered room in which her father had received his dwindling patients. As a child she had hated that room, hated the hideous charts of "people with their skins off," the ponderous books with their horrific and highly colored plates, the "patients' chair" with its clinging odor of plush and ether, ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... other comes, hungry for the bread which he takes and eats. I do not believe that he ever before had tasted such hard and bitter bread. The measure of barley kneaded with the straw, of which the bread, sourer than yeast, was made, had not cost more than five sous; and the bread was musty and as dry as bark. But hunger torments and whets his appetite, so that the bread tasted to him like sauce. For hunger is itself a well mixed and concocted sauce for any food. My lord Yvain soon ate the hermit's bread, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... a beggarly old huckster and kidnapper! Why, you penurious slicer of musty bacon—you iniquitous dealer in light weights—what respect are you entitled to from me? You know who I am—and you must bail me. Otherwise never expect, when the time comes, that I shall recognize you as a base relative, or ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... enjoyed playing cicerone in Winchester, knowing and loving the place as I do, if it hadn't been for Dick Burden's air of thinking such knowledge as mine quite the musty-fusty luggage of the old fogy. There's no use pretending it didn't rub ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... awaiting us in a private sitting-room, long, oak-beamed, spotlessly clean, and a trifle musty, with that faint but unmistakable mustiness which hangs about old rooms and old furniture. Tea was set out on one half of the oak dining-table. The china was of the old-fashioned white and gold order, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and looked around. The house was old, and comfortably sturdy. It gave him a sense of refuge, of having reached a safe haven at last. The house was over-warm, and there was a musty smell of over-aged furniture, old leather, and the pungence of mothballs. It seemed to generate a feeling of firm stability. Even the slightly stale air—there probably hadn't been a wide open window since the storm sashes were installed last autumn—provided a locked-in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... necessary requisites on her part, if it had been the will of the Lord. This had occasioned her to make some reflections, and then to reason upon those reflections; as for instance, that since her husband chose rather to devote himself to his studies, than to the duties of matrimony, to turn over musty old books, rather than attend to the attractions of beauty, and to gratify his own pleasures, rather than those of his wife, it might be permitted her to relieve some necessitous lover, in neighbourly charity, provided she ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... same grey sky that hung low outside his cell; the same snowfall that he could catch a glimpse of through the tiny space above his door was seen by her that moment in Doom; she must be taking the flavour of the sea as he could sometimes do in blessed moments even in this musty oubliette. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... hiding the end. In these passages hung the smoky perfume of incense; and from over tile-topped walls came the fragrance of roses and lemon blossoms, half choked with the melancholy scent of things old, musty and decayed. Beautiful pillars, brought perhaps from ruined Carthage, were set deeply in the whitewashed walls, looking sad and lumpy now that centuries of chalk-coats had thickened their graceful contours. But to compensate for loss of shape, they ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sighed when his carriage stopped opposite to the old hackney-coach, which Archibald had kept in attendance at the place where they had left it. While the coachman again bridled his lean cattle, which had been indulged with a bite of musty hay, the Duke cautioned Jeanie not to be too communicative to her landlady concerning what had passed. "There is," he said, "no use of speaking of matters till they are actually settled; and you may refer ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... care they are perfectly fresh-gathered when the weather is tolerably dry; for, if they are picked during very heavy rain, the ketchup from which they are made is liable to get musty, and will not keep long. Put a layer of them in a deep pan, sprinkle salt over them, and then another layer of mushrooms, and so on alternately. Let them remain for a few hours, when break them up with the hand; put them in a nice cool place for 3 days, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a famous smoker. Give me a cigar,—it will take away the musty odor of these ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sir Walter Scott, "that I am one of the Black Hussars of Literature who neither give nor take criticism." Tennyson resented any interference with his muse by writing the now nearly forgotten line about "Musty, crusty Christopher." Byron flew into a rhapsodical passion and wrote English Bards and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... and raised the lid. It contained a very great variety of articles, including a tolerably good suit of clothes, which I had never seen upon the person of the old man. I took these out, and discovered a little dress, musty and mildewed. It was made of fine material, and was elaborately ornamented. There was a complete suit, and ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... as he shut the door behind them: "certainly, Sir." And then, having placed the musty documents upon the shelf, whence they could be fetched down without difficulty on the slightest sign of a client, that ingenious youth, with singular confidence that nobody would be inconvenienced thereby, put a notice on the door to the effect that he would be back immediately, and adjourned to ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... good many more; they had, at all events, introduced a wholesome and thorough system of cleansing and cleaning throughout the house, that had been very welcome to the soul of Mrs. Eccles; but into the library they had not penetrated. The old bookshelves remained untouched; the old books, in their musty brown calf bindings, were undesecrated by profaning hands. All sorts of quaint chairs and bureaus, gathered together out of every other room in the house, had congregated here. The space over the mantelpiece was adorned by a splendid portrait by Vandyke, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... here and there absorbingly, convinced him that there were at least five thousand volumes in the cases, a magnificent private collection, considering that the owner was not a lawyer, and that these books were not dry and musty precedents from the courts of appeals and supreme. He was glad to see that some of his old friends were here, too, and that the shelves were not wholly given over to piracy. What a hobby to follow! What adventures all within thirty square feet! And a shiver passed over his spine as he saw ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... rarely disturbed them. "If Helen finds any pleasure in that musty old room," she said, one cold January morning, "I'm sure I'm glad. But she would be a great deal more sensible and cheerful if she'd sit up in the parlor with me, if she didn't do anything more than play patience. But then, Helen never was like ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... of the new philosophies which Rousseau had lately given to the world, and which was contributing so vastly to the mighty change that was impending. But within his soul there dwelt in that hour no such musty subject as the metaphysical dreams of old Rousseau. His mood inclined little to the "Discourses upon the Origin of Inequality" which his elbow hugged to his side. Rather was it a mood of song and joy and things of light, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... With such materials, let them, if they will, To prove at once their pleasantry and skill, 140 Build up a bard to war 'gainst Common Sense, By way of compliment to Providence; Let them, with Armstrong[336], taking leave of Sense, Read musty lectures on Benevolence, Or con the pages of his gaping Day, Where all his former fame was thrown away, Where all, but barren labour, was forgot, And the vain stiffness of a letter'd Scot; Let them, with ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has to be carried out and laid in the sun every day, with the forecast that it may be demolished at any moment. The confinement is dreadful. To sit and listen as if waiting for death in a horrible manner would drive me insane. I don't know what others do, but we read ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... classical themes, there is a sort of pervading ennui, or the forced appreciativeness of a gouty, disappointed man. The daughter of Jove to whom he dedicates his hymns too often is 'Adversity'. And classical reminiscences have, even with him, a dull musty tinge which recalls the antiquarian in his Cambridge college-rooms rather than the visitor to Florence and Rome. For one thing, his allusions are too many, and too transitory, to appear anything but artistic ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... neuroptera. He seeks for a true neuropter in the white ant before him, but its very form and habits summon up a swarm of true ants; and then the little wingless book louse (Atropos, Fig. 141) scampering irreverently over the musty pages of his Systema Naturae, reminds him of that closest friend of man—Pediculus vestimenti. Again, his studies lead him to that gorgeous inhabitant of the South, the butterfly-like Ascalaphus, with its resplendent wings, and slender, knobbed antennae so much like those of butterflies, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... people, entertained them, sent presents to their wives and children—we've done everything! And what have we had for it? Only a very moderate living, all the grapes we could eat, and a few bottles of musty old wine. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... in the darkness with an extraordinary effect of personal sorrow. This was not where happy people came to offer thanks; it was a refuge for the afflicted, a temporary harbour for the weary. They did not seem to pray; they sat relaxed, wrapped in the antique peace, the warm, musty smell of the building, sitting with the stillness of their desire to preserve this safety which was theirs only for a little while. Their dull clothes mixed with the shadows, the old oak, the worn stone, and the voice of the organ was like the voice of multitudes of sad souls. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... for his first taste of the musty and ancient savor of the law. He had hoped that morning to walk away free at evening, or at least to have met the worst that was to come, chancing it that Morgan failed to appear and give him a hand. But he saw the hours waste ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... said Mrs. Starling, "for you seem to me a goose. Cultivated! Who is cultivated, if you are not? Weren't you a whole year at school in Boston? I guess my gentleman hasn't been to a better place. And warn't you for ever reading those musty old books, that make you out of kilter for all my world. If you don't fit his neither, I'm sorry. Society indeed! There's no better society than the folks of Pleasant Valley. Don't you go and set yourself up; ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... him more than the manifestations of life itself. Whether it was that that afternoon in the study had awakened with sharper poignancy than ever before the remembrance of his youth, that some aspect of the room, with its musty books, its fire and the driving rain without, had awakened in him a forgotten memory of a day that had once held actual place in his life but had long since been lost, awakened it through the mere material agencies of the sense of smell and sight: or whether ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... urged, hope in his voice as he observed my face; "let me show you the interior. I brought the keys along. Of course, the rooms may seem a bit musty. No one has lived in it for—some time. It's the old Michell property; been in the family for a couple of hundred years. Last Michell is dead, now, and it's being sold for the benefit of some religious institute the old gentleman left it to. Trifle wet to walk over the land today! But I've a ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and thence a dirty little court, where a low arched door admitted them into a heterogeneous assemblage of everything musty, and dusty, and old, that could well be imagined. His verdict on the armour was satisfactory, and his companion at once concluded the purchase. As they were leaving the place, Cosmo's eye was attracted ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... estimation of the world which his father now rightly fills. Some time toward the end of June, they made a land-fall on the north-eastern coast of North America. The actual site of the land-fall will always be a matter of controversy unless some document is found among musty archives of Europe to solve the question to the satisfaction of the disputants, who wax hot over the claims of a point near Cape Chidley on the coast of Labrador, of Bonavista, on the east shore of Newfoundland, of Cape North, ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... there were any suspicions of unfair play buzzed about amongst the by-standers, you would not in the main be a gainer; for my dear, without character, what is even wealth, or all that wealth can bestow? I do not mean to trouble you with stale wise sayings, which young people hate; nor musty morality, which is seldom fit for use in the world, or which smells too much of books to be brought into good company. This is not my way of giving advice; but I only beg you to observe what actually passes before your eyes in the circle in which we live. Ladies of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... three weeks 60,000 or 70,000 gulden—and without much trouble, in complete security. The first week the ration-bread would be rather sweeter than usual, the second week rather bitterer, and the third week rather musty. But soldiers do not look narrowly at such things; ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... for there were a ponderous Latin Dictionary in Landor's handwriting, a curious old Italian and French Dictionary of 1692,—published at Paris, "per uso del Serenissimo Delfino,"—a Greek Grammar, and a delightfully rare and musty old Latin Grammar by Emmanuel Alvarus, the Jesuit, carefully annotated by Landor. Then, too, there was a valuable edition, in two volumes, of Annibal Caro's Italian translation of the AEneid, published at Paris in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... I was told to set about it at once. On turning to the doctor for the requisite materials, he told me he had none; there was not a fly-leaf, even in any of his books. So, after great search, a damp, musty volume, entitled "A History of the most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies," was produced, and its two remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a fellow ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... dark, musty place, with a row of old, tumble-down tenements each side, where poor wretches live all huddled up together, fifty in a house, eh? I was told I couldn't drive up it in a carriage, so I had to walk. Do ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... are rooted up, all the sweet and tender old flowers ruthlessly eradicated, to make way for a blazing parterre after the manner of the suburban villa—gay in the summer, in the spring a wilderness of clay, in the autumn a howling desert of musty evergreens.. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... is tabooed in the front room of the house. The "damp dignity" of the best-room has been well described: "Musty smells, stiffness, angles, absence of sunlight. What is there to talk about in a room dark as the Domdaniel, except where one crack in a reluctant shutter reveals a stand of wax flowers under glass, and a dimly descried hostess who evidently waits only your ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... with godlike showing To-day for each that sees May's magic overthrowing All musty memories In him whom May decrees To be love's own. He saith, 'I wear love's liveries ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... leaves the fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer, accessible, Mr Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. 'For that,' Mr Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... most common sufferer from excessive secretion of urine. The most common causes are musty feeds, such as hay, grain and shipped feeds. New oats, succulent feeds and acrid plants may sometimes cause it. In the fall of the year, when the season is changing from warm to cool weather and the horse eliminates less water from ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... that set the brain of France in a whirl. Hence the decrees of 16th November-15th December, which tear to pieces the old diplomacy, and apply to astonished Europe the gospel of Rousseau. In place of musty treaties there will be Social Contracts; instead of States there will be nations that will speak straight to one another's heart. They do speak: English Radical Clubs speak to the heart of France, the Convention; and Gregoire, President of that body, makes answer ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... is presented here is an old musty show, that hath lain this twelvemonth in the bottom of a coal-house amongst brooms and old shoes; an invention that we are ashamed of, and therefore we have promised the copies to the chandler to wrap ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... reality. How glorious it will be! I can see our little house now nestling among the hills, shaded by great spreading trees with flowers and vines and golden fruit all about it, rich plumaged birds and gorgeous butterflies. Oh! I can hardly wait. Who would live in a musty palace when one has within reach such a home, and that, too, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... she was fathoms deep in thought. The musty-smelling lift shot them up to the top floor; Beverley, stepping out ahead of Clo, had the air of having forgotten her existence. The girl's anxiety deepened. The best she could do was to guide her ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it all, anyhow?" demanded Dunk. "I'll spend four mortal years here, and come out with a noddle full of musty old Latin and Greek, go to work in dad's New York office and forget it all in six months. I might as well start forgetting ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... them which we who are poor and plain need at all envy, and that instead of the perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the barber shop—something that turns stale and musty ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to confess, commanding the keeper, to whose care he was committed, that he should permit no person whatever to have access to, or commune with him; that his sustenance should not exceed three ounces of musty bread, and a pint of water every second day; that he shall be allowed neither bed, pillow, nor coverlid. "Close up (said he) this window in his room with lime and stone, stop up the holes of the door with double mats: let him have ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... sex by insisting on its superior moral, not to say intellectual, capacity, and on the self-sufficient imbecility of man unless he has a woman always at his elbow to keep him tolerably straight and in his proper place—this, and not the musty fusty old bust we see in libraries, is the kind of person who I believe wrote the Odyssey. Of course in reality the work must be written by a man, because they say so at Oxford and Cambridge, and they know everything down in Oxford and Cambridge; but I venture to say that if the Odyssey were ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... kept preparing, according to what suited. If the raisins of wine were ready, that kind might be made; if gooseberries be cheap and plentiful, then gooseberry vinegar may be preferred; or if neither, then the sugar vinegar; so that the cask need not be left empty, or be liable to grow musty. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... little grimace. "One may as well describe things correctly, and that is chickory," he said. "Still, you may warm it if it pleases you, but I might point out that, indifferent as it is, preserved milk which has gone musty does not improve ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the extension and perfection of institutions similar to our own throughout the world." A passage which Hamilton's editor selects as the keynote of his system expresses well enough the spirit of the Revolution: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. I consider civil liberty, in a genuine, unadulterated sense, as the greatest of terrestrial ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... To things ye knew not of—were closely wed To musty laws lined out with wretched rule And compass vile; so that ye taught a school[7] Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit, Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Easy was the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... everything and penetrated every nook and cranny. The floors groaned dismally, and the scurrying feet of mice echoed through the walls. Cobwebs draped the windows, where the secret spinners had held high carnival, undisturbed. An indescribable musty odour almost stifled them and the chill dampness carried with it a sense of gloom ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... the front seat of the open wagon. Behind him, his mother and Jim sat stiffly, hand in hand. They gazed dully at the black thing ahead, and sobbed softly, now singly, now together. Both—himself as well—were dressed in complete black; old musty black, gotten out of the dark, hurriedly, and with the close smell of the closet still upon it. Even the horses conformed to the sober shade. They had been supplied by a neighbor on account of their ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the same subject was discoursed on, I defended music, and maintained that poetry was no upstart intruder, but that it was time out of mind admitted into the sacred games, and crowns were given to the best performer. Some straight imagined that I intended to produce some old musty stories, like the funeral solemnities of Oeolycus the Thessalian or of Amphidamas the Chalcidean, in which they say Homer and Hesiod contended for the prize. But passing by these instances as the common theme of every grammarian, as likewise their criticisms who, in the description of Patroclus's ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and at once,' quoth he. 'Have your largest double-couched chamber ready with your softest lavender-scented sheets, for we have had a weary ride and must rest. And hark ye, landlord, no palming off your stale, musty goods as fresh, or of your washy French wines for the true Hainault vintage. I would have you to understand that my friend here and I are men who meet with some consideration in the world, though we care not to speak our names to every underling. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Nay, my host; this is almost my first day of perfect freedom, and I only left London, and my uncle the king, a few days back. Dunstan has gone down to Glastonbury, for which the Saints be thanked, and I am released for a few days from poring over the musty old manuscripts to which ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... scenes and customs, the united wailing and lamentations of a houseful of women, awakening the echoes of the silent night, savor too much of things supernatural and unearthly not to jar unpleasantly on the senses; the custom is, however, on the eve of being relegated to the musty past ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... certainty had been sound. As for the book, it was clearly from the library of the old man's youth, kept and hidden away for some reason, when nearly everything else had been destroyed. Between the musty pages the accusing letter had lain forgotten for thirty years, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... better see all you can before it gets any darker. Take down as many books as you want. I don't care much for those fusty-musty old histories. I must ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... value to posterity. Who could appear to have lived more entirely in vain than some of the early heretics? They were burned or massacred, their writings extirpated, their memory anathematized, and their very names and existence left for seven or eight centuries in the obscurity of musty manuscripts—their history to be gathered, perhaps, only from the sentences by which they were condemned. Yet the memory of these men—men who resisted certain pretensions or certain dogmas of the Church in the very age in which the unanimous assent of Christendom was afterward claimed as having ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the drawing-room, three sofas, three tables, two looking-glasses, and a wheezy clock of tarnished enamel with engraved bronze hands; in the study, a table piled up with papers, and a bluish-coloured screen covered with pictures cut out of various works of last century; a bookcase full of musty books, spiders, and black dust; a puffy armchair; an Italian window; a sealed-up door into the garden.... Everything, in short, just as it always is. Mardary Apollonitch has a multitude of servants, all dressed ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... taboos—which possibly had their place and use in the past—can be tolerated no longer. We are bound to turn the searchlight of reason and science on a number of superstitions which still linger in the dark and musty places of the Churches and the Law courts. Modern inquiry has shown conclusively not only the foundational importance of sex in the evolution of each human being, but also the very great VARIETY of spontaneous manifestations in different individuals and the vital necessity that these should be ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Platoon wearily thrown their rifles and equipment into the musty barn that was allotted to them, than the Colonel told him that he would have to sleep with his men, the reason being that the owner of the farm, on the approach of the Germans, had hidden a large stock of brandy beneath the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... ye might call thick, but musty, these last few days. We were lookin' to pick up the Farallones." ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... to-night, I am sure. Didn't I bring home Prescott, thinking that she would be delighted to have me sit the evening with her and read so charming an author? But, at the very proposition, she flared up, and said she didn't want to hear my musty old histories. Humph! A nice way to make a man love his home. Better for her and me, too, I'm thinking, that she had listened to the history, and kept her husband ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... mountain. To him who loved the fresh, wind-swept world, the open sea with its smell of clean salt air, the wide deserts where the sunshine lay everywhere, this pleasure grove of a long dead royalty was become musty, foul, permeated with an aura of a great gilded tomb. His sensation was almost that of a drowning person or of one awaking from a trance to find himself shut in the narrow confines of a buried coffin. The air seemed heavy and impure; he fancied it still fetid with all the blood of sacrificial ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... scene between the late Earl and himself. Nothing had changed, except that now there were wires which gave out hissing sparks, electrical instruments invented since the earlier day; except that this man, gently dropping acids into the round white bottle upon a crystal which gave off musty fumes, was bolder, stronger, had more at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and musty here, with all this old tapestry and stuff about; I'll open the other window," she thought; and, noiselessly slipping from Amy's side, she threw on wrapper and slippers, lighted her candle and tried to unbolt the tall, diamond-paned lattice. It was rusty and would not yield, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... could see the stars through the roof. The old sheet-iron stove was badly rusted and broken. Most of the night I spent chopping wood, and I did not sleep at all. But I had a good rest by the stove, where I read a little from a musty pamphlet on palmistry that I found between the logs of the cabin. I always carry candles with me. When the wind is blowing, the wood damp, and the fingers numb, they are of inestimable value in kindling a fire. I do ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... the eighteen nineties, still too liable to be influenced by their ways, to be able to speak for posterity and to pronounce the final judgment upon those evil years. It is possible that the critics of the twenty-first century, as they turn over the musty pages of the Yellow Book, will ejaculate with feeling: "Good God, what a dull time these people must have had!" On the whole it is probable that this will be their verdict. They will detect the dullness ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... knowing no other city, no other bourne north of Tenth Street or west of Chelsea—silent, serene, drab-toned people, whose drawing-rooms were musty with what had been fragrance once, whose science, religion, interests, desires were the beliefs, interests and emotions of a century ago, their colourless existence and passive snobbishness affronted nobody who did not ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... conducted me was on the first floor, and was darkness itself when we entered. It was musty, too, and chill, as with the memory of a past funeral and the ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... where, if anywhere, unhealthy conditions exist, justifies this prolonged discussion, and before leaving the subject, ventilation in the cellar should receive a word of encouragement. Too many cellars are damper than need be, are musty and close, full of odors of decaying vegetables and rotting wood, entirely from lack of ventilation. The cellar windows are small and always, closed. The cellar door is seldom opened, and never with the idea of admitting ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden |
