"Rusty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a flannel shirt of washed-out shepherd's tartan, and a suit of reddish tweeds, of the colour known to tailors as "heather mixture"; his neckcloth was black, and tied loosely in a sailor's knot; a rusty ulster partly concealed these advantages; and his feet were shod with rough walking boots. His hat was an old soft felt, which he removed with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could not possiby omit, in a work treating of this peculiar and most distressing crisis. As the boy Charles was on his way to M'Mahon's—and this he mentioned to the family afterwards—he was met, he said, by a gentleman dressed in rusty black, mounted upon a strong, coarse horse; and who, after looking at him with a good deal of surprise, said—"What is your name, my fine fellow?" and on hearing it he asked him where he was going. The child, who had been trained to nothing but truth; mentioned at once the object of his message; ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics. A rusty nail or a crooked pin ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... her languages. They take care of themselves; they will not get rusty here; our regiments are not made up of natives alone—far from it. And she is picking up Indian ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... In a few minutes out came an old patriarchal-looking rat, who, having taken a careful survey, quietly began to feed. After a long aim, bang went the gun—I fell backwards, knocked down by the recoil of the rusty old piece of artillery. I did not remain prone long, for I was soon roused by the most unearthly squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an infuriated animal madly rushing round and round the sty. Ye gods! what ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... inside, at whose identity I could now make a guess, uttered a low exclamation, and still seemed to hesitate. But on my repeating my demand I heard a rusty bolt withdrawn, and Madame de Bruhl, opening the door a few inches, showed her face in the gap. 'What do you ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... is Hargrove, Sir; I am minister of the new Jerusalem church; we, Sir, explain the scripture in its true meaning; the key has been lost these four thousand years, and we have found It." "Then," said Paine, in his own neat way, "it must have been very rusty." Shortly before his death, he stated to Mr. Hicks, to whom he had sent to arrange his burial? that his sentiments in reference to the Christian religion were precisely the same as when he wrote the "Age of Reason." On the 8th of June, (in the words of Clio Rickman) 1809. ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... up my mind to see what Caryl Carne is at, among his owls and ivy. You remember the last time I went to the old place I knocked till I was tired, but could get no answer, and the window was stopped with some rusty old spiked railings, where we used to be able to get in at the side. All the others are out of reach, as you know well; and being of a yielding nature, I came sadly home. And at that time I still had some faith in your friend ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... steep streets of the old Calvinistic city. The garden faced this way, toward the lake and the old town; and this was the pleasantest approach to the house. There was a high wall, with a double gate in the middle, flanked by a couple of ancient massive posts; the big rusty grille contained some old-fashioned iron-work. The garden was rather mouldy and weedy, tangled and untended; but it contained a little thin—flowing fountain, several green benches, a rickety little table of the same complexion, and three orange-trees, in tubs, which were deposited as effectively ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... far as the two latter were concerned, he did not overstate the case. The college at Trevecca could hardly be regarded in any other light than that of a Dissenting Academy. Berridge saw this, and wrote to Lady Huntingdon: 'However rusty or rickety the Dissenters may appear to you, God hath His remnant among them; therefore lift not up your hand against them for the Lord's sake nor yet for consistency's sake, because your students are as real Dissenting preachers as any in the land, unless a gown ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... incessantly past, and broke thundering against the cliffs. The second attempt to reach the launch was successful, and, wonderful to relate, she had suffered no damage, only she had shipped so much water that everything was soaked and rusty. The engineer began to repair her engines, and by evening she steamed back to her anchorage, where we welcomed her as if she had been a ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... on the soil as if he were no more than droppings, And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin. ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... see the garotte by the President, who took it out of its little mahogany case, into which it was fitted like any other surgical instrument. We noticed that it was rusty, and indeed it had not been used for many months. It is not ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... opening it he saw—money. Yes; a roll of bills with two figures on all of them,—three tens and one twenty. It took his breath away for a minute; then he hugged the old book tight in both his grimy hands, and rocked to and fro all in a heap among the oyster-shells and rusty tin kettles, saying to himself, with tears running down his cheeks, 'O Nanny! O Nanny! now I ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... northern door of the cathedral. In reply to the rap of our knuckles at the huge portals, it slowly swung back on its hinges, and a grim, surly-looking face appeared. The figure which belonged to the face was clad in a rusty and seedy black robe, from beneath which a hand was thrust forth, and the words, "two-pence each," sounded harshly on our ears. Two-pence each was accordingly paid, and then the surly janitor, or verger, as he is called, admitted us within the building. In a moment afterwards, we were beneath the ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... dug more. 'I have it out now,' he said; 'it is like a great spear, for it has a huge head of rusty iron. ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... room in which Mrs. Rider had been murdered, and the rusty brown stains on the floor where Tarling had found her were eloquent ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... a mistresse of ours, where we likened the cure of Loue to Achilles launce. The launce so bright, that made Telephus wound, The same rusty, salued the sore againe, So may my meede (Madame) of you redownd, Whose rigour was first suthour of ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... to tell you what I was doing this afternoon. You will think I am not at war at all when I tell you that I have been roller-skating. I was a bit rusty at first, but warmed up to it. It is about the only exercise we can get on shore, for it rains all the time. Each shower puts an added crimp in my temper, as I have been trying to get a new coat of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... house was a queer survival of three centuries, with a pattern of black oak beams let into a white-washed front. Its roof shot up into a high gable at an acute angle, and was tiled with red clay squares, mellowed by Time to the hue of rusty iron. A long lattice with diamond panes, and geraniums in flower-pots behind them, extended across the lower storey; two little jutting windows, also of the criss-cross pattern, looked like two eyes in the second storey; and high up in ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... buckled scarlet that capered to and fro, And all her rusty locks were wreathed with twisted mistletoe; But never a dint, or mark, or print, in the whiteness for to see, Though danced she high, though danced she ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... progressed, turning now and again to the other faces with glances that burned; he was winning steadily. A red-headed man was on his left, with his back to Andy; but now and again he turned, and Andy saw a heavy jowl and a skin blotched with great, rusty freckles. His shoulders over-flowed the back of his chair, which creaked whenever he moved. The man who faced the redhead was as light as his companion was ponderous. His voice was gentle, his ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... discuss the contents in detail because, in nine instances out of ten, they had not attempted to read them. As for those who did make a half-hearted effort to do so, in the majority of cases their minds were so rusty and stultified by long years of disuse, that, although the pamphlets were generally written in such simple language that a child might have understood, the argument was generally too obscure to be grasped by men whose minds were addled by the stories ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the back-form on the girls' side a new face. The owner of this new face was very quietly studying her book, a thin, blue-covered book, Temple's Arithmetic. She was dressed in black,—not fine, glossy black, but black that was gray, rusty, and well worn. A very small silk handkerchief of the same color was drawn over her shoulders and pinned where its two corners met her gown in front, making a sort of triangle of whiteness,—some would say, "revealing a neck and throat pure and white as a lily-leaf"; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... had once been scarlet, but which had faded since, hung, detained at the shoulder by a rusty buckle, and bordered by a laticlave, loosely about his form. In his hand a bulrush swayed; on his head was a twisted coil of bear's-breech, in which, among the ruffled leaves, one bud remained; it was white, the opening edges flecked with pink, perhaps with ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... broken loose!" cried Danny Griswold. "There is no telling what sort of a rusty old gag he'll try to spring. If we only had a few stale ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... moment at his side it had seemed to Rachael that she must die, too, of sheer agony of spirit. She put her beautiful head down against the brown little limp hand upon which a rusty stain was drying, and she could have wailed aloud in the bitter rebellion of her soul. Not Derry, not Derry, so small and innocent and confiding—her own child, her own flesh and blood, the fibre of her being! Trusting them, obeying them, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... discover if any bailiffs were on the watch; while the others sat down, and with the help of the turnip lantern "busked" their spears; in other words, fastened on the steel—or, it might be, merely pieces of rusty iron sharpened into a point at home—to the staves. Some had them busked before they set out, but that was not considered prudent; for of course there was always a risk of meeting spoil-sports on the way, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... 90 per cent of U-boat sinkings are of ships of less than 12 knots' speed; which means that these rusty old junk heaps, wheezing along at maybe 9 or 10, but more likely at 7 or 8 knots, furnish most of the sinkings. They surely must be having great old times getting by the U-boats, and their captains and crews must surely have a ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... charnel-house which they desire to be shown. The scent of the king's roses fades from his nostrils, the Egyptian music which throbbed in his ears is hushed, the glorious illumination of the Palace of a Thousand Columns is extinguished; and in the gathering gloom we leave him fumbling with a rusty key at the mildewed door of the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... a bit rusty. That's what's the matter with me. I want some hard work to rub me up and put a polish on me and I can't get it here. I've never had enough to do since I left Leeds. Harker was a wise chap to stick to it. It would do me all the good in the world ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... father!" close in their ears. Fareham set his shoulder against the heavy oak door, and it burst inwards. There had been no question of secret spring or complicated machinery; but the great, clumsy door dragged upon its rusty hinges, and the united strength of the two girls had not served to pull it open, though Papillon, in her eagerness for concealment in the first fever of hiding, had been strong enough to push the door till she had jammed it, and thus made ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... let it die in its bed so nice and ladylike? Not much! It'd kick out the footboard and come alive. Inglesby must be getting rusty in the joints not to reach out for the Clarion himself, right now. Maybe he figures it's not worth the price. Maybe he knows this town so well he's dead sure nobody that buys a newspaper here would have the nerve to print anything or think anything he didn't ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... pounds of flour, partly wet and crusted. 2 pounds mildewed Cream of Wheat. 3 or 4 cans (rusty) of dried beef. Less than one ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... and beheld the tonsured head of a priest clad in a rusty black cassock, who was standing at the only window to be seen in a blank wall somewhat higher than that of the other houses surrounding it. The effect of those words on the angry multitude was wonderful. The hands raised to strike were ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and learned history of New York. It was dedicated to the New York Historical Society, and began with an account of the supposed author, Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker. "He was a small, brisk-looking old gentleman, dressed in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet breeches, and a small cocked hat. He had a few gray hairs plaited and clubbed behind.... The only piece of finery which he bore about him was a bright pair of square silver shoe-buckles." ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... that gave to her face the expression of one who was about to cry. Life had apparently for some time been more than she was equal to, and, incapable of battling further with it, she radiated a helplessness that was pitiable and yet irritating. Thin and flat-chested, her uncorseted figure in its rusty black dress straightened for half a minute, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... even guess why they were once so exciting, or how men could have supposed their modes of attacking the question to be adequate. The Pope and General Booth still condemn each other's tenets; and in case of need would, I suppose, take down the old rusty weapons from the armoury. But each sees with equal clearness that the real stress of battle lies elsewhere. Each tries, after his own fashion, to give a better answer than the Socialists to the critical problems of to-day. We ought so far to congratulate ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... way up to the dim garret, the scene of her memorable punishment. A rusty hook projected from one of the joists a little higher than a man's head. Something was hanging from it,—an old garment, was it? She went bravely up and touched—a cold hand. She did what most children ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... encountering a large red baize door, which evidently shut off the wing in which my room was situated from the rest of the mansion, and completely closed all egress from the corridor where I then stood. I paused a moment or two in uncertainty, for the door was locked; but presently my glance fell on an old rusty key hanging from a nail, likewise rusty, in a niche of the wall. I abstracted this key from its resting-place, destroying as I did so the residences of a dozen spiders, which, to judge from appearances, seemed to have thrived excellently in the atmosphere ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... read of it in the morning papers. Towards midnight on the day of the murder Zerkow's body had been found floating in the bay near Black Point. No one knew whether he had drowned himself or fallen from one of the wharves. Clutched in both his hands was a sack full of old and rusty pans, tin dishes—fully a hundred of them—tin cans, and iron knives and forks, collected ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... you would ham, put it before the fire for a few minutes, not too long, or it will dry and spoil it. Bacon is sometimes as salt as salt can make it, therefore before it is boiled it must be soaked in warm water for an hour or two, changing the water once; then pare off the rusty and smoked part, trim it nicely on the under side, and scrape the rind as ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... and locked the door. Elbows on his knees and face in his hands, Don Diego sat watching the rusty sands as they filtered from the upper to the lower bulb. And what time he watched, the lines in his lean brown face grew deeper. Punctually as the last grains ran ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... the double doors of the vestibule of the house, and she had great trouble to open them; for the heavy, rusty key refused to turn in the lock. At length the lock yielded with a heavy grinding of its springs; and the door, a little obstinate itself, burst open with a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... his hall kennel on the fourth floor rear, Louis Mitchell went out upon the rusty little porch of the boarding-house and sat down on the topmost step, reflecting gloomily that a clerk has small chance ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... first question was for Matty, but no one had seen her; and when he told them where he had left her, they shook their heads as if they thought he was crazy. But they went to look, that he might be satisfied; and he was; for they they found some little bones, some faded bits of cloth, and two rusty silver buckles marked with Matty's name in what had once been her shoes. An Indian arrow lay there, too, showing why she had never cried for help, but waited patiently so long for father ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... man, clothed in picturesque patches and tatters, paused and leaned on his stout oak staff. He was tired. He drew off his rusty felt hat, swept a sleeve across his forehead, and sighed. He had walked many miles that day, and even now the journey's end, near as it really was, seemed far away. Ah, but he would sleep soundly that night, whether the bed were of earth or of straw. His ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... that many of these members, all of whom are by rank eligible to society, may be met with, who are more rusty of bearing than most of those within St. Stephen's; but I will answer for this latter assembly outfacing them in samples of rudeness, ill-breeding, and true vulgarity: for it is a striking characteristic of the American, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... the telegraph poles loaded with unlovely wires and battered little electric light fixtures—the uncompromising, unrelieved ugliness of street and people, of shop and vehicle, of treeless sidewalks, brick pavement, car rails, hydrants, and rusty gasoline pumps. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Tripoli on account of piracies committed on American shipping, landed a force to co-operate in the attack on Derna then being made by Sidi Ahmet, an elder brother of the dey. This force, commanded by William Eaton (q.v.), built a fort, whose ruins and rusty guns are still to be seen, and began to improve the harbour; but its work quickly came to an end with the conclusion of peace. After 1835 Derna passed under direct Ottoman control, and subsequently served as the point whence the sultan exerted a precarious but increasing control over eastern ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... natural landscapes are in Corsica, one finds most of the villages, however picturesque at a distance, on a nearer approach, a conglomeration of tall, shapeless houses, black and frowning, with windows guarded by rusty iron grilles, and generally unglazed. Altogether, they look more like the holds of banditti than the abodes of peaceful vinedressers; while the filth of the purlieus is unutterable. Throwing open the double casements of the widow's ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... are looking for corallines, you can't do better than ask your papa some fine afternoon, to drive you as far as Sheldon, and you'll find a sight of fine weeds there, as I know, for my boy, my poor boy I lost, I mean," said he, again touching the rusty crape on his hat, "my boy was very curious in those things, and had quite a museum of 'em at home." How could Edith stand against such an attack? It was plain that the old man wanted to make peace with her, and, cheerfully thanking him, she was ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... hand in hand out of the gates of Paradise, the world has travailed under an infinite succession of house-hunts. To-day in every eligible suburb you may see New Adams and New Eves by the score, with rusty keys and pink order-forms in hand, wandering still, in search of the ideal home. To them it is anything but an amusement. Most of these poor pilgrims look simply tired, some are argumentative in addition, but all are disappointed, anxious, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... handled, too, the poker used to such good purpose by Geoffrey Crayon. The muse had fled, the fire was out, and the poker rusty, yet a pleasant influence lingered even in that cold little room, and seemed to lend a transient glow to the poker under the influence ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... gate-tower of an earlier day, and beneath the vacant arch where the portcullis used to fall, thus reaching the inner region, where stands the old palace on one side, and the old Parliament House on the other. The former looks aged, ragged, and rusty, but makes a good appearance enough pictorially, being adorned all round about with statues, which may have been white marble once, but are as gray as weather-beaten granite now, and look down from between the windows above the basement story. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty fire-lock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... time the apostle does not forbid appropriate and respectable recognition of the things of physical well-being, in keeping with each individual's station in life, even including things ministering pleasure and joy. For Peter would not have filthy, rusty, greasy monks nor sour-faced saints, with the hypocrisy and show of their simulated austere and peculiar lives, wherein they honor not their bodies, as Paul says (Col 2, 23), but are ever ready to judge and condemn other people—the maiden, for instance, who chances to join in a dance or wears ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... a bare little room whose only resemblance to a hotel bar-room was in its rusty cannon stove set in the midst of a box of sawdust, and a map of Kansas hanging on the wall. Bradley knocked on the inner door, and it was opened by a faded little woman ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... of repulsion, and the impulse was to run away. But there was fascination, too, in the hag-like visage of those grim brick walls, checkered with innumerable dirty windows and trussed up, like a paralytic old crone, with rusty fire-escapes. It was the fascination of the mysterious and of the evil; and, repulsive and forbidding as was its general aspect, nothing could now have induced me to turn back. Instinct told me that I was about to enter into no commonplace experience. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... now lived near Genoa, and he had taken at a rent absurdly above its value[78] an unpicturesque and uninteresting dwelling, which at once impressed its new tenant with its likeness to a pink jail. "It is," he said to me, "the most perfectly lonely, rusty, stagnant old staggerer of a domain that you can possibly imagine. What would I give if you could only look round the courtyard! I look down into it, whenever I am near that side of the house, for the stable is so full of 'vermin and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sank into a sort of stupor, from which he was awakened by a knock, and the entrance of a nervous, little wiry gentleman whose clothes of rusty black had the effect of having been purchased in a fit ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... to reach the bayou levee. The quarry was already in midstream, wielding an efficient canoe paddle. On impulse Val shouted after him, but he never turned. A rifle lay across his knees and there were some rusty traps in the bottom of the flimsy canoe. Then Val remembered that Pirate's Haven lay upon the fringe of the muskrat swamps where Cajun and American squatters still carried on the fur trade of ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... coals shape themselves into a thousand memories of the past, I seem to be staring with childish eyes at a board that stares back at me out of a larch plantation, and gives notice that 'This House is to Let.' Then, again, I seem to peep through rusty iron gates at the house itself—an old red house, with large windows, through which one could see the white shutters that were always closed. To look at this house, though only with my mind's eye, recalls the feeling of mysterious interest with which I looked at it fifty ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... lantern of yours I want, by the way, and in case it doesn't turn up again, take this to buy a new one. No, I can't rest to-night. This is my working time, and I must be up and doing." He reached for the rusty old lantern behind the door, and lighted it, laughing as he did so. His face was pale, and there was a nervous tremor in his hands, but his voice had lost none of its old heartiness. "Ah, that's it, old man," he said, when the light was ready. "We'll shake hands in case ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... on the faces of the men were wild and haggard, most wore greasy bonnets of wool, some huge wooden shoes, some hobnailed ones, and over their shoulders or in their hands protruded their weapons—pitchforks, scythes, flails, knives, clubs, and rusty guns. All must have been several thousand, collected from every hamlet in his territory. They seemed like a legion of some spectre army of Hunger and Ignorance. In the commander Germain recognised ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... shaft, and, raising himself on his hands, peered through the bushes. A belt of pale golden light, thrown by the rising moon between the converging tips, lay right across the mouth of the shaft; and up through the rusty bark of the door were thrust a thin long hand and a bony arm. As Dick gazed, trembling and amazed, a second hand appeared. He heard the rattle of a chain, the click of a lock; then the door was thrust upwards and let noiselessly ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... fat, and are supposed by some of our epicures to be equal to the famous Ortolans of Europe. Their note at this season is a single chuck, and is heard overhead, with little intermission from morning till night. These are halcyon days for our gunners of all descriptions, and many a lame and rusty gun-barrel is put in requisition for the sport. The report of musketry along the reedy shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill is almost incessant, resembling a running fire. The markets of Philadelphia, at this season, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... shadows, 'Round the band of Regimentals, Near the river-bridge of Lincoln. Gently came the night besiegers, Softly marched the twenty-seven, When a sharp, out-standing picket Sounded forth the note of warning, With his damp and rusty weapon, Blazoned forth the call of danger, With the snapping of his musket. Quick the camp is in commotion. "To arms!" "To arms!" shout the Militia, The surprised and sleepy Cornstalks. And the men run hither, thither In a search for ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... was fond of speaking in an instructive tone, "experience showed that men like Philippus, who solely on account of the number of their years withdrew their services from the state, felt unhappy, and, like the unused ploughshare, became prematurely rusty. What they lacked, and what Philippus would also miss, was not merely the occupation, which might easily be supplied by another, but still more the habit of command. One who had had thousands subject to his will was readily overcome by the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that all the rest of life was made of trifles, and that when the crises came you could not lay your hand on the religious principle that would have enabled you to deal with them. The sword had got so rusty in its scabbard because it had never been drawn for long years, that it could not be readily drawn in the moment of sudden peril; and if you could have drawn it, you would have found its edge blunted. Use your religion on the trifles, or you will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... late as it was, and had another look at my master's face. And as I lay it seemed to me that I heard a door opened, and then a step, and then a key turned. Now, the master never locked his door, so the key of that room turned rusty in the lock, and before I had time to think more than that I was out of bed and in my dressing-gown, creeping along the passage. Sure enough, my master's door was open, as I saw by the streak of light across the ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... for a short time. Another method is to wet the suspected paper or document with alcohol, wrapped in another piece of paper also saturated with alcohol, for the purpose of bringing out as yellow rusty marks all the pen strokes which had not been entirely ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... loosely hang In furrows on their lank thigh-bones, Their rusty sabres drag and clang, As ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... the huge iron key into the lock. The rusty bolt yielded slowly. It still remained for him to pull the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... got the tic-del-rew," declared Margaret, rather unfeelingly. "Aunt Matildy says he's allus creakin' round like a rusty gate-hinge." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... apron and threw it round Matthew's neck. Then she hurried away and disappeared within the church. The great door had just creaked on its rusty hinges, and a burst of chanting rose in the open air amidst the quiet sunshine. Suddenly the bell began to toll with slow and regular strokes. Desiree, who had remained kneeling beside the pig patting ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... before compared the size, shape and appearance of the daily half loaf of corn bread issued to us to a half-brick, and I do not yet know of a more fitting comparison. At first we got a small piece of rusty bacon along with this; but the size of this diminished steadily until at last it faded away entirely, and during the last six months of our imprisonment I do not believe that we received rations of meat above ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... long, black broadcloth,—the strassino—which gives such distinction to a gondola, falling in ample folds from the carved back of the seat, and hiding the rougher finish of the stern. Under the awning, on the very rusty and dilapidated cushions, sat Kenwick, and beside him, face up, was an oil-sketch of a half-grown boy, sitting at the prow of a fishing-boat, dangling his bare brown legs over the water, which gave back a broken reflection of the bony members. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... named himself Spencer Scott. He buried his money. He made a truck garden and had patches in slavery both in South Carolina and at Magnolia. He told me he had rusty dollars never been turned over since they made him came here. He left some money buried back there. We found his money on his place at Magnolia when he died. He tole us ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... gravely, and turned to his bed. From under it, he pulled out a clumsy tin box. Having opened the rusty lock with some difficulty, he produced a ragged pocket-book, and picked out from it a paper which looked like an ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... it rolls in wavy alternations, and yonder it reaches in an unbroken shade where the plain sweeps broad and free. For many weeks green is the only color, though cold nights may perhaps tinge it with a rusty red. About the first of February a little starlike flower of bluish pink begins to shine along the ground. This is the bloom of the alfileria, and swiftly it spreads from the southern slopes, where it begins, and ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... had done all she directed him, there was still a little time, for William and Henry had not come in from the field. Gabriel sat down near his father and, noting a rusty, dusty little book lying on the table, he picked ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... preferred the hill. The warm scent of the pinewood seemed to me The first true breath of summer; did you see The waxen hurt-bells with their promised fruit Already purple at the blossom's root, And thick among the rusty bracken strown Sunburnt anemones long overblown? Summer is ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... is certain—that he is a most excellent scholar. I knew I had got rusty, but I didn't know how rusty till I came to work for him. He has a wonderful memory—seems to know every Greek author by heart—and a most delicate and unerring taste. I thought I should find a mere dabbler—an ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the bell which chimed its first call to vespers, when the great city was a quiet, frontier hamlet, has long been silent. It is to be regretted that from its historical character it has not been preserved from decay, but looks as time-worn and mouldering as does the rusty cannon in the hall of the Chateau, which was one of the guns of the ill-fated fleet, and over which the river had flowed for almost two hundred years. Seven of England's sovereigns had lived, reigned and died, and in France the Royal house had fallen in the deluge of blood that flowed ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... Lady Belle's sensitive nostril which told its little story to her. Jack-o'-Lantern's hoofs were varnished most beautifully, but when he lifted them one glimpse told Peggy the condition of the frogs. The silver mounting upon "The Senator's," Isabel's horse's harness were shining, but his bit was rusty and untidy. A dozen little trifles testified to Dawson's superficiality, and Peggy had been mistress of a big paddock too long to let this popinjay lord it over one whom he sized up as "nothin' but a school girl." Consequently, her reply ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed or sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that the summer lets an apple go without streaking ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... the rim of a glass. There are raw edges, of course, but time will eventually attend to these. Now and then, between the motor-cars, you will see a creaking Red River cart. Next to an office-building of gray sandstone you're likely to spot what looks like a squatter's wickyup of rusty galvanized iron. Yesterday, on our main street where the electric-cars were clanging and the limousines were throwing their exhaust incense to the gods of the future, I caught sight of a lonely and motionless figure, isolated in the midst of a newer world. It was the figure of a Cree squaw, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... some funeral procession that has gone seeking the place of sepulchre three hundred years and more in wind and rain— are daubed in forcibly against the glowing ferns and heather. Every tassel of their rusty foliage is defined with pre-Raphaelite minuteness. And a sorry figure they make out there in the sun, like misbegotten yew-trees! The scene is all pitched in a key of colour so peculiar, and lit up with such a discharge of violent sunlight, as a man might live fifty ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... besides the doctor in that little company whom John Weightman had known before—an old bookkeeper who had spent his life over a desk, carefully keeping accounts—a rusty, dull little man, patient and narrow, whose wife had been in the insane asylum for twenty years and whose only child was a crippled daughter, for whose comfort and happiness he had toiled and sacrificed himself without stint. It was a surprise to find him here, ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... rusty man of forty, with long black hair brushed back over his forehead, and cadaverous cheeks and long upper lip which all the shaving in the world could not redeem for the blue shade of the strong black beard which at midnight showed almost black. But for his black, mocking eyes, he might ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the official who so recently had had the verbal tilt with Cram held forth a rusty, cross-hilted, two-edged knife that looked as though it might have lain in the ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... out and upside down, only to be dyed and turned and twisted all over again. But what was a dyed gown, when one had all that money in the bank and the big house on the hill in prospect! Reuben's best suit grew rusty and seedy, but the man patiently, even gleefully, wore it as long as it would hang together; and when the time came that new garments must be bought for both husband and wife, only the cheapest and flimsiest of material was purchased—but the money ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... one isolated piece of table furniture that bore about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was the caster. It was German silver and crippled and rusty, 15 but it was so preposterously out of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among barbarians, and the majesty of its native position compelled respect even in its degradation. There was only one cruet ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... looked familiar for some incomprehensible reason. As Oliver clung to the wall, squinted through the leaves, and wondered why that should be, the mystery was suddenly solved. The door of the house opened with a squeak of rusty hinges and somebody came out on the step. It was Anthony Crawford. No wonder the scarecrow looked like its master, for it was wearing his old clothes, garments to which there always cling a vague resemblance to the person who once ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... be a well-informed fellow identified it as New York. I was much annoyed now at the behaviour of Cousin Egbert, who burst into silly cheers at the slightest excuse, a passing steamer, a green hill, or a rusty statue of quite ungainly height which seemed to be made of crude iron. Do as I would, I could not restrain him from these unseemly shouts. I could not help contrasting his boisterousness with the fine reserve which, for example, the Honourable George would ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... to have known he was near till he flung the door back and came stalking into the light with the rusty bread-knife in his hand. One would not have imagined there were blood enough left in her wasted heart, but her face went crimson when she lifted ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... these ill things had all fallen away, Tom's soul was clean again, as his early love had found it, a long while since in spring; and it swung up there in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with his old torn coat and rusty chains. ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... monarchy, was the victim of its past sins. That grisly fortress, long useless as a defence of Paris, with the jaws of its rusty cannon opening on the most populous quarter of the city to overawe sedition, and its sinister memories of the Man in the Iron Mask,[164] symbolised in the popular mind all that was hateful in the old regime, though it had long ceased ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... there we discovered evidences of the former journey, but nothing to indicate that human beings had ever before, that been below Disaster Falls. There we saw the same indications of an early disaster which Powell had noticed on the first trip, a rusty bake-oven, some knives and forks and tin plates, in the sand at the foot of the second fall. The day after the Cliff of the Harp camp we began by making a line-portage around a very ugly place, which took the whole morning. In the afternoon there ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... older specimens are found with mirrors of steel which, owing to exposure to damp, have become very rusty, and, in some instances, have perished altogether. Others with silvered glass mirrors show spots, and are much blurred from the same cause. The colourings of enamels vary; in some the groundwork is white, in others pink or rose-colour or blue. Little picture scenes are varied with ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... had ever known they had lost, and with the breakdown of modern drainage, modern water supply, shopping, and the like, their civilised methods were useless. Their cooking was worse than primitive. It was a feeble muddling with food over wood fires in rusty drawing-room fireplaces; for the kitcheners burnt too much. Among them all no sense of baking or brewing or metal-working ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... waterproof in the bag and donned the bowler and the top-coat. They fitted fairly well. Likewise the cuffs and collar, though here I struck a snag, for I had lost my scarf somewhere in the Coolin, and Amos, pelican-like, had to surrender the rusty black tie which adorned his own person. It was a queer rig, and I felt like nothing on earth in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flap their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as the currency goes down in the ladies' department of the "Old ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... castel was not a shock to her faith. It was neither a cheerful nor a luxurious abode, but it was as full of wonders as a box of old heirlooms or objects "willed." It had battered towers and an empty moat, a rusty drawbridge and a court paved with crooked grass-grown slabs over which the antique coach-wheels of the lady with the hooked nose seemed to awaken the echoes of the seventeenth century. Euphemia ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... IN NATURE.—You all probably know that the ochreous stain, which, perhaps, is often thought to spoil the basin of your spring, is iron in a state of rust: and when you see rusty iron in other places you generally think, not only that it spoils the places it stains, but that it is spoiled itself—that rusty iron is ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... yet, in short time, thy hair will grow again; that is, thy former experience will in short space be as long, large, and strong, as in the former times. Indeed at the first thou wilt find all the wheels of thy soul rusty, and all the strings of thine heart out of tune; as also when thou first beginnest to stir, the dust and filth of thy heart will, like smoke, trouble thee from that clear beholding the grace of thy God, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... rule that don't work both ways, hey? If this was ever white, ma'am, 'twasn't a fast color; faded to a rusty black. And as to it's being a mountain, ma'am, it looks to me like a pretty ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... who stood in a row under the spout, all dripping wet. Tommy was wetter still, having impartially pumped on himself first of all. Frocks, aprons, jacket, all were soaked, shoes and stockings were drenched, the long pig tails of the girls streamed large drops, as if they had been little rusty-colored water-pipes. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... agreed to accept the charge and old Dave shuffled over to his cupboard, procured a rusty tin box, and placed ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... seemed to hold a conclave about one hundred feet above the big new white bird which they had discovered on the sand. They circled round after round, and once in a while there was a series of loud peeps, like those of a rusty gate, as if in conference, with sudden flutterings, as if a terrifying suggestion had been made. The bolder birds occasionally swooped downwards to inspect the monster more closely; they twisted their ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of emotion tends to its extinction. Varying conditions of health and other externals will affect the buoyancy and clear-sightedness and vivacity of the spiritual life. Only a barometer that is out of order will always stand at set fair. The vane which never points but to south is rusty ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... again over the wheat, half expecting to see the flying figure returning in haste, but the parted wheat waved on and sang its song of the harvest, unmindful and alone, with only a fluttering butterfly to give life to the landscape. A little rusty-throated cricket piped a doleful sentence now and then ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of the carrying, and had slept along time that day in the shade of a tree, I was awake an hour or more after they were snoring. Every flash lit the old room like the full glare of the noonday sun. I remember it showed me an old cradle, piled full of rubbish, a rusty scythe hung in the rotting sash of a window, a few lengths of stove-pipe and a plough in one corner, and three staring white owls that sat on a beam above the doorway. The rain roared on the old roof shortly, and came dripping down through ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... When the way was free again he would sling the kit-bag and the valise over his shoulder and step back into the road. His turban, once white, was brown with dust and sweat. His khaki uniform was rent under the arm-pits, several buttons were gone; his stockings were rusty black, mottled with patches of brown skin; and the ragged canvas-shoes spurted little spirals of dust as he walked. The British-Indian government had indulgently permitted him to proceed about his duties as guide and carrier ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... I see but one sort of stone, called by the workmen sand, or forest-stone. This is generally of the colour of rusty iron, and might probably be worked as iron ore; is very hard and heavy, and of a firm, compact texture, and composed of a small roundish crystalline grit, cemented together by a brown, terrene, ferruginous matter; will not cut without difficulty, nor easily strike fire with steel. Being often ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... footsteps, then the room door opened with a protest of rusty hinges, and Ruan saw the Parson standing on the threshold. A woman's face, pale and strained, swam out of the darkness behind, and to Ruan, materialist though he was, came the thought that the pale blur looked like the face ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... beetle on the back stairs, which was horrid, but I went on. The side door key is very rusty and very stiff; I had to put down the Rushlight and use both my hands, and just then the clock struck the half-hour, which was rather a good thing, for it drowned the noise of the lock. It did not take me two minutes to run down the ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... look dull and sit in a puffed-up little heap, a drop of brandy in their water often does good; and, should they show signs of asthma, try chopped, hard-boiled egg, with a few grains of cayenne pepper, and a bit of saffron or a rusty nail in the water. These are also good when the bird is moulting. For insect-eating birds you must buy meal-worms and ants' eggs, and thrushes and ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Frank smiles down upon her in this amiable doubt, their party is approached by the tipsy man who has been making the excursion so merry for the other passengers, in spite of the fact that there is very much to make one sad in him. He is an old man, sweltering in rusty black, a two days' gray beard, and a narrow-brimmed, livid silk hat, set well back upon the nape of his neck. He explains to our friends, as he does to every one whose acquaintance he makes, that he was in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... the mode, looking more like some stray diplomat caught in the wiles of the Street, or some retired magnate, than a modest bank clerk on three thousand a year. The next instant he was tripping down the granite steps between the rusty iron railings—on his toes most of the way; the same cheery spring in his heels, slapping his thin, shapely legs with his tightly rolled umbrella, adjusting his hat at the proper angle so that the well-trimmed side whiskers—the veriest little dabs of whiskers hardly an ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... laid by about five thousand pounds, and with this I think of purchasing a farm. I learnt something of farming before I took to the sea, so that I am not quite so green on such matters as you might suppose, though I confess I'm rather rusty and behind the age; but that won't much matter in a fine country like this, and I can get a good steward to take command and steer the ship until I have brushed up a bit in shore-goin' navigation. There is a farm which ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... meaning—all the same! Don't take any more of that vile stuff, you'll make yourself drunk. Here——" and then, with sudden fury, the preacher grabbed the bottle, threw it out of the window among the debris of rotting fruit and rusty cans ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... not the way you did it. Kissing should be done upon the soft pedal mon ami, adagio, con amore. Your technique is rusty. Is it a wonder that I ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... occurrences (OEuvres, 11-644). Here the analysis gives 70 per cent. red oxide of iron, and sulphur and loss by ignition 5 per cent. It seems to me acceptable that iron with considerably less than 5 per cent. sulphur in it is not iron pyrites—then little, rusty iron objects, shaped by some other means, have fallen, four months apart, at the same place. M. Arago expresses astonishment at this phenomenon of recurrence so ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... The Geneseo Valley lay near us like a lake under the sky, and silhouetted against it were the factory chimney and buildings. The wood's edge came close to the town, whose yards prolong themselves into green meadows and farming lands. We knocked at a rusty screen door and were welcomed with the cordiality of the country woman to whom all folks are neighbours, all strangers possible boarders. The house, built without mantelpiece or chimney, atoned for this cheerlessness with a large parlour stove, whose black arms ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... clang—creak! So the discordant bell sounded forth in the playground, the interval between the strokes being filled by a harsh, rusty squeak that set one's teeth on edge. The message it bore to the boys was, "Come in—quick! Come in—quick!" For the time was ten minutes to nine, and the day that following the incident which was already known as ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... mighty ears to conceive with Midas, and yet little reason to judge; if he come aboard our bark to find fault with the tackling, when he knows not the shrouds, I'll down into the hold, and fetch out a rusty pole-axe, that saw no sun this seven year, and either well baste him, or heave the coxcomb overboard to feed cods. But courteous gentlemen, that favor most, backbite none, and pardon what is overslipped, let such come and welcome; I'll into the steward's room, and fetch them ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... in the sky Swift on the wintry scale inclines: To earthy caves the Dryads fly, And the bare pastures Pan resigns. Late did the farmer's fork o'erspread With recent soil the twice-mown mead, Tainting the bloom which Autumn knows: He whets the rusty coulter now, He binds his oxen to the plough, And wide his future ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... stood petrified, suddenly there appeared the figure of a man in rusty armour. The Flounder looked up, saw him and, withdrawing her finger from the mouth of the child, let out yell after yell. The man, who said nothing, drew a sword and lifted ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... count heard the steps of his retainer he pulled back the rusty bolts which protected the door leading from the gallery to the tower, admitting into the sanctuary of learning a man of arms whose stalwart appearance was in keeping with that of his master. This man, scarcely awakened, seemed to have walked there by instinct; the horn lantern ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... to gray, formed no part of this afflicted lady's system of mourning. She laid her best blue walking dress and her new bonnet to match on the bed, and admired them to her heart's content. Her discarded garments were left on the floor. "Thank Heaven, I've done with you!" she said—and kicked her rusty mourning out of the way as she advanced to the fireplace ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... understand that he must go and inform my father that we were locked into the belfry. It was not long before we saw both him and my grandfather on their way to the church. They came up to the little door, and told us to push with our united strength against it. The rusty lock soon yielded, and how good it was to look into those two beloved human faces once more! But we little girls were not invited to join my brother again when he tolled the bell: if we had been, I think we should have promptly ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... fellow, feeling the point, and declaring it as sharp as any lady's needle, and in the next instant piercing with it a huge junk of rusty pork, weighing four or five pounds; for nothing, scarcely, is too large or too high in flavour for the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... troops would spend their mornings to such advantage, I should soon make soldiers of them despite themselves. Rapier play is most useful when one is going to fight the French, who are masters at it. I fear my own arm is growing rusty," he added carelessly. "Lend me your ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... set too,' he said, 'from rusty red to one almost white. But you did give me a turn with that ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... places, in the heart of the great common-lands, where the smooth, white stems and glossy foliage of the self-sown hollies spring up between the roots of the beech trees, where plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies—those lithe, onyx-eyed children of the magic East—still pitch their dirty, little, fungus-like tents around the camp-fire,—as the sunset died and the twilight thus softly widened ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... sharply to see what I was going to do. He seemed to have some idea directly; and as luck would have it, the little square hole that was used to turn the screw was toward me, the screwdriver went in, and it turned so easily that I was able to open the filthy, rusty shackle, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... General Knox's old mansion,—a large, rusty-looking edifice of wood, with some grandeur in the architecture, standing on the banks of the river, close by the site of an old burial-ground, and near where an ancient fort had been erected for defence against the French ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for no special reason, to open the drawers of an old writing-table, which for years past had stood, unused, in a corner of an upper room. In one I found a rusty screw, in another a couple of dusty envelopes, in a third a piece of sealing-wax, half-a-dozen nibs, and a broken pencil. The fourth, and last drawer, was very stiff. For a long time it defied my efforts, and it was only ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... saw it. It was a small building, like a Northern corn-barn, and seemed to have as prominent and as legitimate a place among the outbuildings of the establishment. In the middle of the floor was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox-chain, for fastening a victim down. When the door had been opened after the death of the late proprietor, my informant said a man was found padlocked in that chain. We found also three pairs of stocks of various construction, two of which had smaller as well as larger holes, evidently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... am so helpless. No one will listen to me. No one answers me. An awful looking woman brought me a cup of yellow broth and a rusty spoon—[indicating with her hand] so big. "Eat!" she said, and threw it down and left. You will see to it, sir, that my friends are ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... were made in haste and secrecy. My yacht lay in the harbour, and at midnight Irene stole down to the shore, where I met her, and rowed her on board. A few minutes later we weighed anchor and steamed away, with the rusty old guns from the castle firing useless ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his tatters with his own hand, and never changed his habit till it was worn to rags; at least, if the honour of God, and the interest of religion, did not otherwise oblige him. At his return from Japan to Malacca, where he was received with so much honour, he wore on his back a torn cassock, and a rusty old hat on ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... suppose they'll object if it brings a little beef to their ragouts. Say no more, say no more. What have we here? Eh? 'Bacchus and Ariadne'? I am rusty in my classics, but Bacchus, Dorothea! This will please Narcissus. We have in our house, sir,"— here he addressed Raoul,—"a Roman pavement entirely—ah—concerned with that personage. It is, I believe, unique. One of these days I must give you a permit to visit Bayfield and inspect it, with my ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... value a change of raiment," observed Armitage. "There was an advantage in armor—your duds might get rusty on a damp excursion, but your shirt wouldn't stick to ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... a trip to sea, to prevent himself from growing rusty," said the admiral. "We want the best officers to command Her Majesty's ships, and he is among them. You will not contradict me ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... failed, and wept tears that railed till the light of day began loom and the night departed with its gloom. Then Kanmakan looked at the other and found him to be of the Badawi Arabs, a youth in the flower of his age; clad in worn clothes and bearing in baldrick a rusty sword which he kept sheathed, and the signs of love longing were apparent on him. He went up to him and accosted him and saluted him, and the Badawi returned the salute and greeted him with courteous wishes for his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... obdurate creditors, he waits the tardy process of the law. He seldom appears in public; for those who professed to be his best friends have become his coldest acquaintances. But he has two friends left,—friends whose pure friendship is like sweetest dew-drops: they are Franconia and Daddy Bob. The rusty old servant is faithful, full of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity; the other is the generous woman, in whose bosom beat the tender impulses of a noble soul. Those impulses have been moved to action in defence of the innocent; ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... in my delineation. To my thinking the best description is this: mantis-hunter. With this information it is impossible to mistake the insect, in my district of course. I may add that it is black, with the first two abdominal segments, the legs and the tarsi a rusty red. Clad in the same livery and much smaller than the female, the male is remarkable for his eyes, which are of a beautiful lemon-yellow when he is alive. The length is nearly half an inch for the female and a little more than half this for the male.—Author's ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... habits. The Goral and Serow are also two large species inhabiting the Himalayas—especially in the kingdom of Nepaul—while the Chousinga is a denizen of the wooded plains of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Two others, Chousingas, are the Rusty red and Full horned, both natives of India; and the Jungliburka, a species found in the Bombay Presidency. In Persia we find the well-known Sasin, or common antelope, as it is usually called; and in the Oriental Islands, Sumatra furnishes us with the Cambing outan, and Japan with the Japanese ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... "We might even guess, without the authority of Pope, backed by Bacon, that there are some beauties which cannot be taught by method, but must be reached "by a kind of felicity." It is not the less interesting to notice Pope's skill in polishing these rather rusty sayings into the appearance of novelty. In a familiar line Pope gives us the view which he would himself ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... a fence-post, Mr. Meadowlark was drinking in Bobby's merry songs. Jolly Robin had stolen away from the orchard to greet the newcomer and listen to his first concert. And even Rusty Wren had forsaken the cherry tree beside the farmhouse. Although Rusty and his wife were in the midst of putting their summer house to rights, he had not been able to resist telling Mrs. Wren, who did not like to have him away from home, that he must ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... though the name Milton Street, bestowed upon a neighbouring street, preserves the remembrance of the poet's connexion with the locality. Here "an ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in a small chamber, "hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." At the door of this house, sitting in the sun, looking out upon the Artillery-ground, "in a, grey coarse cloth coat," he would receive ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... purchased looked sheepish or ashamed; and a cynical-looking little man, with a thin flaggy beard, and a countenance ever wearing the rudiments of a grin, seated alone in a corner commanding a good view of the scene, held a rusty hat before ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Jehu at length drew up at a massive stone gateway, which he assured me formed the entrance to Dacrepool Grange. There was neither light nor sound in the lodge, nor did any one come out in answer to our impatient calls, so we had perforce to open the gates for ourselves. They creaked on their rusty hinges, as if they had not been unclosed for many a day, and when I noted the neglected drive, where the overhanging trees swept our faces as we passed, I began to fear that I had come on a fool's errand, and that I should find the house shut ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... to notice that, after a glance of recognition, one of the pedestrians had paused, and was still regarding them irresolutely. He was a tall, burly man, habited in rusty black, and the next moment, as if finding courage, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... knew of the engagement, and approved of the same, although some hinted that Lucy Kendal would have been wiser to marry the soldier-baronet. Amongst these was Widow Anne, who really was Mrs. Bolton, the mother of Sidney, a dismal female invariably arrayed in rusty, stuffy, aggressive mourning, although her husband had been dead for over twenty years. Because of this same mourning, and because she was always talking of the dead, she was called "Widow Anne," and looked on the appellation as a compliment ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... an' buy some o' the good things o' life. Look at us. Like a lot of scare-crows, we be. In rags, ev'ry one on us, 'cept you,—an' your black velvet suit is lookin' a leetle mite rusty, if you'll 'scuse an ol' sailor-man, for speakin' right out. An' we'd like somethin' good to eat, an' somethin' good to drink. Look at me: risin' eighty-six year, I be, an' aint never tasted nothin' all my life 'cept salt-hoss, an' ship-bread, an' rum; never slep' nowheres 'cept in ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson |
