"Clammy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the Rougons' house was an individual with clammy hands and equivocal look, one Monsieur Vuillet, a bookseller, who supplied all the devout ladies of the town with holy images and rosaries. Vuillet dealt in both classical and religious works; he was a strict Catholic, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... A clammy sweat stood on Adam's forehead, his tongue felt dry and so powerless that it needed an effort to force it to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... a big, beautiful doll, in a dress of faded pink, and a pink hat and feather. Dick had never seen such a fine lady before; she quite fascinated him. He leaned gently forward and touched the waxen hand. It was cold and clammy; Dick did not like the feel, and retreated. The unwinking eyes of the doll followed him as he sidled away, and ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... thought of what he must tell her now. "Can she punish me?" he asks himself, vaguely. Perhaps. He must bear it if she does. He has done all he can. Consoled by this reflection, he knocks. A well-known voice answers, "Come in." Silvestro's clammy hand is on the lock—a worm-eaten door creaks on its ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... the trail and safely started. The cold perspiration made Freckles' temples clammy and ran in little streams down his chest. It would take her more time to follow the trail, but her safety was Freckles' sole thought in urging her to go that way. He tried to figure on how long it would require to walk to the carriage. He wondered if the ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Jane,' and us would pat our hands and walk on broom grass. I don't know nothin' 'bout charms. Dey used to tell de chillun dat when old folks died dey turned to witches. I ain't never seed no ghostes, but I sho' has felt 'em. Dey made de rabbits jump over my grave and had me feelin' right cold and clammy. Mudder used to sing to Miss Lucy to git her to sleep, but I don't 'member ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... at each other dubiously, though each had an earnest desire to please. They groped for human understanding, and suddenly that clammy, discouraged feeling spread its muffling wall between them. Billy was the first to ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... green-thatched cottage not far off. The boy quickly waved a signal of assent, drew the water with what was a great effort for one of his stature, landed and emptied the big bucket into his own pair of smaller ones, and pausing a moment for breath, started with them across the patch of clammy greensward whereon the well stood—nearly in the centre of the little village, or rather ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the boat started. The shores receded and spread apart, and the lines of houses came and went like dissolving views upon a white wall. The boat shot under the dark and clammy arch of the bridge, where the echo increased the splashing of the steamer waves and the thump of the machinery to a roar. The noise subsided suddenly, as when a damper is laid over a resounding instrument; the steamer had passed ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... teens are there—a year or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, now mothers, with babies at their breasts—happy still perhaps; but that pretty face is woefully wan—that hair did not use to be so dishevelled—and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that lay so white, and warm, and smooth in the grasp ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... shaking and incoherent lover indoors and established him on a sofa, had a fire lit for him as he appeared to be deathly cold, and sat holding his clammy hand until the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... evil. The men and women of Tourneur and Marston are scarcely men and women at all: they are mere vague spectres, showing their grisly wounds and moaning out their miserable fate. There is around them a thick and clammy moral darkness, dispelled only by the ghastly flashes of lurid virtue of maniacs like Tourneur's Vindici and Hippolito; a crypt-like moral stillness, haunted by strange evil murmurs, broken only by the hysterical sobs and laughs of Marston's Antonios and Pandulphos. At ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... cave; 315 Seized by the throat the growling fiend disarms, And tears his gaping jaws with sinewy arms; Lifts proud ANTEUS from his mother-plains, And with strong grasp the struggling Giant strains; Back falls his fainting head, and clammy hair, 320 Writhe his weak limbs, and flits his life in air;— By steps reverted o'er the blood-dropp'd fen He tracks huge CACUS to his murderous den; Where breathing flames through brazen lips he fled, And shakes the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... unsophisticated maidenhood—a power which seemed sometimes to have a touch of the weird and wizardly in it. Personally he was not ill-favoured, though rather un- English, his complexion being a rich olive, his rank hair dark and rather clammy—made still clammier by secret ointments, which, when he came fresh to a party, caused him to smell like 'boys'-love' (southernwood) steeped in lamp-oil. On occasion he wore curls—a double row—running almost horizontally around his ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... No more warm rooms and comfortable evenings beside the fire with mother, no more suppers made ready for the boys, and jokes and laughing when they came home; there was no more a house to call home, no mother nor boys, only something cold and clammy under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed snake, leaving its clammy trail wherever ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... any vapourous wetting Air. The same reason also is to be assigned why the Voice doth at last quite cease in those who have made too long Harrangues, in speaking, and whose Jaws are quite dried with an immoderate Heat; for in both these cases the top of the Wind-pipe is covered over with a clammy Tenacious Phlegm. ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... soaking into the wood, it is probable that it lightly glides, and as long as it is clean, easily cuts the waves; but when it is thoroughly soaked, when weeds, ooze, and filth stick upon its sides, the stroke of the ship is more obtuse and weak; and the water, coming upon this clammy matter, doth not so easily part from it; and this is the reason why they usually calk their ships. Now it is likely that the echeneis in this case, sticking upon the clammy matter, is not thought an accidental consequent to this cause, but the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... little girl"—Angela's tears were dropping on the soft, smooth hair that was growing clammy; she felt the cold breath on her face—"never mind, little girl, the dream ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the retiring hour. As the antecedent of the modern American electric blanket, they enticed the drowsy to bed. Retreating from the cheerful hearth, the would-be sleeper, then as now, had no fear of being aroused by the clammy ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... then, let him, to his heart's content: he has been in such a hurry to take you that we'll see if it suits him to keep you. I'm very good to break my heart about it when you've no more feeling for me than a clammy little fish!" She suddenly thrust the child away and, as a disgusted admission of failure, sent her flying across the room into the arms of Mrs. Wix, whom at this moment and even in the whirl of her transit Maisie saw, very red, exchange a quick ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... up was not an easy task. It took stern will, and all the strength of muscle he had left, and when he finally achieved it there was a clammy dew of pain upon his face. With slow guarded movements he began to dress himself. Any sudden or violent action might burst the delicate gassed spots in his lungs or throw out of place one of the lower vertebrae of his spine. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... on the glass. For all my rubbing it remained. And then the spasm went through me; I crooked my arm and plucked at the middle of my back. My skin, too, felt like the damp chicken's skin in the poulterer's shop-window; one spot between the shoulders itched and irritated, felt clammy, felt raw. Could I reach it? Surreptitiously I tried. She saw me. A smile of infinite irony, infinite sorrow, flitted and faded from her face. But she had communicated, shared her secret, passed her poison; she would speak no more. Leaning back in my corner, shielding ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... coming nearer? how clammy grows my brow; Yes, I'm going home for promotion, the battle's over now. Comrades, I often fancy, how upon yon blessed shore, In that land of recognition, we may yet all meet once more. Colonel, we'll gather round you then, as in the days of old; Why ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... naturally a sociable man, and loved the company of his fellows, but here he was living a hermit's existence, shut up in the bowels of the earth, with no better associates than the clammy stalactites which constantly dripped water upon the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... was permitted but a brief sojourn in this region of sorrow. Ere another sun, her head hung lifeless on Lord William's bosom;—he had pressed her to his heart in token of forgiveness; but he held only the cold and clammy shrine—the idol had departed! ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... idea popped into his head—one of those clammy ideas, which come instantly, and come with a chill; ideas that are positively physical in the way in which they affect one. Suppose it was Mendoza's car with someone else driving it? Someone of the score ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... whitey-brown man is objectionable. He is vain, apt to take offence, sly, indolent, sensuous, and, like Reuben, "unstable as water." He has a facile smile, a clammy hand, a manner either forward or obsequious, a mincing gait, and not always the snowiest linen. [In very dangerous cases ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a fly to be caught in them; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly glutting the markets in the teeth of 'no demand.' The steam crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nostrils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to frosted hats and dripping boughs. A soulless, skyless, catarrhal day, as if that bustling dowager, old mother Earth—what with match-making in spring, and fetes champetres in summer, and dinner-giving in autumn—was fairly worn out, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... wretch feel as faint at the sight of the priest coming to bid him prepare for the gallows, as I did at the sight of one of those sublime functionaries bringing me my doom on a silver salver? Every pore opened; a clammy perspiration broke out all over me; I reached forth a shaking hand, and thanked his highness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... touch on the bosom of his inner vestment, and suddenly he stood alone beside the gruesome abbey. Clammy with fear, he knew not why, he drew his mantle round him and sped home as one speeds in a fearsome dream. And that it was a dream he half-believed, when later, in the hall, he served at meat those gathered ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... ghostly forms sweeping towards him, uttering as they came nearer and nearer shrieks so terrible that the silence of death could more easily be borne. Cuglas turned to escape, but they hemmed him round, and pressed their clammy ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... quicker, announcing the immediate approach of the dead. Lesbia listened, her head raised, her face, turned to open window, felt over by the clammy, impalpable fingers of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the hero, Aeson's son, cut off the extremities of the dead man, and thrice licked up some blood and thrice spat the pollution from his teeth, as it is right for the slayer to do, to atone for a treacherous murder. And the clammy corpse he hid in the ground where even now those bones lie ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... disappearing altogether. This is the significance of the servant-girl question. This is the root of the alarming conviction that Phillis is changing into Biddy, whose fit epithet is not neat-handed. This is the meaning of the cry for bread—light, sweet, well-baked bread; not the clammy dough which is served to a despairing land. This is the reason of the wondering question, What has become of roast meat? and of the melancholy conviction that henceforth baked beef is to replace the juicy sirloin of ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... and clammy, and there's not a single thump in his arteries," he said with solemn gravity; and letting fall Larry's hand he proceeded to examine his neck. "The vertebra broken, cracked, dislocated," he continued, in the same solemn tone. "D'ye see this black mark down his throat? it's amply ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... forces of the world, inspired its art, formed its social life, subsidized, its great powers, and wields to-day the heavy battalions; a force that this hour beats in millions of hearts, all over this globe, with a living warmth beside which the love of science and art is cold and clammy. Surely it would be not much to ask for the docility to recognize such patent facts as these. And I must believe that any mind is fundamentally unhinged that despises the profoundest convictions of the noblest ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... chilly air Bids comfort hence depart, While sad repining's clammy wings Cling icy, to ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... an obstruction—it was hard and cold—a stone wall, surely? I felt it up and down and found a hollow in it—was this the first step of the stair? I wondered; it seemed very high. I touched it cautiously—suddenly I came in contact with something soft and clammy to the touch like moss or wet velvet. Fingering this with a kind of repulsion, I soon traced out the oblong shape of a coffin Curiously enough, I was not affected much by the discovery. I found myself monotonously counting the bits of raised metal which ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the bulwark's side, And one after one they stepped on board. Dead men, with eyes that opened wide With the stare of blindness—gracious Lord! One of them groped his way abaft, And laid his swollen hand on the wheel. His hand that in death was clammy and damp; His blind eyes stared at the binnacle lamp, As if the dead hand had nerves of steel, He altered the ship's course in spite of me Who could only stare at him and gasp, For I was in the nightmare's ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... bitter experience, into a skeptical mistrust of humanity, dreadful to see in a woman. All the careless years of her girlhood passed in mockery before her eyes to-night, until her poor heart was nigh bursting with pent-up sorrow and grief. She dropped her cold clammy hands into her lap and sat upright in the darkness. How long had she been here? Was it an hour, a day, or a week? How long must she remain here now? She felt in her breast for her pocket-book, and a look of undying scorn stole into ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... docks, made fast and drew their fires, till it seemed that the works, like a great octopus, was withdrawing every arm and filament it ever had radiated, and was coiling them endlessly at its cold and clammy side. Yet, for all of this, it did not seem possible that the whole structure was tumbling, the structure on which so many years of labor—so much genius and enthusiasm—so many millions—had been lavished, until one afternoon a drunken Swede threw a stone into ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... latter part of his vigil, an odd thing happened. A blast of spray struck Madden with some slimy thing that whipped about his neck and chest and almost tore him from the wheel. With convulsive repugnance, he jerked it loose and held the clammy stuff toward the binnacle light. He saw it was seaweed. Presently more strands came beating down on the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Mr. Chester a thin, tremulous hand which lay on Dick's broad palm in a nerveless, clammy fashion. "Pray," he said, in a high, squeaky voice, "convey my greetings to dear Uncle Ebeneezer, and inform him ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... away. Doom sounded in his words. The hand of Death laid clammy fingers on us. Edith Metford's strength failed at last. It had been sorely tested. She sank into ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... Blown birds show their whiteness Up against the lightness Of the clammy clouds; By the random river Pushing to the sea, Under bents that quiver There ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... this fountaine hath an incisive and abstersive faculty to cut, and loosen the viscous and clammy humours of the body, and to make meable the grosse: as also by its piercing and penetrating power, subtilty of parts, and by his deterging and desiccative qualities to open all the obstructions, or oppilations of the mesentery (from whence the seeds ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... and he saw that the sides of the abyss were covered with slime; and the damp air made him cough, and the cap had got over his spectacles and nearly blinded him; and he was perspiring with a cold, clammy sweat. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... from ten to six thousand and got rid of our clammy suits. Tim shut off and stepped out of the Frame. The Mark Boat was coming up behind us. He opened the colloid in that heavenly stillness and ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... dollars dropping on the bar slowed down to playing two-steps and marches instead of jigs. But I looked out the window and saw a hundred or two of our customers standing in line at Bird City Savings and Loan Co., and I knew they were borrowing more money to be sucked in by the clammy tendrils of the octopus. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease; For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— And no more lapis to delight the world! Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs 120 —Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave me in my church, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness—who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach—who had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... mansion, was her brother-in-law, Lord Fareham. A large high-backed armchair stood beside the bed, and on this Angela seated herself. She recollected the Superior's injunction just in time to put one of the anti-pestilential lozenges into her mouth before she bent over the sufferer, and took his clammy hand in hers, and endured the acrimony of his poisonous breath. That anxious gaze, the dark yellow complexion, and those great beads of sweat that poured down the pinched countenance too plainly indicated the disease which had desolated London. The Moslem's invisible ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... were coming, gaunt and ghastly, sad and slow; They were coming, all the crimson wrecks of pride; With faces seared, and cheeks red smeared, and haunting eyes of woe, And clotted holes the khaki couldn't hide. Oh, the clammy brow of anguish! the livid, foam-flecked lips! The reeling ranks of ruin swept along! The limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody finger tips! And oh, the dreary rhythm ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... was sending forth her black clouds of smoke, the knives of the cutting-machine bored themselves deep into the clammy ground, and the press worked slowly and silently like a good-natured domestic animal. A newly-built shed with its white walls looked dazzling in the sunshine, and all round about the long black rows ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... agitation to my mind. I can scarcely now recall the feelings of that week without undergoing a partial return of the same painful sensations. My soul was striving as with itself, and seeking an outlet for escape. I panted, as if for breath—my tongue was parched—my lips clammy—my voice, in the language of the poet, clove to the roof of my throat. Altogether, I have never felt such emotions either before ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... had gone down and a red light was glowing in the west, high up in the tender blue. The air had turned cooler and a cold, clammy damp was falling over the fields, which now lay steaming deadly still in the rising mist that already shrouded the trees in blue and ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... the clammy bank, Where the tangled reeds are long and dank, Where the dew lies white on the iris bed, And ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... the few necessary seconds, pushed disarranged dark hair out of his eyes and felt the clammy dampness on his forehead, and wished silently to himself that opportunists like Cain were kept where they belonged—on the Slam-Bang Run out of Callisto. That's where the money was. That's where a Warrant ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... after three hours of excessive toil the bullocks had not advanced two miles, because the stiff clay so clogged the wheels that it could not be easily removed. Seeing the cattle so distressed I was compelled to encamp, and await the effect of the sunshine and the breeze on the clammy surface. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... not hear of this: he thought, as he became very conscious of the clammy feel of his saturated clothing, that he could not get much wetter than he already was. Linden accompanied him as far as the front door, and Owen once more set out on his way homeward through the storm that howled around like a wild beast hungry for ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... all passed in a very few minutes, and before I well knew how or why, I found myself on board of a ship's long-boat, sweeping along over the Mersey, with Santron's head in my lap, and his cold, clammy fingers grasped in mine. He was either unaware of my presence or too weak to recognize me, for he gave no sign of knowing me; and during our brief passage down the river, and when lifted up the ship's side, seemed totally insensible to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of Burgos when it is not the breath of a furnace is so heavy and clammy through the testimony of all comers that Burgos herself no longer attempts to deny it from her high perch on the uplands of Old Castile. Just when she ceased to deny it, I do not know, but probably when she ceased to be the sole ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... wondered, in the freezing coldness that settled round his heart, did her coming presage death—had her soul been sent to claim his that had brought upon her such fearful destruction? A muffled cry that was scarcely human broke from him, his eyes dilated and the clammy sweat poured down his face as she bent toward him and he saw the dusky lashes tremble on her dead white cheek and knew that in a second the anguished eyes would open to him in all their accusing awfulness. The bed shook with the spasm that passed through him. Slowly the heavy lids ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... for his meeting with Capitola at the altar of the Forest Chapel to fire his clammy heart, stagnant blood and sated senses with the very first passion that he had ever known. Her image, as she stood there at the altar with flashing eyes and flaming cheeks and scathing tongue defying him, was ever before his mind's eye. There was something about that girl ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... clergyman walk about the streets with a sullen and malignant scowl always on his face, which at the best would be a very ugly one? Why should another walk with his nose in the air, and his eyes rolled up till they seem likely to roll out? And why should a third be always dabbled over with a clammy perspiration, and prolong all his vowels to twice the usual length? It is, indeed, a most woful thing, that people who evince a spirit in every respect the direct contrary of that of our Blessed Redeemer should fancy that they are Christians of singular attainments; and it is more woful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Watch while I sleep. Perhaps I'll never wake again," grandpa said, and clasping Maddy's hands he fell away to sleep, while Maddy kept her watch beside him, herself falling into a troubled sleep, from which she was aroused by a clammy hand pressing on her forehead, and Uncle Joseph's voice, which said: "Wake, my child. There's been a guest here while you slumbered," and he pointed to the rigid features of ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... so pathetic in its youth, with the ravages of disease visible in the hectic cheek, and harsh, rasping cough, touched the strong young officer. He stooped down and put his hand on the young lad's forehead; it was cold and clammy. Was ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... dawn was breaking when he awoke shivering with cold. His buckskin clothes were wet and clammy, ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... thinner, and was very pale; her head had been shaved close, and there was nothing between the broad white border of her nightcap and her clammy brow and wan cheek. But illness was more becoming to Anty than health; it gave her a melancholy and beautiful expression of resignation, which, under ordinary circumstances, was wanting to her features, though not to her character. Her eyes were brighter than they usually were, and her ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... up, if I'm to be ready for the great Paris-Berlin race at 3.30. Feel very cold and sleepy. Pitch dark morning, of course. Moon been down hours. Must get into clothes, I suppose. Oilskins feel very clammy and heavy at this hour in the morning. Button up tunic and tuck trousers into top boots. Put on peaked cap and fasten veil tightly over face, after covering eyes with iron goggles and protecting mouth with respirator. Wind woollen muffler round neck ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... water's edge she came, nor did she even pause, but stepped into the shallows beside the little island. On she moved toward the Mahar, who now slowly retreated as though leading her victim on. The water rose to the girl's knees, and still she advanced, chained by that clammy eye. Now the water was at her waist; now her armpits. Her fellows upon the island looked on in horror, helpless to avert her doom in which they saw a ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... They visited several huts, and found the inhabitants at dinner, their food consisting, at this time of the year, of fish and the root of a large fern. The roots were prepared by scorching them over a fire, and then beating them till the charred bark fell off. The remainder was a clammy, soft substance, not unpleasant to the taste, but mixed with three times its bulk of fibres, which could not be swallowed. This part was spat out into baskets ready at hand for its reception. No animals were seen, except ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... About two the light in the lanthorn burned low in the socket, and with a soft sputtering went out. For an hour after that the room lay still, silent, dark; then slowly the grey dawn, the greyer for the river mist which wrapped the neighbourhood in a clammy shroud, began to creep into the room and discover the vague shapes of things. Again an hour passed, and the sun was rising above Montreuil, and here and there the river began to shimmer through the fog. But in the room ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... and yet so altered was that form, that were it not for a consciousness of guilt, with difficulty he would have recognised her whom he had once idolized. Gomez Arias thrilled as he gazed on the nocturnal visitor; in her pale features could be traced no sympathy with life; a clammy dampness bedewed her brows; a chilling apathy sat upon her countenance. One of her hands now mechanically fell on the feverish breast of Don Lope, and the cold, cold touch imparted a ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... patriarch, made a tour of inspection among the outhouses to the edge of the birch woods. Presently would come a rending of the ice on the firth, and patches of inky water would show between the floes. The snow would slip from the fell-side, and leave dripping rock and clammy bent, and the river would break its frosty silence and pour a mighty grey-green flood to the sea. The swans and geese began to fly northward, and the pipits woke among the birches. And at last one ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... As the cold, clammy suckers crinkled themselves into his flesh, the skin all over his body seemed to creep in disgust. He had been bending over as he hauled up the rope and the squid's tentacles around his arms held him poised half out of the boat, his ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... by a golden haze. It burst into a momentary flame as the haze flickered out. Hawkes dropped the ashes from his clammy ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... departure, and whilst yet the beat of his horse's hoofs was to be distinguished above the driving storm of rain and wind without, Joseph hastened across the hall to the servants' quarters. There he found his four grooms slumbering deeply, their faces white and clammy, and their limbs twisted into odd, helpless attitudes. Vainly did he rain down upon them kicks and curses; arouse them he could not from the stupor in whose thrall ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... twenty-four. The rousing from sleep, the turning out from warm or even from wet blankets, the standing still in a water-logged trench, with everything—fingers and clothes and rifle and trench-sides—cold and wet and clammy to the touch, and smeared with sticky mud and clay, all combine to make the morning 'stand to arms' an experience that no amount of repetition ever accustoms one to or makes ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the clammy mist of its central heating. Maggie, as she sat through service after service, watched one headache race after another. The air was full of headache; she asked once that a window might be kept open. "That would mean Death in Skeaton. You don't understand ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... uncomfortable prison, too. His sandwiches were soon disposed of; thereafter—what? He dared not smoke; he had no book with him; the keeper and the gillie, having withdrawn themselves, were exchanging confidences in their native tongue. His clothes were wet and cold and clammy; Percy Lestrange's flask appeared to afford him no comfort whatever. And of course the longer he brooded over the chances of hit or miss, the more appalling became the responsibility. How much depended on that fifteenth part of a second! He was half inclined to say, "Here, Roderick, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... that was so perfect that one wouldn't wish for anything else. Rich, rich! That was the thing. And still, when he saw Elsie, his calculations came to a sudden stop. This fading, languishing, sleepy thing seemed too unpalatable to him. When she touched him with her clammy hands he shuddered; he felt as if he must wipe the spot she had touched. And then when he heard her talk, so affected and stupid, it almost drove him out of the room, and he had to reflect: No, you can't stand living with this woman; every word she said would shame you. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and made her promise not to lose hold of the rock. The poor child was dreadfully frightened, and stopped every now and then, crying out in horror that she was falling into the water, but I held her fast and coaxed her to go on again; and all the time the clammy dews of terror stood on my forehead. Never to my dying day shall I forget ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... body drew an exclamation of horror from his lips. For a moment every drop of blood seemed to recede from his brain, leaving him cold. A clammy moisture broke out upon his forehead at what he beheld. The man's clothing had been torn open leaving his chest bare, and he now beheld his own knife plunged to the hilt in the white flesh. Will Henderson was ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... for I had laid my hand against his heart, and it was still, and his flesh was clammy cold, and when we found him he was lying ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... deceased taken its farewell flight from its earthly tabernacle, than the scaffold was crowded with members of the 'gentler sex' afflicted with wens in the neck, with white swellings in the knees, &c., upon whose afflictions the cold clammy hand of the sufferer was passed to and fro for ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... where likewise a great quantity are made up; they vary in length from four to eight or nine inches. A great quantity are likewise manufactured at Masulapatam, but they are considered as much inferior to those of Bengal. At Masulapatam there is a very extensive manufactory of a black clammy snuff, which is sent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... state produced by the toxins of the disease, the so-called "spes phthisica"—the everlasting and pathetic hopefulness of the consumptive. But here we call for help upon another of the features of disease—the hand. If, instead of being cool, and elastic, this is either dry and hot, or clammy and damp, and feels as if you were grasping a handful of bones and nerves, and the finger-tips are clubbed and the nails curved like claws, then you have a strong ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... which held the younger man to the frame and stood ready to catch him as he slumped forward. And the officer's hold wiped away the last clammy residue of the mist. Though he did not seem able to keep on his feet, Shann's ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... master of the Fearless wiped his clammy brow. "I can't think he's dead," he said slowly. "Who'll come down with ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... know any friend of Harri's, I'm sure," and Mr. Stout gave Rex a hand that was so disagreeably clammy that the younger lad could scarcely resist the impulse to take out his handkerchief and wipe off the ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... stand by her in her misery, at the same time broke forth; "O supporters of my mother's age! Oh ye that have betrayed my hopes of marriage, my dearest brothers!"—But king Eteocles heaving from his breast his gasping breath, heard his mother, and putting out his cold clammy hand, sent not forth indeed a voice; but from his eyes spoke her in tears to signify affection. But Polynices, who yet breathed, looking at his sister and his aged mother, thus spoke: "We perish, O my mother; but I grieve for thee, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... cover me up. I'm perishing with cold." "Here's matches!" "And 'ere; I've got a bit of candle." "Where?" "Oh, do straighten out my arm!" "'Ere, 'old out your 'and." "Got it," and the light flickered up again round the broken figure, and the arm was laid straight. As the touch came on to the clammy fingers it met something wet and red, and the prone body quivered all over. "What," said the weak voice—the smile struggled to come out again, but dropped back even sooner than before—"have they got my finger ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... be fast in slumber soon That head sinks backward, and a clammy sweat Bathes all his limbs, while from his foot hath burst A vein, dark bleeding. Let us leave him, friends, In quietness, till he hath ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... night, as the sailors say. The darkness was something that could be felt as well as seen—it pressed down upon one with a cold, clammy touch. Gazing into the hollow blackness, all sorts of imaginable shapes seemed to start forth from vacancy—brilliant colors, stars, prisms, and dancing lights. What boy, lying awake at night, has not amused or terrified himself by peopling the spaces around his bed with these ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Wherefore I also bowed to the inevitable, but like Ulus I said things. There was no chance of reaching the abodes of men by any other route. We were booked till the gale chose to ease—at any rate till morning; and for myself, I contemplated a moist bivouac under streaming Jove, with one clammy elk-skin ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... rather hastily, while my hands were yet clammy with the skull, thinking that this accusation of Philistinism was aimed at me. But Hohenfels thought of nothing less than of a personality, being in his cloudiest mood of generalization. So I only concealed the handkerchief, while I said, as easily as I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... call it "The Devil's sirih-box."[8] Are you as fond of frogs as you used to be? Last week, some people were dining with us. I had just helped the soup, and, letting my hand fall upon my lap, picked up one of your friends who had settled himself there. Not knowing at first what the cold clammy thing was, I jumped up, and everybody else jumped up too, to see what was the matter; for it might have been a ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... of moral values, look what the spider can do. What is there in the clammy, not to say messy, honey-comb to be compared with the delicate fabric of the spider's web? Indeed, should we ever have given a single thought to the honey-comb if it had had no honey in it? Do we become lyrical about the wasp's comb? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... deep, and unusually precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... anchoring off an exposed lee-shore. Preferring the latter course, even at the risk of losing our boat altogether, we cast anchor, and leaving a man in the boat, waded ashore. Here things looked very wretched indeed. Everything was wet and clammy. Very little firewood was to be found; and when it was found, we had the greatest difficulty in getting it to light. At last, however, the fire blazed up; and though it still rained, we began to feel, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... and flatness are the qualities of a pancake, and thus far he attained his aim: but if he means it for me, let him place the accessories on the table, lest what is insipid and clammy ... grow into duller accretion and moister viscidity the more ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... scene woke him, years afterward, through more than one clammy midnight. In one second the peaceful dining-room was a chattering, howling reign of terror. For Margarita, with a choking cry of rage and anguish, threw the ice with terrible precision into the bland face of the ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... black, clammy fur. He felt the utter futility of even being afraid. He would simply remain as he was, and soon he would ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... in the middle of the workshop. It seemed as if he had sat down for a few minutes' rest and had fallen asleep without slipping from his first attitude of sad, fatigued thought. His face, unwashed since yesterday, looked pallid and clammy; his hair was tossed shaggily about his forehead, and his closed eyes had the sunken look which follows upon watching and sorrow. His brow was knit, and his whole face had an expression of weariness and pain. Gyp was evidently uneasy, for he ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... said, tenderly, as she untied the bonnet strings with gentle care, and placed her hand upon the clammy temples. ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... viscosus-foliis longe lanceolatis linearibusve apice subuncinato, calycis foliolis latis acutis, corollae glabrae ventricosae laciniis obtusissimis infima dilatata subtriloba vix caeteris magis soluta, staminibus vix exsertis.— Leaves three to six inches long, two to six lines broad, thick and clammy. Flowers above an inch long, remarkable for the broad divisions of the corolla, and the general form much that of a BIGNONIA. This difference in the form of the corolla, would perhaps justify the placing it into a distinct genus instead of a mere section, especially as ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Americans, as I am thereby enabled not only to make it uncomfortable for frauds and fakes, but to hold an occasional bypedal puppy up by the subsequent end that Scorn may sight him and stick her cold and clammy finger so far through his miserable carcass that Goliah might hang his helmet on the protruding point. Sometime ago I found America's meanest man in Massachusetts: I have just discovered the most contemptible of all God's creatures in Kansas City. Some may suppose that the first discovery excludes ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... at Jerry and Jerry looked at Gyp. By some process of mental communication they agreed to say nothing about Uncle Peter's ghost. Back here in the softly-lighted, warm living-room, those weird voices and clammy fingers seemed unreal. However, there was the letter—Gyp reached for ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... brow The clammy death-sweats coldly rise; How dim and strange your features grow Through the hot mist ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... Pink, from long habit, opened his eyes to the dull gray of early morning. The air in the tent was clammy and chill and filled with the audible breathing of a dozen sleeping men; overhead the canvas was dull yellow and sodden with the steady drip, drip, drop of rain. There would be no starting out at sunrise—and perhaps there would be no starting at all, he thought ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... of aromatic plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter, penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian, clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores, dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they reeled and tottered ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... enough en route to satisfy himself that he was going to earn every dollar of his money, and when he reached Ore City he was sure of it. The problem before him was one to sleep on, or rather, thinking with forebodings of the clammy sheets upstairs, to lie awake on. However, something would perhaps suggest itself and Mr. Dill was resourceful as well as unhampered by any ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... a mere handful of people other than dealers had drifted in to wait for the sale to begin—something for which the weather was largely to blame, for the day was dismal with a clammy drizzle settling from a low and leaden sky—and with a solitary exception these few were ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... her a little, and, leaning forward, kissed her clammy lips. "The thing will seem clearer to you to-morrow, no doubt. I must leave you now. Go to Clara and her girls. They all like to pet and make much of you. I will bring Lisa in the morning, to talk business a little. She has an uncommonly clear ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... 'The Monster that Annually,' don't you know?—where we found the two young students scuffling round the office, and smelling of peppermint?—Hedrick, you know, and Sweeney. Sweeney, the slim chap, with the pallid face, and frog-eyes, and clammy hands! You remember I told you 'there was a pair of 'em'? Well, they're up to something here to-night. Hedrick, there on the stage in front; and Sweeney—don't you see?— with the gang on ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... racket to have such a man about, to say nuthin' of it prejudicin' quiet settlers. He had too many revolvers for one man to keep his eye on, and was altogether too much steeped in blood, so to speak, for ordinary washin' and domestic purposes! His hull get up was too deathlike and clammy; so we persuaded him to leave. We just went there, all of us, and exhorted him. We stayed round there two days and nights, takin' turns, talkin' with him, nuthin' more, only selecting subjects in his own style to please him, until he left! ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... finished his shaving in a growing testiness increased by his spinning headache and by the emptiness in his stomach. When he was done, his round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water, he reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them—his own face-towel, his wife's, Verona's, Ted's, Tinka's, and the lone bath-towel with the huge welt of initial. Then George F. Babbitt did ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... skin is cold, moist, or clammy, the trouble is due to heat exhaustion. Give plenty of fresh air, but apply no cold to the body. Apply heat, and give hot drinks, like hot ginger tea. Sunstroke or heatstroke is a dangerous affliction. It is often followed by serious ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... about a quarter of a mile from the castle, melting glue, it being evening, and only four of his men with him, he perceived a gentleman in mourning passing the lathe where the men were at work. He was immediately seized with a violent trembling and weakness, his hair stood on end, and a clammy sweat spread over his forehead. The lights were put out, he knew not how, and at last, in fear and terror, he was obliged to return home. On his arrival at the castle, as he was passing up the stairs, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... loss—loss of things never possessed, the most bitter loss of all—that, if he could have had these things, even the ruddy-haired, golden-eyed children of his dreams might go. He knelt by Hazel's bed and laid his dark head on the pillow, torn by physical and spiritual passion. His hair was clammy, and a new line marked his forehead from that day. Anyone seeing him would have thought that he was praying; he was so still. It was Edward's fate to be thought 'so quiet,' because the fires within him made no sound, burning ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the tempest shrieked and howled, the great wind shook the Kaffir hut of grass and wattle, piercing it in a hundred places till the light of the lantern wavered within its glass, and the sick man's hair was lifted from his clammy brow. From time to time fierce squalls of rain fell like sheets of spray, and the water, penetrating the roof of grass, streamed to the earthen floor. Leonard crept on his hands and knees to the doorway ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... and up and down without a check, for these paths are to the natives as marked as the king's highway is to us; insomuch that, in the days of the man-hunt, it was their labour rather to block and deface than to improve them. In the crypt of the wood the air was clammy and hot and cold; overhead, upon the leaves, the tropical rain uproariously poured, but only here and there, as through holes in a leaky roof, a single drop would fall, and make a spot upon my mackintosh. Presently the huge trunk of a banyan hove in sight, standing upon what seemed the ruins ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from hunger and fatigue, the young man, no longer able to proceed, fell down at the foot of a spreading beech, and gave way to an agony of grief; drops of cold sweat stood upon his brow; the clammy feeling of fear took possession of his heart, and though, perhaps, he would have had no objection to try the fortune of the pistol or the sword, in any college broil or senseless riot of the populace, the circumstances ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... to rain by and by, not heavily, but a slow, dull, seeping fall that was inexpressibly dreary, and the thick, clammy darkness, shot with mists and vapors from the lake, rolled up to the very edge of the fires. Robert might have joined the sleepers, as he was detached from immediate duty, but his brain was still too much heated to admit it. Despite his experience and his knowledge that it could not be so, his vivid ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with this goodly steel will halve thee And into clammy goblets carve thee. So stand, Thing, to thy club betake thee, And soon, Thing, I ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... built, and clean and decent looking. I'd been thinkin' of that, too; thinkin' he didn't look like the others I've seen drop off so sudden it left me gasping. Nor like them who went over so screamin' mad it left my palms wet and clammy from hangin' on to myself while they were going. He looked different, settin' here and staring into the fire, and hell burning inside him, and saying nothing. I sort of got to figurin' over him about then—sort of begun to wonder, even before ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... had expected, proved to be only the refuse of what was considered unsaleable in market. In place of the steaming biscuit, golden butter, and delicious cream she had promised herself, there were huge slices of clammy bread, a plate of old-fashioned short-cake, yellow with saleratus; butter, that to say the least of it, was not inodorous, and a compound of skim milk and lukewarm water, dignified by the name of tea. Leaving it almost untasted, Clemence sought her couch, and ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... lamp, so that we had not taken ten paces before we had lost sight of the ill-omened cottage, in which I had received so singular a welcome upon my home-coming. The wind had softened down, but a fine rain, cold and clammy, came drifting up from the sea. Had I been left to myself I should have found myself as much at a loss as I had been when I first landed; but my companion walked with a brisk and assured step, so that ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... revival of one or two of these "old comedies" this season, accomplished with that "bargain-counter" atrocity—a sop for vulgar minds—known mischievously as the "all-star-cast." It has been amusing to watch the cold, dispiriting and almost clammy reception accorded to these "classics," compared with the cordiality extended to Miss Alice Fischer in her "imitation" classic, "The School for Husbands." Yet, if a well-read, modern playwright cannot improve upon the eighteenth ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... this realm of the winds and waves Man cometh not with his living soul, But like the mounds over clammy graves, Over his body the surges roll; No mortal weeper hath seen his tomb, Buried he lies in eternal gloom, Save that the Petrel with wailing cry Hover'd around as ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... acknowledgment that you love me, I can do anything," she said, and her white hand crept slowly into the cold, clammy one which lay so listlessly ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... fine shock of grizzled hair and heavy black eyebrows. Beulah went through the formula of introduction again, but without it Beaudry would have known this hawk-nosed man whose gaze bored into his. The hand he offered to Hal Rutherford was cold and clammy. A ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... were utterly destroyed by earthquake, fire, and the inrush of the sea. For three hours the unprecedented holocaust continued; and then thick darkness fell, in the which it was found impossible to kindle a fire; the awful gloom was like unto the darkness of Egypt[1457] in that its clammy vapors could be felt. This condition lasted until the third day, so that a night a day and a night were as one unbroken night, and the impenetrable blackness was rendered the more terrible by the wailing of the people, whose heart-rending refrain ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... foully in his sleep, the drunkard stirred uneasily and the dog slunk beneath the bed, while the boy stood shaking with fear until all was still again. Reaching out, he touched once more that clammy hand upon the dirty coverlid. No movement answered to his touch. Reaching farther, he cautiously laid his fingers upon the ashy-colored temple, awkwardly brushing back a thin lock of the tangled hair. The face, ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... had ceased; but as the column emerged from St. Louis Gate, the scene before them was a dismal one. As yet there was no sign of spring. Each leafless bush and tree was dark with clammy moisture; patches of bare earth lay oozy and black on the southern slopes: but elsewhere the ground was still covered with snow, in some places piled in drifts, and everywhere sodden with rain; while each hollow ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... later. You just grit your teeth and take a fresh grip of your rifle and go forward with greater determination to strike a blow in the cause of freedom and honour. Maybe you reach your objective, your clothes sodden with sticky, clammy mud and possibly the red of your own blood ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... and I express our baggage to our hotel and jump on the platform of a horse-car on West-street, skirting the wharves. The roadway is ill paved, certainly, and the clammy atmosphere has congealed on its surface into an oily black mud; while in the middle of the side streets one can see relics of the blizzard in the shape of little grubby glaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not enlivening; nor do the low brick houses, given up to nondescript longshore ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... kind, and loved to sit In the low hut or garnished cottage, And praise the farmer's homely wit, And share the widow's homelier pottage: At his approach complaint grew mild, And when his hand unbarred the shutter, The clammy lips of Fever smiled The welcome which they ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery one; added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the narrow trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where the parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp, clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have been an officer, otherwise he was a ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... which met her entrance with an ill-tempered jangle. From somewhere in the black depths of the shop the dealer came forward. He had a clammy white face, with a sparse black beard, and wore a skull cap and spectacles. Mrs. Wilton spoke to him ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... time to time he glanced at the watch on his wrist and each time his face grew blacker. If he would only speak! His silence was worse than anything he could say. What was he going to do? He was capable of doing anything. The suspense was torture. Her hands grew clammy and she wrenched at the soft open collar of her riding-shirt with ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... up in bed, and seemed to keep upright with great difficulty. Her large black eyes, dimmed by fever, no doubt, and half-dead already, hardly moved under the bony arch of her eyebrows.—There,' he added, pointing to his own brow. 'Her forehead was clammy; her fleshless hands were like bones covered with soft skin; the veins and muscles were perfectly visible. She must have been very handsome; but at this moment I was startled into an indescribable emotion at the ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... he die thus? [Examines Dimsdell. The pulse is weak—a clammy sweat— 'Tis but the culmination of the trance. 'Tis but a dream. A dream! Yet one must die; And to our human thought that death were best That came preceded by a flag of truce To parley peace. To pass away in dreams— Without the vain regret for work undone; Without a load ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... first realized the worth of Angus Strachan the year of the great strike among the mechanics of New Jedboro. That was a terrible year, and the memory of it is dark and clammy yet. For our whole town, and almost every man's bread and butter, rose and fell with the industry or the idleness of our great iron manufactories. To my mind, the cause of the trouble was twofold: first, that the proprietors ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... she was so tall; and spent, Her shrunk lids open; her lean fingers shut Close, close; their sharp and livid nails indent The clammy palm; then all is mute: That way, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... had not yet been fixed. George, standing opposite his uncle, twisted one leg about the other; twined his clammy hands; put the awful question: "By how much will the allowance ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... speech progressed my hair began to stiffen at the roots, and a chilly sensation like that which might ensue from the unexpected and clammy touch of the dead, ran through me. It was hard to die so young and so far from home. Theological questions which before had attracted little or no attention, now came uppermost in our minds. We thought ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... being watery with small flakes suspended, and sometimes containing blood," cramps in the extremities. The pulse is very slow and strong at first, but later weak and rapid, sometimes sweat and saliva pour out. Dizziness, faintness, and blindness, the skin clammy, cold, and bluish or livid; temperature low with dreadful tetanic convulsions, and finally stupor. (McIlvaine and ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... strain a syllable when I state that the worst forms of confirmed indigestion originate in the practice that is here explained. By this practice all the functions are vitiated, the skin at one moment is flushed and perspiring, and at the next moment it is pale, cold and clammy, while every other secreting structure ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... Americans get used to the fact that France is under water for half the year they're perpetually risking their lives by not being properly protected. I suppose you've been tramping through all this nasty clammy mud as if you'd been taking a stroll ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... room, and helped him off with his wet clothes. He tried to say something ideally fit in recognition of his heroic act, and he articulated some bald commonplaces of praise, and shook Staniford's clammy hand. "Yes," said the latter, submitting; "but the difficulty about a thing of this sort is that you don't know whether you haven't been an ass. It has been pawed over so much by the romancers that you don't feel like a hero in real life, but a hero of fiction. I've a notion ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Llanero immediately approaches the prostrate colt, and deliberately beats its head with a heavy bludgeon until it becomes quite senseless. He then places his saddle upon its back, adjusts a murderous bit in its clammy mouth, and seats himself firmly in the saddle at the moment when the animal recovers strength enough to rise. The fearful plunges, the wild bounds, the vicious attempts at biting, which ensue, are all in vain; in a couple of days he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... thunderbolts hidden under flowers, but they know how to hold in check that monster advertisement. It is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out on the right and on the left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in through its thousand little inhaling organs all the gossip and slander and praise afloat, to spit out again at the public when it is vomiting its black gall. But those who are ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... even in these most trying circumstances. His complete control, too, over his mind, enfeebled as it was by loss of blood and pain, was wonderful. His suffering was intense; his hands were cold, his skin clammy. But not a groan escaped him—not a sign of suffering, except the light corrugation of the brow, the fixed, rigid face, the thin lips, so tightly compressed that the impression of the teeth could be seen through them. Except these, he controlled by his iron will all evidence of emotion, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... of Sunday to the crew, they are allowed on that day a pudding, or, as it is called, a "duff.'' This is nothing more than flour boiled with water, and eaten with molasses. It is very heavy, dark, and clammy, yet it is looked upon as a luxury, and really forms an agreeable variety with salt beef and pork. Many a rascally captain has made up with his crew, for hard usage, by allowing them duff twice a ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... search of oxen, owing to which he fell sick, and shortly died, though he might have been cured by letting blood before the disease had settled. Before leaving this place we procured some thousand weight of pitch, or rather a grey and white gum, like frankincense, as clammy as turpentine, which grows black when melted, and very brittle; but we mixed it with oil, of which we had 300 jars from the prize taken to the north of the equator, not far from Guinea. Six days before leaving Zanzibar, the head merchant of the factory sent a letter to our captain, in friendship, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to drop upon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemed alive and writhing. When the little man endeavored to stand erect the ceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. His clothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by smoke, tried to pierce the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... in themselves to the accomplishment of the end intended. The appliance must be water, and not sand—or rather water or sand, with judgment, discrimination, and tact; for the gardener often finds that a judicious mixture of sand with the clayey and clammy soil about the roots of his plants is just what is required. The principle is, that the appliance must be an appropriate one—that is, one indicated by a wise consideration of the circumstances of the case, and of the natural characteristics of ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... at it. You've got me all clammy. We could do with a little good news. Wait a minute! Is it by any chance about ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... inward triumph doth my soul upheave And spread abroad through endless 'spersed air. My nimble mind this clammy clod doth leave, And lightly stepping on from star to star Swifter than lightning, passeth wide and far, Measuring the unbounded heavens and wasteful sky; Nor aught she finds her passage to debar, For still ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... not answer. All his energies were needed to steer a course through the scrub which covered the steep hill-side. The morning mist lay thick and clammy. It was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to miss the way back to the trench, and either go over the steep edge to the beach or get in among the enemy snipers ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges |
