"Squalid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corner of which is familiar to the real student of Balzac. It is situated, as everybody should know, in the Rue Neuve St.-Genevieve, just where it descends so steeply towards the Rue de l'Arbalete that horses have some trouble in climbing it. We know its squalid exterior, its creaking bell, the wall painted to represent an arcade in green marble, the crumbling statue of Cupid, with ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... aged man rushed into the Forum on a market-day, loaded with chains, clothed with a few scanty rags, his hair and beard long and squalid; his whole appearance ghastly, as of one oppressed by long want of food and air. He was recognized as a brave soldier, the old comrade of many who thronged the Forum. He told his story, how that in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... places before, but had never visited them. Shabby women, and dirty and squalid children surrounded the young lady as she descended to the pavement. The children came very close indeed, and some even stroked her dress. One mite of three years raised, in the midst of its dirt and neglect, a face of such sweetness and innocence, that ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... over," I replied, somewhat tartly. "You'd have seen that every one of your suppositions was wrong. He's not at a smart hotel. He's living in one tiny room in the most squalid way. If he's left his home, it's not to live a gay life. He's ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... For years she had been deserted, but when one day he was supposed to be dying she was sent for that he might beg her forgiveness. She went and found that for four years he had been stone blind and that he had sunk so low that she shrank from the squalid house in which he was living. She took him away and stayed with him until his death, making the last days of his life ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... the poorest part of the London suburbs then, and the house was a mean small tenement, with a wretched little back-garden abutting on a squalid court. Here was no place for new acquaintances to him: no boys were near with whom he might hope to become in any way familiar. A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow-Street officer lived over the way. Many, many times has he spoken to me of this, and how he seemed at once to fall into a solitary ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... struggle to believe that which he desires. For a long time he has been like the beggar who was suddenly borne away from his hut and lodged in a magnificent palace. He awoke and threw uneasy glances about him, seeking, in that immense hall, for the squalid things he remembered to have had in his tiny room. Where were the hearth, the bed, the table, stool, and basin? The humble torch of his vigils still trembled by his side, but its light could not reach the lofty ceiling. The little ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... one thing which most fascinates the public mind. And when to murder is added mystery, and when that mystery centres round the figure of a woman, and when that woman is young and beautiful, and in a social position which does away with the presence of squalid details or coarse motives, the public may be pardoned if they take the very fullest interest in ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity. The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a blanket ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... stated, it appeared reasonable to expect in Lee and his army some depression of spirits. The fact was strikingly the reverse. The army was in excellent spirits, probably from the highly-agreeable contrast of the budding April woods with the squalid trenches, and the long-unfelt joy of an unfettered march through the fields of spring. General Lee shared this hopeful feeling in a very remarkable degree. His expression was animated and buoyant, his seat in the saddle erect and commanding, and he seemed to ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... keeping watch, with knotted brows, under the portico, with the avowed intention of assaulting the first person who issued forth. He was a sinister-looking, meager caitiff, with a red cap—gaunt, ugly, and unshaven; his appearance altogether more squalid and miserable than Englishmen would conceive it possible to find in such an establishment. An end, however, was put to the tragedy by the fellow throwing himself on a bench, and bursting into tears—wailing and asking pardon for his offence, and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... brilliant and adventurous Frenchman was biassed by his inclinations. He and his companions were sick of Ireland. They were ready to face death with courage, nay, with gaiety, on a field of battle. But the dull, squalid, barbarous life, which they had now been leading during several months, was more than they could bear. They were as much out of the pale of the civilised world as if they had been banished to Dahomey or Spitzbergen. The climate affected their health and spirits. In that unhappy country, wasted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... almost as good as nameless—all constitute a chapter of extraordinary importance in the general history of English toleration, extending in its consequences far beyond the pale of the communion immediately concerned. It was a long and painful journey, often unedifying, not seldom squalid, with crooked turns not a few, and before it was over, casting men into strange companionship upon bleak and hazardous shores. Mr. Gladstone, though he probably was not one of those who are as if born by nature tolerant, was soon drawn by circumstance to look with favour upon ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Gypsies call a kekkeno mushes puv, a no man's ground; a place which has either no proprietor, or which the proprietor, for some reason, makes no use of for the present. The houses in the neighbourhood are mean and squalid, and are principally inhabited by artisans of the lowest description. This spot, during a considerable portion of the year, is the principal place of residence of the Metropolitan Gypsies, and of other people whose manner of life more or less resembles theirs. During the summer ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... Luck gave the squalid huts a long stare and turned away toward the corral and a low shed that served as a stable. A rusty old mower and a toothless rake and a rickety buckboard stood baking in the sun, and a few stunted hens fluttered away from their approach. In the corral a mangy ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... search long for a better symbol of what we may all do by our life? Bleakness, wind, squalid streets, a car full of heterogeneous people, some very dull, most very common; a laborious jog-trot all the way. But to redeem it all with the pleasantness of beauty and the charm of significance, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... lantern and signed to Tony to follow her. They climbed a squalid stairway of stone, felt their way along a corridor, and entered a tall vaulted room feebly lit by an oil-lamp hung from the painted ceiling. Tony discerned traces of former splendour in his surroundings, but ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... though wide enough for two carriages (of which we saw none), was not good, and the ditches on both sides were frequently neither clean nor sweet. Must I write it? The houses were mean, poor, shabby, often even squalid, the smells were bad, and the people looked ugly, shabby, and poor, though all were working ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... admiration for two days; then the visit to the Chilcats and the return trip commenced. Bowling down the canal before a strong north wind, we entered Stevens Passage, and visited the two villages of the Auk Indians, a squalid, miserable tribe. We camped at the site of what is now Juneau, the capital of Alaska, and no dream of the millions of gold that were to be taken from those mountains disturbed us. If we had known, I do not think that we would have halted a day or staked a claim. Our treasures ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... money than I could afford. Virginia stormed. All to no purpose. I was for walking, and was about to command Virginia to accompany me, when who should appear but my gentleman himself, the Cavaliere Aquamorta, inquiring the cause of the uproar. He presented a truly magnificent appearance in that squalid place. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the hearth of his squalid mud hut with the mummies of the Pharaohs of Egypt, the all-powerful builders of the everlasting pyramids. Customs, conventions, codes, dynasties, states, nations come and go in incontinent succession. But, stronger than these, never disappearing, forever growing, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the block on which fell the honored head of Antony Straalen, to the obscure chair in which the ancient gentlewoman of Amsterdam suffered death for an act of vicarious mercy—from one year's end to another's—from the most signal to the most squalid scenes of sacrifice, the eye and hand of the great master directed, without weariness, the task imposed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Titan's struggle, and it was never either selfish or ignoble. He wanted to live and be heard because he knew that he had something to say that was worth hearing. He needed to live for the sake of his ardent squalid affections, for the sake of the people who were always dependent upon his meagre bounty, for the sake of the wife he loved so deeply, mourned so truly when she died, and remembered with such tender loyalty so long as life was left to him. Miserably poor himself, he always ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wealth and hereditary elevation operate as an apology for many delinquencies, there are some which so irresistibly address themselves to the indignation of mankind, that, like death, they level all distinctions, and reduce their perpetrator to an equality with the most indigent and squalid of his species. Against Mr. Tyrrel, as the tyrannical and unmanly murderer of Emily, those who dared not venture the unreserved avowal of their sentiments muttered curses, deep, not loud; while the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her shoulder I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long drowned,—bloated, bleached, seaweed tangled in its dripping hair; and at her feet lay a form as of a corpse; and beside the corpse there cowered a child, a miserable, squalid child, with famine in its cheeks and fear in its eyes. And as I looked in the old woman's face, the wrinkles and lines vanished, and it became a face of youth,—hard-eyed, stony, but still youth; and the Shadow darted forth, and darkened over these ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... all the forenoon, walking down the river along the squalid waterside avenues; he found them in sympathy with the squalor in himself which always followed a squabble with his wife. At the end of one of the westward streets he found himself on a pier flanked by vast flotillas of canal-boats. As he ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... man took note of her and saw that she was lovely, but she had nothing on her head save a piece of camlet, and, marvelling at her beauty, he said to himself, "This charmer dazzleth men's wits but she is in squalid condition, and whether she be of the people of this city or she be a stranger, I needs must have her." So he followed her, little by little, till he met her face to face and stopped the way before her in a narrow lane, and called out to her, asking ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... long, narrow "Opera House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations. At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren was singing a song which Simon did not listen to. The floor of the auditorium was filled with chairs and tables in disorderly array, the occupants of which seemed to be paying more attention to their ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... depressed, those who were fortunate enough to obtain the scant remuneration, had, in addition to their toil, to endure each morn and even a weary journey before they could reach the scene of their labour, or return to the squalid hovel which profaned the name of home. To that home, over which Malaria hovered, and round whose shivering hearth were clustered other guests besides the exhausted family of toil—Fever, in every form, pale Consumption, exhausting Synochus, and trembling Ague,—returned after ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... these Colonies were a chosen Generation of Men, who were first so pure, as to disrelish many things which they thought wanted Reformation elsewhere; and yet withal so peaceable, that they embraced a voluntary Exile in a squalid, horrid, American Desart, rather than to live in Contentions with their Brethren. Those good Men imagined that they should leave their Posterity in a place, where they should never see the Inroads of Profanity, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... him—a grimy shoulder, which showed naked through a wide rent in his blouse. This portion of the cell was well- nigh in total darkness; the feeble shaft of light which came through the open door hardly penetrated to this remote angle of the squalid burrow. The same sense of mystery and unreality overcame Chauvelin again as he looked on the miserable creature in whom, an hour ago, he had recognised the super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney. Now he could only see a vague outline in the gloom: the stooping shoulders, the long limbs, ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... appear guilty; and {than} thou, unhappy Lethaea, confiding in thy beauty; breasts, once most united, now rocks, which the watery Ida supports. The ferryman drove him away entreating, and, in vain, desiring again to cross {the stream}. Still, for seven days, in squalid guise[6] did he sit on the banks without the gifts of Ceres. Vexation, and sorrow of mind, and tears were his sustenance. Complaining that the Deities of Erebus[7] were cruel, he betook himself to lofty Rhodope, and Haemus,[8] buffeted by the North winds. The third Titan had {now} ended the year ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... all at once she became aware of the empty Cage with its interior in disorder, the camp bedsteads not taken away, a pillow lying on the deck, the dying flame like a shred of dull yellow stuff inside the lamp left hanging over the table. The whole struck her as squalid and as if already decayed, a flimsy and idle phantasy. But Jorgenson, seated on the deck with his back to it, was not idle. His occupation, too, seemed fantastic and so truly childish that her heart sank at the man's utter absorption in it. Jorgenson ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... inboard and got out the oars from under the seats. He got the little boat out to mid-stream, and they floated down until a village of squalid huts appeared on the eastern bank. He landed, there, and with much bargaining and a haughty demeanor disposed of the boat to the skipper of a batelao in exchange for passage down-river as far as Corumba. The rate was outrageously high. But he had little ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast of his slovenly, shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances! No trim garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms. Here poverty, at least, was elegant—there, how squalid! He did not comprehend at how cheap a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected. They now approached the extremity of the Squire's park pales; and, Randal, seeing a little gate, bade the farmer ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... that can't be all!" She sprang up a stair, dragging the old woman after, and on the hurricane-deck, near a paddle-box, stood for a moment in the wide glory of water, land, and early sky, agape again at the squalid object. Then, as the full humor of the thing struck her—but her behavior may as well go undescribed. Yet it could not have been so very bad, for the pilot high above at the wheel, Watson's "partner," glancing down from his side window, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... coal consumption. He exchanged a ferocious greeting with one or two workpeople, and so we came out of the factory gates into the ugly narrow streets, paved with a peculiarly hard diapered brick of an unpleasing inky-blue colour, and bordered with the mean and squalid homes of his workers. Doors stood open and showed grimy interiors, and dirty ill-clad children played in ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... already told in print elsewhere the story of Runciman's descent into the depths of Deptford, how he set about humanising the shoeless, starving, conscience-little waifs who were drafted into his school, and how, before many months had passed, he never walked through the squalid streets of his own quarter without two or three loving little fellows all in tatters trying to touch the hem of his garment, while a group of the more timid followed him admiringly afar off. From the children, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... psychologist has an unusually good chance to get glimpses of this filthy underworld, even if he does not frequent the squalid quarters of the astrologers. Bushels of mail bring this superstition and mental crookedness to his study, and his material allows him to observe every variety of illogical thought. If a letter comes to his collection which presents ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... squalid in the chamber, nothing specially cruel or repulsive in the arrangements of his captivity. He was not in fetters, nor fed upon bread and water. He was not put upon the rack, nor even threatened with it as Ledenberg had been. He was kept in a mean, commonplace, meagerly furnished, tolerably ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... purring night sounds. He had passed from the affluent stone piles on the boulevard to the cheap flat buildings of a cross street. His way lay through a territory of startling contrasts of wealth and squalor. The public part of it—the street and the sidewalks—was equally dirty and squalid, once off the boulevard. The cool lake wind was piping down the cross streets, driving before it waste paper and dust. In his preoccupation he stumbled occasionally into some ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... every lingering wrong assail; All chains from limb and spirit strike, Uplift the black and white alike; Scatter before their swift advance The darkness and the ignorance, The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, Made murder pastime, and the hell Of prison-torture possible; The cruel lie of caste refute, Old forms remould, and substitute For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, For blind routine, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you read in the papers the sequel to the sequel, you will remember and be entertained. He caught us red-handed, you see. It was one evening when we hadn't expected him home until after midnight, and at ten o'clock the door opened and he stood suddenly in the room. Squalid enough, isn't it? To this day I don't know whether he had laid a trap for us, or whether he was as surprised as we were. He stood there stock still, and I sprang up and stood too, and we glared across ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... first of those dividend-built and dividend-building terminals that were to spring up quickly and palatially the country over, rose with a peculiarly American trick out of one of the most squalid sections of the city. Fifteen railroads threaded into it, a gaseous shed de luxe, picking up St. Louis like a gigantic bead ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... day a terrific scene terminated this melancholy drama. This, the last day of Moscow, having arrived, Rostopchin collected together all whom he had been able to retain and arm. The prisons were thrown open. A squalid and disgusting crew tumultuously issued from them. These wretches rushed into the streets with ferocious joy. Two men, a Russian and a Frenchman, the one accused of treason, the other of political indiscretion, were selected from among this horde, and dragged ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... a study. A silver standish and some useful plate, which he had been prevailed on to accept as pledges of kindness from some who most esteemed him, together with furniture that would not have disgraced a better dwelling, banished those appearances of squalid indigence which, in his less happy days, disgusted those who came to see him.' Some of the plate Johnson had bought. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... encouraged each other to trample on their lawful and hereditary sovereign. By a pathetic appeal to their humanity, he extorted that pity which is seldom refused to the fallen fortunes of a king; and while they beheld the abject posture and squalid appearance of the prisoner, his tears, his chains, and the marks of ignominious stripes, it was impossible to forget how recently they had adored the divine splendor of his diadem and purple. But an angry murmur arose in the assembly as soon as he presumed to vindicate his conduct, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... such objects demand it. I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula, I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, the never-failing nostrum of all ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... fisticuffs, like bolts from the twisted strings of a catapult. The voices of many are threatening and formidable. They are quick to anger, but quickly appeased. All are clean in their persons; nor among them is ever seen any man or woman, as elsewhere, squalid in ragged garments. At all ages they are apt for military service. The old man goes forth to the fight with equal strength of breast, with limbs as hardened by cold and assiduous labor, and as contemptuous of all dangers, as the young. Not one of them, as in Italy is often ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which suggested that she was getting away from where the herds of London slept, into open spaces. For some obscure reason this made her nervous, and she turned back. After a while London closed in on her again, but this time in a more squalid quarter, a wilderness of dirty narrow streets, where even in the darkness the debasing marks and odours of squalid poverty were perceptible in the endless rows of houses which seemed to crowd in upon her. She came to a bridge and crossed it ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... empty stomach into Steerage No. 1, was an adventure that required some nerve. The stench was atrocious; each respiration tasted in the throat like some horrible kind of cheese; and the squalid aspect of the place was aggravated by so many people worming themselves into their clothes in twilight of the bunks. You may guess if I was pleased, not only for him, but for myself also, when I heard that the sick man was better and had gone ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... limestone that surrounds the coast, and which forms the flat-topped hills of the Messaria. In many places the natives had built these into walls around their fields, in order to clear the ground required for cultivation. We passed several villages, all squalid and miserable, although the rich soil exhibited green crops far superior to anything we had met with in the lower country. Extensive gardens of mulberry explained the silk-producing power of this neighbourhood, and almonds, figs, apricots, &c., throve in great numbers ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... windows, its glistening panes, its tall chimney losing itself in the depths of the sky, and nearer at hand the lovely little garden against the ancient wall of the former mansion. All about were gloomy, miserable roofs and squalid streets. Suddenly she started. Yonder, in the darkest, the ugliest of all those attics crowding so closely together, leaning against one another, as if overweighted with misery, a fifth-floor window stood wide open, showing only darkness within. She recognized it at ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... of clothing, and so surprised the clerk by his new appearance that he was invited to remain there for another night. The shrewd man guessed that some good fortune must have befallen Archie, or he wouldn't be so happy. But the one night of misery which he had spent in the squalid hotel was enough for Archie, and he walked hastily up-town with his bundle, keeping a sharp lookout for a pleasant place where he might get a room. In his previous wanderings he had seen several nice houses with rooms to rent, but now that he wanted a room he found it difficult ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... thus enclosed, and almost overtopping the cabin, were half a dozen peach and plum trees, veritable geyser jets of pink and white bloom. Behind, in a small clearing, was the stubble of last year's corn. Squalid and poor and mean enough a dwelling, a shiftless clearing, a dirty family of children—yes. But under its geyser jets of blossom that little gray cabin was the essence of the picturesque, with the forest wall rising behind it, and behind that the great headwall of ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... and manner of Cesarini were so calm and rational that they changed the first impulse of Maltravers, which was that of securing a maniac; while the Italian's emaciated countenance, his squalid garments, the air of penury and want diffused over his whole appearance, irresistibly invited compassion. With all the more anxious and pressing thoughts that weighed upon him, Maltravers could not refuse the conference thus ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reached their station, and their journey was over; but in all the years to come, never, never again would Kitty Trenire pass the long, ugly rows of squalid backs of houses just outside the station, and dull depressing streets, never again would she enter that station itself, without living through once more and tasting again the misery, the strangeness, the forlornness which filled her heart that afternoon. She ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in London, a farmer, who offered to take me out with him. You saw me start, you say? How strange, how wonderful! And I, yes, I saw you, but I could not believe my senses! How could it be my beautiful, dainty Ida, the mistress of Herondale, standing on the dirty, squalid quay! I went with him and worked with him on his cattle-run. Do you remember how you taught me to count the sheep, Ida? God, how often when I was riding through solitary wastes I have recalled those hours, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... of Plaistow and East Ham we drew out in the squalid region of Barking Creek, and I looked down on the mud and the dirty brown water with a curious feeling of satisfaction. It was like meeting an old friend again after a long separation. The lower Thames, with its wharves, its warehouses, and its never-ceasing traffic, had ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... move. She stood at the foot of the stairs, barring the way, the chill morning light falling on her threatening attitude, her grey dishevelled hair and all the squalid disarray of her dress. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... vain, but at length an old man in squalid attire, with long dishevelled gray locks and matted beard, appeared at the window of ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... robber, still I should be blind As justice. But this very day a wife, One infant hanging at her breast, and two, Scarce bigger, first-born twins of misery, Clinging to the poor rags that scarcely hid Her squalid form, grasped at my bridle-rein To beg her husband's life; condemned to die For some vile, petty theft, some paltry scudi: And, whilst the fiery war-horse chaf'd and sear'd, Shaking his crest, and plunging to get free, There, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... ice-cream vendors, the high-pitched eloquence of medicine-men, peddlers, tired children, and scolding mothers, it is well-nigh maddening. Still the crowd elbows and jostles along, gradually growing noisier and denser. There they mingle shoulder to shoulder, the squalid and the well-to-do, lads and lasses, boys and girls, husbands and wives, grave and gay; while friendly greetings are exchanged, light jests bandied as they move backwards and forwards, intent upon the fun of the fair, with hardly a glance for the feast of beauty which nature has spread ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... From the cheap, squalid section of town known as "railroad end," Cable's rising influence carried him to the well-earned luxury. The lines of care and toil mellowed in the face of his pretty wife, as the years rolled by; her comely figure shed ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... looked down upon her squalid rags; her rough features writhed with a scornful smile. "That's a lie!" she muttered. "What could the likes of me do for anybody, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... impure atmosphere, which with difficulty sustains life, and which is demonstrably calculated, from its deleterious qualities, to induce serious disease. The effects manifest in the parent descend, and visible in the youngest children; they are squalid and wretched-looking,—and how can such offspring be otherwise? They are exceedingly subject to all children's diseases, and peculiarly predisposed to pulmonary irritation of one ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... the night and the long day the great cement factory and the glass factories belched forth their lurid fumes. The trolley cars went creaking and moaning around the curves through the mean, dirty, squalid, little streets of the mining and manufacturing towns. They whined impatiently as they sailed across the prairie grass under the befogged sunshine between the settlements, but always they brought up ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... elsewhere, and they gradually cleared away the rubbish until the original beauty of the temple was visible again. Even now, high up on all sides, you can see the depth of the earth surrounding it like cliffs, and on the top are squalid huts with dirty children and fluffy impudent goats and shrill-voiced, black-clad women, living their daily lives and looking down ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... transpiring at the old fort a party of Mexicans had journeyed from the south, crossed the Arkansas River and formed a settlement on the east side of the Fontaine. A characteristically squalid and miserable place it was, with the dwellings—they scarce deserved the name of houses—built in the side of the bluffs very much as animals might burrow in the ground. Part dug-out and part adobe were those wretched habitations, and the shed-like parts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... badge, the promise of valor, till they have slain an enemy. Over blood and spoils they unveil the countenance, and proclaim that they have at length paid the debt of existence, and have proved themselves worthy of their country and parents. The cowardly and effeminate continue in their squalid disguise. The bravest among them wear also an iron ring [171] (a mark of ignominy in that nation) as a kind of chain, till they have released themselves by the slaughter of a foe. Many of the Catti assume this distinction, and ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields are squalid with devastation." —Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Andrew knocked again, this time more peremptorily: more oaths were heard, and then shuffling steps seemed to draw near the door. Presently this was thrown open, and Marguerite found herself on the threshold of the most dilapidated, most squalid room she had ever seen ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his companions, full of delighted anticipations, had explored the flowery borders of the St. John's. Dire was the contrast; for, within the homesick precinct of Fort Caroline, a squalid band, dejected and worn, dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or lay stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... be that my thoughts changed with the dying blaze—passing from merry fancies to gray visions, trooping out of the recent weeks, of cold and hunger and squalid death in the places ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... number of poor white families, whom he described as the most degraded, vicious, and abandoned people in the island—"very far below the negroes." They live promiscuously, are drunken, licentious, and poverty-stricken,—a body of most squalid and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a squalid back street I glanced through the window of a corner house. The front of the house was a grocery store. The room into which I happened to look was a general dwelling room. On one side stood the kitchen stove; the floor was littered with children and rubbish, ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... board fence is as good a object lesson as you'll find of the cleansin' and elevatin' power of the Christian religion. There wuz two heathen families, and their cabins wuz dirty and squalid, while the Christianized homes are as clean and pure ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... saw rather the prairies than the Plains proper. We were following a plainly marked trail, which wound in and out among low rolling hills; and for two days we remained in touch with the scattered huts of the squalid, half-civilized Indians and squaw men who still hung around the upper reservations. Bleached bones of the buffalo we saw here and there, but there was no game. The buffalo had long years since been driven far ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... pursuit. That, at least, she had escaped, and now again she took partial courage as she reflected that with moderate caution she might yet be able to extricate herself. There must be some outlet to that neighborhood of squalid misery; and take whichever way she might, she could scarcely fail, at the end, to emerge ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... description of the man as he accompanied Larcher to a part of the riverfront not far from the Brooklyn Bridge, on the afternoon at which we have arrived. The two were walking along a squalid street lined on one side with old brick houses containing junk-shops, shipping offices, liquor saloons, sailors' hotels, and all the various establishments that sea-folk use. On the other side were the wharves, with a throng of vessels moored, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Nottingham, on the 14th January, 1860, "that there was an amount of privation and suffering among that portion of the population connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world. . . . Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... humanity that was far from usual with him, exchanged Jogues's squalid and savage dress for a suit of Dutch cloth, and gave him passage in a small vessel which was then ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... from sunrise to sunset they are constantly delving and digging. We are led to believe that this labour must be an offence, and punishable. For the persons guilty of it are housed in filthy, ruinous, squalid cabins. They are clothed in some colourless hide. So great does their ardour appear for this noxious, or at any rate useless activity, that they scarcely allow themselves time to eat or to sleep. In numbers they are to the others as ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... streamed from under his finger nails. When I returned (after a month passed at Camp Chase), I was startled by the appearance of those, even, who had not been subjected to punishment in the dungeon. They had the wild, squalid look and feverish eager impression of eye which lunatics have after ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... they passed in those towns where their presence was barely suffered, they had no means of quenching their thirst, for they were forbidden to enter into the little cabarets or taverns. Even the water gushing out of the common fountain was prohibited to them. Far away, in their own squalid village, there was the Cagot fountain, and they were not allowed to drink of any other water. A Cagot woman having to make purchases in the town, was liable to be flogged out of it if she went to buy anything except on a Monday—a day on which all ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... eager and active of all the Virtues, set off first on his journey. Justice followed, and kept up with him, though at a more even pace. Charity never heard a sigh, or saw a squalid face, but she stayed to cheer and console the sufferer,—a kindness ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one of my first duties was to go in search of Moulin, the detective-artist whom I mentioned in my first chapter. I found him in his somewhat squalid home in the Quartier Mouffetard, surrounded by a tribe of children, and he immediately informed me that he was one of the "agents" appointed to attend the Emperor on the campaign. The somewhat lavish Imperial equipage, on which Zola so frequently ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... of living faith; the churches were falling into ruins. The little chapel of St. Mary and the Angels at Assisi was in a scandalous condition of decay. It troubled the heart of the young pietist profoundly to see the Christian church squalid and tottering to its fall while within sight of it was the Roman temple in which men had worshipped the idols. There it stood, as it had stood for a thousand years—as it stands to this day. Oh, shame! that Christian men should ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... was a little girl. A flower thrown down in the dirt. A jewel encrusted with mean earth. Little feet in enormous coarse shoes, cracked and trodden down; bare arms trying to hide themselves under a bit of old woolen shawl; hair tangled beneath a squalid hood; out from amidst all, a face of beauty that peeped, like an unconscious draft of God's own signing, upon humanity. Was ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a table beside the reading-lamp, she had a vision of Miss Farish's cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and hideous wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in. But the luxury of others was not what she wanted. A few years ago it had sufficed her: ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... The other woman, who was middle aged, was nursing an infant; and the eldest of the children, about twelve years of age, was making preparation for washing; a pan was suspended from three poles, under which she had kindled a fire, to boil water. The very tattered and squalid appearance of this ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... squalid life they labored, in sordid grief they died,— Those sons of a mighty mother, those props ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... all your standing there so strong and arrogant and self-reliant. It is easy to talk of misery when one does not understand it. It is easy to be the martyr of an hour or a day. But to drag into a sordid and squalid martyrdom the woman one loves—well, the man does not live who would do it, if he knew what I know, had seen what I have seen. No, love is a luxury of the rich and the poor and the steady-going. It is not for ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... were on the move each day in country which was one continual rise and fall, with stony beds of wadis to check progress, without a tree to lend a few moments' grateful relief from a burning sun, and nothing but the rare sight of a squalid native hut to relieve the monotony of ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... brass guns said to be on their way down from Pinhel under an escort of Portuguese militia; and, taking leave of them, I was handed over to a company of the 23rd Regiment—hurrying in from one of the outlying hamlets near Celorico—with whom I reached on the 7th of January the squalid village of Boden, in and around which the 52nd lay in face of the doomed ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wildness and ruggedness somehow reminded him of the Rockies in the old pioneer days, and he wandered through all the lanes of the quaint old town until he knew every cornice and cobblestone familiarly, and the women who sat weaving or mending before their squalid but picturesque hovels all nodded a greeting to the cheery little American ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... so squalid as the usual Hindu temple, although so ancient that the carving of the pillars in some places was almost worn away, and the broad stone flags on the floor were hollowed deep by ages of devotion. The gloom was pierced here and there by dim light from brass lamps, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Rome are those that lie around St Peter's and the Vatican. The Corso is in good part a line of noble palaces; but in other parts of the city you pass through whole streets, consisting of large massive structures, once comfortable mansions, but now squalid, filthy, and unfurnished hovels, resembling the worst dens of our great cities. It cannot fail to strike one, too, as somewhat anomalous, that there should be such a vast deal of ruins and rubbish ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... shop, De Vac threaded his way through the dirty lanes and alleys of ancient London, lighted at far intervals by an occasional smoky lantern, until he came to a squalid tenement but a short distance ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... promising himself any special pleasure, like rejoining an old friend or returning again to scenes he loved. At such times his voice had an irresistible pathos in it, and his smile diffused a sensation like music. When he came into the presence of squalid or degraded persons, such as one sometimes encounters in almshouses or prisons, he had such soothing words to scatter here and there, that those who had been "most hurt by the archers" listened gladly, and loved him without knowing ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... of one of the squalid houses at the foot of my tower, a little girl has lived for a year, fighting silently and single-handed a good fight against poverty and sin. I saw her when she first came, a hopeful, cheerful, brave-hearted little soul, alone, yet not afraid. She used to sit all ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... pretty and I had thought about life a lot. I knew that in men fidelity had the importance that they gave to it. To a few—very few—it matters—but in most cases unfaithfulness is not a psychological thing at all; it is simply a temporary excess like getting drunk—squalid, if you like—but not touching your real relationships. Women bluff a lot on the subject and many are fools. They believe in the same law for both sexes. It is a ridiculous fallacy. Only Edmond was different. He loved women—psychologically. He was therefore inconstant, which ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... of his outward poverty, yet proud of the secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter's visage with precisely the effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had probably worn when he gloried in the building of a strong house for a home to many generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bed-quilts and travelling-shawls, were disposed in all conceivable attitudes, and scattered about on the hard floor and tables, sleeping soundly. The room was a long, low apartment—extending across the entire front of the house—and had a wretched, squalid look. The fire, which was tended by the negro-woman—(she had spread a blanket on the floor, and was keeping a drowsy watch over it for the night)—had been recently replenished with green wood, and was throwing out thick volumes of ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... present to the passenger, with the exception of an occasional portal, only blank walls, built, as they are at Jerusalem, of stone, and very lofty. These walls commonly enclose a court, and, though their exterior offers always a sombre and often squalid appearance, it by no means follows that within you may not be welcomed with cheerfulness and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... spot, which in the heart of a Christian land retained the vestige of the old idolatry (for just such were the chapels that in the Pagan age were dedicated to the demon-saints of mythology), gathered six or seven miserable and squalid wretches, whom the Curse of the Leper had cut off from mankind. They set up a shrill cry as they turned their ghastly visages towards the horseman; and, without stirring from the spot, stretched out their gaunt arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother. Glyndon ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the centre of which was an altar, and to the right of this altar stood an old bay-tree. An old man and a grey-haired woman were clinging to this altar; it was drenched with blood, and on the steps of it lay several bodies of young men clothed in armour, but squalid with dust and blood. ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... again. What had become of the hat-tub? Why had the Chinese water-jug gone from the squalid little wash-stand? Baffled and solemn, he went back ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of inexplicable charm, said to be Arabian and to signify 'Place of the Beasts.' Down the picturesque archway, cut in deep yellow upon such a blue as only southern Europe can show at all seasons, a few steps lead you to the squalid ruin where Cervantes slept, ate and wrote the Ilustre Fregona. So exactly must it have been in the day Cervantes suffered and smiled, offering to his mild glance just such a wretched and romantic front." H. Lynch, op. cit., ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... at nine o'clock he took his seat as usual in his office, and began to open his pile of letters, his square-set, hard face, with its cold grey eyes, looking harder than ever, for he had been annoyed by the old charwoman who cleaned his squalid place asking him ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... ambles up the street beneath the roaring "El" between the rows of reeking sweat-shops. Pallid, stooping, insignificant, squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body and mind, yet, as he swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome inhalations from his cigarette you perceive that he nurtures in his narrow bosom the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... He was completely intrigued by her. Her performance in "The Zingara" had led him to expect a girl of much more poise and finish, and yet with all her rawness she was far from naive. His own experience recognized hers; both had lived in the world's squalid byways; he could have talked to her in their language and she would have understood. But she was not of the women of such places, she had a clean, clear quality like a flame. Daring beyond doubt, wild and elusive, but untouched by what had touched the rest. He ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... masses so dense that they nearly forced one another over the brink of the causeways into the water below. Some had climbed on the terraces, others feebly supported themselves against the walls of the buildings. Their squalid and tattered garments gave a wildness to their appearance which still further heightened the ferocity of their expression, as they glared on their enemy with eyes in which hate was mingled with despair. When the Spaniards had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... which the author had sought refuge from the turmoil and forgetfulness of the vices of the city; and whence he was driven back upon London by disgust at the discovery of villany as elaborate and roguery as abject in the beggars and thieves of the country as the most squalid recesses of metropolitan vice or crime could supply. The narrative of this accidental discovery is very lively and spirited in its straightforward simplicity, and the subsequent revelations of rascality ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Edinburgh. A depressing change indeed from the sunny terraces and fields of France! In her own realm were fog and rain and only a hut to shelter her upon her landing. When she reached her capital there were few welcoming cheers; but as she rode over the cobblestones to Holyrood, the squalid wynds vomited forth great mobs of hard-featured, grim-visaged men and women who stared with curiosity and a half-contempt at the girl queen and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the country, City Bushman, where you went, For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; But we lately heard you singing of the 'plains where shade is not', And you mentioned it was dusty — 'all was ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... long-cherished hope of a home, and resigned myself with no good grace to my routine of study and instruction. Where were all the romantic fancies and proud anticipations with which I had accepted the position of governess to the royal family of Siam? Alas! in two squalid rooms at the end of a Bangkok fish-market. I failed to find the fresh strength and courage that lay in the hope of improving the interesting children whose education had been intrusted to me, and day by day grew more and more desponding, less and less equal to the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... toll eleven, Roland roused himself, walked across the bridge to Sachsenhausen, and so to his squalid lodging, consoling himself with the remembrance that the great King Charlemagne had made this his own place of residence. Here, before retiring to bed, he wrote the letter which he was to send in next day to Herr Goebel, composing it with ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... was a circular edifice, which seemed to have been composed of a row of Ionic columns standing upon a lower row of Doric, many of the antique pillars being yet perfect; but the intervening arches built up with brickwork, and the whole once magnificent structure now tenanted by poor and squalid people, as thick as mites within the round of an old cheese. From this point I cannot very clearly trace out my course; but I passed, I think, between the Circus Maximus and the Palace of the Caesars, and near the Baths of Caracalla, and went into the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the course Allen pursued, he was right. Because, though at first nothing was talked of by his captors, and nothing anticipated by himself, but his ignominious execution, or at the least, prolonged and squalid incarceration, nevertheless, these threats and prospects evaporated, and by his facetious scorn for scorn, under the extremest sufferings, he finally wrung repentant usage from his foes; and in the end, being liberated from his irons, and walking the quarter-deck where before he had ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... dirty narrow street, near the harbour of the town, there stood a small public-house which was frequented chiefly by the sailors who chanced to be in the port, and by the squalid population in its immediate neighbourhood. Although small, the Red Lion Inn was superior in many respects to its surroundings. It was larger than the decayed buildings that propped it; cleaner than ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... this way," said McPherson, who had evidently paid many a visit there before. Pushing open a swinging door, he made his way into the crowded bar, where the reek of bad spirits and the smell of squalid humanity seemed to Tom to be even more horrible than the effluvium of the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dark, the selfish aim, To bless himself alone! Mark maiden innocence a prey To love-pretending snares, This boasted honour turns away, Shunning soft pity's rising sway, Regardless of the tears and unavailing prayers! Perhaps this hour, in misery's squalid nest, She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother's fears shrinks at the rocking blast! Oh ye! who, sunk in beds of down, Feel not a want but what yourselves create, Think, for a moment, on ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... nothing like what they were then. Nobody would have found robbing me a profitable employment in those days, and I used to walk through these wretched dens without let or hindrance. Alleys nine or ten feet wide, I suppose, with tall houses full of squalid drunken men and women, and the pavement strewed with still more squalid children. The place of air was taken by a steam of filthy exhalations; and the only relief to the general dull apathy was a roar of words—filthy and brutal beyond imagination—between ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... packed closely along the edge of the river, was a huddle of small houses and cottages, where lived the poorer sort of riverside workers, a squalid, dirty region known as Skinner's Hole. It was so called because it lay very low, and because hides from abroad were landed there, and dealt with by three or ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... smoky dens, he saw the inmates, their heads muffled in their robes of skins, seated around the fires in silent dejection. Everywhere was heard the wail of sick and dying children; and on or under the platforms at the sides of the house crouched squalid men and women, in all the stages of the distemper. The Father approached, made inquiries, spoke words of kindness, administered his harmless remedies, or offered a bowl of broth made from game brought in by the Frenchman who hunted for the mission. [ Game was so scarce in the Huron country, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... as they mourn who have no hope: he has an absolute conviction in future compensation; and, meanwhile, his lively poetic impulse, the poetry of ideas, not of formal verse, and his radiant innate idealism breathe a soul into the merest matter of squalid work-a-day life and awaken the sweetest harmonies of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... children were playing about on the floor in their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine, intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and squalid his surroundings were,—the patch of sunshine flung on the floor glorified ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... tapers from the altars, stood around the destroyers and lighted them at their work. Nothing escaped their omnivorous rage. They desecrated seventy chapels, forced open all the chests of treasure, covered their own squalid attire with the gorgeous robes of the ecclesiastics, broke the sacred bread, poured out the sacramental wine into golden chalices, quaffing huge draughts to the beggars' health; burned all the splendid missals and manuscripts, and smeared ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... In every guest-room, however squalid, four objects were never missing: the sacred Ikon, portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina, and a printed copy of the posting rules. On the wall was generally also a bill of fare, in faded ink, which showed how many generations ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... him were smoking their morning's pipe, with a half-awakened air, as if they had only just got out of a snug bed, in which they always slept every moment that they lay upon it. Titmouse almost envied them! What a squalid figure he looked, as he paced up and down, till at length he saw the porter of Messrs. Tag-rag & Co. opening the shop-door. He soon entered it, and commenced another jocund day in that delightful establishment. The ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... to a certain degree, arrived at that equality which they profess to covet; and in no one, perhaps, more than in the fair distribution of good looks among the women. This is easily accounted for: there is not to be found, on the one hand, that squalid wretchedness, that half-starved growing up, that disease and misery, nor on the other, that hereditary refinement, that inoculation of the beautiful, from the constant association with the fine arts, that careful nurture, and constant attention to health and exercise, which exist ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... is the remotest on the whole plantation, and I found there the wretchedest huts, and most miserably squalid, filthy and forlorn creatures I had yet seen here—certainly the condition of the slaves on this estate is infinitely more neglected and deplorable than that on the rice plantation. Perhaps it may be that the extremely unhealthy nature of the rice cultivation makes it absolutely ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... all women were to be given their chance at a fuller life, and even yet in sunny Italy, there is much to do for womankind. Then, as now, the skies were blue, and the sun was bright and warm; then, as now, did the peasants dance and sing all the way from water-ribbed Venice to fair and squalid Naples, but with a difference. Now, there is a measure of freedom to each and all—then, justice was not only blind but went on crutches, and women were made to suffer because they were women and because they could not defend, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... I sit here writing by lamplight at midday, in the midst of a great city of shallow social sham, of hopeless, squalid poverty, of ignorant selfishness, cultured or brutish, and of noble and heroic endeavour frowned down or callously neglected, I am almost aware of a burst of sunshine in the room, and a long form leaning over my ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... known, but a world in which East and West were strangely mingled: much of the familiar with the unfamiliar. Here in Korea, on the contrary, I have found the real East, the Asia of romance, of tradition and of fable, almost untouched by {62} Western influences—dirty, squalid, unprogressive, and yet with a fascination all its own. Great bare mountains look down on the capital city, the old city-wall climbing their steep sides, and the historic Han flows through an adjacent valley. The thatched or tiled roofs of the houses are but little higher than one's head, ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... Burke became a student at Trinity College, Dublin, where Oliver Goldsmith was also a student at the same time. But the serious pupil of Abraham Shackleton would not be likely to see much of the wild and squalid sizar. Henry Flood, who was two years younger than Burke, had gone to complete his education at Oxford. Burke, like Goldsmith, achieved no academic distinction. His character was never at any time of the academic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the land as a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Not so the Irish tenant. He has made what he calls improvements, he claims a quasi-ownership in the land, and has the characteristic Celtic attachment for the patch of ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however inadequate for his support. In short, in Ireland there is a dual ownership—that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... no end either to his knowledge of France, or to the plans for its development, which even then filled his brain, and have since turned wildernesses into fruitful lands, and squalid towns into great cities. Grave and formal, he could yet unbend; the most sagacious of counsellors, he was a soldier also, and loved the seclusion in which we lived the more that it was not devoid of danger; the neighbouring towns being devoted to the League, and the general disorder alone making ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... then he goads himself into madness, tears himself into shreds, and eats his own substance. Deprived of the background of the whole, his poverty loses its one great quality, which is simplicity, and becomes squalid and shamefaced. His wealth is no longer magnanimous; it grows merely extravagant. His appetites do not minister to his life, keeping to the limits of their purpose; they become an end in themselves and set fire to his life and play the fiddle in the lurid light of the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... care about him, and I left him fumbling with his latch-key. I think you will say I did pretty well when I tell you that within a few weeks I had made myself an intimate friend of Black's. I shall never forget the first time I went to his room; I hope I shall never see such abject, squalid misery again. The foul paper, from which all pattern or trace of a pattern had long vanished, subdued and penetrated with the grime of the evil street, was hanging in mouldering pennons from the wall. ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... moved about the squalid rooms, arranging the primroses in broken bowls, and even teacups, with a sort of ministering grace I had never noticed in her before. Mother had always praised her nursing. She said her touch was so soft and firm, and her movement ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was unnecessary. Both she and her mother were on intimate terms with these hypothetical friends who so frequently turned up from Paris or elsewhere when it was necessary that she should suddenly go back to London and live in squalid seclusion in the unopened house, with a charwoman to provide her with underdone or burnt chops, and eggs at eighteen a shilling, while the shutters of the front rooms were closed, and dusty desolation ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... such loving and far-looking pride. You must buy your narrow strip from him, and raise thereon your tawdry little house, calculating the cost of every inch of construction in hungry anxiety of mind. And then you must sit down in your narrow front-room to stare at the squalid shanty of the poor man who has squatted right in your sight, on the land condemned for the new avenue; to wish that the street might be cut through and the unsightly hovel taken away—and then to groan in spirit as you think ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... killed, when suddenly a motley concourse appeared wading across the creek toward us. They filed past in rapid succession, men, women, and children; some were on horseback, some on foot, but all were alike squalid and wretched. Old squaws, mounted astride of shaggy, meager little ponies, with perhaps one or two snake-eyed children seated behind them, clinging to their tattered blankets; tall lank young men ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Dublin a life divided between squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father died, leaving a mere pittance. The youth obtained his bachelor's degree, and left the university. During some time the humble dwelling to which his widowed mother had retired ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... wall. The house is built of red brick, straight up and down like an overgrown doll's house, but the whole of the wall is weathered and toned by the southerly gales which blow down the Gut from the open sea. Those same winds see to it that Alexandra Square does not smell squalid, however it may look. At its worst it is not so depressing as a row of discreet semi-detached villas. It is, I should imagine, a pretty accurate mirror of the lives that are lived in it—poor men's lives that scarcely anybody fathoms. If one looks for ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... dismayed! The wonderful novelty of everything, the unusual smells, the unaccountable filth (though it is reckoned the cleanest of Italian towns), the disorderly jumbling of dirty houses, one upon the roof of another; the passages more squalid and more close than any in St. Giles's or old Paris; in and out of which, not vagabonds, but well-dressed women, with white veils and great fans, were passing and repassing; the perfect absence ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... true-to-life author, depicting the often squalid scenes he encountered with great care and attention to detail. His young readers looked forward eagerly to his next books, and through the 1860s and 1870s there was a flow of books from his pen, sometimes four in a year, all ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... darkening into dusk one day late in January when Philip Ashe stood in the hallway of a squalid tenement house, looking out into a dingy court. The place was surrounded by tall buildings which cut off the light and made day shorter than nature had intended, an effect which was not lessened by the clothes drying smokily on lines above. In one corner of the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... feels himself so exalted that he metaphorically pats himself upon the back and tells himself he is a righteous being—a very Brutus where honor is concerned; any other man might have hurried that exquisite creature into a squalid marriage for the mere sake of gratifying an overpowering affection, but he had been above all that! He had considered her! The man's duty is ever to protect the woman! He had protected her—even from herself; for ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... battle-field and identified many of the slain Emirs. At 4.20 p.m., with two batteries, several Maxims and Colonel Maxwell's brigade leading, the Sirdar rode down the great north thoroughfare towards the central part of the squalid town. The houses, or more accurately huts, were full of dervishes, hundreds of whom were severely wounded. Women and children flocked into the streets, raising cries of welcome to us. Of all the vile, dirty places ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... wealth of which we hear so much in the present day, and with which the possessors seem to know so little what to do, I would purchase some of those squalid streets in Westminster, which are the shame of the metropolis, and clear a great space and build a real cathedral, where the worship of heaven should be perpetually conducted in the full spirit of the ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... brother so loved—the mother of his children—died in this squalid room, and far from her sons, in poverty, in sorrow! died of a broken heart! Was that well, father? Have you in this nothing ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... doorway and looked up and down the street with open disgust. "Come on down to Picardo's, Jack; what the deuce is there here to hold you? How a man that knows horses and the range, can stand for this—" he waved a gloved hand at the squalid street—"is something I can't understand. To me, it's like hell with the lid off. What's holding you anyway? ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... them died; two others seemed near death's door. Two women were hauling a small tree-top to their door to chop for night-wood. The feet of these poor women were exposed to the mud and snow, which was melting. O, what squalid wretchedness was here! Not a bed, chair, table, or whole dish in this gloomy abode! I inquired how they slept. I was shown a rag-carpet on the fence, which they obtained for washing for one of the neighbors. This ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... intact, than any other which can be identified with the early or even the middle life of the poet. That William and Dorothy, in their poverty, should have rented so noble a country property seems at first sight inexplicable, and the contrast between Alfoxden and Coleridge's squalid pot-house in Nether Stowey can never cease to be astonishing. But the sole object of the trustees in admitting Wordsworth to Alfoxden was, as Mrs. Sandford has discovered, "to keep the house inhabited during the minority ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... or south, and many more for whom a dole of broth or bread sufficed; but there were also others with heads or limbs tied up, sometimes injured in the many street fights, but oftener with the terrible sores only too common from the squalid habits and want of vegetable diet of the poor. These were all attended to with a tenderness and patience that spoke well for the charity of Sister Anne and her assistants, and indeed before long Dame Lilias perceived ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out, when its grimy panes allowed, above one of the many squalid streets that feed the main artery of the Strand, my story begins anew. The furniture of the room relieves me of the task of word-painting, being more effectively described by catalogue, after the manner of the ships at Troy. It consisted of two small beds, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... worst of it visions continued to flash and sparkle in his brain—long lines of railroad track that simmered across the desert; rurales and American constables, prisons and calabooses; tramps at water tanks—all the squalid and painful panorama of his odyssey after Rio Blanca and the strike. And, resplendent and glorious, he saw the great, red Revolution sweeping across his land. The guns were there before him. Every hated face was a gun. It was for the guns he fought. He was the ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... stretched the handsome facades of tile-roofed buildings, giving one an idea of the ancient quarter which a closer inspection dispels; for the streets are crooked and steep, and the houses, except those lining the quays, squalid. It was not there, however, that the eye would have lingered. Far away, seen an incredible distance in the transparent evening atmosphere, Mont Blanc and its massed group of snowy satellites lifted themselves into the clouds. All those luminous ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
