"Littered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being over, and the stalls and areas empty. He would have preferred a more congenial spot, but, as usually happens, in place of a romantic field or solemn aisle for his tale, it was told while they walked up and down over a floor littered with rotten cabbage-leaves, and amid all the usual squalors of decayed vegetable matter and unsaleable refuse. He began and finished his brief narrative, which merely led up to the information that he had married a wife some years earlier, and that his wife was living still. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... eye swept the littered field from which Jabez Rockwell rose, as one from the dead, to rally his comrades, alone, undaunted, pathetic beyond words. A little later two privates were carrying to the rear the wounded lad, who had been ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the door open while they all entered a pretty sitting-room that was littered with all sorts of paper—some stiff, some thin, and some tissue. The sheets and scraps were of all colors. Upon a table were paints and brushes, while several pair of scissors, of ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... gloom into the kitchen; instantly the piteous cry ceased and Caliban rose from the cold hearth and bounded gladly to him, purring and rubbing against his legs. Mechanically he stooped and stroked it; then, after carefully pulling down the shades, he lighted the lamp upon the littered table, and looked about him. Everything bore evidence, as had the living-room, of a hasty exodus. The fire was extinguished in the range, and it was filled to the brim with flakes of light ashes. Evidently Brunell ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... position, he could see the port to the east packed with lifeless vessels. The stretches of stone wharf and the mole were vacant and littered with rubbish. The yard-arms of abandoned freighters were peculiarly beaded with tiny black shapes that moved from time to time. Far out at sea, so far that a blue mist embraced its base and set its sails mysteriously afloat in air, a great galley, with all canvas ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... stone which they had left Who wrought it; but a high-pitched roof was reared Above it, and the western gable pierced With three long narrow lights. Great tie-beams loomed Across, and many daws frequented there, The starling and the sparrow littered it With straw, and peeped from many a shady nook; And there was lifting up of wings, and there Was hasty exit when the curate came. But sitting on a beam and moving not For him, he saw two fair gray turtle-doves Bowing their ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... and bleached skulls and bones of digested victims lay in heaps upon the sandy floor of their azure-hued caverns. Gold and jewels, too, the spoils of many a brave galley that had been lured to destruction by these charmers, likewise littered their retreat, and perhaps it was as much the glittering of this gold as their own lovely features that in certain cases enticed the wary merchant into this fatal trap. Gold and a pretty face: what male heart could be proof against the double ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... few friendly enquiries about the young man's own work, and the report of a promising word from the great Benson, Adams took up a letter lying loose among the papers on his big littered desk. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... six tiny rooms. One of them—the one to which he led our friends—was called the study. A thick-legged table, littered over with papers black with the accumulation of ancient dust as though they had been smoked, occupied all the space between the two windows; on the walls hung Turkish firearms, whips, a sabre, two maps, some anatomical diagrams, a portrait of Hoffland, a monogram woven in hair in ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... into a gigantic chamber, lined from floor to ceiling with shelves that groaned beneath their burden of the literature of genius. Indeed he had, in fancy, beheld even the chairs and couches covered with stacks of volumes, the very floor littered with the choicest productions of the brains of the dead and living. His surprise was, therefore, very great when, on passing through the door, he beheld Madame Sagittarius reposing at full length upon a maroon sofa in a small apartment, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... piano and some violins, which were hidden away out of sight, fell upon her delighted ear. She followed the sound, and it took her to the glass extension, which, to her astonishment, was all alight, and fragrant with flowering plants and towering palms. The "old trunks and things" that had littered the place were gone, and in their stead was all this soft greenness and bloom, while from above hung graceful lanterns, sending out a tender light that made the leaves look shadowy and waxen, and gave the spot a peculiar ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... large size, hunt singly or in packs, and burrow holes for their young. (1/35. Azara 'Voyages dans l'Amer. Merid.' tome 1 page 381; his account is fully confirmed by Rengger. Quatrefages gives an account of a bitch brought from Jerusalem to France which burrowed a hole and littered in it. See 'Discours, Exposition des Races Canines' 1865 page 3.) In these habits the feral dogs of La Plata resemble wolves and jackals; both of which hunt either singly or in packs, and burrow holes. (1/36. With respect to wolves burrowing holes see Richardson 'Fauna Boreali-Americana' ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... hour they arrived at a large encampment upon the bank of a broad shallow river. There were nearly an hundred lodges standing upon the plain; and the ground was littered with buffalo-horns and hides, while vast quantities of the flesh of these animals were hanging from poles in front of every lodge. There were fires, and camp-kettles, and dogs, and Indian ponies, and women, and children—all mixed up ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... and Miss Arsdale led the way without hesitation along a grass-grown road and through an old orchard. The trees were scraggly and untrimmed, littered with dead branches, but Spring, the mother, had decked them with green leaves and buds until they looked as jaunty as old people going to a fair. The sun sifted through the tender sprigs to the sprouting ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... came in. She was summarily dressed, and very pale, and her hair, more notable than ever, was down. As she entered he opened his hand and let the ball of notes drop into the littered grate. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... work is only a lovely mask, or rather just the sunlight of the fourteenth century which has come into the dark old Norman building. The most notable change is the roof, in Norman times a flat ceiling, now a magnificent vault. But that century was not content with transforming the nave, it littered it with the first of its various delights, those chantries which are among the greatest splendours of this Cathedral, and which still, in some sort, commemorate Bishop Edingdon (1366), Bishop Wykeham (1404), Bishop Beaufort (1447), Bishop Waynflete (1416), Bishop Fox (1528) ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... dust and cobwebs of unwashen years. For all the cold that snapped and bit through the stillness of the forest night, the door of the camp was thrown wide open, and from it a long sheet of light spread out across the trodden and chip-littered snow. Around the doorway crowded the rough-shirted woodsmen, loafing and smoking after their prodigious dinner of boiled pork, boiled beans, and steaming-hot molasses cake. The big box-stove behind them, which heated the camp, was wearing itself to a dull red glow; and the air that rushed out with ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... cabinets containing specimens, line the walls. At the back is a door leading to the hall; in the foreground on the left, a door leading to the sitting-room. In the righthand wall are two windows, of which all the panes are broken. The DOCTOR'S desk, littered with books and papers, stands in the middle of the room, which is in disorder. It is morning. DR. STOCKMANN in dressing-gown, slippers and a smoking-cap, is bending down and raking with an umbrella under one of the cabinets. After a little while ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... open, and the din of omnibuses and other traffic from the street below was almost deafening. Stools and chairs were stacked together in the middle of the floor, and the waste-paper of yesterday littered the whole place. Even our own desks were thick ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... it was, the major was up and hard at work. His tent table, transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism—the disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... straight and bounded by factories, mean houses and distempered walls: a road littered with many scraps of paper, bones, dirt, and refuse) I went on for several hundred yards, having the old wall of Rome before me all this time, till I came right under it at last; and with the hesitation that befits all great ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Sunday morning, he was heard to say that "he hoped his master and mistress prayed for him, as he had no time to pray for himself." He brought his lady home from the Opera at one in the morning; then went to fetch his master from the "Hell" in St. James's-street, and by the time he had littered and rubbed down his horses, and got to his own bed, it was four o'clock; he thought after that he could not do less than sleep till nine; by half-past-ten he had got his breakfast, and at twelve his carriage was ready; at one he took his dinner; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... flew to you—I found you surrounded by sharpers—What was to be done? I became Morrington! littered with villains! practised the arts of devils! braved the assassin's steel! possessed myself of your large estates—lived hateful to myself, detested by mankind—to do what? to save an injured brother from destruction, and lay his fortune ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... tapers in heavy silver sconces, I beheld St. Auban seated at a table littered with parchments, over which he was intently poring. His back was towards me, and his long black hair hung straight upon his shoulders. On the table, amid the papers, lay his golden wig and black mask, and on the floor in the centre of the room, ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... coals. He had captured a coatimundi, an animal somewhat larger than a tame tom-cat, with a long snout and long ringed tail; one of the dogs was gnawing at the animal's head, and the tail and the feet were also lying on the floor, among the old bones and rubbish that littered it. Stealing round, I suddenly presented myself at the opening to his den, when the dogs rose up with a growl and Nuflo instantly leaped to his ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... your master at once. Tell him I am here," and as the servant slowly shambled up the stairs, Folsom entered the sitting-room. A desk near the window was open and its contents littered about. The drawers in a heavy bookcase were open and papers were strewn upon the floor. The folding doors to the dining-room were open. Decanters, goblets, cigar stumps and heel taps were scattered over the table. Guest ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... own room by the return of Gowan, sat staring at the portrait as it stood propped against his trunk. Little O'Grady, if he had been present, instead of being occupied on the other side of the partition in sweeping up the dried plaster that littered his floor, would have decided that the personal interest was in fair proportion to the professional, and would have rated Prochnow no higher as an artist than as ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone in the unfriendly, empty apartment, where the mats are still littered with the little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ear the melody of Tchaykovsky's song; but he slammed it to again directly in vexation, and went up to his aunt to her special room, which was for ever baking hot, smelled of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and was littered up with such a multitude of rugs, side-tables, stools, cushions, and padded furniture of all sorts, that any one unused to it would have found it difficult to turn round and oppressive to breathe in it. Platonida Ivanovna was sitting at the window, her knitting in her hands (she was knitting ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... a feast more eagerly than Father Hecker read a sermon, a lecture, or an editorial showing the trend of non-Catholic thought. After his death his desk was found littered with innumerable clippings of the sort, many of them pencilled with underlinings and with notes. These furnished much of the matter of his conversation, and doubtless of his prayers. Once he wrote to ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... you at there, scoundrels?" cried Lieutenant Mason, as he came in sight from a walk he had taken to sneer at the evening parade of the regiment of militia. "Away with every man of you to your quarters, and let me find that each horse is cleaned and littered, when I come round." The sound of the officer's voice operated like a charm, and no priest could desire a more silent congregation, although he might possibly have wished for one that was more numerous. Mason had not done speaking, when it was reduced to the image of Caesar only. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... doth speedily lead on to madness: herein I am strengthened by what I learn in my lord of Essex, who shifteth from sorrow and repentance to rage and rebellion so suddenly as well proveth him devoid of good reason or right mind; in my last discourse he littered such strange words, bordering on such strange designs, that made me hasten forth, and leave his presence. Thank heaven I am safe at home, and if I go in such troubles again, I deserve the gallows for a meddling fool. His speeches ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... an obscure corner of the suburb—obscure, for it had just sprung into existence. The scaffolding that had built it now littered an adjoining field, where in a few months it would rise about Horsely Gardens, whose red gables and tiled upper walls will correspond unfailingly with those of Avondale Road. Nowhere in this neighbourhood could Esther detect signs of eighteen pounds a year. Scanning the Venetian ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... we came back I dropped another bomb. Its silent puff seemed littered with flying fragments of the two projectors and the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... that day, but could find no trace of him. The next day we tracked across a glacier-like expanse littered with large blocks of sandstone. It was a grim spot. A horrible, stony, treeless waste which might have been the birthplace of the earth and the scene of Creation—a tableland between great mountains, full of masses of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... and tore at the logs which held him so effectively. He stripped the inside of the pen entirely free of bark, and littered the floor with a bushel of splinters; but all his tearing and biting, pushing and straining, prying and growling, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... square, still littered with torn-up paving-stones. A Caliphate army officer, displaying the weapon—it was an old M3, all right; Chalmers had used one of those things, himself, thirty years before, and he and his contemporaries had called it a "grease-gun." ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... tracks he went as usual to the big, weed-grown, rubbish-littered field north of the dairy farm, which served as baseball grounds, athletic field, and football gridiron, according to the season. There he found a baker's dozen of boys of his own age, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... the ground; packages of soda and groceries and medicines slid with them, bursting into chemical spots of green and crimson flame; a wheel crushed in and sank, spilling more packages that flickered and hissed; the garbage of combat and murder littered the earth, and in the air hung an odor that Cumnor knew, though he had never smelled it before. Morsels of dropped booty up among the rocks showed where the Indians had gone, and one horse remained, groaning, with an accidental arrow in ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... the township, and her otherwise carefully tended kitchen was littered with clippings and bits of material. She resumed her task by the lamp a soon as the delegate of the School ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... From the house came streams of silent figures, families from the shrubberies, tourists from the laurels by the scullery windows, and throngs of breathless oddities from the kitchen-garden. The lawn was littered with discarded luggage; umbrellas dropped on flower-beds, where they instantly took root and grew; animals ran scuttling among them—birds, ponies, dogs, kittens, donkeys, and white mice in trailing swarms. There was not a minute to spare. One big Newfoundland ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... old line is an array of rotted sandbags, filled with chalkflint, covering the burnt wood. One need only look at the ground to know that the fighting here was very grim, and to the death. Near the road and up the slope to the enemy the ground is littered with relics of our charges, mouldy packs, old shattered scabbards, rifles, bayonets, helmets curled, torn, rolled, and starred, clips of cartridges, and very many graves. Many of the graves are marked with strips of wood torn from packing cases, with pencilled inscriptions, "An unknown ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... a duel. In the darkness it seemed to him to be more happily adapted for a game of blindman's-buff. There was a half-filled hay-cart in the moat, and bundles of hay were scattered hither and thither on the ground and littered the place confusingly. Lagardere began to busy himself in clearing some of this hay out of the way, so as to afford an untroubled space for the coming combat. While he was thus engaged he heard for the first time a faint sound come from the direction of the castle. It was the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... some of them as black as a favourite pipe. Above the great stone chimney-piece is a full-length figure of the duke in a hunting costume of green velvet. The candelabra that Henri had just lighted on the long centre-table, littered with silver souvenirs and the latest Parisian comedies, now illumined the duke's smile, which he must have held with bad grace during the sittings. The rest of him was lost in the shadow above the chimney-piece of sculptured cherubs, whose missing noses have been badly restored ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... only my way of putting it; but I really was pleased to be driving such a pretty girl again; and when her old cane trunk came down, and we fixed it on to the grid behind, and half a dozen hat-boxes littered up the back seats, I felt that old times had come again, and that I was one of the luckiest drivers in ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... and cloth of arras deck the wall, Sumptuously woven and in different wise, In vaulted cellar and in littered stall; Not only spread in latticed galleries, Not only spread in lordly bower and hall. Vase, gold and silver, gems of many dyes, Carved into cup and charger, blue, red, green, And countless cloths of silk ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... open to the public and inducements are made to get workers to come in and read a thoughtful treatise on Industrial questions. The latch-string is always out for people who care to listen to a lecture on economics or similar subjects. Inside the hall there is usually a long reading-table littered with books, magazines or papers. In a rack or case at the wall are to be found copies of the "Seattle Union Record," "The Butte Daily Bulletin," "The New Solidarity," "The Industrial Worker," "The Liberator," "The New Republic" and ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... unless he can take away clearly what that discourse hath urged against them, by one who will expect other arguments to be persuaded the good health of a sound answer than the gout and dropsy of a big margent, littered and overlaid with crude and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... no more. The marriage was celebrated a few days after this visit, and not long before the time fixed for the Bishop and his large band of emigrants to sail. Under these circumstances the ceremony was a quiet one. The old rectory was in disorder, littered with packing cases, and upset from cellar to garret. Even when the wedding was over both Phebe and Hilda were too busy for sentimental indulgence. The few remaining days were flying swiftly past them all, and keeping them in constant fear that there would not be time enough for ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... chairs seemed as if they had grown out of the floor, and were destined to remain as stationary as the oaks of the forest; the "primeval carpet," over which the Misses Nancy and Jerusha Simpkins walked as though mentally enumerating the lines that crossed each other in such exact squares, never was littered by a single shred; and the high, old-fashioned clock still maintained its position in the corner from year to year, seeming to take a sort of malicious satisfaction in calmly ticking the hours away which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... in a worn office chair before a littered desk. In the close air hung the smell of stale cigars and the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... The pier was littered with baggage and crowded with distracted men and women watching the inspectors diving remorselessly among their tenderest possessions. Each was absorbed in his own affairs, and none of them noticed ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... a pulley, and the gun fell. Perry had then a fierce look, but his words were cool, his manner dauntless. He peered through lifting clouds of smoke at our line. He stood near me, and his head was bare. He crossed the littered deck, his battle-flag and broad pennant that an orderly had brought him trailing from his shoulder. He halted by a boat swung at the davits on the port side—the only one that had not gone to splinters. There he called a crew about ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... unchanged since his previous visit, years before. The cabin had no floor, not the least vestige of furniture, and rodents had littered the ground with leaves. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... letters were written in the railway train, and dated from 'near' this town, or 'between' this and that. We remember to have heard from one who was his companion in a railway carriage that before the journey was half-finished the adjoining seat was littered with envelopes of letters which he had read, and with the answers he had written since he started. All this undeniably shows energy and determination, and ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... power she was, she sprang from him and ran frantically about the room, uttering harsh bleatlike cries. She pulled open the drawers of a chest, rummaging among its harmless contents, gasping, quivering, bounding, as her tortured nerves commanded. When she had littered the floor with the contents of the chest she ran about screaming hopelessly. The doctor shuddered, but he thought of the four innocent people in her power and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... on and soon reached their destination. It was a picturesque place, but the cabins were deserted and only a few empty boats were in sight. The beach was littered with old fish nets and various sorts of rubbish, while a few piers ran ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... bore you, I'll try to explain." He drew up his chair and sat down again, facing her across the littered table. "I don't suppose you've ever stopped to consider what an essentially stupid animal a crook must be. Most of them are stupid because they practise clumsily one of the most difficult professions imaginable, and inevitably fail at it, yet persist. They wouldn't think ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... how far Sherlock Holmes took any sleep that night, but when I came down to breakfast I found him pale and harassed, his bright eyes the brighter for the dark shadows round them. The carpet round his chair was littered with cigarette-ends and with the early editions of the morning papers. An open telegram lay ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Mad Hatter does. Whereas Alice grows nine feet taller, Dick sprouts "two inches taller" and Emmeline "twice as plump." Like the baby in the "Pig and Pepper," Hannah sneezes at the first sight of Dicky. The novel is artfully littered with references to wonder, curiosity, and strangeness—all evidence of Stacpoole's conscious effort to invoke and honor his ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... recorded in the United Provinces. Mr. A. J. Currie has found the nest on two occasions in a mango tree in a tope at Lahore. In each case the eyrie was a flat platform of sticks about twice the size of a kite's nest. The ground beneath the eyrie was littered with fowls' feathers and pellets of skin, fur and bone. Most of these pellets contained squirrels' skulls; and Mr. Currie actually saw one of the parent birds fly to the nest with ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... general freedom had increased, and one woman's laughter rang out so loudly that every head turned round. The men were smoking, and a bluish cloud slowly rose above the straggling tablecloths, stained by wine and littered with dirty plates and dishes. When Fagerolles, on his aide, succeeded in obtaining two glasses of chartreuse for himself and Jory, he began to talk to Sandoz, whom he treated with a certain amount of deference, divining that the novelist ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... pieces of gas-pipe, boxes, and paper, and on shelves were jars of various materials. There was a work-table littered with tools, pieces of wire, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... high boots, and all the trappings and harness belonging to a cowboy's outfit littered the place, and stretched out on the robes and furs, in easy, careless attitudes, lay some ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... sound likely to disturb the serenity of the feminine party assembled there, was the occasional buzz of intrusive wasps, apparently mistaking each lady's head for a sugar-basin. No sugar-basin was visible in Mrs. Linnet's parlour, for the time of tea was not yet, and the round table was littered with books which the ladies were covering with black canvass as a reinforcement of the new Paddiford Lending Library. Miss Linnet, whose manuscript was the neatest type of zigzag, was seated at a small table apart, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... half dozen of them leaped overboard and swam to the mass of tangled spars and rigging which littered the beach. Selecting what they wished they returned to the vessel, and a few minutes later von Horn was chagrined to see them stepping a jury mast—he thought the treasure lay ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quickly along the winding trail of the Buret Hei and in two days began to make the elevations of the mountain pass between the valleys of the Buret Hei and Kharga. The trail was not only very steep but was also littered with fallen larch trees and frequently intercepted, incredible as it may seem, with swampy places where the horses mired badly. Then again we picked our dangerous road over cobbles and small stones that rolled away under our horses' feet and bumped off over the ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... the Union forces on entering found public buildings, stores, warehouses, private dwellings, and cotton, on fire—a scene of distress to which some of them also further contributed.[11] I myself remember streets littered with merchants' correspondence, a mute witness to other devastation. My recollection is that the officiating clergyman saw and dodged the too evident application, reading some other chapter. Many still living may recall how apposite, though ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... our ears. The old males snort and roar like mad bulls or lions; the females bleat exactly like calves, and the young cubs like lambs. Of the young we saw great numbers on the beaches; and one of the females being knocked down with a club, littered in the same instant. The sea-lions live together in numerous herds. The oldest and fattest males lie apart, each having chosen a large stone, which none of the rest dares approach without engaging in a furious battle. We have often seen them seize each other with a degree of rage which is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... guest into another room, which from floor to ceiling was lined with books—books on all subjects and in many languages. A huge writing-table, littered with letters and foreign newspapers, occupied the centre of the apartment, which was evidently a working room, though luxurious in all its appointments. De Froilette did not speak until the servant had placed the coffee on a side ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... morning after our arrival, when I awoke from sleep, how sad I felt! I could see that our windows looked out upon a drab space of wall, and that the street below was littered with filth. Passers-by were few, and as they walked they kept muffling themselves ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... into the sitting-room to the right of the hall, deposited the letters and packets which he held on a small, tumble-down sofa already littered with books and papers, and returned to the hall-table for the letter. He tore it open, read it with slightly frowning brows and a mouth that worked unconsciously, then thrust it into his pocket and returned ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... caught up with them. We disarmed them and ordered them to walk back until they fell in with our cavalry, or the infantry, which was being brought forward in trucks. As we bowled along in pursuit the scene reminded me of descriptions in the novels of Sienkiewicz or Erckmann-Chatrian. The road was littered with equipment of every sort, disabled pack-animals, and dead or dying Turks. It was hard to see the wounded withering in the increasing heat—the dead were better off. We reached the heights overlooking Haditha to find that the garrison was in full retreat. Most of it ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... look at as the only available representative of King Eurystheus. This done, Mr. Blyth wasted some little time, as usual, before he began to work, in looking for his drawing materials. In the course of his search over the littered studio table, he accidentally laid his hand on two envelopes with enclosures, which, after examining the addresses, he gave immediately to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the bullet whines, And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and with countermines— Here, where haply some woman dreamed (are those her roses that bloom In the garden beyond the windows of my littered working room?) We have decked the map for our masters as a bride ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... where the furnaces were dust-covered, the scale case black with grime, and the floor littered with refuse crucibles, cupels, mufflers, and worn buckboards, they discovered a bundle of old tablets. Almost invariably these showed that the assays had been made from samples that would have paid to work, but this alone gave ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... blown away were twisted about the leg of an easy-chair; while ribbon garters straggled over a settee. A fan of price, half unfolded, glittered on the chimney-piece. Drawers stood open; flowers, diamonds, gloves, a bouquet, a girdle, were littered about. The room was full of vague sweet perfume. And—beneath all the luxury and disorder, beauty and incongruity, I saw Misery crouching in wait for her or for her adorer, Misery rearing its head, for the Countess had begun to feel the edge of those fangs. Her tired face was an ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... the dark and littered lower room. We still had our revolvers, and now I had the small hand-projector of the green light-beam. It was a strangely weightless little cylinder, with a firing mechanism which I had no idea ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... The rose of the afterglow lay upon the water, tipping the silvery ripples with soft colour. It was a magic night. But the wonder of it did not apparently reach him. A table littered with papers stood in front of him bearing a portable electric lamp. He was obviously too engrossed to think ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... little stool in the side of the chimney corner displayed a leg, the whiteness of which, compared with the other two, told of attention to small things. There was a peg for everything, and everything seemed to be on its peg. Nothing littered the well-scrubbed floor or defiled the well-brushed hearthstone, and it did not require a second thought on the part of the beholder to ascribe all this to the tidy little middle-aged woman, who, with an expression of deep anxiety on her good-looking countenance, attended ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... walk inside, miss," said cook, very amiably; and Penelope followed her through the dim hall to a large room where a lady was sitting at a table littered with vases, cans of water, and quantities of cut flowers. She was rather a severe-looking lady, and glanced up so sharply when cook opened the door and showed the visitor in, that Penelope was, for the moment, quite ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... anchor and helped to snug down the mainsail, I went below in the very worst of tempers, to find the cabin floor littered with the contents of a writing-case and a box of mixed biscuits, which had broken loose in company. As I stooped to collect the debris, this appeal (type-written) ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... played martial airs at every street corner and volunteers sky-larked and paraded in all sorts of impossible uniforms and with every form of theatric display. But system and order were absolutely lacking, and the adjutant-general's office, littered with blanks and well-nigh knee deep with papers, was the most helpless spot in the welter of confusion. All the material for a respectable army was at hand, but how to form it into an effective force was more than anyone seemed to know. The mass of military forms and blanks intended for that ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... sleeping on the billiard-table, or littered down in the room of the table-d'hote: the place was crowded. All the world had flocked in to assist at the Pardon of Sainte Anne-la-Palue, which was to take place the following morning. No vehicle was to be had, and we were in despair of being ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... at twilight, an old man came from a village and stood calling at the door of the convento, which was closed and guarded by sacristans. The old man beat the door with his fists and with his head, while he littered cries stifled and inarticulate, like those of a dumb person, until he was at length driven away by blows and shoves. Then he made his way to the gobernadorcillo's house, but was told that the gobernadorcillo ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... thus discovered him. The view to be had from the point where Chester stood, of the small laboratory opening from this office, was also a familiar one. He could see steam arising from the sterilizer: he knew surgical instruments were boiling merrily away there. A table was littered with objects suggesting careful examination: a fine microscope in position; a centrifuge, Bunsen burners, test-tubes; elsewhere other apparatus of a description to make the uninitiated actively sympathetic with the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... knows not fear flashed from his sombre blue eyes. The room itself—Lassalle's cabinet—seemed in its simple luxuriousness to give point at once to the difference between the two men and to the parvenu's taunt. It was of moderate size, with a large work-table thickly littered with papers, and a comfortable writing-chair, on the back of which Lassalle's white nervous hand rested carelessly. The walls were a mass of book-cases, gleaming with calf and morocco, and crammed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... duplicated. How could living men and women have endured the appalling uniformity of this human beehive? Everywhere, too, were the same recurring evidences of the haste and panic that had characterized the final moments of that terrible hegira. Hats and garments, cash-boxes and account-books, littered the hallways, and were piled in little heaps at the entrances to the elevators—impedimenta that must inevitably be abandoned at the last if life itself were to be saved. And the final tragedy—an elevator cage that had ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... refreshed the girl, and as she passed through the editorial rooms she noted their forlorn, dishevelled appearance, which all places show when seen at an unaccustomed hour, their time of activity and bustle past. The rooms were littered with torn papers; waste-baskets overflowing; looking silent, scrappy, and abandoned in the grey morning light which seemed intrusive, usurping the place of the usual artificial illumination, and betraying a bareness which the other concealed. Jennie recognized a ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... which the waifs had so long harboured, is a low, rectangular enclosure of building at the corner of a shady western avenue and a little townward of the British consulate. Within was a grassy court, littered with wreckage and the traces of vagrant occupation. Six or seven cells opened from the court: the doors, that had once been locked on mutinous whalermen, rotting before them in the grass. No mark remained of their old destination, except the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... step or two in one direction or another, it merely stood and waved its torch. The little dull-red beam of light carried no more than twenty or thirty feet. The street in a few moments was clear of pedestrians; remained littered with glass from the broken bottles. A taxi came suddenly around the corner, and the driver, with an almost immediate tire puncture, saw the monster. He hauled up to the curb, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... glad we're arriving in the afternoon," Blue Bonnet said, as she gathered up magazines and various other articles that littered the section. "There's something so flat about getting anywhere in the morning—nothing to do but sit round waiting for trunks that have been delayed, and wander about the house. I wonder if Aunt Lucinda told the ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... a tale—quite a Shakespearean ending, stage fairly littered with corpses," struck in Major Carstairs. "I wonder Tochatti didn't put the finishing touch by ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... conditions—made necessary a system of petty expedients under which practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid asset it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the market was flooded with a worthless currency which it was unable to absorb. The Provincial leaders, being powerless to introduce improvement, exclaimed ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... study. The reporter found the floor distressingly "hard, but polished wood." The walls were painfully plain—"all white." My table, which the reporter kindly signified as a "big one," was drawn up to a large window. Of course, like all tables of the kind, it was "littered." I never read of a library table in a newspaper that was not "littered." The reporter spied everything upon it at once, "letters, newspapers, books, pens, ink bottles, pencils, and writing-paper." All of which, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the small sitting-room was littered with a heterogeneous collection of manuscripts and books; the latter were piled up everywhere. David slowly removed some from a table and laid ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... Hatchard could recover, and the latter at once verified the information in part by walking round to his old house. Bits of straw and paper littered the front garden, the blinds were down, and a bill was pasted on the front parlor window. Aghast at such determination, he walked back to his lodgings in ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... friend Blythe. He was in a state of frantic agitation, his whole form trembling like a leaf. His head was bowed; he clutched something in his two hands. From it dangled a cord. Several burned matches lay near him and wisps and little masses of woven straw littered the miniature ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... found him. Hampton, his hair ruffled, Judith's table littered with market reports, and many sheets of paper covered with untidy figures, looked up at ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... whether it were, indeed, part of a publisher's warehouse, or of a literary museum, or only the rather expansive sanctum of an opulent homme de lettres. Herr Ritter laid down his three big volumes on a table that was absolutely littered from end to end with old manuscripts and curious fossilised-looking tomes in vellum covers. "Ah, 'Giorno, Herr!" said the gentleman, looking up from his book; "what is that?" He came towards us as he spoke, and opening ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... a big straggling sort of suburban town—tramways down the side, dirty little houses lining the street, great chimneys belching (I believe that is the correct term) volumes of black smoke, huge mountains of slag in all directions, rusty brickfields littered with empty tins, old paper, and bits of iron, and other similarly unlovely views. The only thing to be said in favour of this industrial scrap-heap was that the smoke was not quite so sooty as it looked, and things ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... in fact, a dreamer. Left to her own devices from childhood, she had read all the books of chivalry, all the colourless romances of olden-time that littered the ancestral presses; and she looked upon life as a fairy-tale in which the beauteous maidens are always happy, while the others wait till death for the bridegroom who does not come. Why should she marry one of her cousins when they were ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... at the old manse that afternoon there was less of sunlight and joy. Shadows hung between the walls and there were shadows, too, in the heart of one of the men who sat by a central, paper-littered table. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... intend to go into this early market side then you should certainly have a coldframe. You could not blame your mother if she refused to have the kitchen littered up with old tin cans and boxes all the spring. Do not be a nuisance at home just to ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... said nothing, but watched the younger girl, who turned away at last with a sigh of approbation. He was standing under the window, leaning against a table littered with paints and brushes. ...
— Different Girls • Various
... high bright window looking down Over the enchanted whiteness of the town, Seeing through whirls of white the vague grey towers, Desires like this to forget what will not pass, The littered papers, the dust, the tarnished grass, Grey death, stale ugliness, and sodden hours. Deep in his heart old bells are beaten again, Slurred bells of grief and pain, Dull echoes of hideous times and poisonous places. He desires to drown in ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... condoleance to the wives of all the fallen ministers. W. was rather astonished when I told him who had come to tea with me, and thought the conversation must have been difficult. I told him, not at all, once the necessary phrases about the departing ministers were over. The piano was open, music littered about; she was fond of music and she admired very much a portrait of father as a boy in the Harrow dress, asked who it was and what the dress was. She was a perfect woman of the world, and ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... elevated if non-exhilarating view of back yards, one and all dank, dismal, and littered with the debris of a long, hard winter. Familiarity, however, had rendered P. Sybarite immune to the miasma of melancholy they exhaled; the trouble in his patient blue eyes, the wrinkles that lined his ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... dreary little hut had no longer poetic or picturesque suggestion. Bereft of the sheen and shimmer of the moonlight its aspect had collapsed like a dream into the dullest realities. The door-yard was muddy and littered; here the razor-back hogs rooted unrebuked; the rail fence had fallen on one side, and it would seem that only their attachment to home prevented them from wandering forth to be lost in the wilderness; the clap-boards ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... in stature and build, his face marred by the loss of one eye and a marked squint in the other, sits at the end of a table littered with papers and the remains of three or four successive breakfasts. He has supplies of coffee and brandy at hand sufficient for a party of ten. His coat, encrusted with diamonds, is on the floor. It has fallen ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... from the rain, but the stony outcrop ran a long distance, and they walked on it cautiously so far as it went, after which they continued on the fallen trunks and brush, with which the forest had been littered by the winds of countless years. They were able, without once touching foot to ground, to reach a brook, into which they stepped, following its course at least two miles. When they emerged at last they sat ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... slanting, fallen turret, over the wreckage of the littered deck. It was not difficult, a lightness was upon us. The Planetara's gravity-magnetizers were dead: this was only the light ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... room they found Mr Wopples, dressed in a light tweed suit, and just putting on his coat. It was a small room, with a flaring gas-jet, under which there was a dressing-table littered over with grease, paints, powder, vaseline and wigs, and upon it stood a small looking-glass. A great basket-box with the lid wide open stood at the end of the room, with a lot of clothes piled up on it, and numerous other garments were hung up upon the walls. A washstand, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... family and friends are likely to be found in the evening hours, unless the party has withdrawn for more intimate social intercourse to the interesting and fascinating private library on the floor above. The lounging-room on the ground floor is more or less of an Edison museum, for it is littered with souvenirs from great people, and with mementos of travel, all related to some event or episode. A large cabinet contains awards, decorations, and medals presented to Edison, accumulating in the course of a long career, some of which may be seen in the illustration ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... little sanctum, scanning a still damp sheet of proof. His brow was furrowed, but the lines were those of conscious power. In the broken chair by the littered desk sat Billy Durgin, his eyes ablaze with the lust of the chase. As I pushed into the dingy little room Solon halted in his walk and, with a flourish that did not entirely lack the dramatic, he handed me the narrow strip of paper. The ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... was free from her improvements, though it was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work. She had long ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too. "I just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... night the one idea was ever before his mind and every little want of Kate's was forestalled with a care and foresight which astonished her. The richest fruit and flowers found their way unexpectedly into her room; her table was littered with the latest books from Mudie's, and the newest pieces lay upon her music-stand. Nothing which attention and thoughtfulness could do was left undone either by the father or ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with divan seats running round them, and windows at the top, the space between the divan and the window sills being lined with books. A long settee is placed before the fire. Along the back of the settee, and touching it, is a green table, littered with journals. A revolving bookcase stands in the foreground, a little to the left, with an easy chair close to it. On the right, between the door and the recess, is a light library stepladder. Placards inscribed "silence" are ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... been strung along almost continuously for about twelve miles in the timber skirting the stream. On every hand appeared ample evidence that the Indians had intended to spend the winter here, for the ground was littered with jerked meat, bales of buffalo robes, cooking utensils, and all sorts of plunder usually accumulated in a permanent Indian camp. There were, also, lying dead near the villages hundreds of ponies, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... were completely bare, except for a water-colour sketch of the San Tome mountain—the work of Dona Emilia herself. In the middle of the red-tiled floor stood two long tables littered with plans and papers, a few chairs, and a glass show-case containing specimens of ore from the mine. Mrs. Gould, looking at all these things in turn, wondered aloud why the talk of these wealthy and enterprising men discussing the prospects, the working, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... case of Mill's study, the only thing that did not seem to have suffered any great damage was the table. Everything else looked rather off colour. The mantelpiece had been swept as bare as a bone, and its contents littered the floor. Trevor dived among the debris and retrieved the latest addition to his art gallery, the photograph of this year's first fifteen. It was a wreck. The glass was broken and the photograph itself slashed ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... "the contents of your pocket may be interesting to you, but we don't want them littered about the passage. Here, catch hold," and he held out a handful of loose letters. "Why, what's the matter? How blue you look! Has any one ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... When I go into a fellow's office and see his desk buried in letters with the dust on them, I know that there are cobwebs in his head. Foresight is the quality that makes a great merchant, but a man who has his desk littered with yesterday's business has no ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... round on his stool, and seized the end of an india-rubber tube which hung at the side of the battered and littered desk, just under a gas-jet. He spoke low, like a conspirator, into the mouthpiece of the tube. "Miss Lessways—to see you, sir." Then very quickly he clapped the tube to his ear and listened. And ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... double doors and of padded walls was upon the private room of the down-town office. Across the littered, ink-stained desk a man and a woman faced each other. Threads of gray lightened the hair of each. Faint lines, delicate as pencillings, marked the forehead of the woman and radiated from the angles of her eyes. A deep fissure unequally separated the brows ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... apparatus. He was incessantly making fresh mirrors, or trying new lenses, or combinations of lenses to act as eye-pieces, or projecting alterations in the mounting by which the telescope was supported. Such was his enthusiasm that his house, we are told, was incessantly littered with the usual indications of the workman's presence, greatly to the distress of his sister, who, at this time, had come to take up her abode with him and look after his housekeeping. Indeed, she complained that in his astronomical ardour he sometimes ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... face, but loneliness and underfeeding had given it a wistful expression that had charm. Unfortunately, it was not the sort of charm which made a great appeal to the stout, whisky-nourished men who sat behind paper-littered tables, smoking cigars, in the rooms marked "Private" in the offices of theatrical agents. Nelly had been out of a "shop" now for many weeks,—ever since, in fact, "Follow the Girl" had finished its long ran at ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... secret," I thought. "Two such challenges as this are not to be ignored." So I concluded this time to observe her progress carefully. In a moment she had reached the right-hand edge of my easel-board, from which she made a short flight, and settled upon a large table in the centre of the room, littered with its characteristic chaos of professional paraphernalia—brushes, paints, dishes, bottles, color-boxes, and cloths—among which she disappeared. It was a hopeless task to disclose her, so I waited patiently to observe the spot from which she would emerge, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... where they found Mackenzie busy with a heap of letters and newspapers that had been sent across to him from Stornoway. The whole of the breakfast-table was littered with wrappers and big blue envelopes: where was Sheila, who usually waited on her father at such times to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... until, beneath the hill, I looked up, up, and saw it nodding there, A single tree upon the sharp-edged hill, Holding its leaves though in the orchard all Leaves and fruit were stripped or hung but few Red and yellow over the littered grass. —It vexed me, the brave tree and senseless name, As I went through the valley looking up And then looked round on elm and beech and chestnut And all that lingering flame amid the hedge That ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... and began to do up her hair rapidly before the glass. Olga laid down the book, and busied herself with folding the various articles of raiment that littered the room. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... woman was in the parlor, busy as usual with her dusting-cloth. Without heeding her, Sir Marmaduke strode up to the table and pushing the crockery, which now littered it, aside, he ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... in without a word, and came to a stand before the table that was littered with his work. She was agitated, he saw. Her hand was pressed against her heart, and she seemed ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... circular doorway, and the others, one by one, followed. They found themselves in a rich and luxurious apartment, softly lighted by a hanging lamp; in the center was a table, littered with open books and scrolls of paper, and bearing notably a great round globe ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... had littered the whole bed with flowers, which she broke and crushed as a child breaks the toys he is weary of, the door of the room opened, and a young lady entered, with a plate of hot-house grapes in her hand. She was older than the sick girl by two or three years, and in all respects a grave and ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... once more around the cabin. The reality was depressing—doubly depressing in contrast to the memory of that other room. A stove stood in the southwest corner, but it was not black and shining; it was rust-red and ash-littered, and the ashes had overflowed the hearth and spilled to the unswept floor. A dented lard-pail without a handle did meagre duty as a teakettle, and balanced upon a corner of the stove was a dirty frying pan. The fire ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... They laid him down in one of the little cabins—just a room for a bed place and a camp-stool or two, you know. We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed languor of his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... forget the look of the E.s' drawing-room, smothered in blankets and littered with the members of the Corps, who lay about it in every pathetic posture of fatigue. A group of seven or eight snuggled down among the blankets on the floor in front of the hearth like a camp before ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... upon Jonathan Wild, he grasped the iron bar, which, when he sat down, he had laid upon his knees, and stepped quickly across the room. In doing so, he had to clamber up the immense heap of bricks and rubbish which now littered the floor, amounting almost to a car-load, and reaching up nearly to the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... second landing. Douglas Stone followed the old nurse into it, with the merchant at his heels. Here, at least, there was furniture and to spare. The floor was littered and the corners piled with Turkish cabinets, inlaid tables, coats of chain mail, strange pipes, and grotesque weapons. A single small lamp stood upon a bracket on the wall. Douglas Stone took it down, and picking his way among the lumber, walked over to a couch in the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remote horizon. In places the route was strewn with bones of horses and camels, while here and there a human arm or leg protruded from the sand, for the Turks did not dig very deeply, and the desert soon gives up its dead. At Romani especially the ground was littered with bones, great ravens hung over the putrifying bodies of animals, and a horrid, fetid smell pervaded the atmosphere. We were glad to get away from this ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... I did," was the candid reply. "But did you see what he brought me this morning?" He pointed to the seat behind him, littered with novels, which Elizabeth recognized as new additions to their travelling store. "He begged or borrowed them somewhere from his friends or people in the hotel; told me frankly he knew I should be bored to-day, and might want them. Rather ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had risen above the clouds and filled the apple orchard with chilly golden light that cast a fantastic shadow pattern of interlaced twigs and branches upon the bare ground littered with apples. The sound of the guns had grown nearer. There were loud eager rumbles as of bowls being rolled very hard on a bowling alley, combined with a continuous roar like sheets ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... stood so often, pouring the tea behind the table, watching that littered floor, the single gas-lamp ever revolving on its chain, turning the shadows about the room like a wheel—my mind filled with ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... class and his mother seemed for a time to recover him. He refurnished a certain number of rooms at Castle Luton, and made a special marvel of his own room, which was hung thick with Boucher, Greuze, and Watteau engravings, littered with miniatures and trinkets, and encumbered here and there with portfolios of drawings which he was not anxious to unlock in his ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... second story. The whirlicote jolted and rattled into the yard. Sibyll and her father were assisted out of the vehicle, and, after a few words interchanged with the host, conducted by Master Porpustone himself up the spacious stairs into a chamber, well furnished and fresh littered, with repeated assurances of safety, provided they maintained silence, and attempted ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and clambered over it. On the far side, the ground was littered with clothes and guns. A newspaper, folded up, lay in the dirt. A dead soldier was stretched with his face hidden in his arm. Farther off there was a group of four or five corpses keeping mournful company. A hot sun had blazed upon ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Chesapeake for the space of twelve minutes, killing three men and wounding eighteen, among them the commander. The Chesapeake was not yet ready for action. Her crew was undrilled in the use of ordnance, her decks littered, appliances for reloading were wanting, and at the supreme moment neither priming nor match could be found. Under these distressing circumstances, the boarding officer of the Leopard took the deserters and sailed for Halifax. The sight ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... barn in which the Germans had slept. It was littered with their equipment. And in front of it was a derelict motor-car dripping in ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... favor that she took it off and gave it to him without demur. That meant that there would be time; yet her very docility frightened him. She seemed quite relaxed now that her head could lie back against the leather cushion, and her gaze traveled about the dingy littered room with a kind of tender inquisitiveness as if ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the young lawyer bent over a long table littered with papers from the young lawyer's portfolio and the storeroom trunks. They were sitting in the young lawyer's room, the room that had been Grandy's and from the mantelpiece the portrait of Grandy's father ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... words: "Editor of the Evening enterprise. No Admittance." Archie opened the door and entered. He knew it would be useless to send in his name. It was best to see the editor at once, and without ceremony. He was seated before a large desk, which was littered with papers of every description, and he was a very pleasant person in appearance. Archie stood hesitating near the door, and remained there a minute or two before the editor ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison |
