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Dilapidated   Listen
adjective
Dilapidated  adj.  Decayed; fallen into partial ruin; injured by bad usage or neglect. "A deserted and dilapidated buildings."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dilapidated" Quotes from Famous Books



... with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood,—at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass,—here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... I unlaced the strings. The household crowded about me, panting with envy and excitement. Reverently I folded the multitudinous wrappings back and revealed a very old, very dilapidated silk slipper, severely busted at the toe and stuffed with sticky sweets, a small female doll, and a note—"With all best wishes to PATLANDER for a happy Christmas, and many thanks for useful hints contained in Punch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... down the alley sounded a chant, drawing nearer and nearer, until there shambled into view a decrepit horse drawing a dilapidated huckster's cart. Perched on the seat was a Greek who turned his dusky face up toward the two women leaning over the porch ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... who, by the way, had now told me that his name was Lancaster, conducted me up a dark, dirty-looking close, and finally into a house of anything but respectable appearance. The furniture was scanty, and what was of it much dilapidated: half the backs of half the chairs were broken off, the tables were dirty and covered with stains and the circular marks of drinking measures. A tattered sofa stood at one end of the apartment, the walls were hung with paltry ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... Men were wounded of both parties, three of them seriously. The draw was cut away, the middle pier and the western abutment partially blown down, and the field piece spiked by the west siders. But the sheriff and the city marshal of Cleveland appeared on the scene, gained possession of the dilapidated bridge, which had been given to the city of Cleveland, and lodged some of the rioters in thee county jail. This removed the bridge question from the camp and battle-field to the more ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... and its accessories in nowise differs from the more serious article intended for warfare, except that, due to its more frequent use, it may be more dilapidated ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... pointed out the portal of the parish church, a fine but dilapidated piece of work, with a large rosette window overhead. The town, he told me, derives its name from certain large grottoes wherein the inhabitants used to take refuge during Saracen raids. This I already knew, from the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... subjects, which of course made us conjecture that they had belonged to the surgeon of the ship. The decayed state of the books showed that it was long since they had been opened, and on a further examination of the hut, it also was found to be in a very dilapidated condition. From the number of things left in the hut, Captain Carr surmised that the last occupants must have left the place very suddenly, if, indeed, they had left it at all. One thing was certain, that we were not likely to find any ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... of the boat, and find not George, but the irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and rather more dilapidated than I can remember ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... Imperialists ascribed their victory to the intervention of Our Lady. Some fifty years after their defeat the Bohemians erected a church and monastery to St. Mary on the White Mountain. You may see this church, looking somewhat dilapidated—I should say ashamed of itself—as it stands there a monument to the Bohemian ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... time, Miss Blake—after unfastening her bonnet-strings, and taking out her brooch and throwing back her shawl—sat fanning herself with a dilapidated glove, and saying, "Oh dear! oh dear! what is to become of me I cannot imagine." But, at length, finding I was not to be ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... 836 West Federal Street, on U.S. Route 422, in a very dilapidated one story structure, which once was a retail store room with an addition built on the rear at ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... the great, money is not to be despised by the politician, I thought. So, having stocked my purse with not less than two hundred dollars, I arrived safely in New York and put up at the Astor House, an hotel in high favor with ex-secretaries and dilapidated politicians, inasmuch as the worthy landlord accepts the honor of their being guests of his house in satisfaction of his bills. It was night when I arrived, and the splendor and strangeness of everything around bewildered and confused me so much, that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... Sambo was at once released. Meantime, Sandy, as the unofficial cashier of the expedition, made an inventory of the treasure trove. It appears that Sambo had scented out in a strange way a very ancient and dilapidated tomb, which these Arab robbers had intended to ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... arctic severity for, probably, many months to come; and, consequently all the blankets in the ship were collected and put on board the raft, besides spare bedding and some hammocks. Snowball also, true to his culinary calling, took care to secure his cooking utensils, clambering back into the dilapidated forecastle for the purpose, almost at the peril of his life—the darkey subsequently bewailing much his inability to remove the ship's coppers, which were too firmly fixed in the galley for him to detach them from ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... afterward distinguished for its strong anti-slavery sentiment, the abolitionists were compelled to hold their meetings in the public park, from inability to procure a house in which to speak; and only after their convention was well under way were they offered the shelter of a dilapidated and abandoned church. In Rochester they met with a more hospitable reception. The indifference of Buffalo so disgusted Douglass's companions that they shook the dust of the city from their feet, and left Douglass, who was accustomed to coldness and therefore undaunted by it, to ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... quarter of Prague represents a remarkable labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets; it is situated in the outskirts of Prague which witnessed numerous bloody episodes of Bohemian and German history. The dwellers of the dirty and dilapidated houses of this quarter are engaged in petty trading and profiteering in their own as well as in other parts of the city. Prague is the only city in Germany where the Jews live entirely isolated from the nation ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces of oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story, and every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada, when under the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the Abencerrages, I suffered my mind to conjure up ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... what had befallen him, Rose bade Phebe obey his call and the delinquent cavalier appeared, breathless, anxious, and more dilapidated than ever, for he had forgotten his overcoat; his tie was at the back of his neck now; and his hair as rampantly erect as if all the winds of heaven had been blowing freely through it, as they had, for he had been tearing to and fro the last half hour, trying to undo the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... from his pocket and scratched the back of his head, tilting his hat as far forward as it had previously been to the rear, and just then the dilapidated side of his right boot attracted his attention. He turned the foot on one side, and squinted at the sole; then he raised the foot to his left knee, caught the ankle in a very dirty hand, and regarded the sole-leather ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... was not empty, in the sense that it was unfurnished. The unknown was using an electric torch of extraordinary brilliancy, and revealed a dilapidated hall-stand and a musty chair. He took a brief survey ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... crooked pin from somewhere about his dilapidated garments, and fastened the roll of bills as securely as he could inside the lining of his jacket, keeping the silver in his pocket. Then he again examined the book to be sure that he had overlooked nothing. On the inside of the ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... tray fastened before it, on which his toys were put. His dearest plaything was a ridiculous old doll, with no eyes, half a wig, such a dilapidated pair of kid arms that the stuffing came bursting through in every direction, making her look as if she had a cotton plantation inside her, and the bolls were sprouting out; and such an extremely short pair of legs in proportion to her body, that it seemed ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow

... 187.).—With respect to the armour said to have belonged to Guy, Earl of Warwick, your correspondent NASO is referred to Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. ii. pl. 42., where he will find an engraving of a bascinet of the fourteenth century, much dilapidated, but having still a fragment of the moveable vizor adhering to the pivot on which it worked. Whether this interesting relic is still at Warwick Castle or not, I cannot pretend to say, as I was unfortunately prevented joining the British Archaeological Association at the Warwick ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various

... the depot and, leaving him there in charge of Pablo, went up town to the Mexican consulate and procured passports into Baja California for himself and Allesandro. From the consulate he went to a local stock-yard and purchased a miserable, flea-bitten, dejected saddle mule, together with a dilapidated old stock saddle with a crupper, and a well-worn ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... never thinks of himself as released from body; he desires a perfect one, and of a nobler sort; he would inhabit a heaven-made house, and give up the earth-made one, suitable only to this lower stage of life, infected and unsafe from the first, and now much dilapidated in the service of the Master who could so easily give him a better. He wants a spiritual body—a body that will not thwart but second the needs and aspirations of the spirit. He had in his mind, I presume, such ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald

... only one was there to be particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier's. For the last four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman whom only Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the sixth floor of one of the most dilapidated houses on the Quai des Grands Augustins: Lawson described with gusto the filth, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... used to swing and creak of a windy night, was still hidden—it may perhaps be there to this day! And somebody (it does not matter who, for it was not any somebody that has to do with this story) took a fancy to the house—fast growing dilapidated, and in danger of sinking from a respectable old inn into a very undesirable public-house, for the coaches had left off running, and the old traffic was all at an end—and bought it just in time to save it from ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... gave me an account book when I went to school, and I used to put down my expenses, but I couldn't make them go very well, for figures are the one thing I am not at all clever about," said Rose, rummaging in her desk for a dilapidated little book, which she was ashamed to show ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... them for the author. Some portions of the Scenes of Clerical Life had already been discovered to have a very strong local coloring, and now there was much curiosity as to the personality of the writer. A dilapidated gentleman of the neighborhood, who had run through with a fortune at Cambridge, was selected for the honor. While the Scenes were being published, an Isle of Man newspaper attributed the authorship to this man, whose name was Liggins, but he at once repudiated it. On the appearance of Adam Bede ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... was an old, dilapidated frame building, whose rude accommodations differed widely from those to which, save during his army life, Boyd had ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... two or three farms and a dilapidated little red brick building that scarcely deserves the name of church. The lane to this hamlet from Great Habton is remarkable for the series of about a ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... course of this walk they went to see the hut where Peter the Great lived while he was in Holland engaged in studying ship building in the ship yards of Saandam. The hut itself was old and dilapidated; but it was covered and protected by a good, substantial building of brick, with open arches all around, which allowed the hut to be seen, while the roof and walls of the building protected it from the rain. The hut was situated in ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott

... and thirty years or more have passed away since this expedition of the Spanish marauders was undertaken, but the "Seven Cities of Cevola" (if they really were the "cities" whose remains are found in the Chaco Valley), although much dilapidated, are still sufficiently well preserved to show us ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... Society of Jesus of this city have been suffering signal discomfort and need, because of the falling of their church, and because the house in which they live is threatened with the same ruin, as it is dilapidated in many places; and, as it is propped up in many places, the religious are living in great danger. This city has grieved much over this loss, as the Society is so frequented by all its inhabitants and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... promptly embarked in the humane enterprise. Bidding a hurried farewell to his wife, he started alone in a dilapidated canoe to sail along the shores of Narraganset Bay upon his errand of mercy. A violent tempest arose, tumbling in such a surf upon the shore that he could not land, while he was every moment threatened ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... wood were littered about, and across the clearing was a roughly-built house of unpainted boards. The front door was propped open by a stick. Some of the panes of glass in the windows were broken, and the whole house had a melancholy, dilapidated look. I thought that I had never seen such a ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... conception retaining the classic lines of the French and yet with an added richness of its own. Then on up to a first floor above a low rez de chausse by wide stairs. These connecting portions of the house seemed unfurnished and barren,—walls of stone or plaster with here and there a dilapidated decoration. It almost would appear as if they were meant to be shut off from the living rooms, like the hall of a block of flats. The whole thing struck a strange note. There were quantities of servants in their quaint liveries about, and when finally they ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... describe as home. In the corners were two truckle beds, a stove, and a large demijohn containing some cheap and fiery whisky; in the centre of the floor was a deal table; on the rough redwood walls were shelves displaying many dilapidated pairs of boots and shoes, also some fly-specked sporting prints, and, upon a row of nails, a collection of shabby discoloured garments, ancient "hartogs," manifesting even in decay a certain jaunty, dissolute air, at once ludicrous and pathetic. Outside, in front, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... the hall from the back in front of the large central arch; it is raised ten feet above the floor, and is about ten feet wide, and covered by a marble canopy, all beautifully inlaid with mosaic work exquisitely finished, but now much dilapidated. The room or recess in which the throne stands is open to the front, and about fifteen feet wide and six deep. There is a door at the back by which the Emperor entered from his private apartments, and one on his left, from which his ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... if such they were, were curious, dilapidated edifices. They stood on platforms supported by posts, placed apparently without any attempt at regularity. Many of the posts were twisted and crooked, and looked as if they were tumbling down. The houses were very low, the roofs being in the shape of boats ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... with two goggle eyes (one of which was fixed), a rubicund nose, a cadavarous[TN-41] face, and a suit of clothes decidedly the worse for wear. He had the gift of distorting and cracking his finger-joints. This kind-hearted, dilapidated fellow "kept his hunter and hounds once," but ran through his fortune. He discovered a plot of old Ralph, which he confided to the Cheeryble brothers, who frustrated it, and then provided for Newman.—C. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... still held the island of Cape Breton and had the fealty of the Indians and Acadians, who were looking forward to the restoration of the country to its former owners. England systematically neglected Nova Scotia, where, until the foundation of Halifax, her only sign of sovereignty was the dilapidated fort at Annapolis, with an insignificant garrison, utterly unable to awe the Acadian French, and bring them completely under the authority of the British Crown. French emissaries, chiefly priests,—notably ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... before, one Josenhans, with his wife and their two children, Amrei (Anna Marie) and Damie (Damien). The father was a woodcutter in the forest, and was, moreover, an adept at various kinds of work; the house, which was in a dilapidated state when he bought it, he had himself repaired and reroofed, and in the autumn he was going to whitewash it inside—the lime was already lying prepared in the trench, covered with withered branches. His wife was one of the best day-laboring women in the village—ready for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... introduced the reader—there are but two—there is a little cottage on your left, and beyond, under a group of trees, mostly fir, which almost hide it from view, a home of a rather superior character, in a very dilapidated condition, with everything around it more or less untidy—that was where George Borrow lived and worked in his way for many a long day. The step-daughter and her husband reside there now—very ancient people, who are to be seen driving about Lowestoft in a little wicker car, drawn by an amiable ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... an inn, which stands at the foot of the hill of Coucy. I took the advice, and had no cause to repent it. The walk up the hill, of some two miles, to the tower and the castle was simply delightful on a fine afternoon in June. Opposite my little inn is a small and rather dilapidated chateau of the eighteenth century, which originally must have been a very pleasant residence; and in the extensive meadows about it were grazing a number of fine cattle, the property of M. de Vaublanche. 'He is the only man hereabouts ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... is close upon the shore. The first landmarks, in fact, which the seaman makes, are the tops of trees growing apparently out of the water, or the summit of an obelisk, or the capital of a pillar, marking the site of some ancient and dilapidated city. ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... house is a little shanty at the far end of the village, shoved away behind a large ugly granary, with its little yard full of reeds, in the midst of which is a crooked, dilapidated pump. The panes of glass in the lead-encased frames have been frosted over, the marl of the thatched chimney is crumbling away, and the whole of the roof is of a beautiful green, like velvet, due ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... that they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time, but still more obliterated by modern fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels of Gothic architecture, which we see crumbling in various parts of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of ages, and partly lost in the additions and alterations of latter days. Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about the rural game and holiday revel, from which it has derived ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... down into unkempt grounds with dilapidated porches and blinds. Such eyesores as one finds on the trolley-lines in any direction! They may have town-water supply, or they may depend on wells, but they are frequently ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... wandering steps at length led her to the Gentile quarter of the village. This was at the extreme southern end, and here some thirty Gentile families lived in huts and shacks and log-cabins and several dilapidated cottages. The fortunes of these inhabitants of Cottonwoods could be read in their abodes. Water they had in abundance, and therefore grass and fruit-trees and patches of alfalfa and vegetable gardens. Some of the men and boys had a few stray cattle, others obtained such intermittent employment ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... of a quarter of a mile brought them to a little clearing in the woods. In the middle of the open space stood a building. As he got closer young Benson saw that it was a dilapidated-looking structure that for many years, probably, had ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham

... form nearly all the audiences to be met with in the Cuban churches, unless upon festal occasions. The men manifest their indifference by their absence, and white women are scarcely represented. Besides the cathedral, Santiago has three or four other old churches, small and dilapidated, within whose sombre walls one seems to have stepped back into the fifteenth century. Upon strolling accidentally into one of these we felt a chill suffuse the whole system, like that realized on descending into a ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... neglected girls to call her low names, or pin dirty rags upon her gown as she walks about the premises; and then every thing within the walls is so clean and nice—no threatening cracks in the white ceilings; no dilapidated walls to totter, or worn planks to shake at every tread; no half-starved rats, stalking about seeking somewhat to devour; and no odious effluvia from the waste lot, or the stagnant pond, stopping her breath as she looked from door or window. Oh! she ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... felt that they were at liberty to go where they chose. Both were begrimed by the smoke until it would have puzzled their best friends to tell whether they were white men or negroes, and both were in a very dilapidated condition, so far ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... small window, before which hung a dilapidated shutter by a rusty hinge. The door opened, Billy knew, into a little passage from which the room door opened, and from which a rickety ladder led up to a loft, unused and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... live in it all winter, much less women and children. It was ten feet by twenty, one storey high, made of mud and boards, with half a partition to divide bedroom from the sitting-room kitchen. If one adds a small porch filled with dirty, half-starved dogs, and refuse of every kind, an ancient and dilapidated stove in the sitting part of the house, two wooden benches against the walls, a fixed rude table, some shelves nailed to the wall, and two boarded-up beds, one has a fairly accurate description of the furnishings. Inside were fourteen persons, sleeping there, at any rate for a night or two. The ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... opposite a sandbank on which stood a dilapidated fort and a dirty settlement known as Lorenzo Marquez, where the Portuguese kept a few soldiers, most of them coloured. I pass over my troubles with the Customs, if such they could be called. Suffice it to say that ultimately I succeeded in landing my goods, on ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... was in the best of humors. She set the bridegroom the example of keeping up appearances by examining the dilapidated house first. This done, she said sweetly to the person in charge, "May we look at ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... expression parliamentary or popular, in Donnybrook or St Stephen's, out it will. "Show me the man who'll tread on my coat!" shouts ragged Pat, flourishing his shillelagh as he hurls his dilapidated garment on the shebeen-house floor. From his seat in the senate, a joint of the "Tail" intimates, in more polished but equally intelligible phrase, his inclination for a turn upon the turf. Wherever blows are rife, Hibernia's sons ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... passed on: nothing could possibly be done materially to raise the standard of those wretched accommodations which the house offered. The dilapidated walls, the mouldering plaster, the blackened mantel-pieces, the stained and polluted wainscots—what could be attempted to hide or to repair all this by those who durst not venture abroad? Yet whatever could be done, Hannah did, and, in the meantime, very soon ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... sported the number '19' with manifest pride. A third had a fatigue cap, bearing the letters 'U.S.' in heavy brass, the rest of his costume being thoroughly aboriginal. One old fellow had converted an empty meat can into a hat without removing the printed label "stewed beef." I gave him a pair of dilapidated gloves, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... we found ourselves, a party of six (including young JERRYMAN, who said that, though he saw no difference between Lucerne and Bayswater, except that Bayswater was a "howling site bigger," he would come, "if only for the lark of seeing the dilapidated old boy" (his way of referring to his invalid Q.C. Uncle) "shovelled about the Bernese Oberland like a seedy Guy Faux,") crossing the silver streak on that valued, steady-going, and excellently well-found Channel friend, the Calais-Douvres. Of course we made a fresh friend for life ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various

... coat that had seen much service, buttoned to his throat. He set the little lamp with its green shade down upon the table amidst a mass of papers and books, and drew forward the only easy-chair there was, a dilapidated piece of furniture covered with faded yellow reps and ragged fringes that dragged on the floor. He took a great cloak from a clothes-horse in the corner and threw it over the chair, smoothing it carefully ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... Fifteenth Street for days around the noon hour and never have noticed that out of the vast crowd that surged along that busy thoroughfare there turned out, every few seconds, some weather-beaten, heavy-footed specimen of humanity, gaunt in countenance and dilapidated in the matter of clothes. The fact is none the less true, however, and the colder the day the more apparent it became. Space and a lack of culinary room in the mission-house, compelled an arrangement which permitted of only twenty-five or ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... the Derwentwater family pictures, to some of which the countess bears a marked resemblance, and the old baronial flag of the unfortunate family already floats proudly from the summit of the fine, though old and dilapidated tower." ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... able to make out the word Shamrock at her bow, and on careful inquiry identified her as the very vessel on which he had travelled to England as a boy; but alas! a Shamrock fallen on evil days, dilapidated by doubtful adventures in distant seas, and debased to ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... Mr. Yeats must have remembered many instances of the same kind in his work. "And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... itself, a house and land as a provision for food and raiment against days to come. This Feng Su, however, only expended the half of the sum, and pocketed the other half, merely acquiring for him some fallow land and a dilapidated house. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... leading the donkey kept his eye upon the valley below, and from time to time caught a glimpse of the old man who had now left the bridle path, and was picking his way up the rough hill-side. He was making for a dilapidated house which stood at one of the hairpin bends of the road, and the donkey-boy, shading his eyes from the glare of the rising sun, saw him disappear into what must have been the cellar of the house, since the door ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... wooden balustrade and flooring of the veranda were broken. So also were the faded green shutters. The patio was but a little square of dust and stringy grass. A few dilapidated chairs stood about, homemade looking chairs with concave seats ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... about. That strange propensity of my countrymen to settle down in remote and unfrequented spots upon the continent, had never struck me so forcibly; for although unquestionably there were evident traces of the former grandeur of the place, yet it was a long past greatness; and in the dilapidated walls, broken statues, weed grown walls, and dark and tangled pine grove, there were more hints for sadness than I should willingly surround myself by in a residence. The harsh grating of a heavy door behind roused me; I turned and beheld ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... Church, who had their "villeggiatura" at Monte Porzio. We spent a day with him there, and visited Tusculum; another day we went to Lariccia, where there is a palace and park belonging to the Chigi family in a most picturesque but dilapidated state. We went also to Ganzano, Rocca del Papa, and occasionally to visit frends at Frascati. There was a stone threshing-floor behind our house. During the vintage we had it nicely swept and lighted with torches, and the grape ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... pale and exhausted; he had tormented her a great deal. At last he found a woolly sheep that had been quite forgotten in the corner of the toy cupboard, a dilapidated old toy from his childhood with only three legs left. And he amused himself with that; that pleased him more than the other costly toys. He sat on the carpet as though he were quite a little child, held the sheep between ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... Grande Place, which now wore a very much more dilapidated appearance than it had three days before, we found a soldier on the pavement completely intoxicated. He was quite unconscious and could not walk. There was nothing to do but to make him as comfortable as possible till he should ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... husbandry as a means of livelihood in their new home. On arriving at Roanoke, on the 22d of July, Governor White, with forty of his best men, went ashore for the purpose of finding the men who had been left there by Grenville. The fort was destroyed, the houses were in a dilapidated condition and no trace of the colonists was found except a single skeleton which lay bleaching in the sun in front of one of the cabins, indicating that some fearful tragedy ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... of the innumerable cannon fired at him. Although these did him no damage, he did none, either, with the artillery that he fired. But he noted how slight were their forces for injuring him, for they had no more than three very small vessels, which could scarcely carry any artillery; one old, dilapidated ship, called "Espiritu Santo," which was already almost useless and broken-up from its voyages to Nueva Espana, and was mastless and without rigging; and one galley of twenty benches. Therefore not anticipating any trouble with Cavite, where ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... removed from salt water, and that it is the first point on entering the Yangtze-kiang at which a port could be established. It is twelve miles up the Whang-poo. Junks whirled past with curious tattered brown sails, resembling dilapidated verandah blinds, merchantmen were there flying the flags of the nations of the world, all churning up the yellow stream as they hurried to catch the flood-tide at the bar. Then came the din of disembarkation. Enthusiastic hotel-runners, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... were three such tents about 100 yards beyond the hospital; they were the most dilapidated tents in the whole Camp, always open; they ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.

... our—fortunately not very valuable—time we devoted to this wonderful novel of ours, I cannot exactly say. Turning the dogs'- eared leaves of the dilapidated diary that lies before me, I find the record of our later gatherings confused and incomplete. For weeks there does not appear a single word. Then comes an alarmingly business-like minute of a meeting at which there were—"Present: Jephson, MacShaughnassy, Brown, and Self"; and at which ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... dilapidated chair in the untidy office he had occupied for nearly thirty years, sat Asa Culkin, popularly known as "Judge" Culkin. Justice of the peace, sheriff, attorney-at-law, and three times Mayor of Laketon, he was still a controlling factor in local politics and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... low, immensely strong double gateway, reminding one of the triumphal arches in the Forum at Rome. The history of the transformation of this gateway is curious. First a fortified city gate, standing in a correspondingly fortified wall, it became a dilapidated granary and storehouse in the Middle Ages, when one of the archbishops gave leave to Simeon, a wandering hermit from Syracuse in Sicily, to take up his abode there; and another turned it into a church dedicated to this saint, tho of this change few traces remain. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... philosophizing. The dented and rusty vehicle had been disencumbered of its motor and was hitched to four mules who seemed less than enthusiastic over their lot. I got in and seated myself gingerly on one of the dilapidated seats, noting that the warning signs "For White" and "For Colored" had been smeared over with just enough paint to make the intent of obliteration clear without ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... forego habits that have become second nature. Breyette and MacDonald put on their dilapidated hats, filled their pipes, and were ready for anything from a social call to a bear hunt. Thompson had to shave, wash up, brush his hair, put on a tie and collar, which article of dress he donned without a thought that the North was utterly devoid of laundries, that he would soon be reduced ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... beautiful lips parted and for the first time I noticed, much to my surprise, that she had no teeth. A woman of our own kind without teeth generally presents a rather dilapidated appearance, but here was a woman that I thought actually ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... adder-infested ironstone ridge, the dozen or so of bark humpies that constituted Mulliner's Camp proper stood out clearly in the bright starlight in all their squat ugliness. From the extra display of light that shone from the doorway of the largest and most dilapidated-looking of the huts, Haughton knew that the Cooktown mailman had come in, and was shouting a drink for the landlord of the "Booming Nugget" before eating his supper of corned beef and damper and riding ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... up another flight of steps to the open door of the house, through a hallway covered with a ragged carpet, where a dilapidated walnut hat-rack stood, up the stairs, threading a dark passage that led into a low-ceiled, stifling room at the very back. A stout, slatternly person in a wrapper rose as they entered, but the mother ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... stained woodwork, its torn wall, paper, but where they were all united in work and drawn closer and closer to each other in love—had still the sweetness of a home; and upon their ragged mourning, their dilapidated furniture, the meagre meat soup at night, the pure light of honor gleamed and watched over them. Now, after this guilty child's avowal, all this was ended, lost forever! There was a blemish upon their life of duty and poverty, upon their irreproachable past, even upon the father's memory. Certainly ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... 'Why, and how, is it that she is so brought up?' and she would only cause discredit to her class. There are, of course, some who combine in themselves every perfection befitting their position. These best of the best are, however, not within every one's reach. But, listen! Within an old dilapidated gateway, almost unknown to the world, and overgrown with wild vegetation, perchance we might find, shut up, a maiden charming beyond imagination. Her father might be an aged man, corpulent in person, and stern in mien, and her brothers ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... who love to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with nightingales and seeming to impregnate the very air with the pleasures ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... you have dealt with certain other cells of monks, which you say are subject to you, even within the monastery of the glorious proto-martyr Alban himself. You have dilapidated the common property; you have made away with the jewels; the copses, the woods, the underwood, almost all the oaks, and other forest trees, to the value of eight thousand marks and more, you have made to be cut down without distinction, and they ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... he continued, "is to, secure through his means your fortune, which they will no sooner obtain, than, to my certain knowledge, they mean instantly, and most unmercifully, to employ it in repairing all their dilapidated estates." ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... and desolate-looking place by comparison with his former impressions of it. The morning was grey-skied, but full of a hard quality of light, which brought out to the uncompromising uttermost the dilapidated squalor of the Surrey side. The water was low, and from the mud and ooze of the ugly opposite shore, or perhaps from the discoloured stream itself, there proceeded a smell which offended his unaccustomed nostril. A fitful, gusty wind was blowing from the east, and ever and again it gathered ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... immobile face. "I have been in the service of the Prefect for ten years," he remarked, "and I have learned that he wastes very little time upon unimportant things." He leaned out and spoke to the chauffeur, and in a moment the car halted before a dingy little shop, on the lower floor of an old and dilapidated-looking house. "Here is the place of Monsieur ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... stupendous tyranny in the community, at the very time when they were baffling the authority of the nobility and braving the power of all kings—at once teaching the world the way to win freedom, and the way to lose it. In our days men see that constituted powers are dilapidated on every side—they see all ancient authority gasping away, all ancient barriers tottering to their fall, and the judgment of the wisest is troubled at the sight: they attend only to the amazing revolution which is taking place before their eyes, and they imagine that mankind is ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... Russia remains heavily dependent on exports of commodities, particularly oil, natural gas, metals, and timber, which account for over 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices. Russia's industrial base is increasingly dilapidated and must be replaced or modernized if the country is to achieve sustainable economic growth. Other problems include widespread corruption, lack of a strong legal system, capital flight, and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... back, after the old man died, to club life in London, and seldom has been near the old place; indeed, it has been let till recently, and he wants to let it again, but it is altogether too dilapidated for that without repairs. So he came down to see about it, and was taken ill there. But to return to what my father told me. He was shocked to hear of the certificate, for he had implicitly believed his brother's ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... market, into which in past times he had put a little money. He hired a small flat in Brooklyn, on the top floor, so that he had a glimpse of the harbor from his sitting-room windows. He spent the last of his ready money in buying out the dilapidated furniture of his predecessor; and then with the assistance of the janitor's wife, who gave him his breakfast and did what she called "redding up the place," he began to live on the slim salary that his new ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... glorious, warm spring morning. Mistress Penwick had ridden forth, attended by a groom, to the village. She spent the entire morning in visiting the poor and sick and did not fail to note the dilapidated state of the cottages. She rode home flushed and eager with plans. She made known to Lord Cedric her desires to build up these poor cottages. Without question he doubled the amount of money she asked for, and paid her a large sum for immediate use among ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... was held in a little ruined stone hut, situated behind some trees on a dreary hill just outside Bosekop. It was a miserable place, barren of foliage,—the ground was dry and yellow, and the hut itself looked as if it had been struck by lightning. The friends, whose taste had led them to select this dilapidated dwelling as a place of conference, were two in number, both women,—one of them no other than the minister's servant, the drear-faced Ulrika. She was crouched on the earth-floor in an attitude of utter abasement, at the feet of her companion,—an ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... the place had a worn and dilapidated appearance; but the inside was not at all deficient in comfort. The public room contained a good substantial oak dining-table, a dozen well polished elm chairs, an old fashioned varnished clock, and a huge painted cupboard in a corner, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... said as the three, the captors and the prisoner, tramped across the dewy grass. As they drew closer to the building Roy had descried, he saw that it was a dilapidated looking affair. Shutters hung crazily from a single hinge, broken window-panes looked disconsolately out. In the roof was a yawning gap, from which a great owl flapped as they drew closer. Evidently the place had not been occupied as a dwelling for ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... dilapidated hut stood a number of women with children in their arms, and among them he noticed a lean, pale-faced woman, easily holding a bloodless child in a short garment made of pieces of stuff. This child was incessantly smiling. Nekhludoff knew that it was the smile of suffering. He ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... who had just dragged himself with slow and weary steps to this spot, begged an alms in the professional whine common to his class. The Caliph gave him a small piece of silver, and then watched him as he crossed the road and entered a dilapidated and wretched hovel, which stood close by the outer wall of the house of ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... she reached the low wooden jetty crawling, like some giant but rather dilapidated black many-legged insect, out over the stream. Its rows of solidly driven piles were intact, but the staging they supported had suffered damage from the rush of river floods, let alone from neglect and age. Handrails were broken down, planks rotted and wrenched away leaving gaps through which ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... a kind of wild horse-track, we turned the corner of a high and somewhat ruinous wall of loose stones, and making a sudden wheel we found ourselves in a small quadrangle, surmounted on two sides by dilapidated stables and kennels, on another by a broken stone wall, and upon the fourth by the front ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... 1990 and 1992 Albania ended 46 years of xenophobic Communist rule and established a multiparty democracy. The transition has proven difficult as successive governments have tried to deal with high unemployment, widespread corruption, a dilapidated infrastructure, powerful organized crime networks with links to high government officials, and disruptive political opponents. International observers judged parliamentary elections in 2001 and local elections in 2003 to be acceptable and a step toward democratic development, but identified ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... rue Messier was a wretched one-storeyed house that belonged to a country vine-dresser who seldom came to Paris. It was damp, dirty, and dilapidated, and would have had to be rebuilt from top to bottom if it were to be rendered habitable. There had been a long succession of so-called tenants of this hovel, shady, disreputable people who, for the most part, left without paying any rent, the landlord ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... Their regular troops were scattered far and wide through the province, and were nowhere more than equal to the local requirement; while of militia, except those of Halifax, they had few or none whom they dared to trust. Their fort at Annapolis was weak and dilapidated, and their other posts were mere stockades. The strongest place in Acadia was the French fort of Beausejour, in which the English saw a continual menace. Their apprehensions were well grounded. Duquesne, governor ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... amid the expanses of street and intervening medleys of broken or half-finished partition-walls. At other points evidence of more life and movement was to be seen, and here the houses stood crowded together and displayed dilapidated, rain-blurred signboards whereon boots of cakes or pairs of blue breeches inscribed "Arshavski, Tailor," and so forth, were depicted. Over a shop containing hats and caps was written "Vassili Thedorov, Foreigner"; while, at another spot, a signboard portrayed a billiard table and two players—the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... one, and very old, but Prudence thought, when with a sigh he finally drew it on, that she had never seen so fine a soldier, and, indeed, the coat did look much better on than off, for a gallant bearing will, to some extent, redeem the most dilapidated attire. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... him. Poor devil, he was full of good-humor too, and had the best of stomachs. His amputated great-toe does not mend: out upon it, the world itself is all so amputated, and not like mending! August the Strong, dilapidated at fifty-three, is fast verging towards a less expensive country: and in three years hence will be lodged gratis, and need no cook or flunky ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... up the river to Lanesport. The old town lay very still in the baking sun. There were schooners in the stream, and one or two at the wharves. A few sloop-yachts and cat- boats were at anchor in the river, but none of them was the "Hoppergrass." Old and dilapidated wharves ran down to the river, some of them deserted, and covered with grass. There were tumble- down buildings at the water's edge, and they were mostly black with age. The town looked as if it had been sound asleep for a ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... improved and thriven to a degree of prosperity never experienced to the north of the Tweed before, and at a ratio which far exceeded that of any other nation in Europe. In the short space of half a century, the whole face of the country had changed. From a bleak, barren, and dilapidated region—for such she undoubtedly was for many years subsequent to the last rebellion of 1745—Scotland became, with the shortest possible transition, a favourite land of husbandry. Mosses and muirs, which, at all events since the forgotten days of the Jameses, had borne no other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... afford provision for such a party as ours for about six or eight months if well administered. In case of necessity this would undoubtedly be a very useful reserve to fall back upon. These stores are somewhat scattered, and the hut has a dilapidated, comfortless appearance due to its tenantless condition; but even so it seemed to me much less inviting than our old Discovery hut at ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... however, no visitors at Stornham, and there were in fact, no accommodations for any. There were numberless bedrooms, but none really fit for guests to occupy. Carpets and curtains were ancient and ragged, furniture was dilapidated, chimneys would not draw, beds were falling to pieces. The Dowager Lady Anstruthers had never either attracted desired, or been able to afford company. Her son's wife suffered from the resulting boredom and unpopularity without ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... western side of the train, the tawny colours of the fields (like a lion's hide), the blue shadows of the glens, the sparkling Hudson in quick blinks of brightness, the lilac line of the hills when we reached Kingston in the dusk. We remember the old and dilapidated theatre at Kingston, the big shabby dressing rooms of the men, with the scribbled autographs of former mummers on the walls. And that night we said good-bye to our little play, whose very imperfections we had grown to love by this time, and took the 3:45 A.M. milk train to New York. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... in the hills north of the city there was a dilapidated stronghold called the Castle of Manzecca. Behind those walls, in the confusion of the Middle Ages, Antonio's family had developed into a nest of rural tyrants. Those old steel-clad men of the Manzecca had become what were called "Signorotti"—lords of a height or two, swooping ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Miss T. drove us to Oaklands, our future home. The road leading to the house was nearly choked with weeds. The house itself was in a dilapidated condition, and the yard and garden had a sadly neglected look. But there were roses in bloom; we plucked handfuls of feathery, fragrant acacia-blossoms; ivy crept along the ground and under the house. The freed people on the place seemed glad to see us. After talking with them, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... had evolved a deep, dark purpose. I went much more rapidly than she, and as soon as I turned the corner, and was safely out of sight, I tore off that hateful shawl and when I arrived at the meeting-house I ignominiously thrust it into the coal heap in the dilapidated shed in the corner of the lot. I was almost frozen by the time I arrived, but any condition was better ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... quarter of an hour of his leaving his lodging, he found himself standing on the pavement, over against the tobacconist's shop, stupidly gazing at the glass door, the well-known sign and the familiar, dilapidated chalet of cigarettes which held a prominent place in the show window. No longer ago than yesterday afternoon the little Swiss cottage had been flanked by the Wiener Gigerl, whose smart red coat and insolent face had been the cause of so much ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... growth, and sprawled in every direction. The gate hung from one hinge, and many palings were off the fence, and all had a sodden, dingy appearance from the recent rains. The house itself looked so dilapidated and small, in contrast with their stately mansion on Fifth Avenue, that irrepressible tears came into ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... squalid and dirty, but with good European trade, and a depot for the caravans from the interior; and Morocco (60), in the S., near the Tensift River, 240 m. SW. of Fez, well situated for local and transit trade, but a dilapidated city. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... with surprise, that a large table was set in the first hall, for about twenty guests. The dining-room opened into a vast salon, where the whole party were presently assembled. These rooms were in keeping with the dilapidated appearance of the outside of the house. The walnut panels, polished by age, but rough and coarse in design and badly executed, were loose in their places and ready to fall. Their dingy color added to the gloom of these apartments, which were barren ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... on in the direction indicated, and presently he arrived at the end of the village, where in an old orchard he found a low, rambling, dilapidated barn, before which clusters of soldiers in blue lounged around smoking fires. As he drew closer he saw that most of them seemed fixed in gloomy abstraction. A few were employed at some task of hand, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... capital, which was her subsequent home. At Arsta the father of Fredrika, who had amassed a fortune in the iron industry in Finland, set up an establishment in accord with his means. The manor-house, built two centuries before, had become in some parts dilapidated, but it was ultimately restored and improved beyond its original condition. From its windows on one side the eye stretched over nearly five miles of meadows, fields, and villages belonging to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... they stood, seeing, by reason of the gloom, vastly little of the columns which have the strange shape of tent-poles; then walked warily and still hand in hand in and out of various and dilapidated chambers. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... irrepressibly loquacious ghost of Lewis Carroll's Phantasmagoria would have resented his genial familiarity. The strange stories are told at a hunting-party in a country-house, a cheerful, comfortable background for ghost stories. A hoary, one-eyed gentleman, "the whole side of whose head was dilapidated and seemed like the wing of a house shut up and haunted," sets the ball rolling with the old story of a spectre who glides into the room, wringing her hands, and is later identified, like Scott's Lady in the Sacque, by her resemblance to an ancestral portrait in the gallery. The "knowing" gentleman ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... than those of Greek or Turkish towns, which are at this moment a topic of interest and ridicule in the public prints. A lively picture has lately been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, says the writer, a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls, which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or river-sides can supply; tumble them down on the declivity of a bare ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... who received her as a daughter, and whose kindness she repaid by writing his biography. However the venture might come out, we would think her life could not well be harder or less attractive than it had been, drudging in a dilapidated farm house, and we are glad she is well out of it. Strange to say, she did not take our view of the situation. We have already seen how independent she was of external circumstances. In a letter referred to, dated May 27, she chides ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... electrify them. They had new life and started to run, but we were so weak that we could not go more than 200 yds. and then spell. I think another day would have seen us off. Arrived at depot 3.25; found it in a dilapidated condition, cases all about the place. I don't suppose there has ever been a weaker party arrive at any depot, either north or south. After a hard struggle got our tent up and made camp. Then gave the dogs a good feed of pemmican. If ever dogs saved the lives of any one they have saved ours. Let ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... in honor of the marriage. The place looked inhabited, the windows were all open, and the paths had been weeded, though Sybil had not allowed the wild shrubbery to be pruned nor the box hedges to be trimmed. She loved the pathless confusion of the old grounds, and most of all she loved the dilapidated summer-house. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... probably fastened by his own hand? Above all, was it not noticeable that he was not to-day under the necessity of hiding one hand behind him under the lappets of his coat, and slipping the other down his half-open umbrella, to conceal the dilapidated gloves, but could display both hands with perfect candour to public scrutiny? Were all these singular merits to pass unacknowledged, to be seen by no one, or seen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... driven into the souls of our shoes by a local shoemaker, who made them for us by hand out of an old English file, and who wanted to pull them all out again because we would not pay him the exorbitant price he demanded. In buying provisions for the expedition, we spent three hours among the half dilapidated bazaars of the town, which have never been repaired since the disastrous Russian bombardment. The most difficult task, perhaps, in our work of preparation was to strike a bargain with an Armenian ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... several picturesque villages, with a modern schloss here and there, and here and there a ruin. Among others, the remains of the castle of Dux, one of Wallenstein's numerous mansions, is especially remarkable. By-and-by, as you approach the town, you see on your left the dilapidated towers of Dobrawska Hora, an extensive pile, built, as we were told, early in the thirteenth century, and owned and inhabited, in 1616, by Count Kinsky, Wallenstein's brother-in-law. And last of all, you enter the town itself; of which I shall speak as I found it on a previous ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... search here only reveals half a dozen avenues of escape. The man could have gone back through several doors into the building itself, or eastward, through some dilapidated yards, into a street that was uninfested by patrols, and dark as the bottom of a well. "It is useless to waste further time," says the lieutenant, who presently rejoins the colonel behind the tavern, and finds him staring up at the rear windows. To him the young officer, briefly ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... found back of first base, and sat down between neighbors of uncommon parts. Next to Helen was a large red man of Hibernian extraction, with a long upper lip tamed but little by civilization or by razor; on his head he wore a dilapidated cloth cap; he was, to appearances, driver for an ice ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... somewhat dilapidated town, but that was not always the case, for it is mentioned in my dear old friend Froude's History of England that the then Earl of Desmond called on the ambassador of Charles V. at his lodgings in Dingle. The old records of the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... The dilapidated marble facade of the church and its rugged stone-work are exceedingly ancient—dating in fact from the eleventh century; the new building is by Brunelleschi and to my mind is one of his most beautiful ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... (first) Venetian printed edition in his epistola dedicatoria leaves even doubt as to whether his authority was handwritten or printed. A first edition, printed ca. 1483, may have well been a dilapidated copy such as Torinus describes in 1529. Torinus admits taking some liberties with the text and failed to understand some phrases of it. Despite this fact, his text, from a culinary point of view seems to be more authentic than the Humelbergius ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... the positions; in the evening he set up his headquarters behind the French centre, at a spot from where could be seen the camps of both armies and the area which would form their battlefield the next day. There was no building in the vicinity but a dilapidated barn, and it was there that were placed the Emperor's tables and maps, while he himself took up a position by a huge fire, surrounded by his numerous staff and his guards. Happily there was no snow, although it was very cold. I bedded down on the ground and fell into ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... look Berry gingerly withdrew from what remained of the envelope some three-fifths of a dilapidated dividend warrant, which looked as if it had been immersed in water and angrily disputed by ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... don't know that you would find it perfect. It is a plain stone house, with a big, dilapidated garden, nice trees and lawns, miles from everything, and with old-fashioned, shabby furniture. Since Gerald came into the place, he's not been able to keep it up, and he has to let it. He hasn't been able to let it for the last year or so, and would be glad of the chance. If you like the ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... of the established worship of the Roman State during the last years of the Republic. Of the actual facts there can hardly be any doubt, though we know very little about them. The decisive symptoms are: that Augustus, after having taken over the government, had to repair some eighty dilapidated temples in Rome and reinstitute a series of religious rites and priesthoods which had ceased to function. Among them was one of the most important, that of the priest of Jupiter, an office which had been vacant for ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... Catholics, it seems odd that nobody has suggested, as the probable scene, the Savoy, which lay next on the right to Somerset Yard. The Savoy, so well described by Scott in Peveril of the Peak, and by Macaulay, was by this time a rambling, ruinous, labyrinth of lanes and dilapidated dwellings, tenanted by adventurers and skulking Catholics. It was an Alsatia, says Macaulay, more dangerous than the Bog of Allen, or the passes of the Grampians. A courageous magistrate might be lured into the Savoy to stop a fight, or on any similar pretence; ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... England stretched between the two homes, which, being on different lines of railway, were inaccessible by the ordinary route. Moreover, the Revells were, as they themselves cheerfully declared, "reduced paupers," and inhabited a picturesquely dilapidated old farmhouse, and the problem, "Where do they all sleep?" was as engrossing as a jig-saw puzzle to their inquisitive friends. Impossible that even a cat could be invited to swing itself within those crowded portals; equally impossible ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... where we have so long been accustomed to resort for Pic-Nics," said Eve, pointing out a lovely place, that was beautifully shaded by old oaks, and on which stood a rude house that was much dilapidated, and indeed injured, by the hands of man. John Effingham smiled, as his cousin showed the place to her companions, promising them an early and a nearer view of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... the face of a cherub, if we can conceive a cherub with an habitual grime on his countenance. Curly yellow hair, innocent blue eyes, for ever twinkling, a dimple in each cheek; add to these a dilapidated suit of clothes, and a sorely battered hat, and you have Tim O'Neill, the scourge ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... why) a long, dilapidated garden rake, all bearded and bedraggled with grasses, so that it looked like the ensign of some old barbarian tribe. His hair, which was as long and rank as the grass, hung down below his huge shoulders; and such clothes as clung about him were rags and tongues of ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... worried, have trouble of one sort or another—to the coffee house! When she did not keep her appointment, for one reason or other—to the coffee house! When your shoes are torn and dilapidated—coffee house! When your income is four hundred crowns and you spend five hundred—coffee house! You are a chair warmer in some office, while your ambition led you to seek professional honors—coffee house! You could not find a mate to suit you—coffee house! You feel like committing suicide—coffee ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... three specimens is somewhat curious. With the exception of two in the Museum at Copenhagen, obtained many years ago by Professor Thomsen from a convent in Rome, and, though greatly dilapidated, presenting some traces of the game kind of ornamentation, they are believed to ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... the city. The eunuch, recognizing him, called his attention to the fleeing concubine, who, when he had alighted and greeted her, begged him to find her a cart that she might follow the court. Presently a dilapidated vehicle came by in which sat an old man. The Prince ordered him to give the cart to the concubine and sent her to his palace where a proper conveyance was secured, and she overtook the court at ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... things flashed through Frank's brain as he bent over to try and pick up the tracks of his missing chum. Whatever could have happened to Jerry? Usually he was able to take good care of himself; could it be possible that some inmate of the dilapidated shack had stolen upon him, bent upon robbery? In that case, ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... present of an old book with pictures in it. It was called The Preceptor—one of Dodsley's publications. There were wonderful folding plates of all sorts in it. Those which represented animals were of course my favourites. But these especially were in a very dilapidated condition, for there had been children before me somewhere; and I proceeded, at my uncle's suggestion, to try to mend them by pasting them on another piece of paper. I made bad work of it at first, and was so dissatisfied with the results, that I set myself in earnest ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decaying mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me good-day. I told him a friend ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... is upon the fourth floor, and that all the space allotted to it is so crowded with books as to dangerously overload the structure. The first floor is occupied by the Court of Claims. The building is of an old and dilapidated appearance, unsuited to the dignity which should attach ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley

... were whirling along the straight, white road between the interminable black vineyards, and past the dilapidated homesteads of the vine-folk and wayside cafes that are scattered about ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... parking strips and yards, dilapidated fences, broken windows, smoking automobiles, dingy working places, all should be the object ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon

... Beneath the terrace is a curious little strip of land cut off from the Embankment garden by high wooden pales. This is practically useless, as it can only be reached through the arches. On it is an old dilapidated shed, once a much-frequented tavern, called the Fox under the Hill, a curious feature on land which is of so ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... been demolished, the Priory buildings had been converted into residences, and the land near the Shoreditch highway had been built up with numerous houses. The land next to the Field, however, was for the most part undeveloped. It contained some dilapidated tenements, a few old barns formerly belonging to the Priory, and small garden plots, conspicuous objects in the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... the Manor-House, at the time of the Squire's return, was in the most dilapidated state. The stout grey walls remained firm and entire; but the inner chambers had been used for all kinds of purposes. The great withdrawing-room had been a barn; the state tapestry-chamber had held wool, and so on. But, by-and-by, they were cleared out; and if the Squire ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... face—white and wrinkled, red at the extremities, and his long beard. Who will see his lean and yellow scarf, his greasy shirt-collar, his battered hat, his green frock coat, his deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his imitation gold pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were plastered in mud? Who will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the unfortunate man in toto, for he has still enough mirth to know the extent of his misfortune. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... humorous subjects. From 1875-78 she studied with Khyn, and later more or less under the direction of her husband. She has painted exclusively small pictures, dealing with simple and natural things, and each picture, as a rule, contains but a single figure. She believes that a dilapidated Skagen hovel may meet every demand of beauty. "Maageplukkerne"—"Gull plucking"—exhibited in 1883, has been called one of the most sympathetic and unaffected pieces of genre painting ever ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... Sunday walks near London we passed a forlorn and dilapidated Primitive Methodist Chapel. The windows were a good deal broken and there was a notice up offering 10/—reward to any one who should give such information as should lead to the, &c. Cut in stone over the door was this inscription, and we ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... grunt, and, stepping out, passed through the patch of light, weird and gaudy, with the face of a man marching through a dream. The mate went on faster:—"Craik—Singleton—Donkin.... O Lord!" he involuntarily ejaculated as the incredibly dilapidated figure appeared in the light. It stopped; it uncovered pale gums and long, upper teeth in a malevolent grin.—"Is there any-think wrong with me, Mister Mate?" it asked, with a flavour of insolence in the forced simplicity of its tone. On both sides of the deck ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... her and pushed resolutely on, never pausing, yet at times looking hastily over her shoulder as if fearful of a possible pursuer. As she passed a deserted farm house, a sudden gust of wind blew one of its dilapidated blinds against the window, shattering the glass with a resounding crash. With a scream the girl sprang forward, then, half wild with fright she ran with a headlong ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... miser may be looked up to, in a way, as an ideal votary of Mammon, but he is never loved. On his vast possessions, mainly in coal-fields, he was even more detested than the ordinary run of capitalists. The cottages and farmhouses on his estates were dilapidated and insanitary beyond what is endurable. Of his many mansions, some were kept in decent repair, because he drew many shillings from tourists admitted to view them. But his favourite abode was almost as ruinous as his cottages, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang



Words linked to "Dilapidated" :   broken-down, derelict, damaged



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