"Muddy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not in his shop and the door was locked. Cunningham explored the muddy gutters all the way from Ling Foo's to Moy's tea house, where the meeting had taken place. He found nothing, and went into Moy's to wait. Ling Foo would have to pass the restaurant. A boy who knew the merchant stood outside ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... is sufficient to account for the formation of the mighty sandbank, for the water is laden with the detritus of cliff and beach which it has taken up in its course round England, and, just as if you give a circular motion to a basin of muddy water, you will soon find the earthy deposit centralised at the bottom of the basin, so the great Goodwins are the result of the daily deposit ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... of the country" which were seen by Pretty, "close to the water-side." All else would be unchanged. Now, a generation later, a great city covers the sandhills on the west, a growing town lies along the muddy shallows of the east; steamboats pant continually between them from before sunrise till the small hours of the morning; lines of great sea-going ships lie ranged at anchor; colours fly upon the islands; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... person had taken them; but after looking carefully around he perceived both birds at a short distance, and this led him to institute a search which soon resulted in finding that the eggs must have been removed by the parent birds to the face of a muddy bank at least forty yards distant from the original nest. A few decayed leaves had been placed under them, but nothing else in the way of lining. A third egg had been added in the interim. There can hardly be any doubt of the truth of ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... her neck undeserving {of such treatment}. She feeds upon the leaves of the arbute tree, and bitter herbs, and instead of a bed the unfortunate {animal} lies upon the earth, that does not always have grass {on it}, and drinks of muddy streams. And when, too, she was desirous, as a suppliant, to stretch out her arms to Argus, she had no arms to stretch out to Argus; and she uttered lowings from her mouth, {when} endeavoring to complain. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... were able to get an idea of the country on either bank of the muddy river; it was low and marshy, every acre being planted in rice. Occasionally, on a slight elevation, would be seen a pagoda-shaped temple, standing lonely among the rice fields, where doubtless it had stood for ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... morning when the little rabbits went for their water, they found the brook full of sticks and stones, and the water so muddy they could ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... put off the meeting, as he did not feel himself quite up to the mark, and was ashamed of seeming afraid of her. He went into the stable, and abused the groom; into the kitchen, and swore at the maid; and then into the garden. It was a nasty, cold, February day, and he walked up and down the damp muddy walks till he was too tired and cold to walk longer, and then turned into the parlour, and remained with his back to the fire, till the man came in to lay the cloth, thinking on the one subject that occupied all his mind—occasionally grinding his teeth, and heaping curses on his ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the latter suddenly redoubled his severity with me; he was continually following me about, as though I were capable of any crime, and must be sharply looked after. 'You mind what I say,' he shouted, bursting without knocking into my room, in muddy boots and with his cap on his head; 'I won't put up with such goings on! I won't stand your stuck-up airs! You're not going to impose on me. I'll ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... confines of miles upon miles of galvanized fencing. Neighbors, as Rankin said, were near now. There were four within a radius of twenty miles. To be sure, there was still plenty of land west of them, beyond the broad muddy Missouri,—open rough land, gradually rising in elevation, where a traveller could journey for days and days without seeing a human face. But this was not then a part of the so-called "cattle ranges." ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... lingered on the bridge to gaze at its green, muddy water, not visibly flowing at all. The high reeds which half concealed it carried my thoughts back to the Galaesus. But the comparison is all in favour of the Tarentine stream. Here one could feel nothing but a comfortless ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... the sails and alongside came the tag-boat; and Aunt Barbara was landed first, parasol and all, and the others followed her. The tide was running out fast, and it was not easy to find a landing-place along the muddy shores. Betty thought the Starlight looked much smaller from the shore than she seemed when they were on board. Harry and Seth made everything trig and came in last, leaving the cat-boat ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... call a Nonconformist—bah! He is clever, but bourgeois. He grates upon me; for I, his subordinate in this service, am aristocrat, a Count of l'ancien regime, catholique, presque royaliste. His blood is that of muddy peasants, yet he is my chief! Peste, I spit upon the sacred ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... dull and diligent. Wines, the stronger they be, the more lees they have when they are new. Many boys are muddy-headed till they be clarified with age, and such afterward prove the best. Bristol diamonds are both bright, and squared, and pointed by nature, and yet are soft and worthless; whereas Orient ones in India are rough and rugged ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... muddy, the house was chill, and the damp wind filled them all with ague; but they had so much to see and talk about, that time passed rapidly. Each one entering was studied critically to see whether dress ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... ships of war, when getting under weigh, a large rope, called a messenger used to carry the strain of the cable to the capstan; so that the anchor may be weighed, without the muddy, ponderous cable, itself going round the capstan. As the cable enters the hawse-hole, therefore, something must be constantly used, to keep this travelling chain attached to this travelling messenger; something that may be rapidly wound ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... appear to be of an organic nature. As a matter of fact, a piece of the hatch, when subjected to heat, blackens, proving the presence of an organic glue cementing the mineral matter. The solution becomes muddy if oxalate of ammonia be added; it then deposits a copious white precipitate. These signs indicate calcium carbonate. I look for urate of ammonia, that constantly recurring product of the various stages of the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... A muddy stretch of land, into which we sank up to our ankles, extends from Carnac to the village of Po. A boat was waiting for us; we entered it, and they hoisted the sail and pushed off. Our sailor, an old man with a cheerful face, sat aft; ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... blackened the fringing trees on the far borders of the great inland marsh, and turned its little gleaming water-pools to pools of blood. Nearer to the eye, the sullen flow of the tidal river Alde ebbed noiselessly from the muddy banks; and nearer still, lonely and unprosperous by the bleak water-side, lay the lost little port of Slaughden, with its forlorn wharfs and warehouses of decaying wood, and its few scattered coasting-vessels deserted on the oozy river-shore. No fall of waves was heard on the beach, no trickling ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... left the Spaniards undisturbed and unchallenged, and felt his way westward along the coasts of Alabama and Mississippi, exploring and sounding as he went. At the beginning of March his boats were caught in a strong muddy current of fresh water, and he saw that he had reached the object of his search, the "fatal river" of the unfortunate La Salle. He entered it, encamped, on the night of the third, twelve leagues above its mouth, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... melancholy oppressed him, when a hatred of his home, the muddy yellow skies, the macadam clouds assailed him, he took refuge in this retreat, set the cage lightly in motion and watched it endlessly reflected in the play of the mirrors, until it seemed to his dazed eyes that the cage no ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... viewing the contest, a soldier rushed into the midst of the enemy, and after performing many conspicuous acts of valour, rescued the centurions from the barbarians, who took to flight. The soldier, with difficulty attempting to cross after all the rest, plunged into the muddy stream, and with great trouble and the loss of his shield, sometimes swimming, sometimes walking, he got safe over. While those who were about Caesar were admiring his conduct and coming to receive him with congratulations ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... the wretch's muddy companions seized and drenched him so horribly that (exclaims Dante) "I laud and thank God for it now ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... low as she turned into the dismal street and trod the muddy pavement. A few illusions shrivelled up that wintry morning under that murky sky. The name she was so fearful of staining; the name she had fondly imagined as noised from mouth to mouth; the name for which she had demanded so great a sacrifice, and had sacrificed so much ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the coffee is poured out you are at liberty to drink it boiling and muddy, or cold and clear. Real amateurs drink it without waiting. Those who allow the sediment to settle down, do not do so from contempt, for they afterwards collect it with the little finger ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Indian chief. Beneath this sign a row of hieroglyphical-looking characters informed the passer-by that he could here find "Entertainment for man and beast." On that side of the house, or rather hut, next to the road, was a row of wooden sheds, separated from the path by a muddy ditch, and partly filled with hay and straw. These cribs might have been supposed the habitations of the cows, had not some dirty bedding, that protruded from them, denoted them to be the sleeping apartments of those travellers whose evil star compelled them to pass ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... was there. A little taste of willow, oak and maple was in the air. You could see the buds growing fat too, and you could smell them. If you opened your eyes and looked in any direction you could see blue sky, big, ragged white clouds, bare trees, muddy earth with grassy patches, and white spots on the shady sides where unmelted snow made the icy feel in the air, even when the sun shone. You couldn't hear yourself think for the clatter of the turkeys, ganders, roosters, hens, and everything that had a voice. I was so crazy ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... to her feet. Her shoes and stockings were wet and muddy, her pretty blue linen dress was torn, and now she realized that her hat was gone, that she must have lost it in pushing her way through the undergrowth; but these things seemed of small consequence to Winifred just then; for the pony, with his forefeet planted firmly in the shallow water, ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... over with square stones, which had sunk, in places, and made hollows, which were filled with muddy water. Lean cats scuttled about here and there, and ran away, if anybody came near them, as if they expected to have stones thrown at them, and then, when the danger seemed past, they rummaged in the ash-barrels for scraps of meat or fish or bread. The ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... according to the grade of their studies. For diversion, they had a narrow garden which they could cultivate and a cabin; they had permission to raise pigeons and to eat them, in addition to the ordinary fare. The classrooms were dirty, being either muddy or covered with dust, according to the season, and evil-smelling as a result of crowding together within narrow spaces too many young folks who were none too clean and to whom the laws of hygiene were unknown. The masters ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... seen in the winter-time an icicle forming under the eaves of a house. It grows, one drop at a time, until it is more than a foot long. If the water is clear, the icicle remains clear and sparkles in the sun; but if the water is muddy, the icicle looks dirty and its beauty is spoiled. So our characters are formed; one little thought or feeling at a time adds its influence. If these thoughts and feelings are pure and right, the ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... birds, nothing industrious but pigs, and nothing happy but squirrels," Daniel Boone's daughter might be seen in high-heeled shoes, attended by white servants whose wages were a dollar a week, skirting muddy roads under a ten-dollar bonnet and a six-dollar parasol. Or, he might emerge from a lonely forest in Ohio or Indiana and come suddenly upon a party of neighbors at a dreary tavern, enjoying a corn shucking or a harvest ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... due north and south. Its greatest length is about thirteen and its greatest width about six miles. Its extreme depth, so far as has been ascertained, is 27 fathoms, or 165 feet. The Jordan flows into its upper end turbid and muddy, and issues forth at its southern extremity clear and pellucid. It receives also the waters of a considerable number of small streams and springs, some of which are warm and brackish; yet its own water is always sweet, cool, and transparent, and, having everywhere a shelving pebbly beach, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... and has been held ever since. Generally speaking, its summits nearly reach, or just surpass, the 200 metre contour, above the sea, but the whole of this country lies so high that such a height only means a matter of 150 to 200 feet above the water levels of the little muddy brooks that run in the folds of the land. It is a country of chalk, but not of dry, turfy chalk, like those of the English Downs; rather a chalk mixed with clay, which makes for bad going after rain. It is the soil over which, further to the east, the battle of Valmy ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... and the burnt-wood Tetons, who live in the elbow of the river, 'with muddy water,' do they not come into the lodges ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... forge has been used since the storm that helped us get through that muddy canal of Jackson's Creek; is that what you mean, Paul?" ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... fingers and tore the skin; the shriek of shot overhead, the boom of cannon and the gulp of impact; cold, hungry, footsore, sleepy; here and there a comrade crumpling up strangely and lying still and white; the muddy ruts in the road; the whole world a dead gray like the face of death! What did ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... It was muddy at the bottom of the fosse, but not so deep as they thought it would be, and they scrambled up the opposite side and then struck across the country south. Presently they came upon a road, which they followed, ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... up by their walk of about thirteen miles from Claremorris, a fact which hardly speaks well for their thews and sinews, but in fairness it must be admitted that they were obliged to undertake their march after a long and fatiguing railway journey, at sundown, on a muddy road, and in alternate light and heavy rain. They were also poorly fed, for their carts and implements generally only came in here this afternoon, escorted by the Royal Dragoons, under Captain Tomkinson, during part of the distance, and for the remainder by ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... all orders," explained Father Baby, "from their earliest foundations, have counted it a worthy mortification of the flesh to till the ground. And be ready to refresh me without grinning, when I come back muddy from performing the labor to which I might send you, if I were a man who loved sinful ease. Monastic habits are above the understanding of a black rascal ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... gateway, they came to a bridge, which seemed to be built of iron. Pluto stopped the chariot, and bade Proserpina look at the stream which was gliding so lazily beneath it. Never in her life had she beheld so torpid, so black, so muddy-looking a stream: its waters reflected no images of anything that was on the banks, and it moved as sluggishly as if it had quite forgotten which way it ought to flow, and had rather stagnate than flow either ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... from head to foot, I remained a moment motionless, and almost petrified with astonishment. All was changed around me: the enchanted panorama had disappeared, and I found myself in a small filthy crossway, at the entrance of a labyrinth of narrow, damp, dark, muddy streets. The houses which surrounded me, built as they were of disjointed planks, had a miserable aspect; time and rain had diluted their primitive red colour into numberless nameless tints. One of those minarets which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... and watching the clock. It was a grey morning, but not raining. At five minutes to nine, she hurried off to Mrs. Rollings. In the back yard the bicycles were out, glittering and muddy according to their owners. Ciccio was crouching mending a tire, crouching balanced on his toes, near the earth. He turned like a quick-eared animal glancing up as she approached, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... What shall I see? The country; that is always beautiful, whereas many so-called "sights" are not. I will make for the shores of the lake, for the spot where the Rhone leaves it, to flow toward France. The Rhone, which is so muddy at Avignon, is clean here; deep and clear as a creek of the sea. It rushes along in a narrow blue torrent compressed between a quay ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... exercising the utmost care and vigilance. This intricate and difficult navigation continued for nearly three hours, at the end of which time they suddenly emerged from the maze of islets and found themselves in a stream of thick, muddy water, averaging about a quarter of a mile in width, with low banks fringed by mangrove trees, beyond which it was occasionally possible to catch glimpses of more lofty vegetation. The water here was ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... details which impressed themselves upon her shrinking brain, and though she still insisted upon smiling at everything, she stood in the middle of the room holding up her skirts quite unconsciously, as if she were standing at a muddy street crossing, wondering how in the world she was ever going to reach the ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... coat and said he was going to the office to ask Mr Rushton if he might have the things. Upon hearing this, Sawkins became so infuriated that he lifted the bundle off the cart and, throwing it upon the muddy ground, right into a pool of dirty water, trampled it underfoot; and then, taking out his clasp knife, began savagely hacking and ripping the ticking so that the feathers all came falling out. In a few minutes he had damaged the things beyond hope of repair, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... grinning at her, for he had taken a fancy to the odd child who had screamed to him not to mash the spider he had fished out of his lemonade cup. "All good motor trucks take a spade with them, under the seat, to use in case they are stuck on some muddy road." ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... evening to conceal themselves in the quarters where no one scarcely ventured to go in search of them. The Cour des Miracles was the usual refuge of all those wretches who came to conceal in this corner of Paris, sombre, dirty, muddy, and tortuous, their pretended infirmities and ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... said, indicating a muddy flood of road scrapings, in which were embedded many splinters from the wreckage ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... collar-straps. In the trap sat the chubby, tightly belted clerk who served Ryabinin as coachman. Ryabinin himself was already in the house, and met the friends in the hall. Ryabinin was a tall, thinnish, middle-aged man, with mustache and a projecting clean-shaven chin, and prominent muddy-looking eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted blue coat, with buttons below the waist at the back, and wore high boots wrinkled over the ankles and straight over the calf, with big galoshes drawn over them. He rubbed his face with his handkerchief, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to attend to, save mosquitoes and mangrove flies, when in such a situation, you may as well pursue the study. At the ebb gradually the foliage of the lower branches of the mangroves grows wet and muddy, until there is a great black band about three feet deep above the surface of the water in all directions; gradually a network of gray-white roots rises up, and below this again, gradually, a slope of smooth and lead-grey slime. The effect is not in the least as if the water had fallen, but as if ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... then I do not remember, except that the dull rumble of the wheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and that I saw through the mist before my eyes a sluggish river, a muddy canal, and patches ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... from dancing with you the whole evening;" with which bribe and threat Dolly embraced her brother, and shut the door in his face, while he, putting himself in good humor by imagining she was somebody else, departed on his muddy mission. ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... Rude men on the sidepaths stare you out of countenance, or make strange signs—a kind of occult telegraphy, which makes your flesh creep. To guard against an unseen foe, you take to the centre of the street—nasty and muddy though it should be,—for there you fancy yourself safe from the blow of a skull-cracker, hurled by an unseen hand on watch under a gateway. The police make themselves conspicuous here by their absence; 'tis a fit spot for ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Augustus memorable in Paris—the beginning of the paving of the city and the building of its girdle of walls and towers. One day as the king stood at the window of his palace, where he was wont to distract himself from the cares of state by watching the Seine flow by, some carts rattled along the muddy road beneath the window and stirred so foul and overpowering an odour that the king almost fell sick. Next day the provost and the sheriffs and chief citizens were summoned before him and ordered to set about paving the city with stone. The work was not however completed until ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... attend the path of the great men who feel themselves to be sent by God. In our humbler lives they dog our steps, and religious fervour needs ever to keep careful watch on itself, lest it should degenerate unconsciously into self-will, and should allow the muddy stream of earth-born passion to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare made Lorenzo speak to Jessica of the harmony that is in immortal souls and say that "whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in we cannot hear it." To refine this muddy vesture, to render the spirit attentive, to bring light, sweetness, strength, harmony and beauty into daily life is the central function of music ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... our way out of the hills without adventure worth noting. The road was muddy, and a good deal washed. In fact, we had occasionally to do considerable manoeuvring to find a way at all around the landslides from ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... and breathe by gills, they have a passion for the land, and during the daytime may always be seen ashore, especially where the coast is muddy. They bask in the sun, and hunt for food, raising themselves on their fleshy fins.... When pursued, they take great springs, using their tails and fins for the purpose; and if they cannot escape into the sea, they will dive down the ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... find his canoe, which seems to our eyes now the emblem of an aggressive civilization, flitting along the Illinois River, entering the muddy Mississippi, and floating down its thousand miles to the Gulf. This is not the whole picture, however. We see the party start from the Chicago River, in the cold weather of December. The rivers are frozen. Canoes ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... out before me, the night was so dark. All at once I heard the quick gallop of a horse's hoofs some way off,—then the sound seemed to die away,—but presently I heard the hoofs coming at a slow steady pace down our muddy old by-road—no one can gallop THAT, in any weather. And almost before I knew how it came there, the horse was standing at the farmyard gate, with a man in the saddle carrying a bundle in front of him. He was the handsomest fellow ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... weather a faint haze overhung the landscape, changing from violet to gray as the shadows rose or fell. Around them the unploughed wasteland swept clear to the distant road, which wound like a muddy river beside the naked tobacco fields. Lying within the slight depression of a hilltop, the two were buried deep amid the lifeeverlasting, which shed its soft dust upon them and filled their ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... to fidget. Her pretty white serge frock had come in contact with some muddy ropes and some oily screws, and several unsightly spots were the result. This made her cross, for she hated to have her costume spoiled so early in the day; and besides she was unpleasantly conscious that her fair complexion was rapidly taking on a deep shade of red. She knew ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... ordinary route, and very ordinary it was in many places. It was not a graded and macadamized road such as you find in England, but simply a rough pathway, principally of nature's manufacture. It was full of ruts and gullies, very muddy in the rainy season, and terribly dusty in the dry times. Travelers went to the mines in all sorts of ways, some on foot, and some by ox and horse wagons, and if they had plenty of money, and were determined to have luxury and speed ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... forward until an admonitory kick from Irish sent him straight down the dim trail. Then the clouds opened recklessly the headgates and let the rain down in one solid rush of water that sluiced the hillsides and drove muddy torrents down channels that had been dry ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... his whole delight, Each sign-post barr'd his way; He spent in muddy ale at night The wages of ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... back in the short winter twilight, past the wooded grounds of white villas, held up every few minutes by transport-wagons and companies of soldiers. The rain had come on in real earnest, and it was two very bedraggled horsemen that crawled along the muddy lanes. As we passed one villa, shut in by a high white wall, a pleasant smell of wood smoke was wafted towards us, which made me sick for the burning veld. My ear, too, caught the twanging of a zither, which somehow reminded me of the afternoon in ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... into his den to meditate upon his good fortune. It was a rendezvous, of course, cunningly arranged on the day of the painter's departure. It seemed to him like a leaf out of one of those flabby novels on large paper, with a muddy wood-cut on every sixteenth page, which he thumbed and pored over now ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... was sharp and bright in anything addressed to his reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was therefore wading painfully through the catechism like a man in a deep-muddy road; with this difference, that the man carries too much clay with him, while nothing stuck to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dead logs and scrub, and no safe place for crossing the creek could be found. During the night the famishing horses tore open with their teeth the packages containing the provisions, and before morning all that was left of the flour, tea, and sugar was trodden into the muddy soil and hopelessly lost; not an ounce of food could be collected. There was no game to be seen; every bird and beast seemed to have fled from the desolate ranges. Mr. Tyers had been for many years a naval instructor on board a man-of-war, understood navigation and surveying, and, it is to be presumed, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... no questions, but ran at full speed through the camp, shouting orders as he went, and presently stood breathless upon a tall bank of raw red earth. On one side the green-stained river went frothing past; on the other a muddy flood spouted through a breach, and already a shallow lake was spreading fast across the cleared land, licking up long rows of potato haulm and timothy grass. Men swarmed like bees about the sloping side of the bank, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... siege, the water in the wells had become turbid and muddy, partly owing, it was thought, to the concussion of the ground by the constant firing, partly by the extra supplies which were drawn from them. As the time went on, many of them dried altogether, and the water in the others ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... sedition and passion and fever. The little affairs of men which they thought so great seemed to me in that hour very little and wicked—like the scheming of naughty children, or the quarrels and spites of efts in a muddy pond. In that hour my whole heart grew sick at this miserable murderous pother in the midst of which my duty seemed to lie; and yearned instead to those things that are great indeed—the love of the maid who had promised herself to me, and the Love of God that ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... He was muddy and tired and his face was very white. "I know it's late," he said, apologetically, "and I'll go up to dress right now. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... avenues were open. And like a huge flood, long damned up, turbulent, turbid, muddy, loaded with wrecks and debris, the gigantic mass broke loose, full of foam and terror, and flowed in every direction. A foul and brutal and ravenous multitude it was, dark with dust and sweat, armed with the weapons of civilization, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... to no greater amount than may be explained by the bird having altered its pace. Many tracks of different individuals and different species are often found crossing each other, and crowded, like impressions of feet upon the shores of a muddy stream, where ducks and geese resort." {103} Some of these prints indicate small animals, but others denote birds of what would now be an unusually large size. One animal, having a foot fifteen inches in length, (one-half more than that of the ostrich,) and ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... said Mr. Polk; 'not that I know of. You needn't mind pulling up the seat of your pantaloons; I'm not noticing. What in the —— are you doing here, looking like a muddy Lazarus ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... first that they all thought that God was going to raise up a saint amongst them—ah! God help her—she had sunk back at the dissolution, from those heights of sanctity towards whose summits she had set her face, down into the muddy torrent of the world that went roaring down to the abyss—and who was responsible? There was Dame Avice, the Sacristan, with her businesslike movements going about the garden, gathering flowers for the altar, with her queer pursed ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... They were in various positions. One lay on his back, with one knee raised like a man day-dreaming and looking up at the sky. Another was stretched stiff, with both hands clinched over his chest. One lay in the ditch close beside us, his head jammed into the muddy bank just as he had dived there in falling; another gripped a cup in one hand and a spoon in the other, as if, perhaps, he might have tried to feed himself in the long hours after the battle rolled on and ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... in through the kitchen. On the big kitchen clothes rail before the fire were clothes of Anna's. They were muddy and sopping wet and steam was ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... night, and it was done (he said) to give good dreams. By a little before six, Taylor and I were in the saddle again fasting. My riding boots were so wet I could not get them on, so I must ride barefoot. The morning was fair but the roads very muddy, the weeds soaked us nearly to the waist, Sale was twice spilt at the fences, and we got to Apia a bedraggled enough pair. All the way along the coast, the pate (small wooden drum) was beating in the villages and the people crowding to the churches in their fine clothes. Thence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the room with me, because there is always some proper man near me; there is nothing to be ashamed of in that. But this I will swear, that to no man have I given money and that by no man has my body been defiled excepting by my husband and by that beggar, who put his muddy hands upon my leg to-day when I ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... arms so long as he had command, and never stop making his private profit out of the public danger; and in course of time the demagogues at Rome accomplished their purpose. Lucullus, advancing by hard marches to the Euphrates, found the stream swollen and muddy, owing to the winter season, and he was vexed on considering that it would cause loss of time and some trouble if he had to get together boats to take his army across and to build rafts. However, in the evening the water began to subside, and it went on falling all through the night, and at ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... said the clown, 'come and have some breakfast'; and Jimmy sat down on the muddy ground, and Nan gave him another mug and a thick slice of bread; but Jimmy was by this time so hungry that he could have eaten anything. Still he felt very anxious to hear how he was to reach Chesterham without ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... market-gardens, a Grizzled Personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden house on wheels. The wooden house was laid up in ordinary for the winter, near the mouth of a muddy creek; and everything near it, the foggy river, the misty marshes, and the steaming market-gardens, smoked in company with the grizzled man. In the midst of this smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house on wheels was not remiss, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... Bombay had yielded to the stronger magnetism of beauty and art. Like his father, he hated politics; and Westernised India is nothing if not political. It was a true instinct that warned him to keep clear of that muddy stream, and render his mite of service to India in the exercise of his individual gift. That would be in accord with one of his mother's wise and tender sayings: (his memory was jewelled with them) "Look always first at your own gifts. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... produce the turbidity of the liquid collect at its surface into a scum, which is blown up by the emerging air-bubbles into a thick, foamy froth. Another moiety sinks to the bottom, and accumulates as a muddy sediment, or "lees." ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... seats. "Feyuss please!" Jenny shrugged her shoulder, which seemed as though it had been irritated at the conductor's touch. It felt quite bruised. "Silly old fool!" she thought, with a brusque glance. Then she went silently back to the contemplation of all the life that gathered upon the muddy ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... across the yard, gained the door, and went up the stone stair, leaving streams of muddy water on all the ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... afterwards you might have seen Paul dashing through the quiet main street Of Morebury in a high dog-cart, on his way to call on the Princess. A less Fortunate Youth might have had to walk, risking boots impolitely muddy, or to hire a funereal cab from the local job-master; but Paul had only to give an order, and the cart and showy chestnut were brought round to the front door of Drane's Court. He loved to drive the showy chestnut, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... nice people are expected; when dead they are fastened up in the family back cupboard by a score of ten-inch nails and three-trick Yale locks, so to speak. And in the meantime all the splash is being made on their muddy oof. See?" ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Texas road jest crowded wid wagons! Everybody doing de same thing we is, and de rains done made de road so muddy and de soldiers done tromp up de mud so bad dat de wagons git ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... bark for the purpose of tanning leather because of the tannic acid it contained. The chips of the wood contain tannic acid as well, and it does the same thing to the impurities in water that boiling does—namely, it coagulates it. In Egypt, the muddy waters of the Nile are clarified and purified by using bitter almonds. In India, they use a nut called the Strychnos for ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... probably so to himself, but which those, on whom he means to impose, believe very efficacious. After this he draws near to the bowl, and bending very low, or rather lying over it, looks at himself in it as in a glass. If he sees the water in the least muddy, or unsettled, he recovers his erect posture, and begins his rounds again, till he finds the water as clear as he could wish it for his purpose, and then he pronounces over it his magic words. If after having repeated them twice ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... violently flung his arms about her and hugged her; then they kissed and moved apart. The man walked to the rain puddle and stood there with his face turned back laughing at her, and then he jumped straight into the middle of the puddle and began to dance up and down in it, the muddy water splashing up to his knees. She ran over to him crying 'Stop, silly!' When she came into the house, I bolted my door and I gave ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... accept this without a murmur. We ate corn beef and canned tomatoes with our hard bread until we were anything but half way pleased. In the fifth or sixth day out to sea the water furnished us became muddy or dirty and well flavored with salt, and remained so during the rest of the journey. Then, the ship's cooks, knowing well our condition made it convenient to themselves to sell us a glass of clean ice water and a small piece of bread and tainted meat for the sum of seventy-five cents, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... to one when he saw it again on his hurried and guilty way home. The pavements were drying in the fresh night wind and he had his overcoat buttoned up to the neck. He was absolutely solitary in the long, muddy perspective of Trafalgar Road. He walked because the last tram-car was already housed in its shed at the other end of the world, and he walked quickly because his conscience drove him onwards. And yet he dreaded to arrive, lest a wound in the child's leg should ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... they went together to a shallow place by the side of the creek, bent down, and, with the pan just beneath the surface, agitated and stirred it, the water washing away the thick muddy portion till nothing was left but sand ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... affected Guido like a bad dream. It was cold and muddy, and the snow when it fell turned to mud so quickly that Guido believed they were one and the same. He did not dare to think of the place he know as home. And the sight of the colored advertisements of the steamship lines that hung in the windows of the Italian bankers hurt him as the sound of ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... in the endeavor to save his strength. A big, raw-boned colt, whom he had named "Chunka Witko," in honor of the Sioux "Crazy Horse," the hero of the summer, had the honor of transporting the colonel over most of those weary miles, and Van spent the long days on the muddy trail in wondering when and where the next race was to come off, and whether at this rate he would be fit for a finish. One day on the Yellowstone I had come suddenly upon a quartermaster who had a peck of oats on his boat. Oats were worth their weight in ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... I'm wet as a musk-rat, so I reckon I ain't afraid of gittin' a little muddy," and with this the navigator stepped from the scow in swamp nearly to his middle, and pulled himself up the slope ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... shakes the silence of the night. Paris wet and muddy! Parisian Paris! Now everything is quiet ... she is sleeping the sleep of the unjust" (Written to Ferrand, Lettres intimes, pp. ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... February there came a thaw. I stood looking out of the store window one day; the snow had melted in the street, and right over the stones that had been laid across the road for a walk, there was a great puddle of muddy water about two yards wide and a foot deep. I soon saw Hetty Slocum tripping across the street; she came to the puddle and stood still; the soft slush was heaped up on either side—she couldn't get around and she couldn't go through. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... five miles and a half below Fort Delaware, the inhospitable marshes became wide and desolate, warning me to secure a timely shelter for the night. Nearly two miles below Point Elsinborough the high reeds were divided by a little creek, into which I ran my canoe, for upon the muddy bank could be seen a deserted, doorless fish-cabin, into which I moved my blankets and provisions, after cutting with my pocket-knife an ample supply of dry reeds for a bed. Drift-wood, which a friendly tide had ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... is situated some miles from the river, on the extreme frontier of Missouri. The scene was characteristic, for here were represented at one view the most remarkable features of this wild and enterprising region. On the muddy shore stood some thirty or forty dark slavish-looking Spaniards, gazing stupidly out from beneath their broad hats. They were attached to one of the Santa Fe companies, whose wagons were crowded together on the banks above. In the midst of these, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... staring Through muddy impurity, As when with the daring Last look of despairing Fixed ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... well. It has been thought that this creature uses its sense of smell more than its sense of sight in the procurement of its food. This is undoubtedly true where the animal is surrounded by water that is muddy, or that is otherwise rendered opaque. The odoriferous particles coming from the food being carried to the creature by the water, it follows them until it ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Diseases and relieves Sunburn. Removes Tan, Pimples, Blackheads, Moth Patches, Rash, Freckles and Vulgar Redness, Yellow and Muddy Skin, giving a delicately clear and refined complexion ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... limbs of a youth with long, smooth thighs Hutched up for warmth; the muddy rims Of trousers fray On the thin bare shins of ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... into the most various results. It is like the delicate manufacture of mosaics. The skilful workers of Rome or Venice put in the same ingredients in nature and amount, and the composition comes out at one time dull and muddy and at another time perfectly clear and lustrous. Some subtle difference in the mixture of the constituents or in the condition of the atmosphere or in the heat of the furnace alters the whole result. So out of life we may say in its various minglings there come various products in character, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... that troubled the poor girl much was the fact that she had not yet discovered the trail of Bladud. In reality, she had crossed it more than once, but, not being possessed of the keen eye of the hunter, she had not observed it, until she came to a muddy swamp, on the edge of which there was an unmistakable track—a trail which a semi-blind man could hardly have missed. Stopping for a few minutes to take particular note of it, she afterwards went on with renewed hope ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... of September the boilers "foamed" so that we had to tie up for nearly a day. This was caused by the water being so very muddy. The Rio Colorado deserves its name, for its swift-flowing current sweeps by like a mass of seething red liquid, turbulent and thick and treacherous. It was said on the river, that those who sank beneath its surface were never seen again, and in looking over into those whirlpools ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... series of pharaohs have gone into their graves; some died in torments, some were killed. But Thou thinkest not of them; Thou thinkest only of those whose service is that they begot other toilers who dipped up muddy water from the Nile, or thrust barley balls into the mouths of ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... respect, for to the northeast of the river mouth, on the starboard side of the yacht, it ran far up inside the island, and its waters were here distinctly sea-green, owing to the channels beyond the island. Where the yacht was, however, and to the south, the water was of a muddy brown color, proving that the river-current tended to empty toward the southward instead of diverging ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... gale burst upon them furiously, and Frank congratulated himself that the boat was snugly moored. The thick muddy water of the river was speedily lashed into angry waves; the rain came down in torrents, and although the left-hand bank was but a quarter of a mile distant it was soon lost to view. Frank was glad to leave the deck and crawl into the little ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... met Dr. Leland next morning, muddy as if he had been on a fox hunt in "Bear Heaven" and Jim Craddock, a noted dude, with his coat neatly buttoned and his collar clean. He was said to sleep lying on his back in a tent with ten or a dozen men, and never ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... than half expected to see some distorted wild face there, and he was pleasantly surprised to see nothing of the kind. His aspect, at any rate, would let no one into the secret of his pain. He examined himself with attention. His trousers were turned up, and his boots a little muddy, but he looked very much as usual. Only his hair was slightly ruffled, and that disorder, somehow, was so suggestive of trouble that he went quickly to the table, and began to use the brushes, in an anxious desire to obliterate the compromising trace, that only vestige of ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... time we saw a remarkable rock, called the Swallow, or Kroo rock, which is detached from the main land, about two miles and a half from the entrance of the river Waffen. There is a safe channel for vessels inside of this rock, with seven fathoms water, and a muddy bottom. Nearly twenty leagues to the westward of the Waffen is the river Cestus,[20] in which river, Captain Spence, an old African trader, has had a timber establishment ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... be found for us, which would ordinarily hold one man besides the two paddlers, with comfort. Into it were crowded three men and a quantity of baggage. In addition, it leaked, and periodically we were turned out on to a muddy and marshy bank while the canoe was ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... "My further mind and will is, out of my sense of the more than ordinary affection and pains of my son Jonathan in the times of my distress, I give him, as a further legacy, ten pounds." The will was proved in Court, July 2, 1656. The will and codicil speak of her "farms at Muddy River;" and of chests and a desk, in which were valuables of such importance that she took especial pains to intrust the keys of them to Edward Rawson, in a provision of the codicil. The estate was inventoried at L344. 14s., which was a considerable ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... as the launch drove steadily up the muddy river—from whose jungle-grown banks arose a warm, moist vapor—Frank drew from the grim-faced old Krooman some of his history. He had been a mighty warrior in the old days, he said, and the weapon be carried was his war axe with which he had killed uncounted ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... think what happens when there is a heavy shower; how quickly the raindrops gather force until they run down the street, making gutters on each side! But how unlike the muddy water in these gutters is the rain as it fell from the sky—how is this? It is the same water, but as it hurries along each drop picks up and carries with it its own little grain of sand or dust. If tiny gutters are tinged by the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... our feet now, if we could see through the muddy water, dozens of salmon and sea-trout are running up from ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... France I should decidedly say was much inferior to that of England, they are very fond of thick muddy back-grounds, their colouring partakes of the same dirty hue, there is generally a stiffness in the position, and much high finish without effect; there are certainly some exceptions to this rule, at the head of which is Madame Lezinska de Mirbel, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... as we made our way slowly up the muddy slope, "really, Harry, how long is this thing to last? When are we ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... evidence in respect to the age of man in America. In Nicaragua, in Central America, the imprints of human feet have been found, deeply buried over twenty feet below the present surface of the soil, under repeated deposits of volcanic rock. These impressions must have been made in soft muddy soil which was then covered by some geological convulsion occurring long ages ago. Even more striking discoveries have been made along the Pacific coast of South America. Near the mouth of the Esmeraldas river ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... fro by the ocean, settled down at the mouths of rivers or at the bottom of the sea, into a sediment, one layer forming over another, gradually built up through long ages. At first it was only a soft, loose, sandy or muddy sediment, such as you may see on the seashore, or in a mud-bank. But as the thickness of the sediment increased, the weight of the layers above gradually pressed the lower layers into firm hard rocks; ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... eels from his temples were hanging, His teeth were like teeth of a jack; His lips were inaudibly "slanging"; His eyes were all muddy and black; And water-snakes, round his neck twining, Were hissing; and water-rats swam At his feet; so without much divining I recognised ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... be right. A bridge over a small stream had collapsed, and was slowly disintegrating amid its own wreckage. Dave explored the stream bottom, getting muddy boots for his pains. Then he ran the car a little to one side of the road, locked the switch, and walked on ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... forewarned. As it happened, however the Major came first, and striding into the room, he shook her hand with considerable fervour and kissed it gallantly. Her gathering ill- temper disappeared with the promptitude of a flash. It was a muddy night; the Major had not carefully wiped his boots, and the footmarks were all over the floor. She saw them, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford |
