"Broken-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... With difficulty we extricated ourselves and horses, and descending the mass of carcasses, we at last succeeded in reaching a few acres of clear ground. It was elevated a few feet above the water of the torrent, which ran through the ravine, and offered to our broken-down horses a magnificent pasture of sweet blue grass. But the poor things were too terrified and exhausted, and they stretched themselves down upon the ground, a painful spectacle of ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... discover my identity until now. It was right enough to be unearthed as Miss Melvyn, grand-daughter of Mrs Bossier of Caddagat, and great friend and intimate of the swell Beechams of Five-Bob Downs station. At Goulburn I was only the daughter of old Dick Melvyn, broken-down farmer-cockatoo, well known by reason of his sprees about the commonest pubs ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... and our destination. At the top the valley of the Moraca could be seen with a magnificent background of rugged mountains. A breakneck descent of two and a half hours, most of it on foot, brought us to the river, which was crossed by a picturesque and broken-down bridge. On a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... "porta aurea," with its graceful ornaments; the "porta ferrea" in its stern plainness, strangely crowned with its small campanile of later days perched on its top. Within the walls, besides the splendid buildings which still remain, besides the broken-down walls and chambers which formed the immediate dwelling-place of the founder, the main streets were lined with massive arcades, large ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... had in their turn grown into great schoolboys, so the old horse, like the other toys, was left forsaken in the big nursery at the top of the house. Broken-down furniture and old magazines had found their way there, together with travelling-trunks and portmanteaux. Spiders had spun their webs over the windows, and dust lay ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... and allowed Morrison to be named. At the same time I was a little provoked and out of patience and I added: "Colonel Morrison knows nothing about the subject whatever. If you are going to appoint broken-down politicians who have been defeated at home, as a sort of salve for the sores caused by their defeat, we might as ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... be interested—the public of the time were not—in the adjustment of Mavick and his wife to their new conditions. The broken-down, defeated bankrupt is no novelty in Wall Street, the man struggling to keep his foothold in the business of the Street, and descending lower and lower in the scale. The shrewd curbstone broker may climb to a seat in the Stock Exchange; quite as often a lord of the Board, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... warriors, their wars and loves, and did they then become mixed up with solar and celestial ideas? Were the fairy tales originally stories of the gods, and did they by popular and familiar treatment fall below the dignity of their original themes till they came to be a debased and broken-down mythology? or were they at first stories about beasts and about clever tricks, such as savages love to tell, and did they rise to something more dignified, till in some of them we may trace the stories of the gods? ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... assert that hunting-men, as a class, are temperate. No man can ride well across a difficult country who is not. We must, however, admit that the birds who have most fouled their own nest have been broken-down sportsmen, chiefly racing men, who have turned writers to turn a penny. These unfortunate people, with the fatal example of 'Noctes Ambrosianae' before them, fill up a page, whenever their memory ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... that it looked as though it had been constructed of human bodies. In the centre stood the helepolis covered with armour; and from time to time huge fragments broke off from it, like stones from a crumbling pyramid. Broad tracks made by the streams of lead might be distinguished on the walls. A broken-down wooden tower burned here and there, and the houses showed dimly like the stages of a ruined ampitheatre. Heavy fumes of smoke were rising, and rolling with them sparks which were lost ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... B, a thicker stratum of some 100,000, or 111/2 per cent., largely composed of shiftless, broken-down men, widows, deserted women, and their families, dependent upon casual earnings, less than 18s. per week, and most of them incapable of regular, effective work. Most of the social wreckage of city ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... was opened to them by an aged servant or "dresser", whose broken-down face and figure and black shabby coat and trousers contrasted queerly with the glittering interior of the great actress's dressing-room. It was fitted and filled with looking-glasses at every angle of refraction, so that they looked like the hundred ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... factor or landlord, at once entered upon possession, as the proper successors of its former occupants. They were a savage party, with a good deal of the true gipsy blood in them, but not without mixture of a broken-down class of apparently British descent; and one of their women was purely Irish. From what I had previously heard about gipsies, I was not prepared for a mixture of this kind; but I found it pretty general, and ascertained that at least ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Culture," pp. 313-16. After quoting three mythic descriptions found among the Karens, the Algonquins, and the Aztecs, Mr. Tylor remarks, "On the suggestion of this group of solar conceptions and that of Maui's death, we may perhaps explain as derived from a broken-down fancy of solar-myth, that famous episode of Greek legend, where the good ship Argo passed between the Symplegades, those two huge cliffs that opened and closed again ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... son of 'em," put in Dr. Surtaine, "staking a high-toned scientific reputation that the one sure, unfailing, reliable upbuilder for brain-workers, nervous folks, tired-out, or broken-down folks of any kind at all is"—here Dr. Surtaine paused, looked about his entranced audience, and delivered himself of his climax in a voice ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... conviction of the advantages of legislative change, for example, he considers to owe its origin much less to active and original intelligence, than to "the remote effect of words and notions derived from broken-down political theories." There are two great fountains of political theory in our country according to the author: Rousseau is one, and Bentham is the other. Current thought and speech Is infested by ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... only his other self—his sweeter and more hopeful self. He told her all that had passed. She stood up beside him, she held his head against her breast and let him sob away there the weight of grief and shame that almost choked him. Then she spoke bravely to the broken-down, weary man: ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... in years, and had become impatient and fretful. He left Paris for Vienna in 1780, having amassed considerable property. There, as an old, broken-down man, he listened to the young Mozart's new symphonies and operas, and applauded them with great zeal; for Gluck, though fiery and haughty in the extreme, was singularly generous in recognizing the merits ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... hair, hideous countenances, and thin legs, or men with their hands in their pockets, in threadbare coats and uncleaned shoes, their countenances pale and dejected, and mostly marked by intemperance. Many of them were young, but there were some of all ages—broken-down gentlemen, unprepared for colonial life, without energy or perseverance, unable and still oftener unwilling to work. The brothers had not to inquire who they were. Their history was ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... when relieved at eight bells, the captain said: "He is a broken-down wreck with a temporarily active conscience; but is not the man to buy or intimidate: he knows too much. However, we've found his weak point. If he gets snakes before we dock, his testimony is worthless. Fill him up ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... very earnestly as they walked through "Pauper Alley." Such was the title bestowed upon Leidesdorff street between California and Pine streets, where the "mudhens"—those bedraggled, wretched women speculators who still waited hungrily for scanty crumbs from Fortune's table—chatted with broken-down and shabby men in endless reminiscent gabble of great fortunes they had ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Palace, though surrounded by guards and other appurtenances of Royalty, is only inhabited by decayed servants of the Court, impoverished and broken-down scions of the Aristocracy, &c. to whom the royal generosity proffers a subsistence within its walls. I suppose about two-thirds of it are thus occupied, while the residue is thrown open at certain hours to the public. I spent two hours in wandering through this portion, consisting ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... bakehouse. There is a large open grate, oven, and chimney in the centre, and the chancel is a storehouse for logs. The upper part of the building has been converted into an upper storey and divided into bedrooms, which have broken-down ceilings. The roof is of thatch. Modern windows and a door have been inserted. It is a ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... If you keep away from the big manufacturing towns and their outskirts you may go by motor or railway through shire after shire in England and never see anything unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at-elbows, or ill-cared-for; no broken-down fences or stone walls; no heaps of rubbish or felled trees by the wayside; no ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the days to come, when it should be her delight to minister to his declining years—to be the consolation of his repentant soul. And now she had found him she knew these things could never be—that there was not one feeling of sympathy possible between her and that broken-down, dissipated-looking man of ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... a decided talent for drawing, had sat up late into the night to make her two sketches. One pictured the shanty boat as it was, dingy and dirty, with a broken-down cabin of two rooms at the stern. In the second drawing Madge's fairy wand, which was her gift of imagination, had quite transformed the ugly boat. The deck of the canal boat was about forty feet long, with a twelve-foot beam. To the two ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Twiggs, General Scott and staff with an escort of dragoons taking position in the center. Colonel Gadsden was appointed quartermaster general for Florida, and acting inspector general. When nine miles from Fort Drane information reached the army that some volunteers left in charge of a broken-down team had been attacked by the Indians and one man killed. On March 28th the column reached the Ouithlacoochee and encamped near Fort Izard. The river bank was occupied by sharpshooters and two pieces of artillery to protect the crossing. Foster Blodget, of the Richmond Blues of ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... suppose I'll find much to eat here, but a little in peace and safety is better than a feast with worry and danger," said she, swimming over to the brown, broken-down bulrushes on one side of the Smiling Pool and appearing to stand on her head as she plunged it under water and searched in the mud on the bottom for food. Peter Rabbit looked over at Jerry Muskrat sitting on the Big Rock, and Jerry ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... earth clasped hands in silent benedictions on that band of immigrants, some on foot, some on horseback, women and children, seventy-five in number, with the company's baggage, in ox-carts and wagons drawn by the fat, the broken-down, and the indifferent "hacks" of wondering, scowling Missouri, scattered all along the prairie road from Kansas City to Lawrence, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... about Belford, and released the wires, and in silence he went away into the night, a broken-down, crushed, and ruined man in the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... o'clock they reached the deserted hut near the old factory. A fire was made upon the hearth and a broken-down settle ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... occupant suddenly cautious in handling his matches. He had no wish to be burned alive in this underground trap. The place was apparently used as a sort of store-room. There was an old trunk in it, and some broken-down pieces of furniture. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Carey. He simply gives his name up to have a Mrs. put before it. By the way, our hostess is an interesting girl. I like the old man, too. It is refreshing to see a man who has opened his oyster after living among such a broken-down lot as we all are. I wish that he could give me a point or two; they say that he can make a million by turning over his hand. Think of it. There are a lot of fellows who can lose one by the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... this purpose, the inducements of high wages are held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor, a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to understand the case; each of these doctors shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... London, in the year 1770, in comparatively humble life,—his father being a dissipated and broken-down barrister, and his mother compelled by poverty to go upon the stage. But he had a wealthy relative who took the care of his education. In 1788 he entered Christ Church College, where he won the prize for the best Latin poem that Oxford had ever ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... The broken-down old woman lived in his rooms in something like comfort, and took pleasure in dusting and arranging his things. One day, when she was tidying the sitting room, her brother was startled by a sudden exclamation, almost a cry, which broke from his ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... dark fir avenue, the broken-down fence. . . . On the field where then the rye was in flower and the corncrakes were calling, now there were cows and hobbled horses. On the slope there were bright green patches of winter corn. A sober workaday feeling came over me and I felt ashamed of all I had said at the Voltchaninovs', ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... who comforted this helpless and broken-down wayfarer was only a low-born ignorant girl called Mary Anne Kepp—a girl who had waited upon the Captain during his residence in her mother's house, but of whom he had taken about as much notice as he had been wont to take ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... series, entitled "Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle." His first experiences as an inventor, coached by his father, who had spent his life in the experimental laboratory and workshop, was made possible by his purchase from Mr. Wakefield Damon, now one of his closest friends, of a broken-down motor cycle. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... stamping their feet. Sometimes men or women came on to the platform and sang. The occupants of the body of the hall were mostly sailors, but among whom were a considerable number of men, who seemed by their garb to be broken-down soldiers and adventurers. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the low basement door, I felt that those who entered here did indeed abandon hope. Inside, the evidences of the past grandeur were still more striking. What had once been a drawing-room was now the general assembly room of the resort. Broken-down chairs lined the walls, and the floor was generously sprinkled with sawdust. A huge pot-bellied stove occupied the centre of the room, and by it stood a box of sawdust plentifully discoloured ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... morning dawn his clothes were dry, and he presented to the eye an aspect similar to that which he wore when captured at Blois nearly a year before, of a dilapidated and broken-down soldier, for he had retained in prison the clothes he wore when captured; but they had become infinitely more dingy from the wear and tear of prison, and the soaking had ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... add to these the remnant of fashion that still lingered in his wardrobe—scarfs from the Burlington Arcade, scent from Bond Street, cracked patent-leather shoes and mended silk stockings—and it will be understood how May built something that did duty for an ideal out of this broken-down swell. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the horse-platforms from here. You must have them loaded up early.' The young man went away wondering what sort of broken-down waif this might be who talked like a gentleman and consorted with Greek muleteers. Dick felt unhappy. To outface an English officer is no small thing, but the bluff loses relish when one plays it from the utter dark, and stumbles up ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... the white wood of these has also received into itself the warm, deep colour. Upon two of these shelves there are accumulations of useless articles, a cracked glass vase, once the pride of the show window, when it was filled to overflowing with fine cut leaf, a broken-down samovar which has seen tea-service in many cities, from Kiew to Moscow, from Moscow to Vilna, from Vilna to Berlin, from Berlin to Munich; there are fragments of Russian lacquered wooden bowls, wrecked cigar-boxes, piles of dingy handbills left over from the ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... knew little or nothing, but had only a vague, "hearsay" idea of matters, which vigorous cross-questioning developed that they had mainly derived from letters or talks of Gleason's, or had got from Rallston himself, who, said they, was riled because he couldn't play off a lot of broken-down mustangs for sound horses on that board. No one could swear that he had seen Ray drink; no one could swear he had played any game for any stake; no one could testify to a single act of his that was in the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... was still on the threshold of her complete achievement. When she had been in Switzerland only a month, and her broken-down nerves were just beginning to respond to the change of air and scene, she received a call which changed the color of her future. Her caller represented the International Committee of the Red Cross Society. Miss Barton did not know what the Red Cross was, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... did not arrive until nearly midnight, and with it, besides three or four broken-down pagazis, came Bombay with the dolorous tale, that having put his load—consisting of the property tent, one large American axe, his two uniform coats, his shirts, beads and cloth, powder, pistol, and hatchet—on the ground, to go and assist the cart ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... me by the arm, one on each side, and carefully and kindly helped me ashore. I have often thought of that little incident. In those days a river deck-hand was not a saint, by any means. As a rule, he was a coarse, turbulent, and very profane man, but these two fellows saw that I was a little, broken-down boy-soldier, painfully hobbling along on a stick, and they took hold of me with their strong, brawny hands, and helped me off the boat with as much kindness and gentleness as if I had been the finest lady in ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... was certainly not wanting—she became an immediate success. Her photos, some taken alone, and some with Bromley Burnham, occupied a conspicuous place in all the weekly illustrateds, and in innumerable shop windows. People talked of her as they do of all actresses. Some said her father was a broken-down peer; some, a needy parson, and some, a policeman! Some said the Duke of Warminster was madly in love with her; others that Seaton Smyth, the notorious Cabinet Minister, was pining for a divorce on her behalf, and others, that ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... a specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I have visited. In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab, two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place. The Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... could have loved such a hollow, stony-hearted piece of crockery, Vedrine did not understand. Was it his title? But her family was as good as his. Was it the English cut of his clothes, the frock coat closely fitted to his broken-down shoulders, and the mud-coloured trousers that made so crude a bit of colour among the trees? One might almost think that the young villain, Paul, was right in his contemptuous remarks on woman's taste for what is low, for ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... up his hands towards heaven, "I am getting old. Oh, what a disgrace, not to be able to carry a handful of guavas! In my youth it would have taken three such loads as those to have made me fall down on my knees like a broken-down horse. Poor old fellow!" ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... for the Berkeley medal (which he afterwards gained) with an excellent, but at the same time broken-down, classical scholar, John Townsend Mills, and, besides instruction, he contrived to get a good deal of amusement out of his readings with his quaint teacher. He told me for instance that on one occasion he expressed his sympathy for Mills on ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... with God, and which I am sure He'll repay with compound interest when needed, if left orphans they would be in some sense provided for by the London Missionary Society, which, though it gives no pensions to any one, yet yearly raises funds and gives money to broken-down old missionaries, widows, and orphans. I don't suppose it is much or enough, but it is something. I say this that you may not be troubled should your ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... long entertained neither friend nor stranger, Cosmo and Aggie were busy—too busy to talk much—airing the linen, dusting the furniture, setting things tidy, and keeping up a roaring fire. For this purpose the remnants of an old broken-down cart, of which the axle was anciently greasy, had been fetched from the winter-store, and the wood and peats together, with a shovelful of coal to give the composition a little body, had made a glorious glow. But the heat had hardly yet begun to affect sensibly the general ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and found Stanley informed of the result of the meeting at the Duke of Wellington's in the morning, which was decisive on the question. The Duke, after his extraordinary speech in the House of Lords, when he mounted the old broken-down hobby of the Coronation Oath and cut a curvet that alarmed his friends and his enemies, assembled the Tories at Apsley House, and there, resuming his own good sense, though not very consistently, made them a speech, and told them that some such measure must be passed, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... hear the nonsense they have put into your head, my poor girl. No! I tell you it is of no use! It is my resolute purpose that not one farthing of mine shall go to patch up the broken-down Ormersfield property! The man is my enemy, and has sown dissension in my family from the first moment I connected myself with him. I'll never see my daughter his son's wife. I wonder he had the impudence to propose it! I shall think you lost to all feeling for your father, if you say another ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his head. "Judas Iscariot," he said, "betrayed the Lord God for thirty. Fanny McIver's scalp isn't worth a cent over twenty-five. You're just a broken-down drunk. It takes a bigger bluffer than you to make me put an insult on Christendom. Fifteen down. Ten when Fanny's had ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... much too big for it; a huge chest of drawers, of oak with brass fittings; a broken-down couch as big as a bed, covered with a dingy shawl, a man's greatcoat, a red flannel petticoat; a table cumbered with the remains of wretched meals never cleared away, and the poor cooking utensils of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... courage and hope. But soon after, on the 15th August, he writes again to the faithful Koerner about his kinsfolk in Swabia: "From the War we have not suffered so much; but all the more from the condition of my Father, who, broken-down under an obstinate and painful disease, is slowly wending towards death. How sad this fact is, thou ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... a good deal about the Crambrys, for he passed their so-called habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was only a month before that he had found them all sitting outside their broken-down fence, surrounded by decrepit chairs, sofas, tables, bedsteads, bits of ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... friendly chat. She disclosed the fact that her husband was going to visit a superannuated employee in the nunnery, which he usually did on the first of each month, and that she did not see what reason her husband had to support forever all his broken-down employees. At the first word, Hill listened breathlessly, and when Mrs. Bennett said that she had just left her husband dressing, he quickly, but quietly, left the room. In an instant he was opposite Bennett's house, and as soon as he noticed the bedroom light extinguished ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... beside the old woman Finola ever saw was a dumb dwarf who, mounted on a broken-down horse, came once a month to the hut, bringing with him a sack of corn for the old woman and Finola. Although he couldn't speak to her, Finola was always glad to see the dwarf and his old horse, and she used to ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... save that group of willow trees by the bank of the turbulent Maros—nothing except the stubble—stumps of maize and pumpkin and hemp, and rigid lines of broken-down stems of sunflowers, with drooping, dead leaves, and brown life still oozing out ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the correct spirit in a reporter was exemplified by an old broken-down, out-of-work morning newspaper man, who had not long before committed suicide at an hour in the day too late for the evening papers to get the sensational item. He had sent in to the paper for which he formerly ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... only living being he respects—the only being whose respect he covets; sent back to die in his loneliness, to perish like a friendless beast, as he is, to the funereal music of his own irrepressible snarling! To growl himself out of the world, like a broken-down old tiger in the jungle, after scaring away all possible peace and happiness and help with his senseless growls! Ugh! It is perfectly just, it is absolutely right and supremely horrible to think of! A fool to the ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... profitless labours, And tired of the night with its lack of repose, I am sick of myself, my surroundings, and neighbours, Especially Aryan Brothers and crows; O land of illusory hope for the needy, O centre of soldiering, thirst, and shikar, When a broken-down exile begins to get seedy, What a beast of a ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... an ancient, broken-down draft horse. Strange vicissitudes had brought her up into the mountains via the logging camp. She was kept, not because there was any real hauling to be done for Bill Campbell, but because, having got her for nothing, she reminded him of the bargain she ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... reached Hooven's place, two or three grimy frame buildings, infested with a swarm of dogs. A hog or two wandered aimlessly about. Under a shed by the barn, a broken-down seeder lay rusting to its ruin. But overhead, a mammoth live-oak, the largest tree in all the country-side, towered superb and magnificent. Grey bunches of mistletoe and festoons of trailing moss hung from its bark. From its lowest branch hung Hooven's meat-safe, a square ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the Adirondacks was open at one end. Here, against a background of big forest trees, a curious medley of substances had been assembled: old chairs, a couple of broken-down airplanes, a large disused dynamo, a heap of discarded clothing, a miscellany of kitchen utensils on a table, a gas stove, and a heap of metal junk of all kinds. The place looked, in fact, like a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... return nothing, is being resented, not by the lower classes for they read in our papers how the King shook hands with Jack Johnson; not by the nouveaux riches, for they are perfectly satisfied with the notoriety they get at the hands of your broken-down aristocracy who spend their money,—no not by these classes, but by our ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... trusts me. He knows I'm none too fond of the devilish hole." Tom ferried across to the broken-down landing-place near the door of the keep. They ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... such of the outcast population as can offer the price of a bed. To any one interested in the misery of the city, the array presented on such an occasion is very striking. One sees every variety of character, runaway boys, truant apprentices, drunken mechanics and broken-down mankind generally. Among these are men who have seen better days. They are decayed gentlemen who appear regularly in Wall street, and eke out the day by such petty business as they may get hold of, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... of the wall of the sigmoid groove in mastoid disease, or of the posterior wall of the frontal sinus in suppuration of that cavity. It also occurs in relation to septic lesions of the cranial bones such as a broken-down gumma, after operations on the cranial bones, and in cases of compound fracture attended with a mild degree of infection and with imperfect drainage. In contusion of the skull without an external wound, the infection may take place through ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the trouble to cast your eye over these you will find they are all here save one for a small figure, which somehow was offered for sale in Boston lately, I believe you said," and as he spoke the president tossed a little package upon the directors' table, upon which the eyes of the broken-down merchant were instantly ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... years ago, was a broken-down fan tan player. He hadn't a cent, and his health was going back on him. He had worn out his back with twenty years' work in the gold mines, washing over the tailings of the early miners. And whatever he'd made he'd ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... found it pitiful to hear poor Francis Trent, with his broken-down, cringing, crafty look, thus sueing for a sovereign. For he had the air of a ruined gentleman, not of an ordinary beggar, and the signs of refinement in his face and bearing made his state of abasement and destitution more apparent. But Oliver was not ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and lank; and his skin had a sallow, unwholesome tint. The diamond ring upon his finger was altogether out of keeping with his threadbare coat, buttoned up to the chin, as if there were no waistcoat beneath it. From head to foot he looked a broken-down, seedy fellow, yet still preserving some lingering traces of the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... bought other horses, they died or was stolen, and everything went against him. He wandered from one country to another, but bad luck met him at every turn. The last I seen him was some two years before; then him and his wife and two or three babies was goin' over the country in an old, broken-down wagon. The wheels was held together with wire and ropes, and the canvas top was in rags and tatters; the horses was the poorest, skinniest creatures you ever see, and him and his wife looked off the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... line!— Fire!" and so on, their guns will rise of themselves and the habitual movements will be performed. But "Fire!" now does not mean shooting into the sand for amusement, it means firing on their broken-down, exploited fathers and brothers whom they see there in the crowd, with women and children shouting and waving their arms. Here they are—one with his scanty beard and patched coat and plaited shoes of reed, just like the father left at home in Kazan or Riazan ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... that poor child growing up to womanhood in such surroundings; spending her days in a dirty, bare studio, with only rough, dissipated men for her companions—though to do them justice they treated her with respect and kindness. Somehow she picked up a desultory education among them. One broken-down old scene-painter taught her to read and write, and another, a French artist, taught her the rudiments of French, and also to play on the violin. 'They all treated me as a plaything,' she once said to me, 'and poor as they were, they would bring me toys and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to show through at the normal blush area on the cheeks; or, failing that, through the translucent epithelium of the lips and gums. If, on the other hand, this yellow tint be due to the escape of broken-down blood-pigments into the tissues, or a damming up of the bile, and a similar escape of its coloring matter, as in jaundice, then we turn to the whites of the eyes, and if a similar, but more delicate, yellowish tint confronts us there, we know we have ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... centuries old, yet the completeness of destruction is such that over most of its area no standing wall is seen, and the outlines of the houses and groups are indicated mainly by low ridges and masses of broken-down masonry, partly covered by the drifting sands. The group of rooms that forms the south east side of the pueblo is an exception to the general rule. Here fragmentary walls of rough masonry stand to a height, in some cases, of 8 feet above the dbris. The character of the stonework, as may ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... sad cases, and I'm sorry for you," spoke Joe, softly. He thought of John Dutton, the broken-down pitcher whose rescue, from a life of ruin, had been due largely to our hero's efforts, as told in the ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... "He went to a boardin'-house and died there. Left his wife a lot of stock in a broken-down street-car line, and a no-good electric-light company, and an independent telephone system that the regulars gobbled up. She's gone back to teachin' school again. We used our influence to get her old job back. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... plain enough?" she exclaimed. "You came to my rooms a week or so ago, a terrified, broken-down man. If ever there was guilt in a man's face, it was in yours. You sent for Laverick. He pitied you and helped you away. At Liverpool they would not let you embark—these men. They have brought you back here. You are ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the dam, the broken-down dam. That is a haunted place, such a haunted place, and so lonely. All round there are pits and quarries, and there are always snakes ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... midst of the discussion, a stockman named Pat Kelly, who was incidentally the Democratic boss of Michigan, rose in his seat. "Can any gentleman inform me," he inquired, "why the business of this meeting should be held up by the talk of a broken-down New ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... gnarled fingers, "you said so. I didn't. I always held that, if he wasn't dead, the time would come when, as it was to-night, the three of us would be sitting round together. I maintained," he added solemnly after a puff or two, "that his heart was in the right place. I'm a broken-down old crock, no longer a pagan; but I'm right. Ain't I, sonny?" He thrust an arm into the ribs of Paul, who was sitting ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Murray inquired after Tom and Desmond. Tom was at sea on board the Roarer, a lately launched composite frigate, which was expected to perform wonders both under sail and steam, but she had already had to put back twice into Plymouth with broken-down machinery and other injuries. It was hoped, however, now that she had undergone a thorough repair, that she would at all events be able to keep above water, although she might not succeed in running after a smaller enemy, or in running away from ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... the working of free systems constructed out of the wreck of a broken-down African Slave Trade are not indeed encouraging; but neither do they, in my opinion, warrant despair. I believe that by great caution and diligence, by firmness and gentleness on the part of the parent state, and much prudence in the instruments ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... fortress, flanked by four towers. This fortress, which once belonged to the Odescalchi family, but is now the property of the Roman government, looks like the very spot for a tragedy, as it stands there rotting in the pestilential air, and garrisoned by a few stray old soldiers, whose dreary, broken-down appearance is quite in keeping with the place. Palo itself is the site of the city of Alsium, founded by the Pelasgi, in the dim gloom of antiquity, long before the Etruscans landed on this shore. It was subsequently occupied by the Etruscans, and afterwards became a favorite resort of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... dramatist revert to caricature and the hard lines of allegory; the moralist is more than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal lampoon, especially of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears unworthily to have used his influence at court against the broken-down old poet. And now disease claimed Jonson, and he was bedridden for months. He had succeeded Middleton in 1628 as Chronologer to the City of London, but lost the post for not fulfilling its duties. King Charles ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... of his fists raised towards the ceiling, Salvat seemed to be protesting against the abomination of a world and a Providence that allowed old toilers to die of hunger just like broken-down beasts. However, he did not speak, but relapsed into the savage, heavy silence, the bitter meditation in which he had been plunged when the priest arrived. He was a journeyman engineer, and gazed obstinately at the table where lay his little leather ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... hostile encounter, whereupon the reassuring answer was given that 'his revolver was loaded, but not cocked.' I leave the point (if any) of this story to the mercy of those whose fate it has been to lose their way on a foggy night among shell-holes, broken-down wire and traps of all descriptions. Temporary bewilderment of the calculation destroyed reliance on any putative guides such as 'Verey' lights, shells, rifle fire, &c., which on these occasions appeared to come from all directions, and English and ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... sideboard and cupboard contained a slender stock of knives, forks, and glasses, and part of a broken-down dinner set, while the fireplace easily held three dozen ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... his work knew better. Many opportunities were afforded him for being as democratic in spirit as he liked, but he left such opportunities alone. His cab-runners run about in rain-shrunken suits that were obviously made in Savile Row; everyone of them, they are broken-down gentlemen. Coachmen, gardeners, footmen, pages, housekeepers, cooks, ladies' maids, and all those who move in the domestic circle of the upper classes he could draw, but his taste in life is a marked one, and that means it is a limited ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... of the affair was the reproving sympathy of her friends, a sympathy that was apt to break down into almost irrepressible laughter at the sight of the broken-down skeleton of whose prowess poor Fanny Fitz had ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... advice of all kinds, as we have remarked, is common and plenty; but sometimes the demand is so great as to require the aid of a purchased pen. On such occasions the individual employed by the managing partner is a broken-down clergyman, who was deprived at once of his sight and his living by the visitation of God, and who writes for the support of a wife and fourteen children. This respectable character is induced, by fear of competition, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... 'to think through all their ribbons.' We call that kind of bonnet 'coal-scuttle' now, but Maclise's portrait of Lady Morgan trying hers on before a glass justifies Hunt's epithet. The lecturer was the lean, wiry type of Scot, within an inch of six feet. In face, he was not the bearded, broken-down Carlyle of the Fry photograph, but the younger Carlyle of the Emerson portrait. Clean-shaven, as was then the fashion, the determination of the lower jaw lying bare, the thick black hair brushed carelessly and coming down on the bony, jutting forehead, violet-blue eyes, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... a broken-down clergyman of the Established Church, and had lost caste for disgraceful irregularities. But he professed to hate the Catholics, and such a virtue secured him friends. Among these was the Rev. Dr. Tonge, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... hotels frequented by artistes, but she was very glad to be in one this time. She, poor little broken-down thing, was not left to the care of a common servant; she had nice, kind nurses.... And she had no lack of friends who took interest in her, very sincerely, for that matter, for she was a favorite with all of them, that pretty Miss Lily, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... sent back and the carcasses of the two animals dragged aside—they would provide excellent meat if the task of sun drying the flesh was not unduly delayed—the march was resumed, until on gaining the summit of a low hill the wings of the broken-down seaplane were visible as they rose obliquely above the scanty scrub at a distance of nearly ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the creed of the new teaching. All starch foods are chiefly digested in the intestines instead of in the main stomach, and hence are unnatural and morbiferous, and the chief cause of the nervous prostration and broken-down health that abound on all sides. (Herr Nordau gives quite a different explanation of the general breakdown, but no matter.) "The 'Natural Food Society,'" says its official organ, "is founded in the belief that the food of primeval man consisted ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... are a hundred why's if you want them, and each one sufficient in itself. I am a beggar, a failure, a wreck, a broken-down soldier from the ranks. Do you think if it were anything less than pure madness on your part that I should stand here a moment and talk like this?—but because I am in love with you, Betty, it doesn't follow that ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... were not as critical as you," said his father, "and in consequence the coach line from Albany to Schenectady was speedily supplanted by a steam railroad, as were the various coach lines into the interior of the State. As a result hundreds of broken-down coach horses were turned out to pasture, a merciful thing. Gradually a series of short steam railway lines were constructed from one end of the State to the other, until in 1851 these were joined together to make a continuous route to Lake Erie. Perhaps we have only scant appreciation of the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... constantly embarking, and others returning. It is a noble service! Men start in thousands from this port young, hearty, healthy, and full of spirit; they return—those of them who return at all—sickly, broken-down, and with no spirit at all except what they soon get poured into them by the publicans. Yes; commend me to the service of my Queen ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... with cheerful effrontery.—"What are you?" asked another voice.—"Why, a sailor like you, old man," he replied, in a tone that meant to be hearty but was impudent.—"Blamme if you don't look a blamed sight worse than a broken-down fireman," was the comment in a convinced mutter. Charley lifted his head and piped in a cheeky voice: "He is a man and a sailor"—then wiping his nose with the back of his hand bent down industriously over his bit of rope. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... in our part of the country as Jack the Killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad at poor old Jack's broken-down condition and rejoicing that he had by chance found him there and had been able ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... everywhere playing the omnipresent slot-machines. The whir of the machines and the low undertones and whispers of the bettors combined in the air to make what Malone considered the single most depressing sound he had ever heard. It sounded like a factory, old, broken-down and unwanted, that was geared only to the production of cigarette butts and old cellophane, ready-crumpled for throwing away. Malone pushed through the crowds as fast as possible, but nearly an hour had gone by when he had all his papers and hailed another ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... coming in through the unshaded window. Sitting on the only chair, with his arms spread over the table, and his head resting on them, was the prisoner. His face was hidden, but the coarse, disordered dress, the long hair, half grey, half black, lying loose and shaggy over his bony hands, the dreary broken-down expression of his attitude, made a picture not to be looked upon without pity. Yet the thing that seemed most pathetic of all was that utter change in the man which, even at the first glance, was so plainly ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... something like that which the agility peculiar to youth formerly enabled her to execute almost con amore; while the haggard face, and distorted smile revealing yellow teeth, tell a sad tale of departed youth. Yes, an old danseuse is a melancholy object; more so, because less cared for, than the broken-down racer, or ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Nabbem, in a state of broken-down opposition; but our spirits are not broken too. In our time we have had something to do with the administration; and our comfort at present is ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... A well-known but broken-down Detroit newspaper man, who had been a power in his day, approached an old friend the other day in ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... where our stoves are black, and it had flowers and birds and beautiful ladies and grand gentlemen painted all over it, and everywhere it was brilliant with gold and bright colors. It was a very old stove, for sixty years before, Karl's grandfather had dug it up out of some broken-down buildings where he was working, and, finding it strong and whole, had taken it home; and ever since then it had stood in the big room, warming the children, who tumbled like little flowers around its shining feet. The grandfather did ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... compassion that strengthened in spite of him; of distrust that persisted in diminishing, try as he might to encourage it to grow. There, perched comfortless on the edge of his chair, sat the poor broken-down, nervous wretch, in his worn black garments, with his watery eyes, his honest old outspoken wig, his miserable mohair stock, and his false teeth that were incapable of deceiving anybody—there he sat, politely ill at ease; now shrinking in the glare of the lamp, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... which our unfortunate Resident has to contend. Invested with large imaginary powers, he has in reality nothing but his personal influence and his own wits to help him. He has no white man to assist him, but living alone in a broken-down tent and some mud huts built by his son's hands (for the Government have never kept their promise to put him up a house), in the midst of thousands of restless and scheming savages, amidst plots against the peace and against his ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... diamonds." The transaction here referred to—though, strangely enough, it is looked on as one that had a political interest—was, in fact, a scheme of a broken-down gambler to swindle a jeweller out of a diamond necklace of great value. The Court jeweller had collected a large number of unusually fine diamonds, which he had made into a necklace, in the hope that the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... never forget it!" she exclaimed. "How the boys would laugh if they heard you'd been feeding sugar to an old broken-down cow-pony! You! Why, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... say to him almost severely, once when he had forgotten himself and had stood at salute while his master passed through a broken-down iron gate before an equally broken-down-looking lodging-house—"perhaps you can force yourself to remember when I tell you that it is not safe—IT IS NOT SAFE! ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to provide a rest-cure or moderate-priced summer home for broken-down musicians, artists and writers, as many seem to think, but to give those at the very height of their productiveness a chance for undisturbed work, under the inspiration of nature in her most alluring guise, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... on the pretext of asking for the Review which my mother had lent me. In my thoughts I beheld him, as he then was, and recalled the strange pity which had stirred my heart at the sight of him, so sad, broken-down, and, so to speak, conquered. He stood before me, in the light of that remembrance, as living and real as if he had been there, close beside me, and the acute sensation of his existence made me feel at the same time all the signification of ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... in Columbus, Ohio. He was going back when he joined us, but for all that he pitched a lot of good ball and won many a good game, thanks both to himself and also to the good support that he received. After he left us he drifted down to Paterson, N. J., which seems to be a sort of Mecca for broken-down ball players, and became identified with the racing business, owning and training for a time quite a string of his own and horses that won for him quite a considerable sum, of money. He is now running a saloon in that New Jersey town, ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... this sad, broken-down woman could be the pleasant-faced, happy girl who had gone away with her husband and boys in the year of the great famine. But as they listened to her story they did not wonder that she seemed so old and talked so bitterly. It made ...
— The Babe in the Bulrushes • Amy Steedman
... better. I want you in the character of a broken-down actor now, and you wouldn't look the part with a new and shiny tile. Put a couple of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... it as it is now, see the need of making it some other way. You must have more than a desire to help Karl—you must have an enthusiasm for the thing itself. You'll get so then that when you see an operation like this you won't see just some broken-down, diseased tissue that makes you feel weak-kneed, but you'll see something to get in and fight. Oh, it's a battle—so get your fighting blood up! Remember that you'll have to have enough for two. You know, what you must do for Karl is not only give him back ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... be sure," laughed the youthful gentleman. "See his long, yellow hair behind; he looks like a Chinaman. Some broken-down Mandarin. Pity he's no crown to his old hat; if he had, he might pass it round, and make eight pennies of ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... of whipcord and thorn-switches; surely I am tough! But I fancy I shall not overdrive again, or not so long. It is my theory that work is highly beneficial, but that it should, if possible, and certainly for such partially broken-down instruments as the thing I call my body, be taken in batches, with a clear break and breathing space between. I always do vary my work, laying one thing aside to take up another, not merely because I believe it ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aided by the false moustachios, so completely disguised his appearance that they need have no fear of his being recognized; and it was therefore decided he should do the talking. As Donna Inez came up he commenced calling out: "Have pity, gracious ladies, upon two broken-down soldiers. We have gone through all the dangers and hardships of the terrible voyage of the great Armada. We served in the ship San Josef and are now broken-down, and have no means of earning ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... sloping deck into the black billows, with here and there a white patch of foam, and while the organ-harp overhead is sounding its magnificent symphony. It is but wood and iron and hemp and canvas that is doing all this, with some thirty poor, broken-down, dissipated wretches, who, being fit for nothing else, of course are fit for the fo'castle of a Liverpool Liner. Yet it is, for all that, something which haunts the memory long,—which comes back years ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Meanwhile, the poor broken-down man, worn out with his long tramp and his terrible emotions, fell ill almost at once, in Jack's own house, and became rapidly so feeble that Jack dared not question him further. The return to civilisation was more fatal than his long solitary banishment. At the end ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... expense of some time and difficulty, and by the assistance of a 'louping-on-stane,' or structure of masonry erected for the traveller's convenience in front of the house, elevated his person to the back of a long-backed, raw-boned, thin-gutted phantom of a broken-down blood-horse, on which Waverley's portmanteau was deposited. Our hero, though not in a very gay humour, could hardly help laughing at the appearance of his new squire, and at imagining the astonishment which his person and equipage ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... broken, came from beyond the place where Law stood facing the trembling woman. The eyes of all turned upon Will Law, from whom had burst this irrepressible exclamation of agony. Will Law, as one grown swiftly old, haggard, broken-down, stood gazing in wide-eyed horror at this woman, so humiliated in the presence of all in this brilliantly-lighted hall; before the blazing mirrors which should have reflected back naught but beauty and joy; ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... very cautiously they ascended and presently came to the top of the stairs. Bob was in the lead, his pistol gripped tightly in one hand. With his free hand he pushed the door open gently and looked within. The kitchen was deserted, a broken-down stove in one corner, a water heater covered with dirt and rust, a sagging sink, and two battered chairs and a table completing the furnishings. A soft breeze entered through a broken window and gently stirred the strip of wall paper hanging limply ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene |
