"Slough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and three or four little negro children asleep under the wagon. The workers were occupied at a little distance, in replacing boxes, beds, and some household trumpery, which had been taken out of the wagon, to enable them to effect its release from the slough in which it had cast one of its wheels, and broken its axle, and the restoration of which had made their supper so late in the night. The heavier difficulties of their labor had been got over, and with limbs warmed and chafed by the extra exercise they had undergone, the whites ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Pine to send the chicken! We didn't have anything for supper but coffee and rolls and eggs. He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough of despond." ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Bateson has been going on like this for thirty years or more; yet if there's roast pork on the table, and I say a word to put him off it, he's that hurt as never was. Why, I'm only too glad to see him enjoying his food if no harm comes of it; but it's dreary work seeing your husband in the Slough of Despond, especially when it's your business to drag him out again, and most especially when you particularly warned ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... feathers new she sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. HENRY HOWARD, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... be immediately choked up by the ooze of the morass and the luxuriant parasitical growth of the forest—who dare hope for that? At present, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to hope! It is the great Slough of Despond ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... a high stand in this matter, and show that we will deny ourselves that which has so insidiously worked the ruin of millions, that so we may perhaps win poor fallen creatures, fallen through drink, to come out of their miserable slough by crying to them, not merely 'Come out,' but 'Come ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Macaulay and Leslie Stephen; he has an argumentative prose-style and a distaste for highfalutin, and, where the unenlightened intellectualism of Macaulay and Leslie Stephen, and the incorrigible common sense of Johnson, might have pitched these eminent men into the slough of desperate absurdity, it often happens that Mr. Brock, whose less powerful mind is sweetened by a sense of ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... whether he be or be not, he also knows not. Now I wish to chuck him head first from thy bridge, so as to suddenly rouse (if possible) this droning dullard and to leave behind in the sticky slush his sluggish spirit, as a mule casts its iron shoe in the tenacious slough. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... that, coming to a bend where the coombe suddenly widened, and the stream without warning cast its green fringe of alders like a slough and slipped down a beach of flat pebbles to the head waters of a tidal creek, Mr. Molesworth rubbed his eyes with a start. Had the stream been a Naiad she could not have given him the go-by ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... say so, it was easy to be saved, while Bunyan, a greater humorist, could be saved only in following a path that skirted madness, and 'as by fire.' To Bunyan, Walton would have seemed a figure like his own Ignorance; a pilgrim who never stuck in the Slough of Despond, nor met Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow, nor was captive in Doubting Castle, nor stoned in Vanity Fair. And of Bunyan, Walton would have said that he was among those Nonconformists who 'might be sincere, well-meaning men, whose indiscreet ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... any particular crisis such as Thoreau describes, but I can trace the process in myself. I took no pains to cast the slough of cities; I registered no vows and consulted no teachers; it seemed that the thing was quietly done for me by the Higher Powers. I had no part in the matter except to be docile. Nature took me in hand, as sleep takes in hand the sick child; the only thing asked of me was my submission. The result ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... tell you, if you wish. But you don't have to, as they say in Maine. And I admit that all I saw was from a curtained auto as we swayed and bumped over broken roads, with an occasional interlude when Jeremy and I got out to lend our shoulders and help the Arab driver heave the car out of a slough. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... the marvellous, and this is why some of the most characteristic of the artist's designs are to be found in his illustrations to the "Waverley Novels." In one of these he shows us the illustrious Dominie at the moment, when reaching over to gather a water-lily, he falls souse into the Slough of Lochend, in which he forthwith became bogged up to the middle, his plight drawing from him of course his favourite ejaculation of amazement. By the assistance of some women the luckless Dominie was extracted from his position, justifying the remark of one ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... here it was muddy, and it is muddy now. There is fine, thin, sticky, slimy, splashy, thick, heavy, dirty mud. Thousands of men and thousands of mules and horses are treading it to mortar. It is mixed with slops from the houses and straw from the stables. You are reminded of the Slough of Despond described by Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress,—a place for all the filth, sin, and slime of this world. Christian was mired there, and Pliable nearly lost his life. If Bunyan had seen Cairo, he might have made the ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... them, I guess—since, by an error. We came in sight of Vienne at 2 o'clock, several miles ahead, on a hill, and I proposed to walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us. So Joseph and I got out and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by came out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we followed that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that slough. Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George it had a distinct and even vigorous quiver to it! I don't know when I have felt so much like a donkey. On an island! I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... utterly gave himself up to pleasures disgraceful in themselves, that he altogether abandoned the reins, and allowed himself to live such a life as is passed by some young men in London. His tastes and appetites were too high for this. He did not sink into a slough of despond. He did not become filthy and vicious, callous and bestial; but he departed very widely astray from those rules which governed him during his first ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... satisfaction at this, and went off. At a quarter of seven, Polly, in a storm of remonstrance from all but one, hurried off to help poor Amy Loughead through her Slough of Despond. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... of gangrenous sloughs, it much resembles the descriptions usually given of sloughing ulcers. A portion of the parts immediately subjacent to the ulcer loses its life; this rapidly separates; and, before or after a complete removal, a fresh slough is formed in the same manner. The sloughs are generally black, with ash-coloured edges. I have not been able to discern a change of colour, the production of vesicles, or any material tumefaction, as antecedent to the gangrene. There is generally, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the middle and at the end of words ia silent; as in caught, bought, fright, nigh, sigh; pronounced caut, baut, frite, ni, si. In the following exceptions, however, gh are pronounced as f:—cough, chough, clough, enough, laugh, rough, slough, tough, trough. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Warwick—the Cromwell of his day—dethroned him more than once; but he had the hearts of the merry dames of London, and the purses and veins of the cockneys bled freely, till they brought him home again. How say you?—shall I shake off my northern slough, and speak with Alice in my own character, showing what education and manners have done for me, to make the best amends they can for ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the perishable vehicle of the English school), like an envelope of goldbeaters' skin, so as to be ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... blood— The blue ranks lock with the ranks of gray, Stab and stagger and sob and sway; The living cringe from the shrapnel bursts, The dying moan of their burning thirsts, Moan and die in the gulping slough— Where are the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... Darlington, Doncaster, Dudley, Gateshead, Halton, Hartlepool, Kirklees, Knowsley, Luton, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, North Tyneside, Oldham, Poole, Reading, Redcar and Cleveland, Rochdale, Rotherham, Sandwell, Sefton, Slough, Solihull, Southend-on-Sea, South Tyneside, St. Helens, Stockport, Stockton-on-Tees, Swindon, Tameside, Thurrock, Torbay, Trafford, Walsall, Warrington, Wigan, Wirral, Wolverhampton : counties: ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... themselves, I must now return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that, although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... half relenting; and at that he raised the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face. "Lead on!" he cried again. "Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough, and all for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distance and lit up the clumps of cypress and groups of palmettos that dotted the prairie before him. A little to the north and extending into the Glades was a row of willows which Johnny visited and found that it marked the course of a slough that crossed the prairie and extended far ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... to the devotion of my wife and children under the new conditions. My wife was a glorious sunbeam whose rays of cheerfulness never dimmed. Her wonderful spirits and courage lifted me out of the Slough of Despondency, and her love and tenderness supported ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... entertained precisely the same opinion. It is not, therefore, surprising that two young men like Frank and Vernon should be well pleased with their quarters, or that, having so early gotten into the slough of love, they should daily continue to sink deeper into the mire. The young poet's lame leg, though not a very serious affair, was still sufficient to keep him for several days a close prisoner to the house; but if any ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... AEROLITE.—The Galt Gazette (California) describes the fall of a meteor in that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric stone falling in an obscure portion ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... very spirit which, under the earlier conditions, made for good now made for evil. To stand by and applaud the efforts of the individual who was perhaps slowly sinking deeper and deeper into a miry slough of degradation began to seem an even diabolical attitude. The maxim of laissez-faire, which had once stood for the whole unfettered action of natural activities in life, began to be viewed with horror and contempt. It was realized that there must ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a slough in the throat, or the mortified part of a carbuncle, if it be kept moist and warm, as during its abhesion to a living body, it will soon putrify. This, and the origin of contagion from putrid animal substances, seem ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... hoar-frost gathered at night by the light of the moon, and the ill-boding wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf, that was wont to change its appearance of a wild beast into {that of} a man. Nor is there wanting there the thin scaly slough of the Cinyphian water-snake,[37] and the liver of the long-lived stag;[38] to which, besides, she adds the bill and head of a crow that had sustained {an existence of} nine ages. When, with these and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... think that Sir Charles Dilke owed a great deal to the Liberal party, but we certainly think that the Liberal party owed a very great deal to Sir Charles Dilke. In the dark days of 1874, when the party was deeper in the slough of despond than it has ever been before or since in our time, it was from the initiative and courage of Sir Charles Dilke that salvation came. His work in organizing the Liberal forces, especially in the Metropolis, has never ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... still a life-work to accomplish. He at one stroke freed himself from all distractions; his pupils and concerts, his whole connection at Bath, were immediately renounced; he accepted the King's offer with alacrity, and after one or two changes settled permanently at Slough, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Noon found us little more than half way to Lectoure, and I was growing each minute more impatient when our road, which had for a little while left the river bank, dropped down to it again, and I saw before us another crossing, half ford half slough. My men tried it gingerly and gave back and tried it again in another place; and finally, just as Mademoiselle and her brother came up to them, floundered through and sprang ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... own life be regulated. Allow not thyself to be led away by pleasures; shun, like the plague, the foolish familiarities thou seest between some men and women; harmless enough at first, but which by insidious degrees corrupt the heart, and thence lead it to negligence, and then into the vile slough of vice. Credit me, the greatest safeguard to female chastity is sobriety of demeanour. I beseech and direct that thou often call to mind the friendship which was betwixt us; but I do not wish thee ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... dog-sleds over mountains of snow. One had to surmise much, of course, regarding William's experience in Canada. His letters were all of his inner life. He said much regarding his spiritual condition, of his grievous lapses of faith, of his days on the Delectable Mountains and of his descents into the Slough of Despond, but very little of the hills and valleys of his adopted country. Once, shortly after his arrival, he had stated that he was living in a shanty where the bush came right up to the door. Margaret had had some misgivings, but Cousin Griselda ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... a remedy, and quickly. If not a common government with a Constitution empowering it to regulate trade, imposts, reduce the debt, enter into treaties with foreign powers which will not be sneered at, administer upon a thousand details which I will not enumerate, and raise the country from its slough of contempt, then what? As the personage who has taken the most decided stand against the enlightened and patriotic efforts of Mr. Hamilton, I appeal to you for a counter suggestion as magnificent as his. I am prepared, sir, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... "Scrape, hobble, slough, quagmire, hot water, hornet's nest; sea-, peck of troubles: pretty kettle of fish; pickle, stew, imbroglio mess, ado; false position; set fast, stand; dead,-lock,-set; fix, horns of a dilemma, cul de sac; hitch; stumbling block, ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... you are cutting the last piece of ground from beneath your feet—letting yourself sink at once into a slough of despond?" ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the line there was something to get through—a swamp at least 1500 paces broad. One can hardly have an idea what this swamp was like, and how much trouble it cost us and our poor animals to get through it. This was a veritable 'Slough of Despond.' It was covered with water from one side to the other, and we had to wade through knee deep, and sometimes the water reached to our loins. The water was no serious obstacle, but the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... curious to observe, how the appearance of characters will change, whilst the root that produces them remains the same. The Washington faction having waded through the slough of negociation, and whilst it amused France with professions of friendship contrived to injure her, immediately throws off the hypocrite, and assumes the swaggering air of a bravado. The party papers of that imbecile administration were on this occasion filled with paragraphs ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... hands and parted and I turned up Monkey Hill. I had made unexpected progress with Trumbull that night. He had never talked to me so freely before and somehow he had let me come nearer to hun than I had ever hoped to be. His company had lifted me out of the slough a little and my mind was on a better footing ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... at any time; and now they were carried along even more resolutely, by the stern, unwavering spirit of their new leader. Having once learned the direction, Stone put himself at the head of the party, and strode forward, almost "as the bird flies," directly toward the point indicated, regardless of slough, and swamp, and thicket. He moved rapidly, too—so rapidly, indeed, as to tax the powers of some of his followers almost too severely. Notwithstanding this swiftness, however, they could not avoid a long delay at ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... cast my slough," Captain Clive said, laughing, "and have, thank God, exchanged my pen for ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... pass briefly over the next few years. I continued to sink deeper and deeper into the slough. I knew all the drugstore clerks in New York by their first names, and they called me by mine. I no longer even had to specify the abomination I desired. I simply handed the man my ten cent check and said: "The ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... that plant roots adsorb water and water-soluble nutrients only through the tiny hairs and actively growing tips near the very end of the root. The ability for any new root to absorb nutrition only lasts a short time, then the hairs slough off and the root develops a sort of hard bark. If root system growth slows or stops, the plant's ability to obtain nourishment is greatly reduced. Roots cannot make oxygen out of carbon dioxide as do ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... officer returned from the front and reported the situation. D.H. Hill's division was at White Oak Swamp Creek, a slough, and one of "despond" to us, draining to the Chickahominy. The enemy held the high ground beyond, and artillery fire was continuous, but no infantry was engaged. There was no change until nightfall, when we bivouacked where we were. Our loss, one artilleryman mortally ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... transient gleam from Hampton Roads and Kernstown; plunging the public mind into a slough of despond, in which it was to be sunk deeper and deeper with ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the emigration. The animal must cast its skin; and the moult is an event that does not fall on the same date for all. The evacuation of the place, therefore, lasts several days. It is effected in small squads, as the slough is flung aside. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the making of Illinois. Nobody who has ever seen her spring roads, where there are no rails, can ever question it. From the very fatness of her soil, the greater part of the State must have been one Slough of Despond for three quarters of the year, and her inhabitants strangers to each other, if these iron arms had not drawn the people together and bridged the gulfs for them. No roads but railroads could possibly have threaded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... courteously any that were to him inevitable. Could he have written with the heart's blood of old Hepzibah if he had failed to put his own shoulder to the domestic wheel, on the plea that it was too deep in the slough of disaster to command his assistance? He did not dread besmirching his hands with any affairs sent him ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the matter, and have done my best to gain them news of him. I did not believe in the reformation of one who had shown himself to be of such evil spirit; but God is all-powerful, and might have led him out from the slough into ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... old arguments as long as possible, and refrained from forcing events. If substantial independence of Parliament and the Ministry could be secured, he was willing to allow the King a vague or imaginary headship until in the course of years that excrescence should slough away. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... again, you have so long estranged yourself from our society;" and continued, "I can't think you could have taken any offence at anything we may have done or said; but if so, upon your mentioning it, we will endeavour to make the amende honorable,"—he was perfectly reclaimed from his "slough of despond." At the same time he knew he could make no explanation, and therefore kept silent. What was he to do? he was again enslaved as hopelessly as ever; for the charm of Eleanor's presence he could not resist. How could he act a part of coldness or indifference, ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... winter some way and then, while he was sitting in the train one day coming home, he overheard two men talking about turtles going up. Must have been two hotel men. Anyway, that gave Sam an idea and he started right in wading through Petersen's slough for turtles. Why, he pulled up barrels of them, and would you believe it, they sold in the city for real money! Sam went crazy—about as crazy as Mary Hagley got over her luck. And then along came rheumatism and knocked ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... was thus sinking deeper and deeper in the Slough of Despond, the firing of a musket, and the shriek of the man who was struck, attracted my attention. Looking towards the opposite end of the pen I saw a guard bringing his still smoking musket to a "recover arms," and, not fifteen feet from him, a prisoner lying on the ground in the agonies ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... fire, and only fragments of them lay about the ground. Others had been wrecked but partially, with holes in the roofs and the windows shot out. The white pillars in front of colonnaded mansions had been shattered and the fallen columns lay in the icy slough. Long icicles hung from the burned portions of upper floors ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the ungenial soil, even everlasting life; and what were earth's troubles to that? One vision of unseen things, rushing in, made small all the things that are seen. The poor old cripple, deformed and diseased, whose days must have been long a burden to her, was going even now to drop the slough of her mortality and to take on her the robes of light and the life that is all glory. What if my own life were barren for a while; then comes the end! What if I must be alone in my journey; I may ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... this remark, as she somewhat suspected that, in casting his slough, young Eachin had not entirely surmounted the habits which he had acquired in his humbler state, and that, though he might use bold words, he would not be rash enough to brave the odds of numbers, to which a descent into the vicinity of the city would be likely to expose him. It appeared that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... trusted. Every man, therefore, who depends upon the opinion of others, is compelled to assume the appearance of being comfortably circumstanced in order to inspire confidence. Character is the life-blood of Englishmen, but character alone will seldom extricate a man from the slough of Poverty. In our highly artificial state of society, something more powerful than character alone is required to place a man in the road to fortune — call it as you please, tact ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... of sin and despair, as bound with them. Hence his power as a preacher; hence the wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all the variety of spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had lain a month in the Slough of Despond, and had played, like him, the long melancholy bass of spiritual heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters: and had limped along ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... his old age abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men —in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, —from the slough of despond and the desert. Half-dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee [72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit That dwells in the drearisome ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... recoiling from it, but taking it with the calmness of the older man who has fewer years to taste it in. He could not ask the boy to consider, to make no hasty judgment. Whatever lay behind the words, it was something of a grave consequence. And Dick himself led the way out of the slough where they were ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... plans a little: going to Portsmouth first, and to Slough on our return; we were to have gone by Slough, but the Prince of Denmark and the King going to Ascot took up all horses and beds, so we were obliged to go ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the members of every great aggregation of mankind should constantly tend to establish and populate such a Slough of Despond as this is inevitable, so long as some people are by nature idle and vicious, while others are disabled by sickness or accident, or thrown upon the world by the death of their bread-winners. So long as that proportion is restricted within tolerable limits, it can ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... votes.[202] Nor have I forgotten how Cleon treated me because of my comedy last year;[203] he dragged me before the Senate and there he uttered endless slanders against me; 'twas a tempest of abuse, a deluge of lies. Through what a slough of mud he dragged me! I nigh perished. Permit me, therefore, before I speak, to dress in the manner most ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... cast suspicious glances at our party. But the two strollers, who were now in their element, played their parts with so much craft and delicacy, and with such an infinity of humour besides, that everything he overheard plunged him deeper in the slough. They knew something of local affairs, and called one another Mayor very naturally; and mentioning their wives, let drop other scraps of information that, catching his ear, made the wretched man every ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... so much as "Thank you." She put the shawl round her mistress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden. She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... trade requires it. It is an old Anglicism, 'Such a man drives a trade;' the allusion is to a carter, that with his voice, his hands, his whip, and his constant attendance, keeps the team always going, helps himself, lifts at the wheel in every slough, doubles his application upon every difficulty, and, in a word, to complete the simile, if he is not always with his horses, either the wagon is set in a hole, or the team stands still, or, which is worst of all, the load is spoiled by the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... two, into as complete a labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal; therefore, I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest they get bemired in a slough of unintelligible learning, or have their brains knocked out by some of those hard Greek names which will be flying about in all directions. But should any of them be too indolent or chicken-hearted to accompany me in this ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... would go to help along his range "atmosphere." To the Happy Family it seemed a waste of horseflesh to comb a twenty-mile radius of mesa to get a cow and calf which might have been duplicated within a mile of the ranch. The Happy Family knew that Luck was wading chin deep in the slough of despond, and they decided that he kept them riding all ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... was thus employed—it was Sunday, in August of 19—, when the Egyptian Exhibition was attracting great crowds of visitors—and sitting, as was his habit, on a bench on the centre platform of Slough Station, he noticed an Indian pacing up and down the platform, who every now and then stopped and regarded him with peculiar interest, hesitating as though he wished to speak to him. Presently the Indian came and sat down on the same bench, and after having sat there in silence for some minutes ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... fool's paradise of luxury and riot, never looking down but to squeeze from them an extra drop of honey— like sheep-boys stuffing themselves with blackberries while the sheep are licking up flukes in every ditch? And now you wish to leave the poor man in the slough, whither your neglect and your example have betrayed him, and made his too apt scholarship the excuse for your own remorseless greed! As a Christian, I am ashamed of you all; as a Churchman, doubly ashamed of those prelates, hired stalking-horses of the rich, who would ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... did, Capting. Reckin, though, both on ye kin hitch on next load," drawled the driver, turning his horses into the slough of mud ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... jumped off. However, F—- and myself declared we would go right into the quadrangle of the Castle, so we went into the middle of the road and formed a line. Soon a rocket (the signal that the Queen was at Slough) was let off, and then some Life Guards came galloping along, and one of them ran almost over me, and actually trod on F—-'s toe, which put him into dreadful pain for some time. Then came the Queen's carriage, and I thought college would have tumbled down ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and a bit of a smile continually bitten in as she regarded me. She seemed indeed like the very spirit of mischief, and, walking briskly in the room, had soon involved me in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least) with nothing intended on my side. I was like Christian in the slough—the more I tried to clamber out upon the side, the deeper I became involved; until at last I heard her declare, with a great deal of passion, that she would take that answer at the hands of none, and I must down upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Goldsmith was now thinking of another method of replenishing his purse. The Vicar of Wakefield had brought him little but reputation; the Good-natured Man had brought him L500. It was to the stage that he now looked for assistance out of the financial slough in which he was plunged. He was engaged in writing a comedy; and that comedy was ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... have prosperity and who wishes to win happiness for himself, should always make gifts of earth, with due rites, unto deserving persons. If after committing numerous sins a person makes gifts of earth unto members of the regenerate class, he casts off all those sins like a snake casting off its slough. The person that makes a gift of earth is said to make gifts of everything, that is, of seas and rivers and mountains and forests. By making a gift of earth, the person is said to give away lakes and tanks and wells and streams. In consequence ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in youth, the crested snake, Who slept the winter in a thorny brake; And, casting off his slough when spring returns, Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns: Restored with pois'nous herbs, his ardent sides Reflect the sun, and raised on spires he rides; High o'er the grass hissing he rolls along, And brandishes by fits his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... typical case of sniffles, with running at eyes and nose, and Bouvais laughed. "The only cold we have up here is when the lungs get touched by frost," he said, "and then you die—the following spring. Always then. The lungs slough away." And then he asked: "Why are ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... having no room in the rocky channel to turn and fire, drew rein at the crossways sharply, and plunged into the black ravine leading to the Wizard's Slough. "Is it so?" I said to myself, with brain and head cold as iron: "though the foul fiend come from the slough to save thee, thou shalt carve ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... was the first crop which the Partridge brothers put in. The total yield was seven bushels, obtained from around the edges of a slough! ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... romance are happily ended. Such milk and water diet is food not fit for men. The new dramatist must provide us with strong meat, properly served by players of intelligence and insight, if dramatic art is to be rescued from the slough into which it has so miserably sunk. The question is: Can America produce a writer of sufficient originality, a manager of sufficient courage, an actor of sufficient understanding to give the ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... across a sea of mud worse than the Slough of Despond, of methodically advanced barrage fire, of quick work in trench fight, sufficed for the Canadians to take Regina trench—one of the smoothest bits of trench-taking that has been witnessed in the Somme drive. I saw the Canadians, muddy to the eyebrows—but grinning—on ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... made everything beautiful in his time," murmured Grande, partly because, gazing at the distant prospect, she thought so, and partly as a praiseworthy attempt, in her turn, to pluck us out of the slough into which we ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... a marcy we've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow,— God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers, To start the world's team wen it gits in a slough; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez the world'll go right, ef he ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... place where, in order to cut off a long sweeping curve of the river with open water and bad shore ice, we went through a dry slough and had to drag those iron runners over gravel and stones, where sometimes it was all the three of us could do to move the sled a few feet at a time. Yet all along the banks were willows, and if we had only known then what we know now we would have cut down and split some saplings ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... to the doctrines of Lao Tzu. Later on, this One came to be regarded as a fixed point of dazzling luminosity, in remote ether, around which circled for ever and ever, in the supremest glory of motion, the souls of those who had successfully passed through the ordeal of life, and who had left the slough of ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... the prairie there was always too much rain or else too little. It was either drought or flood. Dark swarms of wild ducks were in all the ponds; V-shaped flocks of geese and brants screamed overhead, and down in the slough cranes danced a ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... pleasure in anything. She regards the revolt of her passions and her involuntary faults as terrible crimes, which draw upon her the hatred of her Beloved. She seeks to cleanse and to purify herself, but she is no sooner washed than she seems to fall into a slough yet more filthy and polluted than that from which she has just escaped. She does not see that it is because she runs that she contracts defilement, and falls so frequently, yet she is so ashamed to run in this condition, that she ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... the other day, who, two years ago, was running a small paper at Larrabie's Slough. He was then in his meridian as a journalist, and his paper was frequently quoted by such widely-read publications as the Knight of Labor at Work, a humorous semi-monthly journal. He boldly assailed the silver dollar, and with his trenchant pen he wrote such burning words of denunciation that ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... lives, in secret bless'd, Above him in the clouds doth rest An oak-wreath, verdant and sublime, Placed on his brow in after-time; While they are banish'd to the slough, Who ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... of the glory that so penetrating an observer might reflect on his reign, ensured to him a pension of 300 guineas a year, and moreover a residence near Windsor Castle, first at Clay Hall and then at Slough. The visions of George III. were completely realized. We may confidently assert, relative to the little house and garden of Slough, that it is the spot of all the world where the greatest number of discoveries have been made. The name of that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... went. Opinions differ as to swearing. One Captain strictly forbade it on board his lugger; but he, also continuing to get no fish, called out, 'Swear away, lads, and see what that'll do.' Perhaps he only meant as Menage's French Bishop did; who going one day to Court, his carriage stuck fast in a slough. The Coachman swore; the Bishop, putting his head out of the window, bid him not do that; the Coachman declared that unless he did, his horses would never get the carriage out of the mud. 'Well then, says the Bishop, just for ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... for a tub full of lye," (that is, washing water prepared with wood-ashes) "and a tub full of fresh milk, and as many whips as a boy can carry in his arms,—and have all these brought into your bed-chamber. Then, when the Lindworm tells you to shed a shift, do you bid him slough a skin. And when all his skins are off, you must dip the whips in the lye and whip him; next, you must wash him in the fresh milk; and, lastly, you must take him and hold him in your arms, if it's only for ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... letter it seemed, read in that light. And how every word drove the unhappy heir of Maxfield deeper and deeper into the slough of perplexity. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Clarence, is permissible; in the ditch of a scavenger, like Escoubleau, is horrible. To struggle therein is hideous; at the same time that one is going through the death agony, one is floundering about. There are shadows enough for hell, and mire enough to render it nothing but a slough, and the dying man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... as justice of a line of conduct which represses every effort on the part of seafaring men to cultivate a self-respect, and elevate themselves in the scale of society; a line of conduct which is calculated to thrust them contemptuously back, and plunge them deeper in the slough from which, perhaps, they ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... instance, to find that the luck of the thirteen began right back at the time when Jan, motoring back from Uzhitze down the valley of the Morava, coming fastish round a corner, plumped right up to the axle in a slough of clinging wet sandy mud. The car almost shrugged its shoulders as it settled down, and would have said, if cars could speak, "Well, what are you going to do about that, eh?" It was about the 264th mud hole in which Jan's motor had stuck, and we sat down ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... they have sent me to you to sound your views and decide your fate; but though they are powerful enough to clear a stumbling-stone out of the young man's way, they are merciful. Understand this, child: a girl whom Lucien loves has claims on their regard, as a true Christian worships the slough on which, by chance, the divine light falls. I came to be the instrument of a beneficent purpose;—still, if I had found you utterly reprobate, armed with effrontery and astuteness, corrupt to the marrow, deaf to the voice of repentance, I should ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... position. I say at the right time, because there may be a time when it is too late. There is a time when, under the weight of long wearisome years, the human soul has become inflexible, and has no longer the power to raise itself from the slough into ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... get into any proper relation to Jimville unless you could slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as a lizard does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee sense of humor into an anticipation of Poker ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... Melbourne, and far inland, was boggy, the soil being volcanic, and abounding in mud which appears to have no bottom. The road to the mines was all the worse for having been ploughed up by bullock teams, and worked into a slough which proved the discouragement of mining parties. Some were even months in traversing the comparatively small distance across the country to the goal they sought. But the attraction of money, which is said to make the mare go, enabled them to triumph at last over ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... a feeling of general sickness, chilliness and some fever. The skin over the sore part is hot and painful. The several dead parts may run together until the entire mass separates in a slough. In favorable cases it proceeds to heal kindly, but in severe cases it may spread to the surrounding tissues and end fatally, sometimes by the absorption of putrid materials, or by the resulting weakness. It runs usually ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... at this time. Without them Chicago would have been a desert. Henry Fuller's gay spirit, Lorado's swift wit and the good fraternal companionship of Charles Francis Browne were of daily comfort; but above all others I depended upon my wife whose serenely optimistic spirit carried me over many a deep slough of despond. How I leaned upon her! Her patience with me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... go so fast as I would, by reason of this burden that is on my back. Now I saw in my dream, that, just as they had ended this talk, they drew near to a very miry slough that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was De spond.[13] Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said De Montaigne, "you have certainly made the most of an argument, which, if granted, would consign government to fools and knaves, and plunge the communities of mankind into the Slough of Despond. But a very commonplace view of the question might suffice to shake your system. Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in February. "I was obliged to make an excursion to Windsor on Saturday, and have an audience before Prince Albert's lunch. I was with the Queen in her closet, solus cum sola. But I should first tell you my difficulty about getting from the station at Slough to the Castle. When we go down for a council we have a special train and carriages provided for us. I consulted Morpeth, who answered, 'I can only tell you how I went last—on the top of an omnibus; but the Queen was a little shocked.' I asked how she found it out. He said he had told her ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... felicity. The paradise lost is to be regained. How it is to be done the sages are not agreed. But they of old were unanimous that some divinity must lend his aid, that some god-sent guide is needed to rescue man from the slough of wretchedness in which ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut more than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull- whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... on a cart, but the rude carts used on the estate could not very well carry it, and a sledge was substituted. Several times, during the journey through the forest, the sledge had to be halted while the underwood was cut away to permit of its passing; and once a slough had to be filled up with branches hewn from fir trees, and bundles of fern. These delays made it evening before the shore of ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... course of a half-dried slough where buffalo tracks were visible. Some two miles from camp, the out-runners returned with word that the herds were browsing a short distance ahead, and that the marsh-bed widened to a banked ravine. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... calling at Captain Dade's, was concerned to hear that Mrs. Dade was not at home. "Gone over to the hospital with Mrs. Blake and the doctor," was the explanation, and these gentle-hearted women, it seems, were striving to do something to rouse the lad from the slough of despond which had engulfed him. That night "Pink" Marble, Hay's faithful book-keeper and clerk for many a year, a one-armed veteran of the civil war, calling, as was his invariable custom when the trader was absent, to leave the keys of the safe and desks with Mrs. Hay, was surprised ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... themselves, feeding in the mean time upon fish and flesh of every description. In the water they move with agility, but on land their long bodies and short legs prevent rapid motion. They migrate during droughts from one slough or bayou to another, crossing the intervening upland. When discovered on these journeys by man, the alligator feigns death, or at least appears to be in an unconscious state; but if an antagonist approach within reach of that ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... conversion we see the man who struggles to conform to a standard of conduct so high, exacting, and minute, that it touches every particular of life, and who yet is beset by a constant sense of failure and disappointment. From this slough of despond he is lifted—how? By the sense of a love which extends to him from the unseen world. It takes form to him as the personal love of one who has lived, has died, and in some inexpressible way still lives. This friendship in the unseen world is the sufficient, the absolute pledge ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the city he found it situated in a slough. It was generally supposed that the ground upon which the city was built was a natural swamp, and when Palmer, among others, advocated the idea of raising the streets they were ridiculed. But subsequent tests proved that beneath the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... but, beyond his yearly contribution of one dollar, he did nothing else but cavil and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time fascinating—an alluring combination ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... greatest part of them to do, but to lead exemplary lives.'[692] Some years later, Bentley could boldly assert of 'the whole clergy of England' that they were 'the light and glory of Christianity,'[693] an assertion which he would scarcely have dared to make had they been sunk into such a slough of iniquity as they are sometimes represented to have been. Writing to Courayer in 1726, Archbishop Wake laments the infidelity and iniquity which abounded, but is of opinion that 'no care is wanting in our clergy to defend the Christian faith.'[694] John Wesley, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... bear, she had built up with them her own character. Sorrow had increased her own power of sympathy; out of trials she had learnt patience; and failure and the gradual sinking of one she had loved into the bottomless slough of evil habit had but left her with an added ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... the man's days were spent amongst a class where the passions run loose, where restraint is an unknown virtue, where self and sensuality are the upraised gods. One can easily imagine that from amongst such a slough might spring at any time the weed of tragedy. In other words, this man Morris Barnes moved amongst a class of people to whom murder, if it could be safely accomplished, would be little ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... old woman with fleshless fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than one street in Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama, a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Phellion. "The dinner hour summons us; I think that, little by little, we have allowed this conversation to drift toward the miry slough ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... learned they had to pass a wood expressed his pleasure. "For," said he, "I am passionately fond of trees. Trees and fair lawns, if you consider of it rightly, are the ornaments of nature, as palaces and fine approaches——" And here he stumbled into a patch of slough and nearly fell. The girl had hard work not to laugh, but at heart she was lost in admiration for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it was either the Lord or the Devil," he said. "Let us ask Him more earnestly to bring her out of the slough on the ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... our souls are strong enough To plunge into the crater of the Scheme — Triumphant in the flash there to redeem Love's handsel and forevermore to slough, Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough And reptile skins of us whereon we set The stigma of scared years — are we to get Where atoms and ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson |
