"Musty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the stove! the disgusting odor of musty papers! However, Amedee had nothing to complain of; they might have given him figures to balance for five hours at a time. He owed it to M. Courtet's kindness, that he was put at once into the correspondence room. He studied the formulas, and soon became skilful in official ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... and, as he stated, never once declared war. The continental Great Powers always made war on him, but not without his thrashing them soundly until they pleaded in their humility to be allowed to lick his boots. You may search English State papers in any musty hole you like, and you will find no authoritative record that comes within miles of justifying the opinions or the charges that have been stated or written against him. Let us not commit the sacrilege, if he is ever ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... chest, and raised the lid. It contained a very great variety of articles, including a tolerably good suit of clothes, which I had never seen upon the person of the old man. I took these out, and discovered a little dress, musty and mildewed. It was made of fine material, and was elaborately ornamented. There was a complete suit, and also a ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... for its motto's sake This scarecrow from the shelf I take; Three starveling volumes bound in one, Its covers warping in the sun. Methinks it hath a musty smell, I like its flavor none too well, But Yorick's brain was far from dull, Though Hamlet pah!'d, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such — The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... took mightily, and I was told to set about it at once. On turning to the doctor for the requisite materials, he told me he had none; there was not a fly-leaf, even in any of his books. So, after great search, a damp, musty volume, entitled "A History of the most Atrocious and Bloody Piracies," was produced, and its two remaining blank leaves being torn out, were by help of a little pitch lengthened into one sheet. For ink, some of the soot over the lamp was then mixed with water, by a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... walled in and made part of the hall. Over one of these windows is the inscription, "Post tenebras lux." The part I liked best, however, was the old-fashioned passage, with its lattice windows and musty dungeon savour, leading to the ancient kitchen and to a little oak-panelled sitting-room: but, knocking my head severely against the oak beam in the doorway, I nearly brought the whole ceiling down, a catastrophe which they tell me has ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... is also curious for his baits; that is to say, that they be clean and sweet; that is to say, to have your worms well scoured, and not kept in sour and musty moss, for he is a curious feeder: but at a well-scoured lob-worm he will bite as boldly as at any bait, and specially if, the night or two before you fish for him, you shall bait the places where you intend to fish for him, with big worms cut into pieces. And note, that none did ever ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... cherish a dream of long hours to be spent in the British Museum, the Congressional Library in Washington and the Public Library in Boston—and this is the only portion of the dream which has been realized. I planned an elaborate scheme of research work which was to result in a magnificent (if musty) philological treatise. I thought of trying to discover by long and patient researches what species of lullaby were crooned by Egyptian mothers to their babes, and what were the elementary dramatic poems in vogue among Assyrian ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... suspicions proved too correct. He took that box to his private room, and with some trouble unlocked it. A damp and musty smell came forth, as when a man delves a potato-bury; and then appeared layers of parchment yellow and brown, in and out with one another, according to the curing of the sheep-skin, perhaps, or the age of the sheep when he began to die; skins much older ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to-night, I am sure. Didn't I bring home Prescott, thinking that she would be delighted to have me sit the evening with her and read so charming an author? But, at the very proposition, she flared up, and said she didn't want to hear my musty old histories. Humph! A nice way to make a man love his home. Better for her and me, too, I'm thinking, that she had listened to the history, and kept her husband ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... a little grain, a few curds, and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift under the new government, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... He used to come frequent-like before—before—" with a sharp glance over at her daughter, "a few months back. He's a good lad, and I thought as he'd make quite a companion for Hervey. An' it 'ud do 'em a deal of good to air them spare rooms. I'm sure they're smelling quite musty. What say?" ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... mouldy moods Caged in musty solitudes; Men beneath the breezy sky March to conquer ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Prout another. Let not the solemn pretender to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and senseless. The name of Frailty is no more woman than man, and old shoes have no business at weddings. Stand aside O censorious reader, (I desire not thy acquaintance,) while I whisper to both maid and widow, what, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... a memory stays upon old ships, A weightless cargo in the musty hold, — Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips, Of stormy midnights, — and a tale untold. They have remembered islands in the dawn, And windy capes that tried their slender spars, And tortuous channels where their ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... goods had been dusty and fly-specked, and the interior of the store dark and musty. Now the shelves and showcases were neatly arranged, everything was scrupulously clean, and it was plain that the reign of woman had succeeded ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... simple folk, (it's queer) Used to patronise the seer And pay cash down for magic spell Perchance a Horoscope as well. Or open wide at special rate That musty tome the Book of Fate; Or seek the Philtre's subtle aid To win the hand of some fair maid. We mus'nt miss the Troubadours Who went forth on their singing tours, Twanging harps and trilling lays To maids of ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... Why can we not go and come without this musty steamer, these odious smells, this food for dogs, and this surge—ah, how remorseless!—of the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... flirt with her? I suppose she got hold of some old rusty, musty don. But then I do not suppose you'd find that sort of ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster a la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... musty old lubbers, Who tell us to fast and to think, And patient fall in with life's rubbers, With ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... rhetorical phrases and catchwords: they will have to depend on the support of public opinion. The peace settlement will have to be made by the nations themselves, and not by a few diplomats. It will have to be made in the full light of day and not in the secret and murky and musty atmosphere ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... no one was visible; there were rows of tuns, certainly, and a musty odor in the place, but no sign of any trade or business being carried on. Suddenly out of the darkness appeared a figure—so suddenly indeed as to startle her. Had this man been seen in ordinary daylight, he would no doubt have looked nothing worse than a familiar type of the fat black-a-vised ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... escape. The two windows were deeply curtained, giving a narrow glimpse of blank wall. She sprang softly to her feet and looked out. There was a stone pavement far below. She turned silently and tried a door. It opened into a closet overflowing with musty hymn-books. She closed it quickly and slipped back to her couch just in time as the door opened and the doctor came back. She could catch a glimpse of the others through the half open door, anxiously peering in. She gathered all her self-control ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... self-respect which Tom had gained that he walked past this place several times before he could muster the courage to enter. When he did enter, the old familiar, musty smell and the sordid litter of the shelves renewed his ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... covers, the chandeliers were veiled with cheese-cloth, the house and glass of the mirrors were dull and lifeless under the coating of dust. Marie opened the door for him and led the way through the dark, musty rooms, the windows closed, and the curtains down, without any light except what came ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... new shops and the side-street theaters and the thought of really nice girls going to a prize-fight in Madison Square Garden, and the eternal and never-ending talk about drinks, about where and how to get them, and how to mix them, and how much Angostura to put into 'em, and the musty ale that used to be had at Losekam's in Washington, and the Beaux Arts cocktails that used to come with a dash of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotch which somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end of Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... ripeness of what seemed so crude. The glow of toil wakes you to the consciousness of your real capacities: you feel sure that they have taken a new step toward final development. In such mood it is that one feels grateful to the musty tomes, which at other hours stand like wonder-making mummies with no warmth and no vitality. Now they grow into the affections like new-found friends, and gain a hold upon the heart, and light a fire in the brain, that the years and the mould ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... one, Squire Jonas, telling the inquiring stranger the tale, had the rights of it. There were town characters aplenty he might have described. A long-settled community with traditions behind it and a reasonable antiquity seems to breed curious types of men and women as a musty closet breeds mice and moths. This town of ours had its town mysteries and its town eccentrics—its freaks, if one wished to put the matter bluntly; and it had its champion story-teller and its champion liar and its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... old-fashioned garments were musty and faded. A frock of blue merino braided in an elaborate pattern in black lay on top. There was a cape to match, and a little cloth cap. Beside these lay a funny pair of leather boots with red tops—almost like a man's—only, ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... instead turned her practical mind to consideration of the immediate moment. The so-called parlor was hopeless she knew, and she dismissed it from the list of possibilities at once. It was a sparsely furnished, gloomy room, damp and musty from being tightly closed all summer, and the unpainted, rough boards ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... look quite so musty," said Dicky, reflectively. "Did it ever seem strange to you, Mr. French, that a pretty girl like Deena ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... ever since I had strength enough to gnaw a bone I have longed for the power of speech, that I might utter a multitude of things I had laid up in my memory, and which lay there so long that they were growing musty or almost forgotten. Now, however, that I see myself so unexpectedly enriched with this divine gift of speech, I intend to enjoy it and avail myself of it as much as I can, taking pains to say everything I can ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... disconcerting a situation, at which one more than usually daring spirit had actually ventured to suggest the election of one of themselves to fill the vacated throne. But this suggestion had been promptly vetoed by Lyga, the "Keeper of Statutes," who, referring to the musty tome in which were the laws relating to the government of Ulua, reminded the council that the law of succession explicitly provides that, upon the death of the sovereign, his next immediate successor becomes monarch. Or, failing an immediate successor, through ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... carefully noted, for any suggestion of fermentation sufficient to affect the odor renders the flour unsuited for making the best bread. Any abnormal odor in flour is objectionable, as it is due to contamination of some sort, and most frequently to fermentation changes. A musty odor is always an indication of unsoundness. Some flours which have but a slight suggestion of mustiness will, when baked into bread, have it more pronounced; on the other hand, some odors are removed during bread making. Flours may absorb odors because of being stored in contaminated places ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... the second floor, the ordinary bedroom of cheap furnished lodgings, with scant space between the foot of the bed and the fireplace, with a dirty wall-paper and a strong musty odour. The window ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... altitudes were gradually diminishing; and hence they knew that they were mounting the plateau. At last, four hours after leaving Diamond Creek, wearied to the marrow with incessant toil, they halted by a little spring, stretched themselves on a scrap of starveling grass, and chewed their meagre, musty supper. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... is a large amount of this used, but the quantity purchased at a time depends upon the kind of meal selected. The common kind, which is made by grinding between two mill-stones, retains a great deal of moisture, and, in hot weather, will soon grow musty; but the granulated meal will keep for any length of time. The corn for this meal is first dried; and it takes about two years for this. Then the outer husks are removed, and the corn is ground by a process that ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... whether it is the Parthenon or a farm-house. Without it, places lack their intimate personality, as photographs lack the personality of men and women. My memory of the Athenaeum Library is of the familiar, slightly musty smell of books, of the faint creaking of the librarian's boots, and the hum of bees and the whirr of a mowing machine, of the smell of an early summer afternoon, the white glare of the North Walk stretching beside the river, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Plutonean treasures, and who had swallowed it in a single gulp. It was in very bad case. The furrows of its red-tiled roof looked as if they were the results of age and decrepitude. Its best room had a musty smell; there was the dampness of deliquescence in its slow decay, but the Spanish Californians were sensible architects, and its massive walls and partitions defied the earthquake thrill, and all the year round ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... have seen many of these bits of paper if you had stopped in your hole in the Rue de Cluny, prowling about among the musty old books in the Bibliotheque de Sainte-Genevieve?" asked Coralie, for she knew the whole story of Lucien's life by this time. "Those little friends of yours in the Rue des Quatre-Vents are great ninnies, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... "With me, as with the caterpillars, it is mostly bluff. I can swing back my head, and flatten the nape of my neck, as well as any deadly adder. I can also strike, but there is no poison behind the blow. My only weapon of offence is smell, a sickening musty smell, that makes the enemy loose his hold. Once I am halfway down a hole, I'm safe. I set my ratchet scales against the sides, and nothing can dislodge me. Only a jerk is dangerous, and that must be accomplished before I am ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... again disappeared the heir bent over the curiously shaped bottle in delight, for when the cork was drawn a fragrance filled the musty ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... out of the town, in a churchyard overgrown with grass, which the wind blew like a field of corn. Many of the stones were out of sight in it. The church, a relic of old catholic days, rose out of it like one that had taken to growing and so got the better of his ills. They walked into the musty, dingy, brown-atmosphered house. The cobbler led the way to a humble place behind a pillar; there Doory was seated waiting them. The service was not so dreary to Donal as usual; the sermon had some thought in it; and ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... rattled as though with the heavy slapping of hands, the pines creaked and the sudden dusk outside made the cabin, when he pushed the door open, as dark as night. Kindling a fire, he lit his pipe and waited. The room was damp and musty, but the presence of June almost smothered him. Once he turned his face. June's door was ajar and the key was in the lock. He rose to go to it and look within and then dropped heavily back into his chair. He was anxious to get away now—to get to work. Several times he rose restlessly ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... had been a dream. He was still at Brockett's, still silent, shy, awkward, still poring over pages of "Reuben Hallard" and wondering whether any one would ever publish it—still spending so many hours in the old musty bookshop with Herr Gottfried's wild mop of hair coming so madly above ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... hall was filled with sombre shadows; the motionless air was heavy with a musty, choking odor. In the dimness a few tattered hangings were visible on the walls; a rope, with bits of crumbling evergreen clinging to it, trailed from above one of the low windows. The panelled double door of the ballroom was shut; no sound ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Sir Walter Scott, "that I am one of the Black Hussars of Literature who neither give nor take criticism." Tennyson resented any interference with his muse by writing the now nearly forgotten line about "Musty, crusty Christopher." Byron flew into a rhapsodical passion and wrote English ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... more or less exact; to their desire to elucidate some point which had hitherto been considered obscure, and which their explanations do not always clear up; to the temptation to display their proficiency in the ingenious art of manipulating facts and figures culled from a dozen musty ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... part, if it had been the will of the Lord. This had occasioned her to make some reflections, and then to reason upon those reflections; as for instance, that since her husband chose rather to devote himself to his studies, than to the duties of matrimony, to turn over musty old books, rather than attend to the attractions of beauty, and to gratify his own pleasures, rather than those of his wife, it might be permitted her to relieve some necessitous lover, in neighbourly charity, provided she could do it conscientiously, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... late Earl and himself. Nothing had changed, except that now there were wires which gave out hissing sparks, electrical instruments invented since the earlier day; except that this man, gently dropping acids into the round white bottle upon a crystal which gave off musty fumes, was bolder, stronger, had more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a stylish card That bids you come and dine, And bring along your freshest wit (To pay for musty wine), You're looking very dismal, when My lady bounces in, And wonders what you're thinking of And why ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... packed in moth preventives ever since and out only four times a year to air, as you told me. It must smell musty and be yellow. I want it fresh ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... find it interesting, Nance, rummaging among these musty old religions of a dead past—though I admit that this one is less pleasant to study than most of the others. This god seems to lack the majesty and beauty of the Greek and the integrity of the Norse gods. In fact, he was too crude to be funny—by the way, what is it I seem to recall, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... he must be my Husband. And when I told her I cou'd'nt love him, she call'd me Fool, saying, I shou'd Marry him first, and love him afterwards: And when I farther objected our Disparity in Age she answer'd with another Musty Proverb, That 'twas good taking Shelter under an old Hedge; and that it was far better being an Old Mans Darling, then a Young Mans Worldling: And tho' this didn't Satisfie me, yet I soon found I must have him or ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... fastened. As a matter of fact, during his search of the pantry, he discovered the key on top of the ice box. A layer of dust indicated that the key had not been touched for a long time. His thorough investigation of the pantry revealed no evidence of recent use. The ice box was dry as a bone, with the musty smell of long disuse. A touch of the finger on various dishes and pieces of glassware showed that these also were covered with ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... Helen; a "musty library, who loved Greek and Latin;" but cousin Helen loved the bookworm, and taught him how to love far better than Ovid could with his Art of Love. Having so good a teacher, Modus became an apt scholar, and eloped with Cousin Helen.—S. Knowles, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... musty," was Dave's comment. "Washington told that to Caesar when the two were planning to throw Socrates into Niagara." And then a ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... since lost heart and passed away. A dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life from the outside must come, and speedily, ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... they entered; the usual mildewed walls, with the colour wash flowing away in streaks from the unsympathetic beam above; the same device, "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!" scribbled in charcoal above the black iron stove; the usual musty, close atmosphere, the usual smell of onion and stale cheese, the usual hard straight benches and central table with its ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... grewsome old shell any way, full of unaccountable noises after dark—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... took her seriously, and ransacked all his store of second-hand philosophy for a worthy answer,—a musty store, dead and pedantic, after the thrilling spirit of her words. "Why, I think—it is—is it not all now the sense-manifest substance of our duty? Pardon. I am obscure. 'Das ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... these musty claims of Portugal there stood the offers of "The International Association of the Congo" to bring the blessings of free trade and civilisation to downtrodden millions of negroes, if only access ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... sight, and not to know where he was. He set it open again, and having checked it so, proceeded to replace the papers. But the strangeness of the presence there of such a light took so great a hold on his imagination, and it was such a rare thing to see what the musty dingy little closet, which to Cosmo had always been the treasure—chamber of the house, was like, that he stood for a moment with his hand on the cover of the bureau, gazing into the light-invaded corners as if he had suddenly found himself in a department of Aladdin's cave. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... taste and smell, I have only to bite one of the biscuits they make nowadays of Lord knows what, reeking the moment you taste them, of fish glue and plaster that has been rained upon, I have only to eat that cold, insipid paste and sniff at a musty closet, and at once the lugubrious picture rises before me of some Godforsaken place!—Your Chartres will no ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... derived his words as often as he used them,—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... maintainance was on an equal scale. Today bacon and peas—peas and bacon tomorrow. Once in a while this menu was broken by porridge or peeled barley, and as an occasional great feast by pudding. This pudding was made of musty flour, half salt and half sweet water and of very ancient mutton suet. The bacon could have been from four to five years old, was black at both outer edges, became yellow a little farther on and was white only in the very centre. ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... must say," she remarked, half petulantly. "You might at least have dropped me a note to ask how I am getting along, and whether I am industrious, and all that rot! But did you? No! You took me to the horse show, and back to the hotel, and then vanished as if you had withdrawn yourself into your musty ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... and sonorous is an English oath. Bright is the steel, arming each clattering hoof! Leather strap and shining buckle, replace musty rope and ponderous knot! The carriage is easier than a Landgravine's,—the horses more sleek,—the driver as civil,—the road is like a bowling green,—the axletree and under-spring, of Collinge's latest patent. But the heart! the heart! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... not a dream; it shall be a reality. How glorious it will be! I can see our little house now nestling among the hills, shaded by great spreading trees with flowers and vines and golden fruit all about it, rich plumaged birds and gorgeous butterflies. Oh! I can hardly wait. Who would live in a musty palace when one has within reach such a home, and ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... have wandered, Harry, into the narrowest underground, musty ways, and have forgotten all ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... disappointment myself, but I secretly felt sorry for Picton, who went rummaging about the barrels in search of something to eat or to drink. "No white sugar?" said the traveller. "We don't have white sugar in this town," was the answer. "Nor coffee?" "No, Sir." And the tea had the same flavor of musty hay, with which we were so well acquainted. At last Picton stumbled over a prize—a bushel-basket half-filled with potatoes, whereat he raised a bugle-note ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so many hours pinioned to a writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time and pleasure in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There is indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... apartment was sufficient. If he should ever really live here the parlor could be made habitable, but for the present its demands were too many. He closed the windows again and abandoned the room to its musty solitude. From the spare room upstairs he brought bed and bedding and placed it in the sitting room. It required some ingenuity to convert the latter apartment into a bedroom, but the difficulty was at last solved by relegating the sewing machine to the parlor and moving the couch. When the ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... you know that picture well, A monk, all else unheeding, Within a bare and gloomy cell A musty volume reading; While through the window you can see In sunny glade entrancing, With cap and bells beneath a tree ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow passageways, just off ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... acridity &c 401.1. V. have a bad smell &c n.; smell; stink, stink in the nostrils, stink like a polecat; smell strong &c adj., smell offensively. Adj. fetid; strong-smelling; high, bad, strong, fulsome, offensive, noisome, rank, rancid, reasty^, tainted, musty, fusty, frouzy^; olid^, olidous^; nidorous^; smelling, stinking; putrid &c 653; suffocating, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her cargo! How momentous the announcement; suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins, and filling me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber, with which my river experience ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... about Professor Sillcocks? It's a shame if I haven't, because every one is the better and nobler for hearing about him. He was about a nickel's worth of near-man with Persian-lamb whiskers and the disposition of a pint of modified milk. Crickets were bold and quarrelsome beside him. He knew more musty history than any one in the state and he could without flinching tell how Alexander waded over his knees in blood; but rather than take off his coat where the world would have seen him he would have died. He was just that modest and conventional. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... could hear the water hammering into something that rang like a gong; and each time I rolled over in the musty trough of my feather-bed I fractiously asked myself why the mischief they had left the tap running all night. Next morning the matter was explained when, on demanding a bath, I was told that "there wasn't but one in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... there as he did above, and announced that he should leave it open for half an hour. The two men moved a little way along the oak stick to be out of the cool draught which blew from the cellar-like place, empty save for the storage of some old fragments of vessels or warehouse gear. There was a musty odor of the innumerable drops of molasses which must have leaked into the hard earth there for half a century; there was still a fragrance of damp Liverpool salt, a reminder of even the dyestuffs and pepper and rich spices that had been stowed away. The two elderly men were carried back ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... banks, dominated by two declivities, lined with brambles and long rows of trees, hidden, drowned in that milky vapor, clad in that musty robe which sometimes floats over valleys, at break of day. And at the extreme end of that thick and transparent fog, you see coming or, rather already come, a human couple, a stripling and a maiden, embraced, inter-laced, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... remember that book too. It was among your old child's books, mother. A queer little musty brown volume, and I remember ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... to Spain to collect materials for the "Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus." This was a much more serious work than anything he had before undertaken. It was, unlike the history of New York, a genuine investigation of facts derived from the musty old volumes of the libraries of Spanish monasteries and other ancient collections. It was a record of the life of the discoverer of America that was destined to remain the highest authority on that subject. Murray, the London publisher, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... begged her, if she were not tired, to do; but this would have been flight, and she was not a coward. So they sauntered down the Rue Fabrique, and turned into Palace Street. As they went by the door of Hotel Musty, her pleasant friends came again into her mind, and she said, "This is where we stayed last week, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... of cedar buds was in the air about them; and wafted out on this, as though it might have been just now brought up from the musty depths of some old cedar chest, they heard the thin voice of Miss Liz scolding one of the servants. Otherwise, the morning seemed to have no life except the lazy ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... received his message and gone for a walk, leaving word he would return at ten o'clock, Mary went into the hotel parlor to wait for him. The room was seldom used, patrons, local and otherwise, preferring the Bar of happy memories, and it smelled musty. She opened the windows and glanced about distastefully. The walls were covered with a faded yellow paper, torn in places, and the ceiling was smoked and fly-specked. The worn thin carpet seemed to have been chosen for its resemblance to turtle soup squirming with ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pylorus.... Here, indeed, the thread of his meditations is a thread of nutriment. However diverted by the fragrance of the Dutch woods, the church bells of Belgium, the music of Stuttgart, the bad pictures of Dublin, the plays of Paris, the musty romance of old Wien, he always comes back anon to such ease as a man may find in his inn. "The stomach of Vienna," he says, "first interested me, not its soul." And so, after a dutiful genuflexion to St. Stephen's ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has to be carried out and laid in the sun every day, with the forecast that it may be demolished at any moment. The confinement is dreadful. To sit and listen as if waiting for death in a horrible manner would drive me insane. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... placed, in 1901, the incongruity of the adult painting and the purposes of the room caused unfavorable comment. But the room has been recently readjusted. It is now lined with high oak shelves, almost to the cornice, filled with musty old books of a beautiful brown—perhaps the most effective decoration in the world—and the ceiling tells ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... It was musty and damp this day as the day when Richard had come back from England and found it vacant and his grandfather dead. But there, at the parting of the stairs, was the triple-arched window which he had described. Through ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the place knew that when the store was under police observation and Mother Toulouche feared a raid she took care to hang out any kind of old clothes; but if the way was clear, if no lurking police were on the lookout, then the rallying flag would be hoisted, the flag being the old, patched, rusty, musty Academician's robe. ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats, the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated. The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside, beneath ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... musty old German books recently published is a little book by that same Frederick. The Prussian king was writing certain notes for the guidance of his sons and successors, among whom is the present Kaiser. In his page of counsels Frederick talks very plainly ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... bibliophile who was furnishing Mr. Rushbrook's library from spoils of foreign collections, and had suffered unheard-of agonies from the millionaire's insisting upon a handsome uniform binding that should deprive certain precious but musty tomes of their crumbling, worm-eaten coverings; how the very gentle, clerical-looking stranger, mildest of a noisy, disputing crowd at the other table, was a notorious duelist and dead shot; how the only gentleman at the table who retained a flannel shirt and high boots was not a late-coming ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... in the rear. A man seated at one of the little tables looked up and nodded. Grand took the chair opposite to this person and, after an exchange of greetings for the benefit of the waiter, ordered oysters and a pint of musty ale. The Colonel had his principal ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... balls on the iron fence shone brighter than ever because he had come. There were steps in the garden that went down and then up again, and the porch, even, was overgrown with green stuff as if it were part of the garden. The walls of the hall were hung with musty leather, printed with gold flowers, and there were chairs with high backs that creaked as if they had ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... sun was sifting through windows of cheap stained glass, and fell in mellow quiet upon the faded cushions and musty ingrain carpet. The place had that deserted look of having been abandoned, yet Courtland, as he stood in the shadow under the old balcony, seemed to see the Presence of the eternal God standing up there behind the pulpit, seemed ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... passed into the high, chill rooms of his father's apartment. After feeling a moist atmosphere and breathing the heavy air and the musty odor which is given forth by old tapestries and furniture covered with dust, he found himself in the antique room of the old man, in front of a sick bed and near a dying fire. A lamp standing on a table of Gothic shape shed its streams of uneven light sometimes more, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... and the entire house, so far as I saw it, are whitewashed and exceedingly clean; nor is there the aged, musty smell with which old Chester first made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an American of his excessive predilection for antique residences. An old lady, who took charge of me up-stairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and talked ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... misgivings did the three lads plunge forward in the darkness, feeling their way with outstretched hands as they entered the tunnel. A close, musty smell, as of things long mildewed and moulded, filled the air, and an oppressive silence lay on everything. Unconsciously, since entering this place, their conversation ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... Fields, There is a grain which, tho' 'tis common, Its Worth till now was known to no Man. Not Ceres Sickle e're did crop A Grain with Ears of greater hope: And yet this Grain (as all must own) To Grooms and Hostlers well is known, And often has without disdain In musty Barn and Manger lain, As if it had been only good To be for Birds and Beasts the Food. But now by new-inspired Force, It keeps alive both Man and Horse. Then speak, my Muse, for now I guess E'en what it is thou wouldst express: It is not ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... his lips. The liquid was musty, having been in the skin nearly two days. Otherwise it seemed to be all right. With a sigh of profound relief he gave Iris the cup, and smiled at the most unladylike haste with ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... and thrust with it at the press. The battle melted away like wax under a hot sun at the touch of those musty bones. Terror and affright seized upon the mob, and everywhere they ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... damp, and smelled like moldy leaves. Meyerhoff followed the huge, bear-like Altairian guard down the slippery flagstones of the corridor, sniffing the dead, musty air with distaste. He drew his carefully tailored Terran-styled jacket closer about his shoulders, shivering as his eyes avoided the black, yawning cell-holes they were passing. His foot slipped on the slimy flags from time to time, and ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... the vivacity of a harlequin—he is fuddled with animal spirits, giddy with constitutional joy; in such a state, he must write or burst: a discharge of ink is an evacuation absolutely necessary to avoid fatal and plethoric congestion. A musty and limited pedant yellows himself a little among rolls and records, plunders a few libraries, and, lo! we have an entire new work by the learned Mr Dunce, and that after an incubation of only one month. He is, perhaps, a braggadocio ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... "A musty, miserable pun! It was he, and I'm delighted it so happened, that the first time he ever spoke to me he had to ask ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... with a board; the windows are never opened; probably the shutters are kept always shut; perhaps some kind of stores are kept in the room; no breath of fresh air can by possibility enter into that room, nor any ray of sun. The air is as stagnant, musty, and corrupt as it can by possibility be made. It is quite ripe to breed small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, or anything else ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... in that," said the parson, with a laugh. "Peter was getting old and a bit rusty in the hinges, you know, and we were likely to turn out a pair of old crows fit for nothing but to scare good Christians from the district. But Greta came to the musty old house, with its dust and its cobwebs, and its two old human spiders, like a slant of sunlight on a muggy day. Here's supper—draw up your chair, Mr. Bonnithorne, and welcome. It's my favorite dish—she knows it—barley broth and a sheep's head, with boiled potatoes and mashed turnips. Draw ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... drugs. There were comfortable chairs, flowers in a window-box, a table with a book or two and some magazines. Through a half-open door, an inner office showed—all very different from the picture her memory showed her of the musty, cumbered room in which her father had received his dwindling patients. As a child she had hated that room, hated the hideous charts of "people with their skins off," the ponderous books with their horrific and highly ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... butterflies, the misty blue hills, the sunshine, who read no lesson in beauty, who recognize no message in the moon and the stars, in cheerfulness and good humor. On the contrary, they seem to abhor the sunshine; they keep their parlors for ever in musty darkness, a kind of tomb where they place funeral wreaths under glass globes and enter but half a dozen times a year. Well, even these had finally dragged themselves away from the grave, and left Warrington standing alone beside the brown roll of damp fresh earth. No carriage awaited ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... than his willingness to undergo severe mental drudgery in pursuit of knowledge concerning the old storied days which had enthralled his imagination. It was no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour after hour and day after day in the Advocate's Library, poring over musty manuscripts, deciphering heraldic devices, tracing genealogies, and unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. By the time he was twenty-one he had made himself, almost unconsciously, an expert paleographer and antiquarian, whose assistance ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... of other stuff writes the stupid peer; scribbling in several places half a dozen lines, apparently for no other reason but to bring in as many musty words in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... listlessly here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while Herbert sat writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But the unfamiliar long S's, the close type, and the spelling of the musty old books wearied eye and mind. What he read, too, however far-fetched, or lively, or sententious, or gross, seemed either to be of the same texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him with its nearness, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Webster in quality rather than in essence. They were both content with America and New England. Hawthorne, with his shrug at old buildings and his wish that all over two hundred years of age should be burnt down, was repeating Webster's contempt of the musty halls of collegiate Cambridge; and Hawthorne, Yankeeizing the Greek myths, and finding all Rome but the background for his Puritan maiden, was asserting that new discovery of Europe by America which has ever since been going on, and was illustrated ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... some castle of their own, secure from all interruption, and rejoicing in the buzzy silence, the murky glimmer, and subterranean secrecy, which imparted a touch of melodrama to their experiences. All sorts of smells were wafted through the hoarding from the neighbouring cellars; the musty smell of vegetables, the pungency of fish, the overpowering stench of cheese, and the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the bringer of the best news we've ever had," she said, and her voice was like a flood of some warm sweet liquor in that musty, hate-charged room. "Oh, Hank, forget your silly, wrong jealousy and listen to me. Patrick here has something wonderful ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Musty hay or straw should not be given to horses. Furze is said to be a heating food; but it is very nutritious, and when young, may be given as part of the food ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... conducted in private by the Keeper of the Seals—a lean, wizened individual, with an air as musty and dry as that of the parchments among which he had spent his days. He was supported by six judges, and on his right sat the King's Commissioner, Monsieur de Chatellerault—the bruised condition of whose countenance still advertised the fact that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... roar of a conch-shell with a bad case of grip. "I may say to you that, aside from a certain uncanny satisfaction which I feel at being permitted for the first time in my life to gaze upon the linaments of a real live misty musty spook, I regard your coming here as an invasion of the sacred rights of privacy which is, ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... hard-backed chair, generally minus a portion of a leg; never any chest of drawers or anywhere to put your things, as if there by any chance was such a thing in the room, it was sure to be full of the inhabitants' rusty old black clothes and dirty blue flannel shirts, and petticoats, thick and musty, by the ton,—I never saw so many ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... Then when my solicitor comes, he and your man can have an evening over a lot of musty papers and the thing will be done. Again, my boy [taking HORACE'S hand], I welcome you to our ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... historical works discovered in an old cupboard in his father's study. To this chamber, which had also served as the bedroom in which the child slept with his grandmother, the young man's thoughts returned with wistful bitterness, and at the image of the innocent little figure poring over the musty volumes by the flickering firelight in the silence of the night, the mass of rags heaved yet more convulsively. How he had enjoyed putting on fresh wood after his grandmother had gone to bed, and grappling with the astronomical treatise, ignoring the grumblings of the poor old lady who ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... there is nothing in them which we who are poor and plain need at all envy, and that instead of the perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the barber shop—something that turns stale and musty in a ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... still remain in the stained whitewash, the seams of battered bricks of the solid old escutcheoned palaces; see them sometimes displayed like the worm-eaten squares of discoloured embroidery which the curiosity dealers take out of their musty oak presses; and sometimes dragging about mere useless and befouled odds and ends, like the torn shreds which lie among the decaying kitchen refuse, the broken tiles and plaster, the nameless filth and ooze which attracts the flies under every black archway, in every steep bricked lane descending ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... very bulwark of Society. It is the foundation on which the Trust Companies, the Courts, and the Prisons are reared. Your codes are blind without the miraculous torches which this Office can light. Your judges can not propound the 'laur'—I beg your pardon, the law—without the aid of these musty, smelling, dilapidated tomes. Ay, these are the very constables of the realm, and without them there can be no realm, no legislators, and no judges. Strong, club-bearing constables, these Liebers, standing on the boundary lines, keeping peace ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Ogilvy," he said. "Father," he added, wringing my hand. I called him son; but it was only an exchange of musty words that we had found too late. A father is a poor estate to come ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... croquet-balls. The dried leaves are used in Switzerland to fill beds with, and very nice such beds must be! Long ago they were used for this purpose in England. Evelyn says that they remain sweet and elastic for seven or eight years, by which time a straw mattress would have become hard and musty. They have a pleasant restorative scent, something like that of green tea. When we think how many poor people lie on musty mattresses, or have none at all, whilst the beech-leaves lie in the woods and go very slowly to decay, we see one more of the ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... feet in height, and the heavy, whitewashed beams made it look still lower. In the narrow space between the ceiling and wainscot, the wall was covered with an old-fashioned paper, florid of design, and musty of odor. On the mantel-shelf stood two brass candle-sticks with snuffer and extinguisher. As Flint stared idly at them, wondering what varied scenes their candles had shone upon, his eyes were drawn above them to a picture which, once having ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Arno flowing under the iron-barred windows, and the Ponte Vecchio, covered with its jewellers' shops, close at hand; the dark, lofty chambers with faded frescos on the ceilings, black pictures hanging on the walls, old books on the shelves, and hundreds of musty antiquities, emitting an odor of past centuries; the shrivelled, white-bearded old man, thinking all the time of ghosts, and looking into the child's eyes to seek them; and the child herself, springing so freshly out of the soil, so ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the same series of pictures in the Swedish inns. In the morning I was aroused by Braisted exclaiming, "There she blows!" and the whale came up to the surface with a huge pot of coffee, some sugar candy, excellent cream, and musty biscuit. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... was the letter held tight in his grasp that was sending electric thrills through him. "A fine old fellow is Dr. Pencoyd—known him for years," he continued; "I attended his lectures before I went abroad. Lives in a musty old house on Chestnut Street, stuffed full of family portraits and old mahogany furniture, and not a comfortable chair or sofa in the place; wears yellow Nankeen waist-coats, takes snuff, and carries a fob. Oh, yes, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dances, playing the measures on an old violin the while. The school desks served for dummy dancers, and were arranged to give her a notion of the ordering of the figures. The aged recluse, in his musty coat, seemed transformed into a very courtly gentleman, but Wilhelmine always fancied that his eyes were more melancholy than usual after these mimic courts. One day she asked him if it saddened him to revoke the past. 'Ah! mon enfant!' he replied, 'que voulez-vous? un coeur profondement blesse ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to wait in a square, cheerless, dimly-lighted room pervaded by a musty smell, that had for only furniture a couple of chairs and a praying-stool, and for only ornament a great, gaunt crucifix hanging upon one ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... it, do you?" sneered the bully. "You'll like it still less when you get below. It's beautifully damp and musty." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... next day as I sat in my ambulance, waiting orders, he trudged by in his blue, "the color of heaven" once, but musty now from nights under the rain. His head of hair, which the glossy black wig had covered, was gray-white. The sparkling, pantomimic face had dropped into wrinkles. He was patient and old and tired. Perhaps he, too, would have been glad of some one to cheer him up. He was just one more ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... Grace, 1915, we are still too close to the eighteen nineties, still too liable to be influenced by their ways, to be able to speak for posterity and to pronounce the final judgment upon those evil years. It is possible that the critics of the twenty-first century, as they turn over the musty pages of the Yellow Book, will ejaculate with feeling: "Good God, what a dull time these people must have had!" On the whole it is probable that this will be their verdict. They will detect the dullness ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... the world is the note of spring freshness. The dewy sweetness of the morning air is in it, and the fragrance of spring flowers. The brown sheets on which the notes are printed have lain amongst the dust for a couple of centuries; they are musty and mildewed. Set the sheets on a piano and play: the music starts to life in full youthful vigour, as music from the soul of a young god should. It cannot and never will grow old; the everlasting ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... shows with godlike showing To-day for each that sees May's magic overthrowing All musty memories In him whom May decrees To be love's own. He saith, I wear love's liveries Until ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... It was a musty old place, without even as much tidiness as is usually found in barns, and there was a dank smell about it, as though generations of haymows had decayed there. There were holes in the floor, and in the dusk of early evening it was necessary for us to pick our way with the greatest care. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... of eccentric character, ever poring over musty records and hunting up decayed titles. He was fond of attaching to his signature the names of all the innumerable offices he held over the conglomerated States of his realm. He was Rhodolph, Margrave of Baden, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... with the heavy eyebrows had ushered Ben into a parlor furnished with what had once been great splendor; but now the hangings were faded, the furniture warped and aged and over all hung a musty aroma as if the place had ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... you are right," exclaimed the lieutenant, sniffing in turn. "And I remember that last time I visited this place the old woman certainly seemed to carry with her an uncanny, musty, animal odour. Therefore it is probably ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... teach Latin, Greek, Spanish, Fardown Irish, and perhaps Choctaw, to such youths as desired to become thorough linguists. He was not very successful in this line, and concluded to enter the office of a prominent law firm on Superior Street as a student. He dove among the musty and ponderous volumes with all the enthusiasm of a wild young Irishman, and commenced cramming his head with law at a startling rate. He lodged in the back-room of the office, and previous to retiring he used to sing the favorite ballads of his own Emerald Isle. The boy who was employed ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... made up beds for himself and his charges in the deck-house; he had cleared the stuff off the table, broken open the windows to get the musty smell away, and placed the mattresses from the captain and mate's ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Father Danny in the master's private car to the great metropolitan hospital; that sent to the startled Hitt the canceled mortgage papers on the Express; and that inaugurated that great work of restitution which held the dwellers in the Ames mansion toiling over musty books and forgotten records for ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking |
