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More "Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wood, but its devious windings eventually brought us out on to an open space on the farther side. Here we at once perceived traces of another kind. A litter of dirty rags, pieces of paper, scraps of stale bread, bones and feathers, with hoof-marks, wheel ruts, and the ashes of a large wood fire, pointed clearly to a gipsy encampment recently broken up. I laid my hand on the heap of ashes, and found it still warm, and on scattering ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... found, in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in a shabby black-and-yellow frock was doing a Spanish dance on a cleared ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the things I knew was rotten you said was the way to live. For you muddled with books and pictures, an' china an' etchin's an' fans, And your rooms at college was beastly — more like a whore's than a man's — Till you married that thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone, An' she gave you your social nonsense; but where's that kid o' your own? I've seen your carriages blocking the half o' the Cromwell Road, But never the doctor's brougham to help the missus unload. (So there ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... superfluous. Power: unlimited, absolute power was his goal. With his end achieved he could establish an autocracy, a dynasty of science: whatever he chose. Oh, it was a rich-hued, golden, glowing dream; a dream such as men's souls don't formulate in these stale days—not our kind of men. The Teutonic mysticism—you understand. And it was ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to get on better, but at the moment the surface changed and we came up over a rise with hard sastrugi. At the top we camped for lunch. What was the difficulty? One theory was that some members of the second party were stale. Another that all was due to the bad stepping and want of swing; another that the sledge pulled heavy. In the afternoon we exchanged sledges, and at first went off well, but getting into soft snow, we found a terrible drag, the second party coming quite ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... weakened him, and whatever for should he walk on, wherever to, to which goal? No, there were no more goals, there was nothing left but the deep, painful yearning to shake off this whole desolate dream, to spit out this stale wine, to put an end to this miserable and ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... could not wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetite they feed. But she made hungry Where ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... is a new Martin Chuzzlewit, told by a wiser Mark Tapley. It is typical of something sombre and occasionally stale in the mood of Dickens when he wrote that book, that the comic servant is not really very comic. Mark Tapley is a very thin shadow of Sam Weller. But if Dickens had written it in a happier mood, there might have been a truer meaning in Mark Tapley's happiness. For it is true that this illogical ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... can fancy scenes in which you'd be quite natural." And indeed I could see the slipshod re-arrangements of stale properties—the stories I tried to produce pictures for without the exasperation of reading them—whose sandy tracts the good lady might help to people. But I had to return to the fact that—for this sort of work—the daily mechanical ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... comrades and infested by filthy crawling things begotten of decaying sheepskins and Heaven alone knows what other foulnesses of that floating hell. He was sparingly fed upon weevilled biscuit and vile messes of tallowy rice, and to drink he was given luke-warm water that was often stale, saving that sometimes when the spell of rowing was more than usually protracted the boatswains would thrust lumps of bread sodden in wine into the mouths of the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fye on it, ah fye! 'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the closet and opened the door. On a shelf he saw half a loaf of bread, dry and stale. He took ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... live for myself. I have one inseparable companion—that is myself. I want to suffer my own sufferings, and enjoy my own enjoyments. This living for others is absurd. I hate second-hand emotions; they are stale and dull. But, Pensee, you haven't told me ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... stairs soldiers were eating hunches of stale bread and knocking the necks from wine bottles with their bayonets. One lumpish fellow came to the door and offered me part of a sausage which he was devouring, a kindly act that touched me, and I wondered whether the other prisoners might find among their ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... and French prisons, which I shall not repeat; for indeed the public has been surfeited with sea-stories of late, from many sufficiently dull ones up to the genial wisdom of 'Peter Simple,' and the gorgeous word- painting of 'Tom Cringle's Log.' And now the subject is stale—the old war and the wonders thereof have died away into the past, like the men who fought in it; and Trafalgar and the Bellerophon are replaced by Manchester and 'Mary Barton.' We have solved the old sea-going problems pretty well—thanks to wise English-hearted Captain Marryat, now ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... uprising and with rumors of the Pretender's movements. From many indications Eliza Haywood would seem to have taken a lively interest in the Stuart cause, but certainly she had no exceptional facilities for reporting the course of events, and consequently her budget of information was often stale or filled with vague surmises. But she did not overlook the opportunity to narrate con amore such pathetic incidents as the death of Jemmy Dawson's sweetheart at the moment of his execution, later the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Lidford House had oppressed him to-night? His youth was fast going—nay, had it not indeed gone from him for ever? had not youth left him all at once when he began his commercial career?—and the pleasures that had been fresh enough within the last few years were rapidly growing stale. He knew the German spas, the pine-groves where the hand played, the gambling-saloons and their company, by heart, though he had never stayed more than a fortnight at any one of them. He had exhausted Brittany and the South of France in these rapid scampers; skimmed the cream of their novelty, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... this trifling incident, the editor of Astley's Collection gives the following marginal reference, A merry passage. Ludere cum sacris is rather a stale jest, and perhaps the grand Raulim was as ingenious as Correa and his priest, to trick the ignorant unbelievers in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... to a mortal conception of God—a distant glitter of candles beyond colossal pillars, a fragrance of stale incense, a silence in which the shadowy crimson of banners, suspended high in the nave, was like a soft blaring of celestial trumpets. Exaltation took hold of her as she recalled the miracles of orthodox faith and the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... editor found that everybody believed it to be a sheer invention of his own to "once more boom" the "Clarion." If they had doubted MR. Dimmidge, they utterly rejected MRS. Dimmidge as an advertiser! It was a stale joke that nobody would follow up; and on the heels of this came a ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... deal of work to do together. In the end, how well we do that work will depend on the spirit in which we approach it. We must seek fresh answers, unhindered by the stale prescriptions of the past. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "I suppose—I shall join you; but as a matter of fact you see, what I've done to-day has been to come right away.... You see I am still in my garden tweeds.... There it was down there, a sort of stale mate...." ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... some undeserved misfortune and of taking possession of a home to which he had some ancient right, was the tone given to Harry's settlement at Yoden, and for a long time he felt compelled to honor it, even after it had become stale and tedious. For it pleased his mother, and she did many unconsidered things to encourage it. For instance, she gave a formal dinner at Hatton Hall to which she invited all the county families and wealthy manufacturers within her knowledge. ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... The book he opened had been a famous novel, a best-seller, some five years ago. It had been thought "advanced." Advanced!—but now how inconceivably flat and stale! How on earth had anyone ever praised it, called it "epoch-marking," bought it by the thousand thousand? Why, the thing was dead—a dead book, than which there is nothing deader. This reflection gave him something to think of for a while. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... that they were Radicals at all. It denounced the attempt of any man to interfere by violence with slaves or Slavery where protected by the supreme law of the land. It repudiated as stale and ridiculous the charge of Abolitionism against them. And declared that such an accusation is without a shadow of truth to ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... and as he did so the clock struck three, and he opened the door and passed out into the hall. It was paved with black and white marble; the walls were washed in a dull yellowish tint, and the prevalent odour of antiseptics was mingled with a stale smell of cooking. At the back rose a straight staircase carpeted with brass-bound India-rubber, like a ship's companion-way; and down that staircase she would come in a moment—he fancied he heard ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... now soliciting a customer to take his choice of three lank cod-fish, ticketed at so much per lb. Billiard-rooms were silent, save where a solitary marker practised impossible strokes: print-shops exhibited a dull uniformity of stale engravings; and the innumerable horde of mongrel puppies of all varieties, that, particularly towards the end of term, are dragged about three or four in a string, and recommended as real Blenheims, genuine King Charles's, or "one of old Webb's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. Late in the afternoon his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head, began to sing. He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer—very flat and stale by this time—and taking down his concertina from the bookcase, where in week days it kept the company of seven volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist," played upon it some half-dozen very ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... has been sold by me,' the bookseller's voice replied from far up the Alpine height of the shop-ladder, where he stood dusting stale volumes, as was his habit of a morning before customers came. 'I have never heard of it—probably never shall;' and he shook out the duster, so as to hit the delicate mean between stifling Christopher and not ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Charley whined as Denver went through the grotesque ritual of donning space helmet and zipping up his glass cloth and metal foil suiting before he dared venture outside. Charley even tried to help by pouring himself through the stale air to hold open the locker where the tool-belts and holstered heat ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... trudging from one indifferent editor to another peddling "space." And why not? Mae Smith had been young and good-looking once, also a local celebrity in her way when she had signed a column in a daily. But she had grown stale with the grind, and having no special talent or personality had been easily replaced when a new Managing Editor came. Now, though chipper as a sparrow, she was always in need of a ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Asia, and America. He alluded more particularly to their application to the dyeing of yarns, &c., by the Scotch Highlanders, under the name of "Crottles." "The process of the manufacture of the various crottles, generally consisted in macerating the powdered lichen for two or three weeks, in stale urine, exposing the mass freely to the air by repeated stirring, and adding lime, salt, alum, or argillaceous and other substances, either to heighten the color or impart consistence. To such an extent did this custom at one time prevail, that, in several of our northern counties ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Mr. Alcott stood in front of the fire-place, his long gray hair streaming over his collar, his pale eyes turning quickly from one listener to another to hold them quiet, his hands waving to keep time with the orotund sentences which had a stale, familiar ring as if often repeated before. Mr. Emerson stood listening, his head sunk on his breast, with profound submissive attention, but Hawthorne sat astride of a chair, his arms folded on the back, his chin dropped on ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... difficulty we secured a small wooden compartment with seats sharp and narrow and a smell of cabbage, bad tobacco, and dirty clothes. The floor was littered with sunflower seeds and the paper wrappings of cheap sweets. The air came in hot stale gusts down the corridor, met the yet closer air of our carriage, battled with it and retired defeated. We flung open the windows and a cloud of dust rose gaily to meet us. The whole of the Russian army ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... misogynist. A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall. The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only light. The air was stale, for both windows were closed ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... windows. We woke to the rumbling of distant cannon, which might more correctly be called a trembling of the air rather than a true sound. Still hoarding our provisions, we ate a frugal breakfast of stale bread and of tea made from the dried leaves of linden trees. We started off at half-past seven, receiving a very friendly God-speed from our ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... together almost continually. Songs and glees enlivened their evenings, and nearly every day there were boating excursions, or rides on horseback, in which Mr. and Mrs. King and Mr. and Mrs. Blumenthal invariably joined. No familiarity could stale the ever fresh charm of the scenery. The beautiful river, softly flowing in sunlight through richly cultivated meadows, always seemed to Mr. Blumenthal like the visible music of Mendelssohn. Mr. King, who had been in Germany, was strongly reminded of the Rhine and the Black Forest, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the bear explained that they were very sorry, but they would have to eat him. Michael, the fox, did not run away as the others had done, but smiled in a friendly manner, and remarked: 'Things taste so stale in a valley; one's appetite is so much better up on a mountain.' The wolf and the bear agreed, and they turned out of the hollow where they had been walking, and chose a path that led up the mountain side. The fox trotted cheerfully by his two big companions, but ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... talk for a girl you'd see itching and scratching, and she with a stale stink of poteen on her from selling in ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... observant of his master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina served us her good food with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood events—how perfect a beginning for the day! How stale beside our breeze-swept table was any board at which I had ever sat! I do declare that I have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my little cousin whom her world had pronounced "plain." Vere and I basked in ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... visiting my friend's apartment in upper New York. If you ever want me again, you will find me amongst my books. If my invention halts and other interests stale, you have furnished me this day with a problem which cannot fail to give continual occupation to my energies. If I succeed in solving it first, I shall be happy to share my knowledge with you. Till then, trust the laws of nature. No man when once on the outside of a door can button it on the inside, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... "I'm stale, I guess, or have lost my nerve or—or something." Armstrong smiled,—a crooked smile that failed to extinguish the furrows on his forehead. "By the way, have you got a little superfluous nerve lying about that you could stake ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... that life was stale, flat and unprofitable when she alighted at Riverton station in the dusk of the next evening. She was not expected until a later train and there was no one to meet her. She walked drearily through the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... turned your head? Charming, talented, you are enthusiastic; but at the same time you can't forget that you want to smoke. Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, and dull time. We are stale and dull ourselves, we can only beget gutta-percha boys, [Footnote: An allusion to Grigorovitch's well-known story.] and the only person who does not see that is Stassov, to whom nature has given a rare faculty for getting drunk on slops. The causes of this are ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... banknote on the kitchen table, with a weight on it to keep it from blowing away. They closed the house door. They'd eaten fully and luxuriously of eggs and partly stale bread and the sensation was admirable. They went out to ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... fast, O Emir, not so fast, I pray you! Better a double mouthful of stale porpoise fat, with a fin bone in it, than ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... legitimate applause, strikes out a fantastic or monstrous innovation; and arrests the attention of many who would fall asleep over monotonous excellence. Imitators are soon found;—fashion adopts the new folly;—the old standard of perfection is deemed stale and obsolete;—and thus, by degrees, the whole literature of a country becomes changed and deteriorated. It appears to us, that we are now labouring in a crisis of this nature. In our last Number, we noticed the revolution ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... for the English satirist in the exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, what room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law! On this point the French are babes in iniquity compared to us—a counsel prostituting himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that it is hardly food for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much more complicated and interesting knavery whereon to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old and stale, it was to be taken away, and new and warm put in its place, to show that God has but little delight in the service of his own people when their duties grow stale and mouldy. Therefore he removed his old, stale, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... POULTICE.—Take stale bread in crumbs, pour boiling sweet milk, or milk and water over it, and simmer till soft, stirring it well; then take it from the fire, and gradually stir in a little glycerine or sweet oil, so as to render the ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... have endeavoured to turn to the illustration of our pages. There is no sinister motive in the selection; but if we have hit the white, or rather the black, of such variableness, "let the galled jade wince," and pay the Mirror the stale compliment of veluti ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... young and childish, and so little qualified—how could I be otherwise?—to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that, in going to Hungerford Stairs of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out at half-price on trays at the confectioners' doors in Tottenham Court Road; and I often spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or bought a roll, or a slice of pudding. There were two pudding-shops between which I was divided, according ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... She tried to be sad, so as not to be angry; but it made her angry that she couldn't be sad. And yet where was misery, misery too beaten for blame and chalk-marked by fate like a "lot" at a common auction, if not in these merciless signs of mere mean, stale feelings? ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... see he's not a common boy? he doesn't whine,' she remarked, and handed me a stale bun, saying, 'Here, Master Charles, and you needn't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up at the leg of bacon in the corner, and thought he had made a good pun; but it was fearfully old and stale to be printed in a book, and we do so only out of deference to his feelings. No right-minded and highly moral person will make puns; and our hero is only excusable on the ground that he was alone, and ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... contrary parties, you have been always regarded as one of the first persons of the age, and yet not one writer has dared to tell you so; whether we have been all conscious to ourselves that it was a needless labour to give this notice to mankind, as all men are ashamed to tell stale news; or that we were justly diffident of our own performances, as even Cicero is observed to be in awe when he writes to Atticus; where, knowing himself over-matched in good sense, and truth of knowledge, he drops the gaudy train of words, and is no longer the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... must have had in common many pleasant memories of people and places dear to both, so that his ideal of matrimony described in Virginibus Puerisque was realised, and he and his wife had 'many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale.' ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... full of contrasts, for the next day was one of brilliant sunlight and perfect calm. Despite the good weather the dogs seemed almost lifeless. It was impossible to get them to move faster than a walk, light though the loads were. Henson and the Eskimos also appeared to be a bit stale, so that it seemed wise to make a single march here instead ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... Yea. Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety. Wonderful, all the same, what perversely bad hits he will persist in making, at times. Does things now and again you'd think a school-girl with a bat would ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... It would be a pity if all these problems could be solved. The joy of the intellectual life would be largely gone. I would not rob a man of his problems, nor would I have another man rob me of my problems. They are the delight of life, and the whole intellectual world would be stale and unprofitable ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... forest with little life and no variety—nothing but a deadly monotony of twilit tangle. There is nothing new under the sun—even immediately under it in Central Africa. The only novelty is the human heart—Central Man. That is never stale, and there are depths still unexplored, heights still unattained, warm rivers of love, cold streams of hatred, and vast plains where strange motives ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... not that the historical facts are alluded to in English, unless by Dr. Moore in his View of Italy[368]. His account is false and flippant, full of stale jests about old men and young wives, and wondering at so great an effect from so slight a cause. How so acute and severe an observer of mankind as the author of Zeluco could wonder at this is inconceivable. He knew that a basin of water spilt on Mrs. Masham's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... that in only once trying them, and viewing them, we find out their secret, and that afterwards the show is too superficial to arrest our attention. As dramatists and novelists repeat their plots, so does man's life repeat itself, and at length grows stale. This is what, in my desponding moments, I have sometimes suspected. What to do, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... how greatlie this mishap had discouraged the Romans, and again by the small circuit of their campe, gessing that they could be no great number, and that lacke of vittels sore oppressed them, they stale priuilie away one after another out of the campe, purposing to assemble their powers againe, and to forestall the Romans from vittels, and so to driue the matter off till winter: which if they might doo (vanquishing these or closing them from returning) they trusted that ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... never-changing tale Of mortal maladies is worn and stale. You cannot charm, or interest, or please, By harping on that minor chord, disease. Say you are well, or all is well with you. And God shall hear your words and ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... court feathers properly adjusted, fresh gauzes and pretty toilettes and fragile, fair women, if you desire simply to skim the surface of life, here is your world for you. Be content with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale intrigues which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals' places and marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in stealthy compromises, so ashamed are we of the mere semblance of passion. Not a single one of all these eloquent faces tells you of a soul, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... entertain. As I moved through the mist and the silence, and felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the wrist of the savage who stalked before me, I cared not how soon they made an end, seeing how stale and unprofitable were all things ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Andrew was out of sight he pulled his leather satchel round so that he could open it with ease, and, having taken a handful of broken and very stale crumbs out of it for immediate use, he dropped Winsome's parcel within. There it kept company with a tin flask of milk which his mother filled for him every morning, having previously scalded it well to restore its freshness. This was specially carefully done after a sad occasion upon which his mother, ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Life was so horribly stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer grief, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... estate of life that spreads about us all, open to all of us in just the measure that we can scramble out of our individual selves—to a more general self. I seemed to be hanging there at the brim of my stale and painful den, staring at the unthought-of greatness of the world, with an unhoped-for wind out of ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness. It had been Gwendolen's habit to think of the persons around her as stale books, too familiar to be interesting. Deronda had lit up her attention with a sense of novelty: not by words only, but by imagined facts, his influence had entered into the current of that self-suspicion and self-blame which awakens ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 6. Stale or Decayed Foods.—Food which has been allowed to stand until it is spoiled, or has become stale, musty, or mouldy, such as mouldy bread or fruit, or tainted meat, is unfit to be eaten, and is often ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... held them out over the stove and nodded to Billy. Bucky had opened his can, and approached the stove with a pan of water, coming in beside Billy without noticing him. He brought with him a foul odor of stale tobacco smoke and whisky. After he had put his water over the fire he turned to one of the bunks and with half a dozen coarse epithets roused Thompson, who sat up stupidly, still half drunk. Henry had gone to a small table, and Sweedy followed him with the bacon. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... own territory. The whole metaphysical realm consisted in nothing more than creatures of fancy and heavenly things at the precise time when real beings and earthly things were beginning to concentrate all interest upon themselves. Metaphysics had become stale. Helvetius and Condillac were born in the same year that Malebranche and Arnauld, the last great French metaphysicians of the seventeenth ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven. Oh times In which the meager, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute took at once The attraction of a ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Beth, believing that she understood horse language. She took a stale piece of candy out of her pocket, and gave it to Dolly. This attention sealed a ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... throng'd with faces, the broadcloth and laces, The booths, and the tents, and the cars, The bookmakers' jargon, for odds making bargain, The nasty stale smell of cigars. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... I tried to sleep, but the atmosphere in the carriage, of smoke, babies, stale clothes, and the peculiar smell of the Russian peasantry which no one who has known it can forget, made sleep impossible. But I travelled fairly comfortably, resolutely shutting my ears to the talk, thinking of fishing in England, and shifting from one bone to another as each ached in turn from ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... will be of as high a quality as anything that the average commercial photographer can produce, and, better yet, it will not have any flat and stale commercial flavor about it. Nothing is more static and banal than the composition that the ordinary professional will produce if you fail to prevent him from having his own way. Ten to one, all the lower half of the picture ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... humor, detects and saves himself on the verge of pious caricature and solemn bathos; knows how to meet important committees on microscopic reforms as well as self-appointed theological inquisitors and all the insistent cranks that waylay a busy pastor. Life cannot grow stale; and by letting the boys lead him forth by the streams of living water and into the whispering woods he catches again the wild charm of that all-possible past: the smell of the campfire, the joyous freedom and good health of God's ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... almost as much as she. Therefore she could say to herself, without the imputation of heartlessness, that when she left her mother it was for a noble, a sacred use. In point of fact, she left her very little, and she spent hours in jingling, aching, jostled journeys between Charles Street and the stale suburban cottage. Mrs. Tarrant sighed and grimaced, wrapped herself more than ever in her mantle, said she didn't know as she was fit to struggle alone, and that, half the time, if Verena was away, she wouldn't have the nerve to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... gave him an entirely innocent but delightful pleasure merely to see a flapper. The reaction from the battle-field produced a condition of hyperaesthesia in which all the theatrical values were altered. Trivial things gained intensity and stale things novelty. The actor, instead of having to coax his audiences out of the boredom which had driven them to the theatre in an ill humor to seek some sort of distraction, had only to exploit the bliss of smiling men who were no longer under fire and under military discipline, but actually ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... plain—the reasons for Lady Beldonald's fond calculation, which they quite justified—were written large in her face, so large that it was easy to understand them as the only ones she herself had ever read. What was it then that actually made the old stale sentence mean something so different?—into what new combinations, what extraordinary language, unknown but understood at a glance, had time and life translated it? The only thing to be said was that time and ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... once elaborately tooled, patent springs, fairy lock, fit receptacle for bank-notes, billets-doux, memoranda of debts of honour, or pleasurable engagements. Now how worn, tarnished, greasy, rascallion-like, the costly bauble! Filled with what motley, unlovable contents: stale pawn-tickets of foreign monts de piete, pledges never henceforth to be redeemed; scrawls by villanous hands in thievish hierolgyphics; ugly implements replacing the malachite penknife, the golden toothpick, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dinner was not exactly a success. We invited all the foreigners in Hiroshima, twelve in number, and everybody talked a great deal and laughed at everybody's stale jokes, and pretended to be terribly hilarious. But there was a pathetic droop to every mouth, and not a soul referred to home. Each one seemed to realize that the mere mention of the word would ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Mexican War had made serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... in another direction. He went to the cafe where he fiddled. At this hour it was like an empty cavern. A smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke pervaded the imprisoned air. He sat down upon the deserted platform and pretended to practise. He played erratically, feverishly. The waiters, moving about their morning preparations with an almost uncanny quiet, listened attentively. Finally one ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that the worst half of their journey was accomplished, they made a halt, under the lee of a sheltering mountain, for rest and refreshment. And, sitting down on a fallen tree, from whose barkless trunk they brushed off the snow, they took out and commenced chewing their stale and frozen bread, with a few small pieces of duck-meat, remaining from their breakfast, and comprising the last of their provisions. The animal heat, produced by their great and continued exertions in travelling, had thus far prevented ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Thario having shown in many ways he was growing stale on the job and in need of a vacation, I decided to take him with me. Besides, if the thought of using the weed as a source of cheap rawmaterial came to anything, the engagement of his interest at an early stage would increase his usefulness. Before setting out for the field ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows; in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain; in the time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine,—it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a raid, and were seeking a supposed new "listening post" of the enemy. There had been a very heavy bombardment of the German trenches all day, and it was only held up for three-quarters of an hour to let us do our job. The new-stale earth turned up by the shells extended fifty yards in No Man's Land. (Only earth that has been blown on by the wind is fresh "over there." Don't, if you have a weak stomach, ever turn up any earth; though there may not be rotting ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... he, "evidently is the result of other peculiarities which nullify the harmony of the more important features; in the first place the thinness of the cheeks and their hue of old wood dotted here and there with freckles, calm stains of the colour of stale bran; then the flat braids of white hair drawn smooth under a frilled cap, and finally the modest dress, a black dress clumsily made, dragging across the bosom, and showing the lines of her stays stamped in relief ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... saying a great deal, he reflected, one seldom enough, in our staid, our stale society, meets a person of whom one can say ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... ye!) Can sightless touch—can vision keen Hunt where the Winds of the World have been And searching, learn what rumors mean? (Nay, ye who are wise! Nay, listen ye!) When tracks are crossed and scent is stale, 'Tis fools who shout—the fast who fail! But wise ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... decidedly an ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... was meagre and stale-smelling, with bare floor and stained and sagging wall-paper; unfurnished save for a battered ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... bread after an honest fashion. The Grinder's mode of life was too well known for even a mother to attempt to deny it. But she pretended that she was very honest herself, and appealed to sundry brandy-balls and stale biscuits in her window, to prove that she lived after ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... drink only from your canteens. If the canteens fail, never fill them from flowing water unless the Indians also drink from the stream. There are always small pools to be found, and, though their water may be warm and stale, it is not likely to be poisoned, as the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... spring red seed, in preference to the white, is put into a clean pot; milk or stale beer is poured upon it, and it is left for two or three days in this state; it is then mixed with a quantity of fine fat earth, and set aside in a hot chamber, till the seeds begin to put out shoots. They are then sown in a hot-bed. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... New York, tired of dancing, tired of everything. Broadway was full of people hurrying to the theatres. Cars rattled by. All the electric lights in the world were blazing down on the Great White Way. And it all seemed stale ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... journey—and it was with the utmost difficulty that the horses performed it. Though they had started so early, it was quite late in the afternoon when they turned the flank of an eminence which formed part of the upland called Greenhill. While the horses stood to stale and breathe themselves Tess looked around. Under the hill, and just ahead of them, was the half-dead townlet of their pilgrimage, Kingsbere, where lay those ancestors of whom her father had spoken and sung to painfulness: Kingsbere, the spot of all spots in the world which could be ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... hosses; everybody knows about that. It got so the ginnies would line up in a bunch, every time he starts, 'n' holler: 'They're off—there he goes!' They does it regular, 'n' pretty soon the crowds get next 'n' then everybody does it. He begins to stale off at Pimlico, so I ships him to Miss Goodloe, 'n' writes her to turn him out ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... prevented games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... civilization. The sort of attraction these unchaste, nakedly adorned, women "of fashion" hold out can never inspire that precious, priceless thing which "passeth all understanding," which survives all the travail of tribulation, that beautiful emotion that "age cannot wither nor custom stale," which radiates the dark places with ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the place. I divined on the instant that this was his habit, to stand by the door before supper and say just those words to the last arrivals. I had a vision of him standing by his mission door aforetime, repeating one jest, or more likely one stale euphuism night after night. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... wonder Valeria had warned her against playing with fire! Was it always like this when people fell in love? What a ridiculous, uncomfortable, outrageous thing it was! How destructive to common sense and sanity and everything that kept life running on reasonable lines. A poor joke at best, and oh, how stale! ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... just finished dinner. The neatly cleaned bone of a chop was on a plate by her side; a small dish which had contained a rice-pudding was empty; and the only food left on the table was a small rind of cheese and a piece of stale bread. Mr. Henshaw's face fell, but he drew his chair up to the ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... enfranchisement usually made by our legislators. We found on comparing notes that the arguments usually made were the same in the House of Commons as in the halls of Congress. If the honorable gentlemen could only have heard their stale platitudes with good imitations in voice and manner, I doubt whether they would ever again air their absurdities. I regretted that our Caroline Gilkey Rogers had not been there to have given her admirable impersonation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Occasionally, during a lull, songs were sung by music-hall artistes of past celebrity, who were now glad of the chance to earn a few shillings before an uncritical audience. The atmosphere was charged with the scent of rouge and powder, brandy and stale sherry. Coarse jest and laughter, ringing on the ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Desmond," was the verdict of grateful subalterns, who found these tea-drinkings a vast improvement on stale home papers, and half-hearted gambling at the Club. There was always music. Honor, besides playing magnificently, could be safely relied upon for impromptu accompaniments. The Chicken, and an irrepressible Irishman of the Sikhs, who gloried in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and sick and frantic and furious; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the clouds, the sun, he had the Rampio, he had Annunziata, he even had Annunziata's uncle; and with all this he had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, that he knew to satiety, a world that was stale and stuffy and threadbare, with its gilt rubbed off and its colours tarnished, into a world where everything was fresh and undiscovered and full of savour, a great cool blue and green world that from minute to minute ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... pause then, while the wheels squelched through the mud below, and the rain beat rhythmically on the windows and roof of the cab. Its noise seemed to ally itself to the interior smell of the vehicle, an odor of damp leather and stale straw and ancient stables. The Professor stared intently through the wet glass, and Mary remembered, with a touch of amusement, her first meeting with him, when she had sat beside him and occupied her thoughts with the ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... one never noticed, or a scented herb which has always grown upon those rocks, but might as well never have done so, but for the other pair of eyes which drew ours to it, or the other hand which crushing made us know its fragrance. Pages of books, seemingly stale, revive into fresh meaning; new music is almost certain to be learned; and a harmony, a rational sequence, something very akin to music, perceived in what had been hitherto but a portion of life's noise and confusion. The changes of style which we note in the case of great ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... to find brandy in the cellars of Craig-nure (the invaders never thought of seeking a cellar for anything more warming than peats), a boll of meal in handfuls here and there among the meal-girnels of the commoner houses that lay open to the night, smelling of stale ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... when Collot d'Herbois lounged before him, with mud-bespattered legs stretched out before him, with dubious linen at neck and wrists, and an odour of rank tobacco and stale, cheap wine pervading his whole personality, the more fastidious man of the world, who had consorted with the dandies of London and Brighton, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... best work Shakespeare has more faults than any other poet of England. He is in turn careless, extravagant, profuse, tedious, sensational; his wit grows stale or coarse; his patriotism turns to bombast; he mars even such pathetic scenes as the burial of Ophelia by buffoonery and brawling; and all to please a public that ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... meant to get my money's worth. Well—the first one I laid out in a great tall glass of lemonade. Say, that was the first time I came up against the disillusions of life. Nothing but a little sweetened water. The next nickel went for peanuts, and they were too stale for ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the woodwork; but she was not sure that they had not been there eleven years before; and there were darnings in the carpets and curtains, which affected her with the same mixture of novelty and familiarity. Certain stale smells about the place (minor smells as compared with the prevalent odour) confused her; she could not decide whether she remembered them of old, or was reminded of the odours she used to catch in passing the pantry ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of water had seeped into the little kettle; and this they used for their tea, mixing the flour with the stale water from the mud pool. Then, they lighted pipes and lay back ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... hash of rags allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and partridges for pates are constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly shaped to represent those birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell marshmallow paste made out of Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts the eyes of a fresh mackerel in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp customers; and as to drinks, one dyer boldly puts over his door "Burgundy Vintages!" They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds of glass. Adulteration on adulteration, moans M. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... after years they must have had in common many pleasant memories of people and places dear to both, so that his ideal of matrimony described in Virginibus Puerisque was realised, and he and his wife had 'many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale.' ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... me of paying a visit this summer to the land of the Czar; that I want companions; that I like young ones, who will follow my ways better than old ones, who won't; that I enjoy fresh ideas freshly expressed, and am tired of stale platitudes; in short, if you will entrust your youngsters to me, I will take charge of them, and point out what is mostly worth seeing and remembering at the places ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... have continued, doubtless, had there been no Germans and Persians to break through the frontiers and destroy. The truth seems to be that, during the third and fourth centuries of our era, classical civilization, like an overtrained athlete, had grown "stale." ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... No, no, Amyras; tempt not Fortune so: Cherish thy valour still with fresh supplies, And glut it not with stale and daunted foes. But where's this coward villain, not my son, But traitor to my name and majesty? [He goes in and brings CALYPHAS out.] Image of sloth, and picture of a slave, The obloquy and scorn of my renown! How may my heart, thus fired with mine [191] eyes, Wounded with shame and ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... "Imprimatur," but brings his chair into the title-leaf; there sits and judges up or judges down what book he pleases. If this be suffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear?—which may in time bring in round fees to the Licenser, and wretched mis-leading to the people. But to the matter. He approves 'the publishing of this Book, to preserve the strength ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... odd Englishman; but he was chiefly won by the dolce far niente of the natives, and the Oriental license of polygamy. In a word, Joseph had the same taste for a full-blooded cuffee, that an epicure has for the haut gout of a stale partridge, and was in ecstasies at my extrication. He neglected his siestas and his accounts; he wandered from house to house with the rapture of an impatient bridegroom; and, till every thing was ready for the nuptial rites, no one at the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... door of the dance hall open, and stepped nonchalantly inside. It was the usual scene, there was the usual hilarious uproar, the usual close, almost fetid atmosphere that mingled the odours of stale beer and tobacco. Baldy Jack's was always popular, and the place, even for that early hour, was already doing a thriving business. Jimmie Dale's eyes, from a dozen couples swirling in the throes of the bunny-hug on the polished section of the floor ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... comfort. His servant brought him two letters. The first was from Chesnel. A letter from Chesnel smacked of the stale grumbling faithfulness of honesty and its consecrated formulas. With all respect he put it aside till the evening. But the second letter he read with unspeakable pleasure. In Ciceronian phrases, du Croisier groveled before him, like a Sganarelle ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Every inhabitant remaining was out of doors. The women, in twos and threes, bareheaded and in white aprons, gossiped in the alley between the blocks. Men, having a rest between drinks, sat on their heels and talked. The place smelled stale; the slate roofs glistered in the ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... at the entrance dazzled by the effect of the light on her eyes, which were smarting with the fog. She found herself looking into a long, narrow, taproom, smelling of stale beer and tobacco fumes, and lit by oil lamps suspended in wire frames from the raftered ceiling. The windows were curtained in cheerful red rep and the place was pleasantly warmed by a stove in one corner. By the stove was a small door ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... stated Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the notes of the great organ braying in their ears. They could hear the panting of the man working at the bellows. Marcos led the way and they passed on into the chapel which was dimly lighted by candles. The subtle odour of stale incense hung heavily in the atmosphere which seemed to vibrate as if the deeper notes of the organ shook the building in their vain ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... occasions, with extraordinary rapidity, and with that cheery appreciation of his labor which to any author is an immense stimulant. But following upon these happy humors came seasons of wearisome depression; the stale manuscript of yesterday lost its charm; the fancy refused to be lighted; he has not the heart to hammer at the business with dull, lifeless blows, and flings down his pen in despair. There are successive months during which this mood hangs upon him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... raisins, stoned and cut in half. One pound of currants, picked, washed and dried. One pound of beef suet chopped fine. One pound of grated stale bread, or, half a pound of flour and half a pound of bread. Eight eggs. A quarter of a pound of sugar. A glass of brandy. A pint of milk. A glass of wine. Two nutmegs, grated. A table-spoonful of mixed cinnamon and mace. ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... orthography which is akin to the subjunctive mood of the Latin tongue."—Booth cor. "To bring him into nearer connexion with real and everyday life."—Philological Museum, Vol. i, p. 459. "The commonplace, stale declamation of its revilers would be silenced."—Id. cor. "She [Cleopatra] formed a very singular and unheard-of project."—Goldsmith cor. "He [William Tell] had many vigilant, though feeble-talented and mean-spirited enemies."—R. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... significance in the history of our city, but also a political one. It has long been the temporal bulwark around the Mormon community. Results which have been seen in Utah affairs, preservative of the Mormon power and people, unaccountable to 'the outsider' except on the now stale supposition that 'the Mormon Church has purchased Congress,' may be better traced to the silent but potent influence of Z. C. M. I. among the ruling business men of America, just as John Sharp's position as one of the directors of U. P. R—-r,—a compeer among such men as ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Thou seem'st to be a most venerable pimp, and, I doubt not, hast abundance of discretion. Here is this young whoremaster, a true chip of the old venereal block his father, and myself, come for a comfortable cast of thy function. I don't mean that stale pretence of conjuring—d— futurity; let us live for the present, old Haly. Conjure me up a couple of hale wenches, and I warrant we shall get into the magic circle in a twinkling. What says Galileo? What says the Reverend Brahe? Here is a purse, you ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the Saturday matinee, crowded in. Clinging to the straps and the backs of seats, clutching each other with little gusts and ripples of laughter, they filled the aisle of the crowded car with a fresh and joyous life that touched the tired woman like a breath of spring. In all this work stale, stupidly weary, world there is nothing so refreshing as the wholesome laugh of a happy, care free, young girl. The woman whose heart was heavy with knowledge of life would have liked to take them in her arms. She felt a sense of gratitude as though she were indebted ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... scoffer cries;) "Gull'd by the despot's hireling lie, with lore That gives for Truth a shadow;—life is o'er When the delusion dies!" "Tremblest thou," hiss'd the serpent-herd in scorn, "Before the vain deceit? Made holy but by custom, stale and worn, The phantom Gods, of craft and folly born— The sick world's solemn cheat? What is this Future underneath the stone? But for the veil that hides, revered alone; The giant shadow of our Terror, thrown On Conscience' troubled glass— Life's lying likeness—in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... bottle of alleged claret included, for an absurdly small sum; but a carton of biscuits, a tin of sardines and a can of condensed milk are usually in evidence on the littered tables of the studios, and, together with the odor of stale coffee, bespeak an economy of diet which is incompatible with the good work which comes of the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... Russian, against whom we rail; S is a Spaniard, as slow as a snail; T is a Turk with his wife in a veil; U a United States' Student at Yale; V a Venetian in gondola frail; W Welshman, with coal, slate,—and shale; X is a Xanthian—or is he too stale?— Y is a Yorkshireman, bred by the Swale; Z is a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... back your vows. Elsewhere you trimmed and taught these lamps to burn; You bring them stale and dim to serve my turn. You lit those candles in another shrine, Guttered and cold you offer them on ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... continued Lady Harman, "I suppose—I shall join you; but as a matter of fact you see, what I've done to-day has been to come right away.... You see I am still in my garden tweeds.... There it was down there, a sort of stale mate...." ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... plain that among other things they were alluding to the stale and senseless story of the sledge filled with baskets of coin sent by the Spanish envoys on their departure from the Hague, on conclusion of the Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... morning something good really did happen. As he folded his blankets in the gray light a hard object rattled along the floor from them. He picked this up before he recognized it as a mutilated fragment from the stale half—loaf of bread he had salvaged. He wondered how he could have forgotten it, even in the plenitude of his banquet. There it was, a mere nubbin of crust and so hard it might almost have been taken for a petrified specimen of prehistoric bread. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... chairs stretched off into a circle of darkness. The stage, naked of setting; the actors whose haggard faces looked ghastly beyond the retrievement of make-up; the noisy and belated frenzy of carpenters and stage crew: all these were sights and sounds grown so stale that he found it hard to focus his attention on those nuances of interpretation which would make or ruin his play. He was conscious only of a yearning to find some quiet place where there was shade along a sea beach, and there to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... government been warned as to the danger of delay. "Your length in resolving;" Wilkes had said, "whatsoever your secret purposes may be—will put us to new plunges before long." The mission of Buckhurst was believed to be "but a stale, having some other intent than was expressed." And at last, the new plunge had been fairly taken. It seemed now impossible for Leicester to regain the absolute authority, which he coveted; and which he had for a brief season possessed. The States-General, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wanter pay. I'll tell you what, Amarilly, couldn't you take it out in gum? I hed a hull lot left over when the theayter shut down. It'll git stale ef I keep it much longer, and I'd like to git some of it offen ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in a shabby black-and-yellow ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... may equally as well, and indeed much better, preserve both by a due admixture of each sort of malt, and with suitable additions and proper correctives in the process or preparation of porter, both salubrious; as by the subsequent mixture of stale and mild beer, before sending out, or, afterwards, by drawing them from different casks into the same pot, when on draught, to suit the palate ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... port, boxed in the city, changed its aspect according to the time and state of the atmosphere. On calm mornings it was a yellowish green and smelled slightly of stale water,—organic water, animal water. The oyster stands established on its wharfs appeared sprinkled with this water ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... 1592," the year when Nash's "Summer's Last Will and Testament" was performed: "They wrong him much with their epitaphs and solemn devices, that entitle him not at the least the second Toy of London, the stale of Paul's," &c. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... ca'd a wee before The stale "three score an' ten," When Joy keeks kindly at your door, Aye bid her welcome ben. About yon blissfu' bowers above Let doubtfu' mortals speir; Sae weel ken we that "heaven is love," Since ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... It is, however, highly improbable that he would in the slightest degree care for this letter, though he might suffer some remorse for his spiteful attack on so good-natured a fellow. Cibber says in this letter that people "allow that by this last stale and slow endeavour to maul me, you have fairly wrote yourself up to the Throne you have raised, for the immortal Dulness of your humble servant to nod in. I am therefore now convinced that it would be ill-breeding ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... No sooner had the advertisement appeared than the editor found that everybody believed it to be a sheer invention of his own to "once more boom" the "Clarion." If they had doubted MR. Dimmidge, they utterly rejected MRS. Dimmidge as an advertiser! It was a stale joke that nobody would follow up; and on the heels of this came a letter from ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... we were going out of Town. Of this we were all unfeignedly glad, for London was growing stale. The leaves upon her trees were blown and dingy, odd pieces of paper crept here and there into her parks, the dust was paramount. What sultry air there was seemed to be second-hand. Out of the pounding traffic the pungent reek of oil and fiery metal ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... the grain to a black powder resembling smut: a cirumstance too well known to many farmers. Those who wish to consult the remedies recommended against this, may refer to The Annals of Agriculture, and most other books on the subject. It is usual with farmers to mix the Wheat with stale urine or brine, and to dry it by sifting it with slaked lime, which has the effect of causing it to vegetate quickly, and to prevent the attacks of many insects when the seed is first put into the ground. This is considered as productive of great benefit to the crop; ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... friendship for very long,' she replied, plucking a glittering firefly from her fan and laying it on his sleeve with her sweet light laugh. 'Like a firefly I shall dance out my short night, and die quickly before life grows stale!' ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... were not very pleasant ones. He walked round the room, which was reeking of patchouli or some such compound, well mixed with the odour of stale cigar smoke, looking absently at the gee-gar ornaments. On the mantelpiece were some photographs, and among them, to his disgust, he saw one of himself taken many years ago. With something as near an oath as he ever indulged in, he seized ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... fastening of the shutter and had presently this establishment open for his exploration. He found several sealed bottles of sterilized milk, much mineral water, two tins of biscuits and a crock of very stale cakes, cigarettes in great quantity but very dry, some rather dry oranges, nuts, some tins of canned meat and fruit, and plates and knives and forks and glasses sufficient for several score of people. There was also a zinc locker, but he was unable to negotiate ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... in imitation of tiling, greasy as to its walls and ceiling, and boasting an atmosphere rank with a reek compounded of a dozen elements, in their number alcohol, cheap perfumery, cooked meats, the sweat of unclean humanity, and stale ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... "Are you hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get stale." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not surprise me this morning when Dinky-Dunk announced that he felt a trifle stale and suggested that the family take a holiday on Tuesday and trek out to Dead-Horse Lake for the day. We're to hitch Tumble-Weed and Tithonus to the old prairie-schooner—for we'll be taking side-trails ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... whether the man recognized his visitor, Ellerey could not determine, but the door was opened wide, and they were admitted into a small, ill-lighted lobby. The entrance was a private one, not a usual cafe entrance, but the smell of stale liquor and smoke and the reek of highly spiced dishes proved that the cafe was under the same roof, and proclaimed it as a resort of that lower stratum of society which loves its food pungent and highly flavored. That there was such silence in the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... milestone in her emotional life on the evening of this day, when she said to herself that she loved Rodney Parker. She admitted it with a sort of splendid shame, as she went about her usual household occupations, passing from the hot pleasantness of the kitchen to the cool, stale odours of the dining room; running upstairs to light the bathroom-and hall-gas for her father and brother, and sometimes stepping for a moment into the darkness of the yard to be ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... song, that's stale here, will be new there a twelvemonth hence; and if a man of the town by chance come amongst them, he's reverenced for teaching ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... prospect of large subsidies which would undoubtedly be demanded of her. The jealous Queen could as ill brook the presence of the French in the Netherlands as that of the Spaniards whom they were to expel. She therefore embarrassed, as usual, the operations of the Prince by a course of stale political coquetry. She wrote to him, on the 18th of March, soon after the news of the Grand Commander's death, saying that she could not yet accept the offer which had been made to her, to take ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... demands on the Treasury has been resorted to does not appear. It is not consistent with a sound public policy. If it be done in this case, it may be done in all others. It would form a precedent for the satisfaction of all other stale and questionable claims in the same manner, and would undoubtedly be resorted to by all claimants who after successive trials shall fail to have their claims recognized and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... down at her, somehow into his memory came the recollection of the first time he ever saw her so—asleep in Casson's rooms, her childish face on the table, the room reeking with tobacco smoke and the stale odour of ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... oil of the machines and the new leather—a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Wendovers had shown Ida everything. They had opened cabinets, peered into secret drawers, sniffed at the stale pot-pourri in old crackle vases; they had dragged their willing victim through all the long slippery passages, by all the mysterious stairs and by-ways; they had obliged her to look at the interior of ghostly closets, where the ladies of old had stored their house linen or hung their mantuas ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... "Split me to the chin like a cod! Stood I not abaft of you all day long, packed like a herring in a pickle! 'Twas a pretty kettle of fish in your Noah's ark to-day! 'Tis all along o' goodness gone stale from too much ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... one's whole life is one continual sacrifice of inclinations, which to indulge, however laudable or innocent, would draw down the malice and reproach of those prudent people who never do ill, 'but feed and sleep and do observances to the stale ritual of quaint ceremony.' The charming and beautiful Mrs. Robinson: I pity her from the ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... wonder if young, enthusiastic brains were excited by all sorts of wild hopes—'perfectibility of the species,' 'rights of man,' 'universal liberty, equality, and brotherhood.'—My dear sir, there is nothing new under the sun; all that is stale and trite to a septuagenarian, who has seen where it all ends. I speak to you freely, because I am deeply interested in you. I feel that this is the important question of your life, and that you have talents, the possession ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... woman with the hauteur and detachment of her calling did not speak, but just glanced at a glass dish under a glass cover. There were two stale looking ham sandwiches. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... proceeds daily, when it has once begun, and the whole ground is carefully cleared off, so that no stale eggs shall remain. Thus if a portion of the ground has been neglected for a day or two, all the eggs must be flung into the sea, so as to begin afresh. As the season advances, the operations are somewhat contracted, leaving a part of the island undisturbed for breeding; and the gathering of ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance. Though Murray with his Miller may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... stove hung a crew of as dirty and disorderly men as ever came out of coal mine or lumber camp. Those who remained sober remained also somewhat aloof against the walls and kept their mouths shut. From the ceiling downward hung the thick, stale cloud of smoke from many strong pipes and the rancid poison of air discharged from many lungs had become a stench in the nostrils. Occasional figures walked with an unsteady lurch, while through the whole chaotic pandemonium ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... of the Union"; "our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country";—these are the mottoes, old, stale, hackneyed, and threadbare as they may have seemed when employed as the watchwords of an electioneering campaign, but clothed with a new power, a new significance, a new gloss, and a new glory, when uttered as the battlecries of a nation struggling for ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Stale cigarette smoke, the acrid odors of sweaty clothing, the vapors of alcohol, the breathing of a crowded multitude, worse by far than a trainful ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... sole and surly occupant of the sitting-room, where he had thrown himself at full length upon the sofa, to lie and yawn over the newspaper, which he vowed was as stale as last ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to everything can say about the food requisite to breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of '93 were fought upon such unsubstantial meals; for the Republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being in ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in the narrow streets pert factory-hands come noisily from work. Still he climbs on toward the Cathedral, through tortuous streets and little alley-ways. And in the gloomiest of them all there is no odour of a stale antiquity, but the perfume of a garden-full of roses, of a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the telegraph. From that point he sent it over the wire to Washington. It was successfully received at the Washington end, and never were human beings more surprised than were the train passengers on alighting at the capital city to find that they brought stale news, and that Clay's nomination was already known throughout Washington. It was the first public proof in America of the powers of the telegraph, and certainly a ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... again for prayer, when I found that ten shillings sixpence more had come in since the morning. With this one pound ten shillings sixpence we were able to buy, even this Saturday evening, the usual quantity of bread (as it might be difficult to get stale bread on Monday morning), and have some money left. God be praised, who gave us grace to come to the decision not to take any bread to-day, as usual, nor to buy anything for which we cannot pay at ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... came out in groups; the elder ones dressed in black, emitting a stale odor from their innumerable skirts and petticoats; the young ones erect in rigid corsets which crushed their breasts and obliterated the prominent curves of their hips, displaying with stately pride, above ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... went to brewing A barrel of ale, She put in some hops That it might not turn stale; But as for the malt— She forgot to put that; "This is a brave sober liquor." Said little ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... shoulder look blue or bright red, it is newly killed; but if black, green, or yellow, it is stale. The leg is known to be new by the stiffness of the joint. The head of a calf or a lamb is known by the eyes; if sunk or wrinkled, it is stale; if plump and lively, it ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... denied me. So life may run on like a leaden stream, and everything that grows and blossoms on its banks remain scentless and grey. The golden sunshine has hidden itself behind a mist, joy lies fainting in my heart, and all that once pleased me has grown stale and charmless. Do you recognize the happy youth of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... began to eat, affecting to forget his presence. The logs on the hearth burned sullenly, and gave no light. The poor oil-lamp, casting weird shadows from wall to wall, served only to discover the darkness. The room, with its low roof and earthen floor, and foul clothes flung here and there, reeked of stale meals and garlic and vile cooking. I thought of the parlour at Cocheforet, and the dainty table, and the stillness, and the scented pot-herbs; and though I was too old a soldier to eat the worse because my spoon lacked washing, I felt the ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about first nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle does not care for English plays; she says they are like stale bread-and-butter. I tell her that ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... room, dim with tobacco-smoke and redolent of stale beer. At the far end a small stage with faded red hangings. The card read No. 7, and the programme informed me that the turn was "A Bouquet of Ballads." A slight, fair-haired girl appeared on the stage. Her cheeks were burning, and she kept her eyes fixed on the floor. The piano jangled, ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... used in this process of scouring demand some notice. These comprise soda ash, soda crystals, caustic soda, silicate of soda, potash, caustic potash, soaps of various kinds, stale urine, ammoniacal compounds. Which of these may be used in any particular case depends upon a variety of reasons. Potash is the best alkaline agent to use. It agrees better with the fibre than any other, leaving it soft and elastic. Ammonia is the next best, ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... examined it to find how much it had been cut. He issued them slips, which they added as part of the contributions. "Good work—you, too, Gordon. Best week in the territory for a couple of months. I guess the citizens like you, the way they treat you." He laughed at his stale joke, and Gordon was willing to laugh with him. The credit on the dope had paid for most of the contributions. For once, he had money to show ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... got into a very low, close, swampy country, and our goat's flesh began to be very stale through the heat, not only of the sun, but the muletto's back: however, we pleased ourselves we should have one more meal of it before it was too bad to eat; so, having travelled about three miles from the river, we took up our lodging ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... of an apostle and the authority of an expert. Dissimulate, but do not simulate, disguise your real sentiments, but do not falsify them. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and mouth mostly shut. When new or stale gossip is brought to you, never let on that you know it already, nor that it really interests you. The reading of these Letters is better than hearing the average comedy, in which the wit of a ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... handling the buttons, and got my shirt all bloody, for I'd been in the drift forty hours, without sleep and breathing powder smoke, till my knees buckled and wobbled under me. To this day the smell of stale powder smoke makes a woman of me; but that morning I sang, for I was going for my bride, and the world was brighter than it has ever been for eighteen years. The little school-house was closed, at which I remembered that the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... with little indentures; with his Reynard full-face—Judas with his pale almost putrescent fatty body in the douche—Judas with whom I talked one night about Russia, he wearing my pelisse—the frightful and impeccable Judas: take this man. You see him, you smell the hot stale odour of Judas' body; you are not afraid of him, in fact, you hate him; you hear him and you know him. But you ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... been of that amphibious fry, Bold to prescribe, and busy to apply; His shop the gazing vulgar's eyes employs, With foreign trinkets and domestic toys. Here mummies lay, most reverently stale, And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail; Not far from some huge shark's devouring head The flying-fish their finny pinions spread. Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung, And near, a scaly alligator hung. In this place drugs in musty heaps ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... am, still, as you know I might find the detention inconvenient, I shall therefore sail early in the speronara. Your letters may be addressed to me as before, but bear in mind that your information is generally too stale. Now I will get a little rest, if you will show me where I am ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... eager to test the virtues of his new tea, for he put a kettle of cold water on the stove, thereby proving that he was an adept at the art of brewing the fragrant herb, since it requires fresh water, brought to a boil, and not stale stuff, to extract the delightful ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... bare and miserable and the air heavy with the smell of dirt and stale tobacco. Charity's heart sank. Old derided tales of the Mountain people came back to her, and the woman's stare was so disconcerting, and the face of the sleeping man so sodden and bestial, that her disgust was tinged with a vague dread. She was not afraid for herself; ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... visit to this beautiful district, which has acquired such a reputation since so many of the best people from town have taken villas here; is his Majesty to make the journey in one of these third-class carriages, with the chance of travelling in company with tradesman stinking of stale cheese?—with folk who, moreover—well, perhaps in common decency I ought not to go on, as ladies are present. (Laughter.) "Economy," I hear some one suggest. That word is in great favour nowadays. But I should like to know what economy there ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Martha. She writhed with shame at the sight of her mother's cajolery of the tyrant she served—and loved. To have spoken out once, recklessly, to have entered a wordy combat without rancor and for the mere zest of tournament, to have let the winnowing winds of satire blow through the house with its stale sentimentalities and mental attitudes, would have reconciled her to any amount of difference in the point of view. But the hushed voice and covertly held position afflicted ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... cabin was littered up with a variety of things, the wings of birds, feathers of chickens, shells of eggs, bones, bits of tree branches, an old iron chain, a tiny square looking-glass, badly cracked, some stale bread and cake, cores of apples and pears, and a great ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... was stupid to stay alone in his chamber. It was some relief even to promenade the hall, for one so nervous as he was at this time. If any of the Orlando's passengers came near him, he could retreat into his room. He walked up and down several times, but this soon became stale amusement. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... he had to get through was dying. It was going to be quicker than the way they had of dying in Davos, but it mightn't be quick enough; it might drive him out of his last fight, back to an inconceivable stale world. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... all I, too, could catch the faint odor of stale tobacco. No time was to be lost, however, and while Craig set to work rapidly going through the contents of a desk in the corner, I glanced over the contents of a drawer of a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... a vender of printed ballads. These effusions were so stale, atrocious, and unsalable in their character, that it was easy to detect that hypocrisy, which—in imitation of more ambitious beggary—veiled the real eleemosynary appeal under the thin pretext of offering an equivalent. This beggar—an aged female in a rusty bonnet—I ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... in a business way!" Mr. Tutt assured him. "Now, if you're feeling stale—and we all are apt to get that way this time of year—why don't you take a run ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... spring in our gallop on the racecourse that evening. The horses were stale, and moved as though they had been ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker, stronger, and more f[oe]tid." It is said to be a fact, that in manufacturing tobacco, it is frequently sprinkled with stale urine. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... received of Mademoiselle Prefere's character, which I was able to see more of later on. A scared-looking servant took my card, and abandoned me without one word of hope at the door of a chilly parlour full of that stale odour peculiar to the dining- rooms of educational establishments. The floor of this parlour had been waxed with such pitiless energy, that I remained for awhile in distress upon the threshold. But happily observing ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Italian, 'Do you understand?' His young wife laughed heartily at the story of his dressing up in woman's clothes." A dull, garrulous husband, boring people with stories of which they were sick; a childish little wife, trying to make the best of things, and laughing over the stale old jokes; this is what may be called the idyllic moment in the wedded life of Charles Edward and Louise. What would she have felt, that strong, calm lady, growing old far off in the Isle of Skye, had she been able to see what Bonstetten saw; had she heard the Count ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... has long been the temporal bulwark around the Mormon community. Results which have been seen in Utah affairs, preservative of the Mormon power and people, unaccountable to 'the outsider' except on the now stale supposition that 'the Mormon Church has purchased Congress,' may be better traced to the silent but potent influence of Z. C. M. I. among the ruling business men of America, just as John Sharp's position as one of the directors of U. P. R—-r,—a ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to have been with you. Next time I'll volunteer. You had action—a run for your money. That's what I enlisted for. Standing still—doing nothing but wait—that drives me half mad. My years of football have made action necessary. Otherwise I go stale in mind and body.... Last night, before you went on that scouting trip, I had been on duty two hours. Near midnight. The shelling had died down. All became quiet. No flares—no flashes anywhere. There was a luminous kind of glow in the sky—moonlight through thin ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... to the closet and opened the door. On a shelf he saw half a loaf of bread, dry and stale. He took it in his ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... Justice Shallow. Nay, is not there, too, that offensively supercilious creak of the boots with which he enforced his remarks on the war in Europe, when he last caught you at the corner of the street and decanted into your ears the stale settlings of a week of newspapers? Now, did not Shakespeare tell us that the imagination bodies forth? It is indeed the verbum caro factum—the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Beef juice and one egg; or, broth and meat; care being taken that the meat is always rare and scraped or very finely divided; beefsteak, mutton chop, or roast beef may be given. Very stale bread, or two pieces of zwieback. Prune pulp or baked apple, one to ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... just when the falling off did begin. We were both very much taken up with our work. But when, one morning, I happened to notice that it was a quarter of twelve when we sat down to a breakfast of stale bread and warmed-over coffee, it occurred to me that there was a hitch ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mine in my own committee. However, he got himself sold at all points...The Polypterus paper and the Aye-Aye paper fell flat. The latter was meant to raise a discussion on your views, but it was all a stale hash, and I only made some half sarcastic remarks which stopped any ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... stars are withered with light. The moon is pale with trying to remember something. Light, straining for a stale birth, ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... later born, The old world was sure forlorn Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant; only thou His true Indian conquest art; And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A finer thyrsus of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... crimps. This was to us a source of great amusement and singular adventure; for the ingenuity in concealing them was only equalled by the art and cunning exercised in the discovery of their abodes. Cellars and lofts were stale and out of use; we found more game in the interior of haystacks, church steeples, closets under fireplaces where the fire was burning. Some we found headed up in sugar-hogsheads, and some concealed within bundles of hoop-staves. Sometimes we found seamen, dressed as gentlemen, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to-night? His youth was fast going—nay, had it not indeed gone from him for ever? had not youth left him all at once when he began his commercial career?—and the pleasures that had been fresh enough within the last few years were rapidly growing stale. He knew the German spas, the pine-groves where the hand played, the gambling-saloons and their company, by heart, though he had never stayed more than a fortnight at any one of them. He had exhausted Brittany and the South of France in these rapid scampers; skimmed the cream of their novelty, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... desire to count your young turkeys, and let them alone for twenty-four hours after they get into this world. Remove them to a clean, airy, roomy coop, and give them boiled eggs, stale wheat bread crumbs just moistened with milk or water, "Dutch" cheese, or a mixture of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... name of the junction, in spite of the ill-natured tones which gave voice to it, sounded sweeter than the chimes of bells. It meant relief from confinement in a few square feet of board; relief from a semi-putrid atmosphere—oil, unwashed men, and stale tobacco-smoke; relief from the delicate attentions of a surly Africander guard, who resented the overcrowding of his van; relief from the pangs of hunger; relief from ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... package. She had been presented with a quarter of a stale loaf of baker's bread, and a big ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... a worn office chair before a littered desk. In the close air hung the smell of stale cigars and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Chesterton. One of the latter's comments on a manuscript is still preserved. Writing of a novel by a lady who was the author of many unpublished stories, all marked by perseverance rather than talent, he said, "Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite lack of variety." But alas, we hear too little of these gentlemen in their capacity as publishers' pursuivants. Patrolling the porches of literature, why did they not bequeath us some pandect of their experience, some rich ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... then—artichoke pickles, tea cakes, pies, and good old healthy lye hominy. There was plenty of meat served, but I was not allowed to eat that, as I was never a very strong child. I was a fool about stale bread, such as biscuit, cornbread, and light bread. Mother was a fine cook and her battercakes would just melt in your mouth. Of course, you know we had no stoves in those days and the cooking was done in open fireplaces, in ovens and pots. Oh yes! We had a garden. ...
— 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
... its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a kitchen, the ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... splendour with which they were surrounded. In a brief time his kindly hospitality became a byword in the capital, and fabulous accounts of it were carried home at week ends to toiling wives and sons and daughters, to incredulous citizens who sat on cracker boxes and found the Sunday papers stale and unprofitable for weeks thereafter. The geraniums—the price of which Mr. Crewe had forgotten to find out—were appraised at four figures, and the conservatory became the hanging gardens of Babylon under glass; the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do let ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... muscular action in the claws, which may be excited by pressing the eyes with the finger; when this cannot be produced, the lobster must have been too long kept. When boiled, the tail preserves its elasticity if fresh, but loses it as soon as it becomes stale. The heaviest lobsters are the best; when light they are watery and poor. Hen lobsters may generally be known by the spawn, or by the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... to serve her and not even the comfort of privacy, loomed large in the mind of Mrs. Singleton Corey. Never before in her life had she drunk coffee with condensed cream in it, or eaten burned bread with stale butter, and boiled beans and bacon. Never before had she shared the bed of another woman, or slept in a borrowed nightgown that was too tight in the arms. To Mrs. Singleton Corey these things bore all ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... are in the hands of a writer of delicate sensibility. It is not as though the seals were stale; they had only just been killed. The writer, however is obviously laughing at her own countrymen, and insulting them as ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... infatuated with the girl, carried away by the allurement of a new and remarkable type of woman, and that these headlong passions were neither healthy nor lasting; but his reasoning brought him no real sense of conviction, and his life, as he looked forward to it, appeared singularly flat and stale. His one consolation, poor as it seemed, lay in the fact that he had played the man to the best of his ability and was really glad, even if a bit envious, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... miraculous slackening of her taut nerves, a delicious peace. Soothed and contented, she yielded herself with eyes half closed to the rhythm of the melody, finding it now robbed in some mysterious manner of all its stale cheapness, and in that moment her whole attitude towards Bruce Carmyle underwent a ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... and to men of the highest eloquence my speech will appear to have little marrow in its views, and its poverty of words will seem jejune. For idle is it, and utterly superfluous, to offer that which is arid to the eloquent, and that which is stale to men of knowledge and wisdom. Whence our Moral Seneca, and, quoting ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... friends. Their fathers and husbands, forced temporarily into the background, crowded round the meagre refreshment table in the entrance hall. All these government cashiers, secretaries, clerks, and superintendents—stale, sickly-looking, clumsy figures—were perfectly well aware of their inferiority. They did not even enter the ball-room, but contented themselves with watching their wives and daughters in the distance dancing with the accomplished ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Englishman; but he was chiefly won by the dolce far niente of the natives, and the Oriental license of polygamy. In a word, Joseph had the same taste for a full-blooded cuffee, that an epicure has for the haut gout of a stale partridge, and was in ecstasies at my extrication. He neglected his siestas and his accounts; he wandered from house to house with the rapture of an impatient bridegroom; and, till every thing was ready for the nuptial rites, no one at the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... trenches into the flesh. The air is septic, full of disease from the dead men. They lie so close to the surface that a shell, anywhere near, brings them up. Three quarters of your casualties are from disease. The wound doesn't heal; it gets gangrene and tetanus from the stale old soil. And instead of having a good fighting man back in trim in a fortnight, you have a sick man in a London hospital for a couple of months, and a cripple ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... correct distance below my feet; and then all that was under me would be swept away. I descended into the muffled saloon, which was a little box enclosing light and warmth partially submerged in the waters. There it smelt of hot engine-oil and stale clothes. I got used to the murmuring transit of something which swept our outer walls in immense bounds, and the flying grind of the propeller, and the bang-clang of the rudder when it was struck . . . and must have gone to ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... accomplished, they made a halt, under the lee of a sheltering mountain, for rest and refreshment. And, sitting down on a fallen tree, from whose barkless trunk they brushed off the snow, they took out and commenced chewing their stale and frozen bread, with a few small pieces of duck-meat, remaining from their breakfast, and comprising the last of their provisions. The animal heat, produced by their great and continued exertions in travelling, had thus far prevented ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... no use in my telling you how I know these things," she said, "but it is enough to tell you I do know them, and I also know that the children made their last breakfast with Miss Dingus, alias Hester Broughton, alias Margery Dubois, on a pickle and a stale cream puff. Miss Dubois is now doing a dance turn in Chicago with one Mike Brady. She fondly imagines when you want to see the children she can come to Dorfield and get them away from the Children's Home ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... front line trench and his withdrawal to a depth, in places, of 40 kilometres, restored the principle of manoeuvre to armies which had fronted one another for two years in positions hitherto justifying the description of stale-mate. Strong moral and political effects accompanied. And this manoeuvre, though carried out upon a part only of the entire battle front, infused a sense of change and movement into the most static portions of the allied line. From ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... History is indebted for this part of the chapter to Mrs. Anna Dunn Noland, president of the Stale Equal ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... days!—the old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... atom to him; but it will subject me to a pinch for stale news. There, give me my patient's picture, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather—a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving them as little and making the ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... a soiled collar; breakfast in dress clothes; a wet house-dog, over-affectionate; the other fellow's tooth-brush; an echo of "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay"; the damp, musty smell of an empty house; stale beer; a mangy fur coat; Katzenjammer; false teeth; the criticism of Hamilton Wright Mabie; boiled cabbage; a cocktail after dinner; an old cigar butt; ... the kiss of Evelyn after ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... was dry and stale, but Phineas was not in the mood to be particular. He ate like one famished, and drained the pitcher ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... fifteen minutes to play. The hard pace was beginning to tell upon the big men, and the inevitable reaction following their unwise "celebrating" began to show itself in their stale and spiritless play. On the other hand, the Twentieth were as fresh as ever, and pressed the game with ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... Heaven—His most excellent gift of charity." Then, in one generous burst, she prayed for love divine, and there was many a sigh and many a tear, and at the close an "Amen!" such as, alas! we shall never, I fear, hear burst from a hundred bosoms where men repeat beautiful but stale words and ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... consequence. The window looked with a sunny aspect down upon the quad, and over the opposite buildings were seen the spires of churches, the dome of the Radcliffe, and the gables, pinnacles, and turrets of other colleges. This was pleasant enough: pleasanter than the stale odours of the Virginian weed that rose from the faded green window-curtains, and from the old Kidderminster carpet that had been charred and burnt into holes with ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... least exacting traveller quells (Though crawling things, not yet in sight, Are waiting for the shadowy night, To issue forth when all is quiet, And on your feverish pulses riot;) Where one wood shutter scrapes the ground, By crusts, stale-bones, and garbage bound; Where unmolested spiders toil Behind the mirror's mildew'd foil; Where the cheap crucifix of lead Hangs o'er the iron tressel'd bed; Where the huge bolt will scarcely keep Its promise to confiding sleep, Till you have forced it to its goal In the bored ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... himself a laughing-stock not only as a sorry sort of flute player, but as a wretched imposter. And now he has a host of expenses to meet; and not one advantage to be reaped; and worse than all his evil reputation. What is left him but to lead a life stale and unprofitable, the scorn and mockery of men? Let us try another case. Suppose a man wished to be thought a good general or a good pilot, though he were really nothing of the sort, let us picture to our minds how it will fare with him. Of two misfortunes ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... from it and mapped out their own territory. The whole metaphysical realm consisted in nothing more than creatures of fancy and heavenly things at the precise time when real beings and earthly things were beginning to concentrate all interest upon themselves. Metaphysics had become stale. Helvetius and Condillac were born in the same year that Malebranche and Arnauld, the last great French metaphysicians of ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... he believed in his own excellence: and quite justly. What he failed to perceive was that the crowd hated excellence. Woodhouse wanted a gently graduated progress in mediocrity, a mediocrity so stale and flat that it fell outside the imagination of any sensitive mortal. Woodhouse wanted a series of vulgar little thrills, as one tawdry mediocrity was imported from Nottingham or Birmingham to take ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... had taken place in the mercantile world, and for many days I had heard nothing spoken of but the vast losses which houses and individuals of high character and standing had incurred, and the bankruptcy with which the community had become suddenly threatened. The subject had grown stale and wearisome to me. It had little interest, in fact, for one whose humble salary of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum depended so little upon the great fluctuations of commerce, and I accordingly disposed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... stern foremost, kegs of brandy and French prisons, which I shall not repeat; for indeed the public has been surfeited with sea-stories of late, from many sufficiently dull ones up to the genial wisdom of 'Peter Simple,' and the gorgeous word- painting of 'Tom Cringle's Log.' And now the subject is stale—the old war and the wonders thereof have died away into the past, like the men who fought in it; and Trafalgar and the Bellerophon are replaced by Manchester and 'Mary Barton.' We have solved the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... at dawn on the morning of the fourth day, after the old farmer had blessed us and sold us some stale rye-bread. Blenkiron bestrode the Arab, being the heaviest, and Peter and I had the screws. My worst forebodings were soon realized, and Hussin, loping along at my side, had an easy job to keep up with us. We were about as slow as an ox-wagon. The ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... eloquent than any Demosthenes of your New England Athens. Women are younger than men, and nearer to nature; they have more animal life and spirits and glee. Their lively, frolicsome, sunshiny chatter keeps existence from growing mouldy and stale. We have it on the authority of the wittiest of Frenchmen, that for the purposes of pleasant, every-day life, L'enjouement vaut mieux que l'esprit. If I wish to discuss a question of political economy, or of metaphysics, I can go to men; but the art of talking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... at hand. The sunlit air invited to the out-door life. The windows and doors of Villa Elsa, which was stale and stuffy from the closed-up winter, stood open and the inmates came out of their hibernation, shook themselves and welcomed the warmth and lack-luster brightness. The lindens and plane trees and shrubberies began to hug the place under their cosy ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... and chatted about various trifling matters. Yet he found it difficult to keep up such superficial conversation. "Woman" was the theme that he longed to approach, and it underlay all his stale jokes and stories of the strike ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... recognized it as a newspaper sanctum," said he in his thin, piping voice. "No litter, no stale pipes lying about, no cursing and quarreling, no excitement whatever. The editorial room is the index to the workshop; I'll see if the mechanical ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... haughty Marmion, Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight, Not quite a Felon, yet but half a Knight. [xiv] The gibbet or the field prepared to grace; A mighty mixture of the great and base. 170 And think'st thou, SCOTT! by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance, Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? [24] No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade, Let such forego the poet's sacred name, Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame: ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... affection or good-nature, receive man after man, astonished and later disgusted him. After all, they were not smart. There was no vivacity of thought there. All that they could do, in the main, he fancied, was this one thing. He pictured to himself the dreariness of the mornings after, the stale dregs of things when only sleep and thought of gain could aid in the least; and more than once, even at his age, he shook his head. He wanted contact which was more intimate, subtle, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... by night," her Majesty's revenues being seldom collected in that happy valley, its rents being pronounced dubious, and its water communication described as "frequently cut off," we found in respect to the whole picture thus lightly-sketched in, that age did not wither nor custom stale its infinite comicality. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... laughed when George declined to drink himself drunk or refused to help his former companions fleece a stranger. Nell Gwynn told him that even his language had grown too polite for polite society, and, lacking emphasis, was flat as stale wine. In truth, it may well be said that George had set out to mend his ways under adverse conditions. But he had set out to do it, and that in itself was a great deal, for there is a likable sort of virtue in every good intent. He had reached the ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... to the boy's eyes. The air was hot and foul—stagnant, exhausted: the stale exhalation of a multitude of lungs which vice was rotting; tasting of their very putridity. A mist of tobacco smoke filled the place—was still rising in bitter, stifling clouds. There was a nauseating smell of beer and sweat and disinfectants. ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... these parts, and the curtain of the dark falls upon the scene as suddenly as the screen of the theatre upon the denouement of the tragedy. Then comes a cup of truly infernal tea, the mastication of a stale roll, with butter, also stale,—then, more sitting on the piazza,—then, retirement, and a wild hunt after mosquitoes,—and so ends the first day at Woolcut's, on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... of the telegraph, to show his good feeling, presented me with a stale tin of condensed milk. His second clerk and operator was the most covetous man I met in China. He begged in turn for nearly every article I possessed, beginning with my waterproof, which I did not give him, and ending with the empty milk tin, which I did, for "Give ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... study in school or college into a kitchen, if an ice-cream freezer occupies all the foreground of this place she calls home, and chafing-dishes with cream bottles, sardine tins, cracker boxes, paper bags full of stale biscuits, fruit skins, dish-cloths and grease-spotted walls, all the background, it is impossible to have a clean ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... for the Baby, excitement, discovery, and adventure. And then, it had attached itself to Ransome. It behaved as if it had some secret understanding with its father. Its sense of comedy, like Ranny's, seemed imperishable. It would respond explosively to devices so old, so stale, so worn by repetition, that the wonder was they didn't alienate it, or disgust. The rapid approach and withdrawal of Ranny's hand, his face suddenly hidden behind its pinafore and exposed, still more suddenly, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... waiter in the passage, and stopped before a door, where a recently deposited tray displayed the half-eaten carcase of a fowl, an empty champagne bottle, two half-filled glasses, and a faded bouquet. The whole passage was redolent with a singular blending of damp cooking, stale ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... so beautiful to look at. You are made to be queen of a ball-room; not a London ball-room, where everything, I take it, is flash and faded, painted and stale, and worn out; but down here in the country, where there is some life among us, and where a girl may be supposed to be excited over her dancing. It is in such rooms as this that hearts are won and lost; a bid made for diamonds is all that is ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... scale a small salmon, stuff with one-half a loaf of stale bread moistened with hot water, seasoned with one-fourth a cup of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and one-half a cup of capers. Mix all well, and bind with one beaten egg. Place the salmon on the rack of a baking-pan in a very hot oven, cover ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... with the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 degrees or 98 degrees in the shade, running up sometimes to 103 degrees at midnight. Very few men, even though they get a pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can continue drinking for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave them something to do. It was too early for the excitement ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... in cool water? Take it along in the hayfield a hot summer day. And even if you can not keep it cool the acid contained in the juice still makes it a delicious and stimulating drink where you would loathe the taste of a stale beer. There are about a hundred other ways to prepare rhubarb, not forgetting a well cooled rhubarb mush served with cool milk in the evening or for that matter three times a day; nothing cheaper, nor healthier. The fresh acid contained in the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... other. Men who had praised London as the only place to live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... or palace, did not essentially differ from a dozen other similar structures the party had seen. In fact, palaces and cathedrals were getting rather stale with them, and they coveted a new sensation, which they were likely to realize at their next stopping-place. Before noon the tourists reached Baden-Baden, and were pleasantly installed at the Hotel de l'Europe. As the season was somewhat advanced, there was plenty of room, though the glories of the ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Later in the day Mary said to Susan that as her master had taken physic, he would require more gruel, but as there was still some left, she need not make it fresh "as she was ironing." Susan replied that the gruel was stale, being then four days old, and, further, that having herself tasted it, she felt very ill, upon which facts Mary made no comment. She thoughtfully warned the cook, however, that if Susan ate more of the gruel "she might do ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Master Prout another. Let not the solemn pretender to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and senseless. The name of Frailty is no more woman than man, and old shoes have no business at weddings. Stand aside O censorious reader, (I desire not thy acquaintance,) while I whisper to both maid and widow, what, probably, they have often pondered—that ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Latin. He was well acquainted with the title-page of Blackstone's Commentaries, and argal (as the gravedigger in Hamlet says) he was not a person to be laughed at.' He attended the Parliament House in the character of a critic, and could give you stale sneers at all the celebrated speakers. He was the terror of essayists at the Speculative or the Forensic. In social qualities he seems to have stood unrivalled. Even in the police-office we find him shining with undiminished lustre. 'If a CHARLIE should find him rather ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are, And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... ass. His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there's nothing in him, he's a mere hawker of stale puns; there's nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior. I have no belief in him. Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up. Four are dead, twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... eyelids; and finally, towards dawn, with every nerve behind his eyes taut with pain and strain, awakening unrefreshed to consciousness of that nimbus of unrelieved false glare which encircled him, and the stench of melted tallow and the stale reek of burned kerosene foul in his nose. That, now, had been the hardest of all to endure. Endured unceasingly, it had been because of his dread of a thing infinitely worse—the agonized, twisted, dying face of Jess Tatum ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... had a ghostly and unkempt appearance. The atmosphere of the sitting-room was stuffy and redolent of stale tobacco smoke. Wrayson's first action was to throw open ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Quid plura meant. He snorted. "Hoo! Stale! It means, what are you crying about? naturally. Who said it? That letter? Who's it ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the advantage of being a secure retreat." He tried the door, which yielded to his touch, and entered the apartment. On the tables stood the remains of last night's libations, and the air hung heavy with the odor of stale tobacco smoke. Over all was a spell of silent desolation, as if the ghosts of the songs and merry jests, which had echoed from the walls, had returned with aching heads ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... and bare, boarded with rough-sawn cedar, and furnished chiefly by the benches that ran down either side of the plain table; but the aromatic smell of the wood was stronger than that of stale tobacco, and the company avoided more than quietly respectful glances at ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... Longbarns, and the children,—complete Fletcher talk,—as though she were already one of them, never, however, mentioning Arthur's name. The old lady got down a fresh supply of the lozenges from London because those she had by her might perhaps be a little stale. And then there was another sign which after a while became plain to Emily. No one in either family ever mentioned her name. It was not singular that none of them should call her Mrs. Lopez, as she was Emily to all of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... "That's all stale news!" cried Miss Prunty, jumping up. "And Gon'ril (since I'll have to call her so) must be tired of waiting in ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... still searching for some pocket of stale rain-water; but once only did they discover the slightest trace of moisture—a crust of slime in a rocky basin, and from it a blind lizard was slowly creeping—a heavy, lustreless, crippled thing that toiled aimlessly and painfully up the rock, only to slide back into the slime again, leaving ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... bread: Soak stale bread in cold water until soft and then press very dry. Measure and then rub through a fine sieve to remove the lumps. All the above may be cooked in the fireless cooker or in ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... a couch in the opposite corner. A rude cupboard had been built against the logs next to the fireplace. It contained supplies and utensils. Toward the center, somewhat closer to the door, stood a crude table and two benches. The cabin was dark and smelled of smoke, of the stale odors of past cooked meals, of the mustiness of dry, rotting timber. Streaks of light showed through the roof where the rough-hewn shingles had split or weathered. A strip of bacon hung upon one side of the cupboard, and upon the other a haunch of venison. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... eager zest, but of late she had begun to find them wearisome. They no longer satisfied her. If this were the result of a few years' experience, what would she feel when she had grown jaded with time and everything was stale? Then her glimpse of the simple, healthful western life had come as a revelation. It was real, a bracing struggle, in which no effort was wasted but produced tangible results: broad stretches of splendid wheat, sweeps of ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... restaurant or club, served by a foreign "chef," a Yorkshire pudding, as hard as a stale loaf of bread, is handed round in slabs with the so-called "roast" beef. It is not roasted: it is baked beef, and the pudding is an ill-tasting baked mess, also. Nowhere in London in public or private house do I ever see the properly cooked article. True ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... have a clean wholesome odor, characteristic of their particular class. The odor of decomposition can be readily detected; stale and ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... difficult thing seems to be, What to do with the husband? You will not make him jealous of his own son? that is a stale and an unpleasant trick in Douglas, etc. Can't you keep him out of the way till you want him, as the husband of Isabella is conveniently sent off till his cue comes? There will be story enough without him, and he will only puzzle all. Catastrophes are worst of all. Mine is most stupid. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... few paces off, an old gentleman engaged her mother in conversation. Madame Patti had been singing, and they were all waiting for their carriages. To their ears at present came a vociferation of names and a rattle of wheels. The air, through banging doors, entered in damp, warm gusts, heavy with the stale, slightly sweet taste of the London season when the London season is ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... and she selected one. The waiter hovered about significantly. Fred ordered coffee ... Ginger took Whiterock. They were silent. The music crashed and banged and whinnied, and the air grew thick with the mingled odors of smoke and stale ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... extremity. He drank the water from the sheet as we caught it (we holding it above him as he lay so as to let it run into his mouth), for we had now nothing left capable of holding water, unless we had chosen to empty out our wine from the carboy, or the stale water from the jug. Either of these expedients would have been resorted to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... precious pages of a missal. Doves fluttered on the lowly roofs. Everywhere was the calling of birds and the smell of broken earth. The minister and Mary fell behind along the way. Kerrenhappuch Green, caught walking westward to the creek, his stale pockets bulged by bait, hid with a simple delicacy in the roadside bushes from Davie's face. Only the children hastening from school nodded to him as he passed them, nor hushed the loud ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... or hackneyed expressions. Such expressions may be tags from everyday speech (the worse for wear, had the time of my life); or stale phrases from newspapers (taken into custody, the officiating clergyman); or humorous substitutions (ferocious canine, paternal ancestor); or forced synonyms (gridiron heroes, the Hoosier metropolis); or conventional ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... My thoughts in passion, 'tis the surest way. I'll bellow out for Rome, and for my country, And mouth at Caesar till I shake the senate. Your cold hypocrisy's a stale device, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... flower of the Stale the monarch affixed the cherished tokens to the heroes' breasts. "My Braves!" he exclaimed. "In the name of the Fatherland I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities is more ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... of Ralph Marvell's cousin, the hero of "Sunday Supplements," the captor of Blue Ribbons at Horse-Shows, of Gold Cups at Motor Races, the owner of winning race-horses and "crack" sloops: the supreme exponent, in short, of those crowning arts that made all life seem stale and unprofitable outside the magic ring of the Society Column? Undine smiled as she recalled the look with which his pale protruding eyes had rested on her—it almost consoled her for his ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... political one. It has long been the temporal bulwark around the Mormon community. Results which have been seen in Utah affairs, preservative of the Mormon power and people, unaccountable to 'the outsider' except on the now stale supposition that 'the Mormon Church has purchased Congress,' may be better traced to the silent but potent influence of Z. C. M. I. among the ruling business men of America, just as John Sharp's position as one of the directors of U. P. R—-r,—a compeer among ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... key, and his people are the children. They are looking to him to bring forth the things new and old for their good. But as far as I can find, he generally brings forth the same old things Sunday after Sunday which have become so stale that people do not care ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... can't say—for I live in a very honest neighborhood. The only two thieves that were in it—Charley Folliott and George Austin—were hanged not long ago, and I don't know anybody else in the country side that would stale it." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the long evenings, no one to arrange for social entertainments and meet and welcome the guests; no one to direct and manage the culinary department, and place the furniture in appetizing arrangement. Of course he had the Chinese cook, but he was stale and without spice. There were millions of qualified candidates in the world, looking for partners, who would be more than pleased to have the opportunity ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... over, he dressed; then played high at piquet or hombre; or rode out, if it was absolutely necessary. All was now over for the day. He supped copiously with his familiars: was a great eater, of wonderful gluttony; a connoisseur in no dish, liked fish much, but the stale and stinking better than the good. The meal prolonged itself in theses and disputes, and above all in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... flight of stairs that led from the street to a darker hall. The smell of stale cigars and cocoa matting was in the air. Down the dim length of this hall he made his way to a door, which without ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... said I, shrugging my shoulders. "I do not like it at all; it is common, low, vulgar. There is no romance about it; it only reminds one of stale tobacco and flat champagne." ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Mystery; so do the Papists, with as good Reason, that of Transubstantiation; for neither of them are Mysteries, or incomprehensible, but palpable Errors, whose Absurdity we do easily and fully comprehend; nor will the stale Art of playing on the Word Mystery amuse us any longer. Another strange Argument, which these Men make use of, in order to set aside some Passages of Scripture, which are positive and express against them, is this, that ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... amid the ghastly horrors of war. What was it that caused the destruction of that Church? At this point some historians, being short of facts, have thought fit to indulge in philosophical reflections; and, following the stale philosophy of Bildad—that all suffering is the punishment of sin—have informed us that the Brethren were now the victims of internal moral decay. They had lost, we are told, their sense of unity; they had relaxed their discipline; they ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... at the Embassy, and its astounding contents had been read by his Chief. He made his way thither, somewhat dubious as to the thrill of his achievement, aware of a shadow about him, the ghost of yesterday's joy, which made all success save the intimate personal one that he most craved, flat, stale, and unprofitable. In the darkness of the street he was aware, too, that he was being observed and followed, but he went boldly toward his destination, sure that as a member of the staff of the British Embassy, his person at least partook ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... disappeared since Paris has become the world's railway terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the observation, proceeds to be very clever. Scratch the Russian, and you know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the one barbarous material! The ladies of these are charming, ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... on the margin of the river. After breakfast, which was but a sorry meal, we determined to make our first attempt at baking. Simon, a man of dauntless resolution, undertook the task, using a piece of stale bread as leaven. It was a serious business, and we all helped or looked on; but the result, notwithstanding the multitude of councillors, was a lamentable failure. Better success, fortunately, attended the labours of Hannibal, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... you do. I don't mean of course that one shouldn't be rationally persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with 'influence'—we'll ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the gray light of a winter dawn mingled with the dull flare of the hanging-lamp increasing the ghastliness of his appearance, sat Michael Gregoriev, in the stale bitterness of a night-old rage and mortification. On the floor, in an unceremonious heap, lay his heavily embroidered coat, with its medals still upon it. In its stead the Prince had wrapped himself in a worn robe of old brocade, fur-lined. Heavy felt slippers shod his feet. His hair was tumbled ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... oppressively Western matron from Kansas City, here is Mistress Fidelia Oldaker on the arm of her attentive son. She would be very old but for the circumstance that she began early in life to be a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the dancing-master, she is almost ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... to pieces with more than madness through grief and remorse. Below this was a charnel vault where some of the apothecaries had been ground down and stuffed into earthenware pots with Album graecum, dung, and many a stale ointment. ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Legg introduced Macer, and so there came on a little intimacy, and three-card loo, &c. &c.. Year after year scores of Muffs, in various places in the world, are victimised by Legg and Macer. The story is so stale, the trick of seduction so entirely old and clumsy, that it is only a wonder people can be taken in any more: but the temptations of vice and gentility together are too much for young English Snobs, and those simple young victims ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him. I could observe the old Fellow was very uneasy at the Affront, and at his being obliged to repeat his Commands several times to no purpose; 'till at last one of the [Lads [2]] presented him with some stale Tea in a broken Dish, accompanied with a Plate of brown Sugar; which so raised his Indignation, that after several obliging Appellations of Dog and Rascal, he asked him aloud before the whole Company, Why he must be used with less Respect than that Fop ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... most satisfactorily treated by placing the affected birds in warm, dry, well ventilated quarters, admitting sunlight if possible, but excluding all drafts of air. Feed stale bread, middlings, etc. Also place the fowls in a moderately air tight coop and compel them to inhale steam from hot water and Turpentine. This is readily done by placing the water and Turpentine in a pan and ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... acquired such a reputation since so many of the best people from town have taken villas here; is his Majesty to make the journey in one of these third-class carriages, with the chance of travelling in company with tradesman stinking of stale cheese?—with folk who, moreover—well, perhaps in common decency I ought not to go on, as ladies are present. (Laughter.) "Economy," I hear some one suggest. That word is in great favour nowadays. But I should like to know what economy there is getting ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... laid upon Good Friday never got stale, and that butter made on that day possessed ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... be superinduced by eating unripe or stale fruit, it may be proper to give an emetic or a cathartic, but ordinarily first give a full dose of the Extract of Smart-weed, and, if the vomited matter is very sour, give the patient a weak, alkaline drink, which may be made by dropping a few live, hard-wood ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... thing and round seem and feel common. It's the unhallowed and unhallowing touch of the selfish, of sin, that makes things seem common, in the sense of not being holy and sweet and pure and refreshing. Sin makes things grow stale to you. Selfishness affects your eye, the way things look to you. God's presence recognized keeps things fresh. His touch upon us, ever afresh, makes us fresh. Everything we touch and see is touched by a God-freshened hand, and ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... bread fairly thin, preferably stale bread. Place the slices into a moderately hot oven and let them remain there until they are crisp through and through. The scorched bread that is generally served as toast is no better ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... organ-grinder, sing a song in broken English, then as a policeman, or a young swell about town. Give me plenty of opportunity, that's the great thing—opportunity to be really funny, I mean. We don't want any of the old stale tricks." ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... years reached such an enormous number that, when he attempted to form a catalogue of them, he was compelled to give up the task in despair; he was constantly adding to the enormous reservoir of knowledge which he had at command, and thus his work never grew stale, and he was ready instantly with a hundred illustrative lights on any point which chanced to crop up either in conversation or in the course of his reading. The cheap and flashy writer is inclined ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... fair to see the play "Bartholomew-fair," with puppets. and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest. This night Knipp tells us that there is a Spanish woman lately come over that pretends to sing as well as Mrs. Knight; [A celebrated singer and favourite of Charles ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... to tell, but A- can show you all the long story I have written. I hope it does not seem very stale and decies repetita. All being new and curious to the eye here, one becomes long-winded ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... heart was losing hope he did not show it, but Pepsy was frankly in despair. In her free hours she sat in their little shelter, her thin, freckly hands busy with the worsted masterpiece that she was working. Pee-wee, at least, had his appetite to console him, but she had no relish for the stale lemonade and melting, oozy taffy which stood pathetically ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... enough! The idea was "difficult to work," says Dickens, with obvious truth. How was he to get the quicklime into the vault, and Drood, alive, out of the vault? As to the reader, he would at first take Datchery for Drood, and then think, "No, that is impossible, and also is stale. Datchery cannot be Drood," and thus the reader would remain in a pleasant state of puzzledom, as he does, ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... surprised into it. Not that she was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had sent her large boxes of stale drugstore chocolates, and called her endearing names as they made ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... right. Moses, he had the well cleaned out for me only last month. We always do do it twicet a year, lest somebody comes along an' drinks it stale. More'n that, the well's fed by a spring, runnin' in an' out, so really don't need ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... gracious, how serenely beautiful, how eloquent of peace and benediction, the scene that met him as he crossed the threshold of the great quadrangle! Some thousands of times his eyes had rested on it, yet how could it ever stale? ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Clement, smiling, "as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale. But could it not come off ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rooms on Twenty-Eighth Street, there was an odor of stale tobacco, permeating the confusion created by a careless person. Dresser had been occupying them lately. He had found Sam Dresser, whom he had known as a student in Europe, wandering almost penniless down State Street, and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... his praise, and continued to look about the room over his shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone the stale round of balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she had sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of the ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... think so," said Lord Reggie. "Nothing is really worth much till it is a trifle stale. A soul that is fresh is hardly a soul at all. Sensations give the grain to the wood, the depth and dignity to the picture. No fruit is so worthless as the fruit with the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Dell seems stale and old, Often she sits and sighs; Life to me is a tale untold, Each day is a glad surprise. Dell will marry, of course, some day, After her belleship is run; She will cavil the matter in worldly way And wed Dame Fortune's son But, ah, well! sweet ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... not even obtain this doubtful information till after the discussion was over, and the matter in debate settled. The public, however, were now becoming more enlightened, and withal more curious, and these garbled and stale speeches did not satisfy them;—they longed for a full reporting newspaper, and the printers were encouraged by the general feeling to venture upon giving the proceedings in parliament from week to week, or from day to day, as they occurred. They were the more induced to take this step because the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... are less generally useful than those of linseed meal. They do not retain the heat nearly so well as those of linseed meal, and are chiefly used in cuts, wounds, or small abscesses; and also because they are so easily made. A slice of stale bread without the crust is put on a plate, boiling water is poured over it, and drained off; it is then placed on a piece of muslin, pressed between two plates to squeeze out the remaining water, and its surface is greased before it is applied with a little ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... a rule cooked and cold before they are sauteed. Some prefer them to the French. To many minds they never get quite rid of the stale taste that clings to the cold potato. The same may be said of stewed cold, cooked potatoes. The least objectionable way of serving them as left-overs is ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... draught of wine mingled with rain, a few minutes to choke over a mouthful of stale bread, and we were off again, longing for the next halt, for a dry shelter, for an hour of ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... must not expect us to encourage, this mad scheme. I do not know what in the world to say, but presume some one has been talking nonsense to him. Let Jim Perry go to Venezuela if he will—he may edit his 'Independent Gazette' amongst the Independents themselves, and reproduce his stale puns and politics without let or hindrance. But our poet is too good for a planter—too good to sit down before a fire made of mare's legs, to a dinner of beef without salt and bread. It is the wildest of all his meditations—pray tell him. The plague and Yellow Jack, and famine and ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... me she gan to play, With her false draughts full divers Sho stale on me, and toke my fers:[1] And when I sawe my fers away, Alas! I couth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the previous history of literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder, we are prepared for a series of useless remarks, weak attempts at jokes, disquisitions on dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes and vain flourishes, which almost make us blush for our country, and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting any of his subjects to travel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Higginbotham had married his sister, and he knew him well. He let himself in with a latch-key and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here lived his brother-in-law. The grocery was below. There was a smell of stale vegetables in the air. As he groped his way across the hall he stumbled over a toy-cart, left there by one of his numerous nephews and nieces, and brought up against a door with a resounding bang. "The pincher," was his thought; "too ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... circular area roped off for dancers; a mysterious tent with a fortune-teller inside; a lottery-stall resplendent with vases and knick-knacks, which nobody was ever known to win; in short, all kinds of attractions, stale enough, no doubt, to my companions, but sufficiently novel and ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... forth of the mouth it is now somewhat stale, whereby Iuglers get much mony among maydes, selling lace by the yarde, putting into their mouthes one round bottome, as fast as they pull out another, & at the iust ende of euery yarde they tie ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... water and expel it at the gills. As it passes through the gills, whatever free oxygen the water contains is absorbed, and carbonic acid given off in its place; and in course of time, the free oxygen of the water is exhausted, the water becomes stale, and at last poisonous, from excess of carbonic acid. If the water is not changed, the fishes come to the surface and gulp atmospheric air. But though they naturally breathe air (oxygen) as we do, yet they are formed to extract it from the water; and when compelled to take air from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... prevent his men from getting out of hand. But a glance at them as they made free with the natives' provisions relieved him on this score, and when Smith explained that he had on board the aeroplane certain delectables in the shape of chicken patties (becoming rather stale), doughnuts, plumcake, a bottle of Australian burgundy, and sundry other remnants of the provisions furnished by the hospitable folk of Palmerston, he voted an immediate adjournment for lunch, and the officers, with the Smiths, were soon satisfying ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... 're ca'd a wee before The stale "three score an' ten," When Joy keeks kindly at your door, Aye bid her welcome ben. About yon blissfu' bowers above Let doubtfu' mortals speir; Sae weel ken we that "heaven is love," Since love makes ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... like to," said Mary vaguely. "I don't care so much about first nights. I like the theatre; but I go so seldom. Aunt Marcelle does not care for English plays; she says they are like stale bread-and-butter. I tell her that is ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... impenetrable darkness—and that was bad enough. I recalled to mind how I had gone through tunnels—this very one among others—in a comfortable lighted carriage, and had drawn up the window, sharply and suddenly, to keep out the stale, poisonous air; and this was the atmosphere I was to breathe for the next hour! I shuddered at the prospect. But it was not long before I was forced to acknowledge that it was the darkness quite as much as the stifling air which was affecting me. I had never been fond of the dark in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... memory, however great, are stale compared with those of hope; for hope is the parent of all effort and endeavor; and "every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." It may be said to be the moral engine that moves the world and keeps it in action; and at ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen. We seek our friend not sacredly but with an adulterate passion which would appropriate him to ourselves. In vain. We are armed all over with subtle antagonisms, which, as soon as we meet, begin to play, and translate all poetry into stale prose. Almost all people descend to meet. All association must be a compromise, and, what is worst, the very flower and aroma of the flower of each of the beautiful natures disappears as they approach each other. What a perpetual disappointment ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... London; or take an early morning gallop through Berlin to wake up the Dutch. All this talk about hands across the sea and such rot makes me sick. The English are the most benighted and the most conceited and condescending race on earth; the Germans and Austrians are stale beer-vats, and the Italians and French are ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... one who is pointed at by a whole village, by one deriving his support from keep of dancing girls, by persons wedding before their elder brothers are wedded, by professional panegyrists and bards, and by those that are gamblers, the food also which is brought with the left hand or which is stale, the food which is mixed with alcohol, the food a portion of which has been already tasted, and the food that forms the remnant of a feast, should not be taken (by a Brahmana). Cakes, sugarcanes, potherbs, and rice boiled in sugared ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Sermon on the Mount: it ended amid the ghastly horrors of war. What was it that caused the destruction of that Church? At this point some historians, being short of facts, have thought fit to indulge in philosophical reflections; and, following the stale philosophy of Bildad—that all suffering is the punishment of sin—have informed us that the Brethren were now the victims of internal moral decay. They had lost, we are told, their sense of unity; they had relaxed their discipline; they had become morally weak; and the day ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... interposed Henry, addressing Gertie, "at any new subject that my sister-in-law mentions. I haven't heard her speak of this before; and it's only fair to her to say that when she takes up anything fresh, she drops it long before it has the chance of becoming stale. Another cup?" ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... fourth month he grew tired of her favourite song. It was stale now! He took up a book and read, and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... is up in arms; With clarion-toned excursions and alarms The rival camp is ringing. Hence perky commoners and pompous peers, 'Midst vehement applause and volleying cheers, Stale platitudes are stringing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... claims—But let me draw the picture, dear Chevalier. Here was a discredited, dissolute fellow whose life was worth a pin to nobody. Tired of the husks and the swine, and all his follies grown stale by over-use, he takes the advice of a good gentleman, and joins the standard of work and sacrifice. What greater luxury shall man ask? If this be not running the full scale of life's enjoyment, pray you what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mean-spirited action."—A. Murray cor. "There is, indeed, one form of orthography which is akin to the subjunctive mood of the Latin tongue."—Booth cor. "To bring him into nearer connexion with real and everyday life."—Philological Museum, Vol. i, p. 459. "The commonplace, stale declamation of its revilers would be silenced."—Id. cor. "She [Cleopatra] formed a very singular and unheard-of project."—Goldsmith cor. "He [William Tell] had many vigilant, though feeble-talented and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... girl came and gave us plenty of food which the big rabbit ate, for I could touch nothing. For two days they came, and then I think they forgot all about us. I grew very hungry, and at night filled myself with some of the remaining food, such as stale cabbage leaves. By next morning all was gone, and the big rabbit grew hungry also. All that day it hopped about sniffing at me and showing ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... to your maids and men I bring both points and pins; Come bid me welcome then, The good New Year begins: And for my love Let me approve The friendship of your Maid, Whose nappy ale, So good and stale, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... It was some relief even to promenade the hall, for one so nervous as he was at this time. If any of the Orlando's passengers came near him, he could retreat into his room. He walked up and down several times, but this soon became stale amusement. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... And, as a rule, it was never even locked with a key. Lichonin pushed the door and they entered. It was dark in the room, because the window curtains were lowered. It smelt of mice, kerosene, yesterday's vegetable soup, long-.used bed linen, stale tobacco smoke. In the half-dusk some one who could not be seen was snoring deafeningly and ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... orders. The butcher's boy came whistling down the lane to deliver the rump-steak or mutton-chop I had decided on for dinner; the greengrocer delivered his vegetables; the cheesemonger took solemn affidavit concerning the freshness of his stale eggs and the superior quality of a curious article which he called country butter, and declared came from a particular dairy famed for the excellence of its produce; the milkman's yahoo sounded cheerfully in the morning hours; ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... after an honest fashion. The Grinder's mode of life was too well known for even a mother to attempt to deny it. But she pretended that she was very honest herself, and appealed to sundry brandy-balls and stale biscuits in her window, to prove that she lived after a ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... as truth in Kester's words when he said that Grannie had told them the story of Janet's Cove the preceding week. The truth was that she had told them that tale every week since winter set in, but nothing could stale its freshness for them. Besides, did not Grannie introduce surprising variations of narrative every time she told it, so that it never seemed quite ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... Germany's property was destroyed and 18,000,000 of her citizens were killed, because men quarrelled about the way to glorify "The Prince of Peace." Marching through rain and snow, sleeping on the ground, eating stale food or starving, contracting diseases and facing guns that fire six hundred times a minute, for fifty cents a day—this is ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... even has an odor, as peculiar to itself as the smell of the sea to a ship. There are those who say that it is only a compound of burnt castor oil and gasoline. One might, with no more truth, call the odor of a ship a mixture of tar and stale cooking. But let it pass. It will be all things to all men; I can sense it as I write, for it gets into one's clothing, one's hair, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... pride that makes thee swell As big as thou dost blown-up veal; Nor all thy tricks and sleights to cheat, And sell thy carrion for good meat; Not all thy magic to repair 750 Decay'd old age in tough lean ware; Make nat'ral appear thy work, And stop the gangrene in stale pork; Not all that force that makes thee proud, Because by bullock ne'er withstood; 755 Though arm'd with all thy cleavers, knives, And axes made to hew down lives, Shall save or help thee to evade The hand of Justice, or this blade, Which I, her sword-bearer, do carry, 760 For civil deed ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... noise. But of this substance, and its odd Qualities more perhaps elsewhere; for now I shall only take notice to you, that I have likewise with Urinous Salts, such as the Spirit of Sal Armoniack, as well as with the Spirit of Urine it self, Nay, (if I much mistake not) ev'n with Stale Urine undistil'd, easily Precipitated such a White Calx as I was formerly speaking of, out of a Limpid Solution of Allom, so that there is need of Circumspection in judging of the Natures of Liquors by Precipitations wherein Allom intervenes, else we may ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... been given some biscuits and stale cake, looked up at them inquiringly, as much as to say, "Aren't we going home now?" Visions of his comfortable bed rose before him, and he felt very inclined for a noon-day nap. But the children told him he was not to go ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Caviare. It needs all the violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds to even partially purge these villages of the rank odours which cling to them at the end of the fishing season; and when all has been done, the saltness of the sea air, the brackish water of the wells, and the faint stale smells emitted by the nets and fishing tackle still tell unmistakable tales of the one trade in which every member of these communities is more or ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... thought I; but I didn't let on. A stale actor in a play couldn't have pulled himself together in a more unconcerned-I-do-this-every-night fashion than I signed for the note, tipped the poor little ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Let not the solemn pretender to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and senseless. The name of Frailty is no more woman than man, and old shoes have no business at weddings. Stand aside O censorious reader, (I desire not thy acquaintance,) while I whisper to both maid and widow, what, probably, they have often pondered—that ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... who of my contemporaries—that is, men between thirty and forty-five—have given the world one single drop of alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... shot from feet to brain; And both paced deck, ere any knew Our peril. Round us press'd the crew, With wonder in the eyes of most. As if the man who had loved and lost Honoria dared no more than that! My days have else been stale and flat. This life's at best, if justly scann'd, A tedious walk by the other's strand, With, here and there cast up, a piece Of coral or of ambergris, Which, boasted of abroad, we ignore The burden ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... that THE FORMATION OF HABITS ought naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass their maximum long before the time when the true decline of life begins, if we may judge by the experience of the ring. A man is "stale," I think, in their language, soon after thirty,—often, no doubt, much earlier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceedingly apt to keep their vital fire burning ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a cigarette and resumed his good nature: "Go on, Captain. I'm so stale with dolce far niente, after the Black Pearl affair last month, that I act like an amateur myself. Make it short, though, for I'm ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... sharply unscrewed and jerked out of him by very anguish. It happened then, and lastly, that Mr Pecksniff found himself immediately collared by something which smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel of beer, a cask of warm brandy-and-water, and a small parlour-full of stale tobacco smoke, mixed; and was straightway led downstairs into the bar from which he had lately come, where he found himself standing opposite to, and in the grasp of, a perfectly strange gentleman of still stranger appearance who, with his disengaged hand, rubbed ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... it had been cut. He issued them slips, which they added as part of the contributions. "Good work—you, too, Gordon. Best week in the territory for a couple of months. I guess the citizens like you, the way they treat you." He laughed at his stale joke, and Gordon was willing to laugh with him. The credit on the dope had paid for most of the contributions. For once, he had money to ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... back to these fountains, flowing in these wild mythic wastes of the Past, and have drunk inspiration thence. Percy, Scott, and Carlyle, by so doing, have infused new sap from the old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic fountains which flow fast by its roots. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... good deal of botany, and enough about birds to differentiate between carnivorous species and those fit for human food, whilst the salt in their most fortunate supply of hams rendered their meals almost epicurean. Think of it, ye dwellers in cities, content with stale buns and leathery sandwiches when ye venture into the wilds of a railway refreshment-room, these two castaways, marooned by queer chance on a desert island, could sit down daily to a banquet of vegetable soup, fish, a roast bird, ham boiled or fried, and a sago pudding, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... had heard nothing spoken of but the vast losses which houses and individuals of high character and standing had incurred, and the bankruptcy with which the community had become suddenly threatened. The subject had grown stale and wearisome to me. It had little interest, in fact, for one whose humble salary of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum depended so little upon the great fluctuations of commerce, and I accordingly disposed myself for sleep as soon as the words bills, money, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... that among other things they were alluding to the stale and senseless story of the sledge filled with baskets of coin sent by the Spanish envoys on their departure from the Hague, on conclusion of the Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board and lodging of servants, forage of horses, and the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... she did, and suddenly there came to her a feeling that was almost gratitude, a miraculous slackening of her taut nerves, a delicious peace. Soothed and contented, she yielded herself with eyes half closed to the rhythm of the melody, finding it now robbed in some mysterious manner of all its stale cheapness, and in that moment her whole attitude towards Bruce ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... agent, and I magnify mine office," he said, as he took up his hat to go forth. "One branch of my duty is to fettle your horse; and in Flamborough they fettle them on stale fish." Mr. Mordacks strode with a military tramp, and a loud shout for the landlord, who had finished his joke by this time, and was paying the penalties of reaction. "Gil Beilby, thoo'st nobbut a fondhead," he was saying to himself. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... houses, new and stale bread, at discretion, are provided; and many a stripling, lean and hungry as a greyhound, with a large appetite and a small purse, calls for a small plate, without vegetables, and fills up the craving crannies with an immoderate proportion of the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... it was in Time that he was to have met his fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have acted; and as he waked up to the sense of no longer being young, which was exactly the sense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of being weak, he waked up to another matter beside. It all hung together; they were subject, he and the great vagueness, to an equal and indivisible law. When the possibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when the secret of the gods had ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... boy was howling, and holding one hand under his arm, while he danced a hornpipe and protested, that, if I'd save him this time, he'd "niver stale another cint's worth as long as ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... "Least said, soon'st mended, Sadie. Give me the new cream. I guess I might's well make some spice cookies. Be pretty busy Wednesday. Dammy likes 'em a little stale." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... suffer my kinsman's servant to disturb me at the hour I desired to be called. I was now resolved to break through all measures to get away; and after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of cold beef, mutton, neats'-tongues, venison-pasty, and stale beer, took leave of the family. But the gentleman would needs see me part of my way, and carry me a short-cut through his own grounds, which he told me would save half a mile's riding. This last piece of civility had like ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... has become serious it is very hard to appreciate the rare novelties of idea offered in our theatres; weariness of stale conventions which affects the young critic in a less degree than the old, does not easily induce one to accept mere outrages upon them. Salome, indeed, has some outrages upon stale conventions, but they ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... under her care were provided; so much more enjoyable than in dull, sanded inn-parlours, swarming with flies, and reeking with stale tobacco. She would leave him at the entrance of a village, bound forward, and cater, and return with a little basket and a pretty blue jug—which she had bought on the road,—the last filled with new milk; the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... regard a profession as a prison house, in which most of one's capacities are cruelly confined. There are again those who, possessing singular and exclusive sensitivity to aesthetic values, to music, art, and poetry, find the world outside their own lyric enthusiasms flat, stale, and unprofitable. If, as so frequently happens, these combine, along with their peculiar temperaments, little genius and slender means, social and economic life becomes for them a blind alley. Every year at our great universities we see small ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... net was; the black fellows closing in behind, followed quickly. Poor Noorunglely floundered into the net, up rushed a black fellow and, seizing her, wrung her neck. Having secured her, they would next secure her eggs; that they might be a trifle stale was a matter of indifference ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... everything can say about the food requisite to breakfast? Those great men Marlowe and Jonson, Shakespeare, and Spenser before him, drank beer at rising, and tamed it with a little bread. In the regiment we used to drink black coffee without sugar, and cut off a great hunk of stale crust, and eat nothing more till the halt: for the matter of that, the great victories of '93 were fought upon such unsubstantial meals; for the Republicans fought first and ate afterwards, being in this quite unlike the Ten Thousand. Sailors I know eat nothing for some ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... car ahead. It was an old car, with faded upholstery, from which the stuffing projected here and there through torn places. Apparently the floor had not been swept for several days. The dust lay thick upon the window sills, and the water-cooler, from which he essayed to get a drink, was filled with stale water which had made no recent acquaintance with ice. There was no other passenger in the car, and Miller occupied himself in making a rough calculation of what it would cost the Southern railroads to haul ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... high bright window looking down Over the enchanted whiteness of the town, Seeing through whirls of white the vague grey towers, Desires like this to forget what will not pass, The littered papers, the dust, the tarnished grass, Grey death, stale ugliness, and sodden hours. Deep in his heart old bells are beaten again, Slurred bells of grief and pain, Dull echoes of hideous times and poisonous places. He desires to drown in a cold white peace of snow. He desires to forget a million ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... deserted, and fled to the savannahs that border the Orinoco on the west. The Jesuit Fathers had already formed a mission on this spot, and bearing the same name. No tribe is more difficult to fix to the soil than the Guahibos. They would rather feed on stale fish, scolopendras, and worms, than cultivate a little spot of ground. The other Indians say, that a Guahibo eats everything that exists, both ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... sufficed to make him an Idealist) he united a fondness for observation, a love of the actual in nature, and a susceptibility to deep impressions from and interest in the objects of sense, which would have seemed to mark him out for a Realist. But is not this the true stale of the mind, instead of being; one which should excite astonishment? Is it not one-sidedness rather than many-sidedness that should be regarded as strange? Is it not as much an evidence of disease as the preponderance ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... beer, and overcome by the heat of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. Late in the afternoon his canary bird, in its gilt cage just over his head, began to sing. He woke slowly, finished the rest of his beer—very flat and stale by this time—and taking down his concertina from the bookcase, where in week days it kept the company of seven volumes of "Allen's Practical Dentist," played upon it some half-dozen ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... quickly does this bourgeois phrase call up before us a hodgepodge room, an atmosphere of stale tobacco smoke, a table covered with pipes, books and magazines, littered with tobacco, walls burdened with hideous prints, a mantel adorned with objects dear to their owner from their associations, to the visitor ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to me and back ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... decaying sheepskins and Heaven alone knows what other foulnesses of that floating hell. He was sparingly fed upon weevilled biscuit and vile messes of tallowy rice, and to drink he was given luke-warm water that was often stale, saving that sometimes when the spell of rowing was more than usually protracted the boatswains would thrust lumps of bread sodden in wine into the mouths of the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... I began operations by tossing up pell-mell through the companion, and piling in a squalid heap about the wheel, all clothes, personal effects, the crockery, the carpet, stale victuals, tins of meat, and in a word, all movables from the main cabin. Thence, we transferred our attention to the captain's quarters on the starboard side. Using the blankets for a basket, we sent up the books, instruments, and clothes to swell our growing midden on the deck; ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the white trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the day's dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks' doors; but a consciousness of their own importance and the receipt of seven shillings a-week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they accordingly put their hats ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... fuerza. And if Don Andres Xiron incurred excommunication for having thus presented himself, the archbishop likewise incurred it when he appeared there. But no consideration was given to this, and the point of fuerza is a stale one in Espana, and consequently it was not discussed. The archbishop was notified of a royal provision issued by Don Phelipe, by which he was ordered to absolve the auditor Marcos Zapata. The archbishop obeyed it, and that afternoon ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... in them went by like shy ghosts; the high fronts of the houses were like barricades between him and all the comfort and security in the world. There was mud in the roads and his boots were no longer weather-proof. Life tasted stale and sour. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... This evening we met again for prayer, when I found that ten shillings sixpence more had come in since the morning. With this one pound ten shillings sixpence we were able to buy, even this Saturday evening, the usual quantity of bread (as it might be difficult to get stale bread on Monday morning), and have some money left. God be praised, who gave us grace to come to the decision not to take any bread to-day, as usual, nor to buy anything for which we cannot pay at once. ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... great secret of being interesting lies in being interested. The really enthralling preacher is he who is himself enthralled by his subject and who realises, also, a deep interest in the people before Him. Should it ever come to pass that the subject grow stale, worn and hackneyed to the man in the pulpit, it will not be a hopeful quest to look for much interest in the pew. Again should it ever come to pass that the preacher lose interest in those before whom he stands, and this has been known to occur, there will remain small reason ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... after my return from Guiana, being a man most honest and valiant. The Spaniards seemed to be desirous to trade with us, and to enter into terms of peace, more for doubt of their own strength than for aught else; and in the end, upon pledge, some of them came aboard. The same evening there stale also aboard us in a small canoa two Indians, the one of them being a cacique or lord of the people, called Cantyman, who had the year before been with Captain Whiddon, and was of his acquaintance. By this Cantyman we understood what strength the Spaniards had, how far it was to ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... there was the Temperance Room with the second-hand papers in it; but a man of any profession cannot read for eight hours a day in a temperature of 96 degrees or 98 degrees in the shade, running up sometimes to 103 degrees at midnight. Very few men, even though they get a pannikin of flat, stale, muddy beer and hide it under their cots, can continue drinking for six hours a day. One man tried, but he died, and nearly the whole regiment went to his funeral because it gave them something to do. It was too early for the excitement of fever or cholera. The men could ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... gone, the fox was the smallest of the three who were left, and the wolf and the bear explained that they were very sorry, but they would have to eat him. Michael, the fox, did not run away as the others had done, but smiled in a friendly manner, and remarked: 'Things taste so stale in a valley; one's appetite is so much better up on a mountain.' The wolf and the bear agreed, and they turned out of the hollow where they had been walking, and chose a path that led up the mountain side. The fox trotted cheerfully by his two big companions, but ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... came in its place, but for a single afternoon he had known what it was to thrill in every fiber with a powerful and pure emotion—an emotion beside which all the cheap sensations of his life showed stale and colourless. While the strangeness of this mood was still upon him he chanced upon Lila and Jim Weatherby standing together by the gate in the gray dusk, and when presently the girl came back alone across the yard he laid his hand upon her arm ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... mind, overloading the stomach, the use of improper food, such as stale vegetables and meat, unripe fruits, indigestible articles, improperly prepared food, irregular meals, disorderly habits, the use of alcoholic stimulants, loss of sleep, masturbation irritability of temper, anxiety, or grief may all give rise to indigestion. If the functions performed by the skin ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... how they always do. There were men shouting for people to come and see their shows for a dime, ten cents, and there were shooting galleries and everything. Sandwiches were thirty cents and the bread on them was stale, because Wig bought one. There was a brass band ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... age, to hear himself accurately and aptly described for the first time in his life by a perfect stranger! This thing happened to me at Bristol, some time ago, in the way I am about to relate. I slept at a Commercial Hotel, and early next morning was joined in the big empty coffee-room, smelling of stale tobacco, by an intensely respectable- looking old gentleman, whose hair was of silvery whiteness, and who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a heavy gold watch-chain with many seals attached thereto; whose linen was of the finest, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... had a brighter household life with us than that of our father's headlong impatience. He moved in a cloud, if not rather in a high radiance, of precipitation and divulgation, a chartered rebel against cold reserves. The good news in his hand refused under any persuasion to grow stale, the sense of communicable pleasure in his breast was positively explosive; so that we saw those "surprises" in which he had conspired with our mother for our benefit converted by him in every case, under our shamelessly encouraged guesses, into common ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... the stale cake and muddy coffee that the slatternly landlady produced, and afterwards, as she was being helped to get back into her riding dress, bestowed upon her a little lilac wool frock from her trunk that the woman admired greatly. From that moment the landlady ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... heard Danton's lowered voice muttering his arguments. He heard Ada quietly sniffing in the darkness of the hall. And this was his world! This was his life's panorama, creaking on at every jolt. This was the 'must' Grisel had sent him back to—these poor fools packed together in a panic at an old stale tale! Well, they would all come out presently, and cluster; and the crested, cackling fellow would lead them safely away ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... The landlord was remarkably attentive and obliging, but his bread was stale, his milk sour, and his cheese the greenest imaginable. I disdained to animadvert on these defects, naturally supposing that his ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... The stale heat of the long day in town, the dusty promiscuity of the suburban train were now but the requisite foil to an evening of scented breezes and tranquil talk. They had been married more than a year, and each home-coming still reflected the freshness ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... have grown and spread with the lapse of ages, your existence would become a long and romantic daydream, and you would be in danger of living the life of a recluse and never separating yourself from these influences. Custom would never stale their infinite variety; familiarity would never breed contempt. Who tires of wandering through a gallery of the old masters? who can endure the modern in comparison? It is not the mere antiquity of all these things that charm; it is that they ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... observed that dramatic representations which depend for their value on their interest lose by repetition, because they are no longer able to arouse curiosity as to their course, since it is already known. To see them often, makes them stale and tedious. On the other hand, works of which the value lies in their beauty gain by repetition, as they are then ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... stand throng'd with faces, the broadcloth and laces, The booths, and the tents, and the cars, The bookmakers' jargon, for odds making bargain, The nasty stale smell of cigars. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Athens,—gather round them. We get hints of all the stages of the revel, from the sparkling wit and the jolly good-fellowship of the early evening, to the sodden disgust that comes with daybreak when the lamps are poisoning the fetid air and the remnants of the feast are stale. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Advanced Guard and of the Main Body will depend on information received, and not only must information be gained by every available means, but it must also be communicated without delay to all concerned while it is fresh and before it becomes stale. It must also be remembered that negative information (e.g. that such and such a village has been thoroughly searched and no trace of the enemy found) is at least of equal value to positive information. The repetition or confirmation of information already sent are ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... Whiteside sniffed. A dull, "burnt" smell, some pungent, "scorched" odour, which he recognised as the stale stench of exploded cordite. He went into the tiny dining-room; everything was neat, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... was finished the party returned to the Exposition. There was such a dense crowd in the galleries, it seemed impossible to penetrate it. An odor of perspiring humanity, a stale smell of old gowns and coats, made an atmosphere at once heavy and sickening. No one looked at the pictures any more, but at faces and toilets, seeking out well-known persons; and at times came a great ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... new publisher, for then the fresh man put all his energies into pushing it; but if you had them all together, the publisher rested in a vain security that one book would sell another, and that the fresh venture would revive the public interest in the stale ones. I never knew this to happen, and I must class it with the superstitions of the trade. It may be so in other and more constant countries, but in our fickle republic, each last book has to fight its own way to public favor, much as if it had no sort of literary lineage. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... have parted with his last piece of bread in order not to be outdone by the others in generosity, for our own provisions were running very low. It is true that the bread and biscuits were mildewed, the cheese stale, and the bacon as hard as stone, but the boys gave the best they could, the very poverty and humbleness of the gifts attesting their own desperate plight, and bearing proud witness to the extent of their sacrifice. With tears in their eyes and reiterated protestations ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... strange if some of these bacteria occasionally penetrate the shell and the egg thus becomes a possible source of infection. Perhaps one of the most common troubles due to bacterial infection of eggs is the more or less serious illness sometimes caused by eating those which are 'stale.' This often resembles ptomaine poisoning, which is caused, not by micro-organisms themselves, but by the poisonous products which they elaborate from materials on ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... as Mr. Wendover talked, Madame de Netteville listened. Robert's restless repulsion to the whole incident, his passionate wish to escape from these phrases and illustrations and turns of argument which were all so wearisomely stale and familiar to him, found no support in her. Mrs. Darcy dared not second his attempts at chat, for Mr. Wendover, on the rare occasions when he held forth, was accustomed to be listened to; and Elsmere was of too sensitive a social fibre ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... crossed some deserted public gardens commanded by a gorgeous casino, its porticos heaped with chairs and tables; so past kiosques and cafs, great white hotels with boarded windows, bazaars and booths, and all the stale lees of vulgar frivolity, to the post-office, which at least was alive. I received a packet of letters and purchased a local time-table, from which we learned that the steamer sailed daily to Borkum via Norderney, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... certainly not to his advantage. Always leading a solitary life, this said man had no idea of making himself agreeable to others, having only been mixed up with wars and the orgies of bachelors, with whom he did not put himself out of the way. Thus he remained stale in his garments, sweaty in his accoutrements, with dirty hands and an apish face. In short, he looked the ugliest man in Christendom. As far as regards his person only though, since so far as his heart, his head, and other secret places were concerned, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... in early June, muggy and still and close, when a fellow breathing felt as though he had his nose buried in layers of damp cotton waste. The city room was a place fit to addle eggs, and from the composing room at the back the stenches of melting metals and stale machine oils came rolling in to us in nasty waves. With his face glistening through the trickling sweat, the major came in about ten o'clock, fanning himself with his hat, and when he spoke his greeting the booming ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco, there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... been paper boomerangs they could not have returned with greater accuracy to their unhappy dispatcher. Oh, the vileness and utter degradation of the moment when the stale little cylinder of closely written pages, which seemed so fresh and full of promise a few days ago, is handed in by a remorseless postman! And what moral depravity shines through the editor's ridiculous plea of "want of space!" But the subject is a painful one, and a digression ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of all the stale old sayings about the vanity of riches, and their inability to give even a transitory content," said Charlie, with laughing defiance ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Will his proud spirit brook an uncertainty? But, after all, is it well worth, the while? Those are uncertain questions—I dismiss them. There is no immediate danger. My humor changes; I am no longer despondent. Away with Doubtful Uncertainty and all of his stale retinue, tricked out in danger-signals—each a false one. Sleep on, sweet Conscience, sleep on! To-night the wedding-reception—given to a woman married for her money! Another ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... accordingly, fifty or a hundred pounds as his suit is. His main ambition is to get a knight-hood, and then an old lady, which if he be happy in, he fills the stage and a coach so much longer: Otherwise, himself and his cloaths grow stale together, and he is buried commonly ere he dies in the gaol, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... know Tommy of the 81st? He gave me good advice: 'Always sew a fifty-pound note into the lining of each waistcoat you've got. Then you can't go short.' Tried it once, and, be George! if me demned man-servant didn't stale that very waistcoat and sell it for six and sixpence. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not be sodeynly take. All dyspur[u]eyed or that he beware. For than shold our dyshonour awake. If he were cowardly take in a snare. Ee quod Vyce for that haue I no care. I wyll auauntage take where I may. That heryng Morpleus p{re}uely stale away. ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... the third day, it was hotter and dryer than ever. We awoke thirsty, and there was no cooking. So dry were our mouths that we could not eat. I tried a piece of stale bread mother gave me, but had to give it up. The firing rose and fell. Sometimes there were hundreds shooting into the camp. At other times came lulls in which not a shot was fired. Father was continually ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... eggs and sugar, add the hot milk, and cook till creamy, put in the salt and vanilla, and cool. Then cut stale cake into strips, or split lady-fingers into halves, and spread with jam. Put them on the sides and bottom of a flat glass dish, and gently ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton
... abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest lesson in holiness and is from the only one that can teach holiness. Great lessons can be taught by all persons, taught of God, but 'tis better to drink at the fountain than out of a stale bucket. Besides all have imperfection. "To the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them." "They shall all be taught of God." "If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all liberally ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... advantage over whole wheat flour. It not only remains free of insect infestation, it doesn't become stale (meaning rancid). In the wheat germ (where the embryo resides) there is considerable oil, containing among other things, about the best natural source of vitamin E. This oil is highly unsaturated and once the seed is ground the oil goes rancid in ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... registered malt, hops, ale, and small-beer, till I began to feel as though the world was one vast brewhouse; and calculated, added, and subtracted pounds, shillings, and pence, until all other lore appeared "stale, flat, and unprofitable." I was in this counting-house four years, and was, finally, discharged by my prudent principal as an unthrifty servant, for having, during a day of unusual business, cut up two entire quills, and overturned the inkstand on a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... called Enfieldwash, and brought her to the house of one Mrs. Wells, where she was pillaged of her stays; and because she refused to turn prostitute, confined in a cold, damp, separate, and unfurnished apartment; where she remained a whole month, without any other sustenance than a few stale crusts of bread, and about a gallon of water; till at length she forced her way through a window, and ran home to her mother's house almost naked, in the night of the twenty-ninth of January. This story, improbable and unsupported, operated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the end, not having change to repair the "damage" (a mean, but true, term, as often applied), they get young Brown to pay the complicated sum added up by the waiter, upon a mahogany ditto, in lieu of a slate, with stale stout spilled in the corner, receipted with a wipe of the towel:—and so, home in the "safety" cab, with large wheels and a spanking grey,—lettered along the side "Nil desperandum," thinking "handsome is as Hansom does;" tumbling into ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... the interior of the smoker, which, except for two or three dozing commuters and a noisy euchre-party, had been empty of everything but the fumes and stale odors of tobacco, and found it swarming with visions, the eidolons of everything he remembered from his past life. Whatever had once strongly impressed itself upon his nerves was reported there again as instantly as he thought of ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... veteran taking the field again. "He may be slow on his pins, but he fights with his head, and he hits like the kick of a horse. When he finished Black Baruk the man flew across the outer ring as well as the inner, and fell among the spectators. If he isn't absolutely stale, Tregellis, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... armie of the Northumbers, and them of Mercia, came vnto London, and earle Goodwine with his sonnes, and a great power of the Westsaxons, came into Southwarke, but perceiuing that manie of his companie stale awaie and slipt from him, he durst not abide anie longer to enter talke with the king, as it was couenanted, but in the night next insuing fled awaie with ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (8 of 8) - The Eight Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... been loosened and the mechanism of the chair reversed, allowing me my freedom. I looked around the room in wonder. There stood the littered card-table and the empty glasses of the previous night, while the air was still heavy with the odour of stale cigars. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... servants' hall, The scuttle-bearing buttons, boon and blank And grimy loads his evening load of coals, Filled with respect for the cook's and butler's rank, Lo, the round cook half fills the hot retreat, Her kitchen, where the odours of the meat, The cabbage and sweets all merge as in a pall, The stale unsavoury remnants of the feast. Here, with abounding confluences of onion, Whose vastitudes of perfume tear the soul In wish of the not unpotatoed stew, They float and fade and flutter like morning dew. And all the copper pots and pans in line, A burnished army of bright utensils, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... saying that he hoped I would fulfill the expectations of General Grant in the new command I was about to undertake, adding that thus far the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac had not done all it might have done, and wound up our short conversation by quoting that stale interrogation so prevalent during the early years of the war, "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" His manner did not impress me, however, that in asking the question he had meant anything beyond a jest, and I parted from the President ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... food. However, even the man in athletic training needs less food than is customary for men in training to take. If the foot ball teams would eat somewhat less than they do and a smaller proportion of meat, they would be much less likely to "train stale." ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... Negroes, being brought all the way from that part of Barbary which lies nearest to Europe, by the Arabs and Azanhaji. Owing to the great heat, horses do not live long here; for they grow so fat that they cannot stale, and so burst. They are fed with bean leaves, which are gathered after the beans are brought from the fields; and, being dried like hay, are cut small, and given to the horses instead of oats. They give millet also, which contributes greatly to make them fat. A horse and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... stopping those that lead to the heart. Those who attempt by outrage and violence to deprive men of any advantage which they hold under the laws, proclaim war against society. When, I ask, will such truths become obsolete among enlightened people; and when will they become stale?" ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... all the other rooms, was foul with stale air and dust-laden. Maskull, having flung the window up and down, fell heavily into an armchair and ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the cathedral, passing the spot where Carmona had struck at me, and the chapel where I had taken Monica. The stones were slippery as the floor of a ballroom, with wax dropped from innumerable candles, and the air was heavy with the smoke of stale incense. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the folly of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Whatever his failings or shortcomings, Morris was her joy, the human being in whose company she delighted; without whom, indeed, her life would be flat, stale, and unprofitable. The stronger then was her determination that he should not slip back into his former courses; those courses which in the end had always brought about ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... spilt no blood, invaded no territory, robbed no lord of his lady, enslaved and made no captives in war? A virtuous hero would be a useless personage both in play and poem—and the spectator or reader would fall asleep over the utterance of stale apothegms. What writer of sense, for instance, would dream of bringing up George Washington to figure in either of these forms before the world—and how, if he did so, would he prevent reader or auditor from getting excessively tired, and perhaps disgusted, with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... metaphysical realm consisted in nothing more than creatures of fancy and heavenly things at the precise time when real beings and earthly things were beginning to concentrate all interest upon themselves. Metaphysics had become stale. Helvetius and Condillac were born in the same year that Malebranche and Arnauld, the last great French metaphysicians ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... before being exposed for sale. Corn was husked, and everything was clean and inviting. Any one found guilty of selling, or exhibiting for sale, vegetables of a previous day was fined, at once, by the market master. This rule was carried out to the letter. Nothing stale could be sold, or even come into market. The rules required that all poultry be dressed before being brought to market. The entrails were cleaned and strung and sold separately—usually for about ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... where the drag was waiting; the footman to carry wraps and take his mistress's final orders. There was a Bohemian flavour in the little walk to the great fruit garden, which was odorous of bruised peaches and stale salads as they passed it. Waggon-loads of cabbages and other garden stuff were standing about by the old church; the roadway was littered with the refuse of the market; and the air was faint and heavy with the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Over all I, too, could catch the faint odor of stale tobacco. No time was to be lost, however, and while Craig set to work rapidly going through the contents of a desk in the corner, I glanced over the contents of a drawer of a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... sour, buttermilk, yoghurt, kefir, albumen cacao, cereals in the form of mush, strained legumes, cooked in soup or milk, all sorts of glutinous soups, farinose dishes prepared from stale rolls, biscuits, zwieback, tender and easily, digestible meats, mashed game meat, chicken, raw beef, ham, meat ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... you! But to return to your wife—as I understand she shares the fate I endure. We poor women have nothing to expect from our husbands, but the stale leavings that remain after business has absorbed the rest! But your story—go on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... You are mighty fond, J.B., Of quoting that stale epigram. You fancy it riles me. Not a bit of it, my Briton; Tartars have a thickish skin, And your foe and I are neighbours, nay a distant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... out in groups; the elder ones dressed in black, emitting a stale odor from their innumerable skirts and petticoats; the young ones erect in rigid corsets which crushed their breasts and obliterated the prominent curves of their hips, displaying with stately pride, above the motley hued handkerchiefs, gold chains and enormous ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the preparation for death—every road and footpath crammed with it, every field trampled by it, every woodland shattered by it, every stream running thick with its pollution. The sour smell of marching men, the stale taint of unclean fires, the stench of beasts—the acrid, indescribable odor that hangs on the sweating flanks of armies seemed ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... like withered leaves in Autumn. The tree will be bare as a gallows ere long, if these rough winds keep on blowing. If only things would amuse me as of old! If there was still excitement in play, and forgetfulness in wine, and novelty in travel! But there is none—and all things alike are 'flat, stale, and unprofitable,' The truth is, Damon, I want but one thing—and ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Prussians the day before, and our fellows had been sore put to it to hold their own against Ney, but had beaten him off at last. It seems an old stale story to you now, but you cannot think how we scrambled round those two men in the barn, and pushed and fought, just to catch a word of what they said, and how those who had heard were in turn mobbed ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... loose, and drove the rams to pasture on the margin of the river. After breakfast, which was but a sorry meal, we determined to make our first attempt at baking. Simon, a man of dauntless resolution, undertook the task, using a piece of stale bread as leaven. It was a serious business, and we all helped or looked on; but the result, notwithstanding the multitude of councillors, was a lamentable failure. Better success, fortunately, attended the labours of Hannibal, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... the business, however, he had then thought that the King should have no associates in the scheme, and should make no account of the inhabitants of England. Since that time the project had become more difficult of accomplishment, because it was now a stale and common topic of conversation everywhere—in Italy, Germany, and France—so that there could be little doubt that rumours on the subject were daily reaching the ears of Queen Elizabeth and of every one in her kingdom. Hence she had made a strict alliance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Families in the County of Kilkenny, and elsewhere, by the Earl of Strafford, on stale Pretences of Non Performance of Covenants on their Part; his Attempt of confiscating twenty-five Parts in thirty of the whole Province of Connaught, on a Claim of Descent, dormant 300 Years, and originally ill founded, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... region did not serve their apprenticeship in the United States Postal Bureau, you perceive that your document has not had 'despatch.' If salt water is ever a preservative, your news ought not to be stale." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... sensitiveness, moody; at times his mind seemed all aglow; he wrote, on such occasions, with extraordinary rapidity, and with that cheery appreciation of his labor which to any author is an immense stimulant. But following upon these happy humors came seasons of wearisome depression; the stale manuscript of yesterday lost its charm; the fancy refused to be lighted; he has not the heart to hammer at the business with dull, lifeless blows, and flings down his pen in despair. There are successive months during which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... against the workers in their struggle for better conditions. By means of newspaper-made war hysteria the profiteers of Big Business entrenched themselves in public opinion. By posing as "100% Americans" (how stale and trite the phrase has become from their long misuse of it!) these social parasites sought to convince the nation that they, and not the truly American unionists whose backs they were trying to break, were working for the best interests of the American people. Our form of government, ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... in a spirited and ennobling enterprise can one endure their fellowship. Comrades in arms are not fastidious. If one confines one's self, on the other hand, to a cultivation of one's rarity, or to a company of choice spirits, not only do these values themselves grow stale and vanish away, but the remainder of mankind becomes a crowd, and civilization a tumult. The collective life of {169} mankind ceases to be jarring and repugnant only at the moment when one enters into it and becomes infused with ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the trembling heart, searching wearily for truth, turned always from such as they with sinking hope. They were violently iconoclastic—they up-rooted—they overthrew—they swept aside with unsparing hand—but they robbed the starving mortal of his once cherished beliefs—they snatched the stale and feebly nourishing bread from his mouth, and gave nothing in return. They emptied his heart, and left it starving. What did it boot to tell a man that the orthodox dream of eternal bliss beyond the gates of death was but a hoax, if no substitute be offered? Why point ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... for you. Allons, camerados, we will drink together, O hand-in-hand! That tea-spoon, please, when you've done with it. What butter-colour'd hair you've got. I don't want to be personal. All right, then, you needn't. You're a stale-cadaver. Eighteen-pence if the bottles are returned. Allons, from all ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... he wanted to "do up" his rooms; he had gone with his purse open and his eyes shut to Grindot, who by this time was quite forgotten. It is impossible to guess how long an extinct reputation may survive, supported by such stale admiration. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the English satirist in the exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, what room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law! On this point the French are babes in iniquity compared to us—a counsel prostituting himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that it is hardly food for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much more complicated and interesting knavery whereon to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... musty smell, no decay! Frost cannot hurt them, heat preserves them! For long voyages, army and navy use, mining, lumbering, and hunting outfits, they are simply invaluable! For all classes of consumers, they are cheaper, cleaner and more wholesome than the ordinary stale and wilted vegetables, for sale in the city markets! We have named these cubes, 'Solaris Vegetable Concentrates,' a title which we have copyrighted. The packages readily wholesale at 75 cents, to be retailed at one dollar. At these prices, they ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... many heads for the voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec, just as they have been able to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage and short provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit; and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the quarantine, that most dreadful visitation of all—for hope ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... been able to get one alive and fresh as he ought to be," said Sam. "These limp ones are two I killed today at work; but as they don't die till the sun goes down they can't be very stale meat." ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the Parsee never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. He took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... needed no stoking up, and, when any orator tried the process on us, soon made him understand that he was wasting his time and ours. I, for one, should be very sorry to lower the intellectual standard of the Fabian by making the atmosphere of its public discussions the least bit more congenial to stale declamation than it is at present. If our debates are to be kept wholesome, they cannot be too irreverent or too critical. And the irreverence, which has become traditional with us, comes down from those early days when we often talked such nonsense that we could not ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... thick, and is as big as a cart-wheel. We eat it every day for luncheon and dinner. I like it so much better, fresh and straight from the farm (if anything four years old can be called fresh), than when stale and grated. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... ale And beer that is stale Rosa-solis and damnable hum, But we will rack In the praise of sack 'Gainst ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... them in my pocket." And Bab produced from that chaotic cupboard two rather stale and crumbly ones, saved from lunch for the fete. These were cut up and arranged in plates, forming a graceful circle around the cake, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... ate the strips of bacon with the soft stale bread he had brought, and drank the tea, and the shadows of the trees lengthened across the glade, and the chestnut-hued setter came back to camp and was gravely reprimanded by his master, and it soon became night, and time passed, and the fire flashed against the greenery strangely, and the man ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... placed their order for May-day blossoms. The confectionery they decided to leave until the day before the basket hanging, so that it would be perfectly fresh. "Don't insult your friends by handing 'em stale candy," ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... down into that darkness, and then looked up, and saw that all the stars in his own sky were dead. They were deities no longer but only a brilliant dust, scattered down the vain void of Lucretius. The stars were as stale as they were strong; they would never die for they had never lived; they were cursed with an incurable immortality that was but the extension of mortality; they were chained in the chains of causation and unchangeable as the dead. There are not many men in the modern world who ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... "he's got to a sticking-point with his work! It's all very well," I thought, "for you to sniff at my miniatures, my friend, but we all get stale on our work sometimes, and the fresh eye, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... frosted bulbs. A great deal of the strong breath of a popular perfume and a great deal of artificial heat lay sweet upon that room, as if many flowers had lived and died in the same air, leaving insidious but slightly stale memories. ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... weather straight in the face, there in the glacial air, in the gloom under the pale sheen of the arc-lights fastened to the mast. He shuddered at the thought of a night in the oppressive confines of his cabin, with the closed port-hole and the hot, stale air. But that alone was not the reason which kept him chained to the deck. It was the urge, in case of danger, to be near Ingigerd Hahlstroem. And when he seated himself near the smoke-stack, with his back ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... blows at night all you have is your little hall bedroom in a rooming house that smells of stale smoke and cabbage. There's no place to go except the streets—but you've just got to go somewhere, to break loose and have a little fun,—even though you're so tired you want to throw yourself on the bed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was going to offer his services to the king, Louis XVIII. I had much interesting public news from M. d'Argy : but I pass by all now except personal detail, as I write but for my nearest friends; and all that was then known of public occurrence has long been stale. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... played high at piquet or hombre; or rode out, if it was absolutely necessary. All was now over for the day. He supped copiously with his familiars: was a great eater, of wonderful gluttony; a connoisseur in no dish, liked fish much, but the stale and stinking better than the good. The meal prolonged itself in theses and disputes, and above ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... two showy cups and placed them on the table. Then she went to the kitchen and brought in the coffee, already poured into two chipped bowls, and a plate with a few stale cakes. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... as idle children feel when destroying for their own cruel sport the velvety wonder of a moth's wing, or the radiant rose and emerald pinions of a dragon-fly. I was a fool—so I was told with many a languid sneer and stale jest—to talk of hidden mysteries in the whisper of the wind and the dash of the waves—such sounds were but common cause and effect. The stars were merely conglomerated masses of heated vapor condensed by the work of ages into meteorites and from meteorites into worlds—and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... account for all these expensive miseries of matrimony. I can't understand a woman in full possession of her faculties deliberately exasperating the man she has to live with—I suppose all men submit to it under protest—for these stale and stereotyped antics. She ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... I don't like the way ye look at this job. It ain't no job o' workin' out. We're all workin' fer ourselves. It's my fight an' it's yer fight. I won't let no king put a halter on my head an', with the stale in one hand an' a whip in t' other, lead me up to the tax collector to pay fer his fun. I'd ruther fight him. Some o' you has fam'lies. Don't worry 'bout 'em. They'll be took care of. I got some confidence in the Lord myself. Couldn't 'a' lived without it. Look a' me. I'm ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... however great, are stale compared with those of hope; for hope is the parent of all effort and endeavour; and "every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." It may be said to be the moral engine that moves ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... on with this kind of thing? You might become a sort of interpreter of the two nations to each other. An original idea. The everyday thing is to exasperate Briton against Russ, and Russ against Briton, with every sort of cheap joke and stale falsehood. All the same Mr. Otway, I'm bound to confess to you that I ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... had breakfasted five hours earlier on stale bread and a few sardines, lunched, with small appetite, on biscuits and a slab of chocolate, and moistened his parched throat with tepid whisky-and-water. Quenching his thirst was an achievement past hoping for till ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... 'I'll just stale over to the door-cheek, and peep in to get one sight of my poor mother; then I'll throw her in a handful of these guineas, and ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... honourable and noble lords, under fictitious names; but the people did not even obtain this doubtful information till after the discussion was over, and the matter in debate settled. The public, however, were now becoming more enlightened, and withal more curious, and these garbled and stale speeches did not satisfy them;—they longed for a full reporting newspaper, and the printers were encouraged by the general feeling to venture upon giving the proceedings in parliament from week to week, or from day to day, as they occurred. They were the more induced to take ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... me, side by side, their faces solemn and black, and I walked at their heels. My mouth stank of the drink, and my head was sick with the stale fumes of it, and I would have cut off my right hand for a drink of water, one drink, a mouthful even. And, had I had it, I know it would have sizzled in my belly like water spilled on heated stones for the roasting. It is terrible, the next day after the drinking. All the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... to conueie to chast eares, som fond or filthie taulke: And if som Smithfeild Ruffian take vp, som strange going: som new mowing with the mouth: som wrinchyng with the shoulder, som braue prouerbe: som fresh new othe, that is not stale, but will rin round in the mouth: som new disguised garment, or desperate hat, fond in facion, or gaurish in colour, what soeuer it cost, how small soeuer his liuing be, by what shift soeuer it be gotten, gotten must it be, and vsed with ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... too commonly found at our hotels and boarding-houses, are that it is made in every way the reverse of what it should be. The water is hot, perhaps, but not boiling; the tea has a general flat, stale, smoky taste, devoid of life or spirit; and it is served, usually, with thin milk instead of cream. Cream is as essential to the richness of tea as of coffee. We could wish that the English fashion might generally prevail, of giving the traveler his own kettle of boiling water and his ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and schoolgirls of the last century, and Masters of Hounds, are scarcely of so much permanent value as the favourite types and characters which Lionardo and Carpaccio repeat again and again. We no more think Claude monotonous than we think "the quiet coloured end of evening" flat and stale. But we may, and must, tire of certain modern combinations too often rehearsed, after the trick has become a habit, and the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... showed himself a burly individual, with traces of coal-dust in all comers not to be reached by hurried and not too fastidious ablutions. Clouds of tobacco-smoke preceded and followed him, and much stale incense from the fragrant weed exhaled itself from his well-worn corduroys. "I ha' not nivver seed him afore," he remarked after a gruff by no means-ill-natured greeting, signifying the stranger by a duck of the ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like Joanna Southcote's Shiloh[215] and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind,—so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale Virginities Have proved ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... it gave him an entirely innocent but delightful pleasure merely to see a flapper. The reaction from the battle-field produced a condition of hyperaesthesia in which all the theatrical values were altered. Trivial things gained intensity and stale things novelty. The actor, instead of having to coax his audiences out of the boredom which had driven them to the theatre in an ill humor to seek some sort of distraction, had only to exploit the bliss of smiling men who were no ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Things grow old and stale, not because they are old, but because we cease to see them. Whole vibrant significant worlds around us disappear within the sombre mists of familiarity. Whichever way we look the roads are dull and barren. There is a tree at our gate we have not seen in years: a flower blooms ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... is not to take advantage of his situation to utter stale jests or vulgar puns. A careful perusal of "The Jest Book" will be his best security against a violation of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... children, how the Snarks Rejoiced her frugal mind; They ate the Buns, they ate the Bag, And even stale cheese rind. ...
— The Adventures of Samuel and Selina • Jean C. Archer
... small one came so near that she almost caught it with her hands, but it dived away into its burrow in a moment. She brought out her sandwiches and biscuits, and began to eat them. She was hungry already, and thought wistfully of breakfast. The bread had gone rather dry and the biscuits a little stale, but she enjoyed them, sitting on the hillside, especially when she remembered all she had escaped from at St. Chad's. She felt that, once back in dear old Ireland, her difficulties would be nearly at an end, and ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... would only laugh at us and wink their saucy eyes, And answer, "Last year's secrets are all past and told. New years bring new happenings and fresh mysteries, You are very welcome to the stale ones of the old!" ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... dissipation, which early in the evening had been the gas-lighted, garish scenes of riot and senseless laughter, and later the fighting ground of all the vile vermin of the night with their uncanny noises—as when, the doors and windows having been at last opened, the light struggles in through stale tobacco-smoke, revealing dimly a discolored, reeking place, whose sights and odors are more in harmony with the sewer than the sweet April sunshine and the violets opening on southern slopes—so when ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... on all their faces. The room, the one unclean room of the ship, was full of breathless heat, and stale with the lees of drink. Kettle, in his spruce-white drill clothes, stood out against the squalor and the disorder, as a mirror might upon ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... I live to do so (and I sometimes amass a wonderful fortune in a very short time, and come back fabulously rich, and do all sorts of things), I think I shall try the overland route. Almost every evening four of us have a very pleasant rubber, which never gets stale. So you will have gathered that, though very anxious to get to our journey's end, which, with luck, we hope to do in about three weeks' time, still the voyage has not proved at all the unbearable thing that some of us imagined it would have been. One great amusement I have forgotten ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... members of the Batavian entourage of William of Orange, the restorer of the palace; with good store too of the lily-bosomed models of Lely and Kneller. The whole tone of this processional interior is singularly stale and sad. The tints of all things have both faded and darkened—you taste the chill of the place as you walk from room to room. It was still early in the day and in the season, and I flattered myself that I was the only visitor. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... was the autumn sunrise! After her long hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this unsounded depth, it may well afford to repeat the same forms forever, nor incurs thereby any danger of exhausting its significance and becoming stale. Vital repetition, accordingly, goes on in Nature in a way not doubtful and diffident, but frank, open, sure, as if the game were one that could not be played out. It is now a very long while that buds have burst and grass grown; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... you ever eat a piece of custard pie made out of stale eggs? Well, that is just about the same as the Carlsbad water, only the water is not baked with a raw crust on the bottom. But the doctor dad consulted was the peach. Dad asked him how much of the water he ought to drink, and the doctor held a counsel with himself, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... to that admission he felt it was on her lips to make. So he strode through the narrow streets, telling himself a fairy story of how it all might be, with a little house of their own and she waiting for him on the wharf when his ship made fast; a story that never grew stale in the repetition, but which, please God, would come true in the end, with Florence his wife, and all his doubtings and ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... door; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... room's—why, it's as stale as a Pullman sleeper. Let me have the chambermaid in to freshen it ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... matters she reserved, no doubt, for the accounts. Herself accustomed to pilfer, she knew to the least detail every trick of the servants, and not a centimo escaped her; she always thought she was being robbed. Such was her spirit of economy that at home they ate stale bread, thus confirming the popular saying, "in the house of ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... you, Mister Archie. Well, sir, that's our game, just as I say. We'll lay up a good stock of rations—I mean save the fresh and keep on eating the stale, and be all ready for the right morning, and when it comes, nip outside, mount the helephant, and away we will go—I mean, that is, if you think that you can creep up same as I do, and lower yourself ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... two totally distinct ideas to the English mind in its ordinary mechanical action. "Intelligence" is not necessarily "new", nor indeed is "News:" in the oldest dictionary I possess, Baret's Alvearie, 1573, I find "Olde newes or stale newes." A.E.B. is very positive that "news" is plural, and he cites the "Cardinal of York" to prove it. All that I can say is, that I think the Cardinal of York was wrong: and A.E.B. thought so too, when his object was not to confound me, as ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... a paid play-actor come here to conjure. I'm not here to do stale tricks; I'm here to see through 'em. I say it's an ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... order to secure provisions. Memories of the famine of the siege of '70 tormented the imagination. Since war had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody to expect a repetition of the same happenings. The storehouses were besieged by women who were securing stale food at exorbitant prices in order to store it in their homes. Future hunger was producing ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... at night, or when weary of sitting in the high-backed, creaking armchair. Uncleanness met the eye on every side—in the one greasy plate, on which lay a lump of repulsive-looking food; in the broken-mouthed jug, which reeked with the smell of stale beer; in the window, whose bemired and cobwebbed panes kept out more light than they admitted; in the ceiling, between whose smoke-grimed rafters large rents allowed many an abomination to drop down from the crowded room above; in the three-legged ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... shall retreat; When judgment, tutor'd by experience sage, Shall shoot abroad, and gather strength from age; When Heaven, in mercy, shall the stage release From the dull slumbers of a still-life piece; 770 When some stale flower[62], disgraceful to the walk, Which long hath hung, though wither'd, on the stalk, Shall kindly drop, then Bride shall make her way, And merit find a passage to the day; Brought into action, she at once shall raise Her own renown, and justify our praise. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... sad party that trailed down that sad, dead valley. The trees were hung with a dreary drapery of grey, and the ashen moss muffled our footfalls. I think it was the deadest place I ever saw. The very air seemed dead and stale, as if it were eternally still, unstirred by any wind. Spiders and strange creeping things possessed the trees, and at every step, like white gauze, a mist of mosquitoes was thrown up. And ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... not with me, Therefore I part with him, and part with him To one that I would haue him helpe to waste His borrowed purse. Well Iessica goe in, Perhaps I will returne immediately; Doe as I bid you, shut dores after you, fast binde, fast finde, A prouerbe neuer stale in thriftie ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, however, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... a pair of fur-topped boots. All his garments were new and well fitting, and contrasted greatly with the greasy and long used coats of the Cossacks on the boat. Sheepskin garments can look more repulsive than cloth ones with equal wearing. Age can wither and custom stale their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the sandy road which could be well seen from the hilltop. No sign of life upon it, she turned and went through the hall to the back porch and down the steps to the orchard, in one hand writing-materials, in the other pieces of stale bread for the birds; and as she walked she hummed a gay little tune to whose rhythm she unconsciously ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... merry, but saw no sights, my wife having a mind to see the play "Bartholomew-Fayre," with puppets. Which we did, and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that, at last, will be found the wisest. And here Knepp come to us, and sat with us, and thence took coach in two coaches, and losing one another, my wife, and Knepp, and I to Hercules Pillars, and there supped, and I did take from her ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... therwith. [Footnote: The same custom still exists amongst the inhabitants of the Lena Delta] As touching mariages, your Highnes is to vnderstand, that no man can haue a wife among them till he hath bought her whereupon somtimes their maids are very stale before they be maried, for their parents alwaies keepe them till they can sel them. They keepe the first and second degrees of consanguinitie inuiolable, as we do but they haue no regard of the degrees of affinity: for they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... young negro, clothed in rags unspeakably vile, which scarcely concealed his nakedness, was standing in the midst of a group of white men, toward whom he threw now and then a shallow and shifty glance. The air was heavy with the odour of stale tobacco, and the floor dotted with discarded portions of the weed. A white man stood beside a desk and was addressing ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sea to the Forth, and thence home. The actual end was delayed but very little longer, and it has been told by Lockhart in one of those capital passages of English literature on which it is folly to attempt to improve or even to comment, and which, a hundred times quoted, can never be stale. Sir Walter Scott died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832, and was buried four days later at Dryburgh, a post-mortem examination having disclosed ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... grow discouraged over their failure to arouse a support to their journals, blaming the race for non-appreciation, when the fault lies with themselves. Do they give their readers news? If a local sheet, they deal in stale generalities. If a general sheet, they confine themselves to locals of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... notes of Italy (Od. III, xxx, 13). He spent seven years in composing the first three Books of the Odes, which appeared in a single volume about B.C. 23. More than any of his poems they contain the essence of his indefinable magic art. They deal apparently with dull truisms and stale moralities, avowals of simple joys and simple sorrows. They tell us that life is brief and death is sure, that light loves and ancient wines are good, that riches are burdensome, and enough is better than a feast, that country life is delightful, that old age comes ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... they passed before him, for time has not dimmed the vivid picture of that procession. I remember their stories, and think still of their cuts and wounds. Outside the court the day was dull, and inside the light was bad and the air heavy with the fumes of stale debauch and chloride of lime. And yesterday had been Christmas Day in the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... he is one of the greatest masters in our language. They are so close to life as all men know it, that the careless reader, as we have already seen, is apt to take them for platitudes; but there is all the difference between the stale superficiality which coldly repeats what only its ears have heard, and these sayings of Johnson heated to new energy in the fires of conscience, thought and experience. "I have already enjoyed too ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... will surely fail to rise at all if you have scalded the yeast; the water must never be too hot. In winter, if it gets chilled, it will only rise slowly, or not at all, and in using baker's or German yeast take care that it is not stale, which will cause ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... health. The dreary, never-changing tale Of mortal maladies is worn and stale. You cannot charm, or interest, or please, By harping on that minor chord, disease. Say you are well, or all is well with you. And God shall hear your words and ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... at the story at first, but when we came across it about every other week, it began to get rather stale. It was one of those canards that stick, and I shall be spoken of always as the man who forgot his wife within an ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... interesting, absorbing, soul harrowing, in the form of financial ruin, highway robbery, murder, arson, fire, or flood. Everything in the world at the present brief hour seemed going on well, consequently the papers were very dull, flat, stale and unprofitable, and were soon laid aside by the host and his guest, and they ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... previous history of literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder, we are prepared for a series of useless remarks, weak attempts at jokes, disquisitions on dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes and vain flourishes, which almost make us blush for our country, and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting any of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... campaign during the Mexican War had made serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... got the god of war in um. Adjetant Wallis, it's a———long time between dhrinks, as I think ye was sayin', an' with rayson. See if ye can't confiscate a canteen of whiskee somewhere in the camp. Bedad, if I can't buy it I'll stale it. We're goin' to fight tomorry, an' it may be it's the last chance we'll have for a dhrink, unless there's more lik'r now in the other ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... the natural, clear, pink color, but rather a dirty yellow, and is usually heavily coated, showing a disordered stomach and impaired digestion. Then, too, there is dryness of the mouth, an unnatural thirst that demands drink. But pure water is stale and flat to such a mouth: something more emphatic is needed. Thus comes the unnatural craving for alcoholic liquors, and thus are taken the first steps on ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... [poor I am but his stale] The word stale, in our authour, used as a substantive, means, not something offered to allure or attract, but something vitiated with use, something of which the best part ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... dancing girls, by persons wedding before their elder brothers are wedded, by professional panegyrists and bards, and by those that are gamblers, the food also which is brought with the left hand or which is stale, the food which is mixed with alcohol, the food a portion of which has been already tasted, and the food that forms the remnant of a feast, should not be taken (by a Brahmana). Cakes, sugarcanes, potherbs, and rice boiled in sugared ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Cut in small pieces stale sponge cake or lady fingers, a few macaroons, some French cherries and apricots (glace), and mix all together. Make a custard of 1 quart milk and 6 eggs, and when cooked, reserve 1 cupful for a sauce, and add to the remainder ...
— The Cookery Blue Book • Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San
... long and black and the air was stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still, trying to probe the luminescent gloom that the goggles he wore brought to his eyes. The tunnel stretched out before him—on and on. Around him was the smell of viciousness ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... took care to turn Lola's attention from them in between, making her go over all sorts of sums and spelling exercises. Should I have persisted in fixing her attention I should only have defeated my true object, and made her stale for future undertakings. In fact, I only engaged in these three, by way of giving a greater sense of completeness to the idea, and also in order to fire the ambition of others embarking upon work of a ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... The butcher's boy came whistling down the lane to deliver the rump-steak or mutton-chop I had decided on for dinner; the greengrocer delivered his vegetables; the cheesemonger took solemn affidavit concerning the freshness of his stale eggs and the superior quality of a curious article which he called country butter, and declared came from a particular dairy famed for the excellence of its produce; the milkman's yahoo sounded cheerfully ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... few weeks before this black shadow of war had loomed up with its deadly menace a great party of German editors had returned our visit and once again I had listened to speeches about the blood- brotherhood of the two nations, a little bored by the stale phrases, but glad to sit between these friendly Germans whom I had met in their own country. We clinked glasses again, sang "God Save the King" and the "Wacht am Rhein," compared the character of German and English literature, of German and English women, clasped hands, and said, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... "merchants often lay it in bog-houses, that, becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker, stronger, and more f[oe]tid." It is said to be a fact, that in manufacturing tobacco, it is frequently sprinkled with stale urine. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... began, "to discuss what has been done in Galavia. That is long since a stale story. Our governments, acting in concert, made it possible to remove Karyl and crown Louis." He smiled quietly. "You know how short a reign Louis enjoyed before death claimed him. Perhaps you do not know that his death ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... trade on my own account, having contrived to learn a few of his tricks. My only capital was the change for half-a-guinea, which he had once let fall, and which I picked up, which was all I could ever get from him: for it was impossible to stale any money from him, he was so awake, being up to all the tricks of thaives, having followed the diving trade, as he called it, for a considerable time. My wish was to make enough by my table to enable me ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... plain-spoken varlet, and I would but ask thy master's name and condition. Answer me straight—no equivocation, no shuffling or evasion shall serve thee; 'tis a stale device now, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... moneye, chargynge them that if the Gentilman came agayne, they shold entreate him better not beyng knowen al this while that she was his wyfe, but fayued her to be her sister. Not long after her husband stale thether againe, he sawe the howse otherwyse decked, and better fare then he was wounte to haue. He asked, frome whence commeth al this goodly gere? They sayde that an honeste matrone, a kynsewoman of ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus
... a hateful twinkle of the eyes. "So you're out for a spree," he continued, winking in a knowing way. "Won't you walk into the back-parlor while I get them?" And he showed them into a dingy horrid room behind the house, stale with smoke, and begrimed ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... beauteous dame Hears what the mournful Maganzese narrates; And, at first mention of Rogero's name, Her radiant face with eager joy dilates. But, full of pity, kindles into flame As Pinabel his cruel durance states. Nor finds she, though twice told, the story stale; But makes him oft repeat and piece ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... think I have only to sit down and write it off, and do it to the quick. "The idea of his life," what he was as a whole, what was his self, all his days, would,—to go on with words which not time or custom can ever wither or make stale,— ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... reason for going down into the Aquarium, where the sallow blinds, the stale smell of spirits of salt, the bamboo chairs, the tables with ash-trays, the revolving fish, the attendant knitting behind six or seven chocolate boxes (often she was quite alone with the fish for hours at a time) remained in the mind as part of the monster ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... this prisoned life. We told stories, got up games, and I induced the men to go a-fishing, as we called it; that is, to let down their ragged hats through the broken window-panes by cords torn from the edges of our blankets. Now and then the poor folks near by filled these nets with stale bread or potatoes; but one day, after long ill luck, a hat was of a sudden felt to be heavy, and was declared a mighty catch, and hauled up with care. When it was found to be full of stones, a strange misery appeared on the faces of these eager, half-starved wretches. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... upon the village. It was a warm summer night, and the scent of the prairie was strong upon the air. As yet Barnriff was neither large enough, nor shut in enough by its own buildings to hold to itself that stale, stifling atmosphere which cities obtain. The air was the pure breath which swept over the vast green rollers of the grass world in the midst of which ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... shouts of "Shut up" and "'Old yer jaw" and "Put a sock in it" and "Let's get a bit o' sleep," but there was no chance of further sleep. The air was heavy with the rank smell of stale tobacco. Several men lit cigarettes and the ends glowed in the darkness, each one illuminating a face as the smoke was drawn in. Someone lit a candle and the bright flame dazzled us at first. Another man ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... were his boast, and drunkards had his praise; "One, in three draughts, three mugs of ale took down, As mugs were then—the champion of the Crown; For thrice three days another lived on ale, And knew no change but that of mild and stale; Two thirsty soakers watch'd a vessel's side, When he the tap, with dext'rous hand, applied; Nor from their seats departed, till they found That butt was out and heard the mournful sound." He praised a poacher, precious child of fun! Who shot the keeper with ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... "difficult to work," says Dickens, with obvious truth. How was he to get the quicklime into the vault, and Drood, alive, out of the vault? As to the reader, he would at first take Datchery for Drood, and then think, "No, that is impossible, and also is stale. Datchery cannot be Drood," and thus the reader would remain in a pleasant state of puzzledom, as he ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... of stale bread of sufficient quantity, scald out a bason, put the bread into it, pour upon it boiling water, cover it over, and let it stand for ten minutes; next strain the water oft, gently squeeze the saturated bread in a thin cloth, so that the poultice shall not be too moist, and then spread it upon ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... piteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, and cheaper,—smoothly, and more smoothly,—they got armies of assistants, and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters, learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. They had fallen—before the days of photography—into providers of frontispieces for housekeepers' pocket-books. I do not know if photography itself, their redoubted enemy, has even now ousted them ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... than a wilderness, while every pillar is a bush to hide them. It is the other expense of the day, after plays and taverns; and men have still some oaths to swear here. The visitants are all men without exceptions; but the principal inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of service, men of long rapiers and short purses, who after all turn merchants here, and traffic for news. Some make it a preface to their dinner, and travel for an appetite; but thirstier men make it their ordinary, and board here very cheap. Of all ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the days!—the old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to me and back ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... yet is needful to be told, To guide your choice: this wife must not be old: 100 There goes a saying, and 'twas shrewdly said, Old fish at table, but young flesh in bed. My soul abhors the tasteless dry embrace Of a stale virgin with a winter face: In that cold season Love but treats his guest With beanstraw, and tough forage at the best. No crafty widows shall approach my bed; Those are too wise for bachelors to wed. As subtle clerks ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... no time for rest or recreation, who can confer no responsibility upon his subordinates, who cultivates no fad, and is impatient of every moment spent away from his occupation, is in danger of eventually "going stale," and having to spend a longer and less profitable vacation in a sanitarium than would have sufficed to avert the disaster. Nor will he find it easy to change his sleep-habit with the change of residence. It behooves ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... through was dying. It was going to be quicker than the way they had of dying in Davos, but it mightn't be quick enough; it might drive him out of his last fight, back to an inconceivable stale world. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... from long personal experience as an amateur boxer and as a trainer of other amateurs. His instructions are accompanied with full diagrams showing the approved blows and guards. He also gives full directions for training for condition without danger of going stale from overtraining. It is essentially ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... however stale, He jumps about and wags his tail, And Human People clap their hands ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... some biscuits and stale cake, looked up at them inquiringly, as much as to say, "Aren't we going home now?" Visions of his comfortable bed rose before him, and he felt very inclined for a noon-day nap. But the children told him he was ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... strenuous day; and when at length I succeeded in doing so, and could get him to talk about himself, it appeared that, stirring though the events seemed to be which were nightly happening before Port Arthur, they were all flat, stale, and unprofitable, compared with such an event as the storming of the Nanshan Heights. And so, as a matter of fact, they were, as I soon discovered for myself; for the duty of our destroyer flotilla consisted ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... went back to his stale question: Could Sybil suggest any other resource? and Sybil sadly confessed that she could not. So far as she could see, they must trust to luck, and she thought it was cruel tor Mr. Carrington to go away and leave her alone without ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the women who are amused by the reveries of the stupid novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales, and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a sentimental jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and draw the heart aside from its daily duties. I do not mention the understanding, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... able to make a handsome affair out of it at all, after you had let it hang so long in the wind, if I had not taken on myself to make it agreeable to the gentleman, and cooked as neat a mess out of it as I have seen a Frenchman do out of a stale sprat?" ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... ice on it, which lasted far into the spring, and once or twice we got aboard this great raft and tracked across it, with as much awe and enthusiasm as ever Kane had felt in his arctic explorations. In all, we became intimate friends with the lake idea, new to us then, but never to grow stale; and our good fortune favored us during after-life with many lovely lakes and ponds, including such gems ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... longed to be a bride; Boiled with her sighs, in giving up the ghost, That for her late deceased husband died; Into the same then let a woman breathe, That being chid did never word reply; With one thrice married's prayers, that did bequeath A legacy to stale virginity. If this receipt have not the power to win me, Little I'll say, but think the devil's ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... seen. The older boys were playing craps in Dennahan's lot and the smaller boys were watching them. One lonely sentinel was perched on the fence scanning the horizon for cops. For this he received the regular union pay of a stale apple-core. ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... good a fortnight in warm weather; in cold weather longer. If your yeast appears to be a little changed, add a little saleratus to it before you mix it with your bread. If it does not foam well, when put in, it is too stale to use. Milk yeast makes sweeter bread than any other kind of yeast, but it will not keep good long. It is very nice to make biscuit of. Take half the quantity of milk you need for your biscuit—set it ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... suppers, was now soliciting a customer to take his choice of three lank cod-fish, ticketed at so much per lb. Billiard-rooms were silent, save where a solitary marker practised impossible strokes: print-shops exhibited a dull uniformity of stale engravings; and the innumerable horde of mongrel puppies of all varieties, that, particularly towards the end of term, are dragged about three or four in a string, and recommended as real Blenheims, genuine King Charles's, or "one of old Webb's black and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... what you mean? How are we going to take care of the news? It is not a magazine of stories and fiction; it is a magazine of news, and the news of the period between August 15th and September 15th, for instance, will become stale if it is not used in the September 15th issue and runs over until the October 15th issue. It is the American Nut Journal. I think your idea can be carried out very fully by featuring the convention as the main thing, but not to use every ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... mean you chaps are going to win at the next election? I devoutly hope you may—we're all as stale as ditch-water—and as for places, anybody's welcome to mine!" And so saying, Ashe lounged away, attracted by the bow and smile of a pretty Frenchwoman, with whom it was always agreeable ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interest of that admirable mixture for salutary application which we know as art. Art deals with what we see, it must first contribute full-handed that ingredient; it plucks its material, otherwise expressed, in the garden of life—which material elsewhere grown is stale and uneatable. But it has no sooner done this than it has to take account of a PROCESS—from which only when it's the basest of the servants of man, incurring ignominious dismissal with no "character," does it, and whether under some muddled pretext of morality ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... composed of half a dozen young men, since grown into graver habits, with Foster—home again, and a link once more in the circle of his intimates—at its head. The negro airs were still the favorites; but the collection, from frequent repetition, at length began to grow stale. One night, as a revival measure for the club, and as an opportunity for himself, Foster hinted that, with their permission, he would offer for trial an effort of his own. Accordingly he set to work; and at their next meeting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... by a diet befitting that state to which it had pleased Providence to call them, they rode the Great North Road for some days in a northern express. Vine said that the Victoria Falls were all right, but that their surroundings were, many of them, perversely wrong. It was so very stale, the hotel business, with the moonlight river excursions and the Livingstone trips, far too much sleeked and smoothed by foresight, and tamed by taking of thought. If one had only traveled up with pack donkeys, provisioned with leathery meat and leathery damper! ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... thousand pounds in gold (the sum is variously stated) from Sadleir. "He saith, whatever pretence they make, the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State and authority." This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had "tempted him" sufficiently. They had come up to his price. Arran, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... hundred clams. Use soft part whole and the tough part chopped fine. Put a layer on the bottom of a buttered baking dish. Season with salt, pepper, cayenne and a little mace and sprinkle over plenty of stale bread crumbs and a quantity of bits of butter. Repeat the layers until the dish is full. Put plenty of butter on top and pour in a cup of the water from the clams. Bake in a moderate oven one hour, and when half done pour in a ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... stories" were not alone his solace, but the delight of numerous audiences of admiring friends and neighbors. At Major Humphreys's request he retold them, two or three years before he died (1788) and they form the basis of his first biographical memoir. But they were doubtless very stale to those of his hearers who had listened to them again and again, as plainly intimated by ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... favour. Remembers and applauds the part she bore in the conversation at his collation. The frothy wit of libertines how despicable. Censures the folly, the weakness, the grossness, the unpermanency of sensual love. Calls some of his contrivances trite, stale, and poor. Beseeches him to remove her from the vile house. How many dreadful stories could the horrid Sinclair tell the sex! Serious reflections on the dying ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "Stale!" Stalky shouted. "We knew that years ago, only we didn't choose to run about shoutin' 'stinker.' We've got some manners, ir they haven't. Catch a fag, Turkey, and make sure ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... up, and was busily engaged in wringing the water from his coarse clothing. There was a smooth water-worn boulder on the beach, and, seeing this, the man who had spoken went up to it and sat down thereon, while his companion, evidently of a more practical turn of mind, collected the stale biscuits which had fallen out of the bag, then, taking the barrel carefully on his shoulder, walked up to where the other was sitting, and threw both biscuits and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor, along the wall, in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... idle and unhappy one. She lives on this intoxicant as other women might live on tea or gossip, as a man would take his dram or his tobacco. She drinks this wine because she is thirsty, and the plain, cool, spring-water of life has grown stale to her. It is corked up in bottles like the water sold in towns where the drinking-supply is low. It has ceased to be palatable ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... air became familiar. It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner wall ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... springs, fairy lock, fit receptacle for bank-notes, billets-doux, memoranda of debts of honour, or pleasurable engagements. Now how worn, tarnished, greasy, rascallion-like, the costly bauble! Filled with what motley, unlovable contents: stale pawn-tickets of foreign monts de piete, pledges never henceforth to be redeemed; scrawls by villanous hands in thievish hierolgyphics; ugly implements replacing the malachite penknife, the golden toothpick, the jewelled pencil-case, once so neatly set within their satin ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fountains, flowing in these wild mythic wastes of the Past, and have drunk inspiration thence. Percy, Scott, and Carlyle, by so doing, have infused new sap from the old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic fountains which flow fast by its roots. In an especial manner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... preserves them! For long voyages, army and navy use, mining, lumbering, and hunting outfits, they are simply invaluable! For all classes of consumers, they are cheaper, cleaner and more wholesome than the ordinary stale and wilted vegetables, for sale in the city markets! We have named these cubes, 'Solaris Vegetable Concentrates,' a title which we have copyrighted. The packages readily wholesale at 75 cents, to be retailed at one dollar. At these prices, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... just their perversity. It'll look so stupid to have two separate shows. Whichever comes last will seem so stale after the other." ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the man in his present stale of mind. He recognizes Calypso as beautiful, deathless, ever young; still he must have something more than sensuous life and beauty; though it last forever, it can never satisfy. Not to be compared with the Goddess in grace and stature, is his wife Penelope, still he longs for his home; ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... on hearing him say that, "Mr. Leonard was of the opinion we were rather overdoing the matter, and might go stale. He told me so, and said that in his experience he had known more than a few teams to overdo things, and lose their best gait in too much work. He says one more test ought to put the proper fighting spirit in us, and that he feels confident ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... paid play-actor come here to conjure. I'm not here to do stale tricks; I'm here to see through 'em. I say it's ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... more like being brother and sister, and that we could both be happy just seeing each other sometimes. It's only rather lately that I've known it had to be everything. There's nothing at all to say about the way we care, Peter, because it's such an old stale thing; it's always been, and I s'pose it always will be. 'Tisn't a new, surprising, sudden thing, like my falling in love with Denis. It's so deep, it's got root right down at the bottom, before we can either of us remember. It's like this ivy that's all over the ground, and ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... wan and chill? What if winds be harsh and stale? Presently the east will thrill, And the sad and shrunken sail, Bellying with a kindly gale, Bear you sunwards, while your chance Sends you back the hopeful hail:- 'Fate's ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... the addition of punch now and then. After these great people and aristocracy of Kolomna, come the rank and file. It is as difficult to put a name to them as to remember the multitude of insects which breed in stale vinegar. There are old women who get drunk, who make a living by incomprehensible means, like ants, dragging old clothes and rags from the Kalinkin Bridge to the old clothes-mart, in order to sell them for fifteen kopeks—in ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... appearances should deeply impress the untutored mind and should be deemed significant and portentous; they must deeply impress any normal mind, they are so grand and so strange. The man who has trained his intellect until it is so stale, and starved his imagination until it is so shrivelled that he can gaze unmoved at such spectacles, that they are insignificant to him, has but reduced himself to the level of the dog upon whom also they make no impression—though even ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... you proposing for me to stale it?" inquired Freckles. "Or am I just to find it laying in me path ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... for Arthur, and the butter had also to be carefully economised because a good deal was required for his crisp toast, which was unpalatable without it. Beth lived principally on the crusts she cut off the toast. When they were very stale, she steeped them in hot water, and sweetened them with brown sugar. This mess reminded her of Aunt Victoria's bread-puddings, and the happy summer when they lived together, and she learnt to sit upright on ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... tea, a word which, since '67, had been steadily becoming the most vexed in the language. The East India Company had put forth a complaint. They had Heaven knows how many tons getting stale in London warehouses, all by reason of our stubbornness, and so it was enacted that all tea paying the small American tax should have a rebate of the English duties. That was truly a master-stroke, for Parliament to give it us cheaper ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pushed the door of the dance hall open, and stepped nonchalantly inside. It was the usual scene, there was the usual hilarious uproar, the usual close, almost fetid atmosphere that mingled the odours of stale beer and tobacco. Baldy Jack's was always popular, and the place, even for that early hour, was already doing a thriving business. Jimmie Dale's eyes, from a dozen couples swirling in the throes of the bunny-hug ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... believe that even African barbarities had charms for the odd Englishman; but he was chiefly won by the dolce far niente of the natives, and the Oriental license of polygamy. In a word, Joseph had the same taste for a full-blooded cuffee, that an epicure has for the haut gout of a stale partridge, and was in ecstasies at my extrication. He neglected his siestas and his accounts; he wandered from house to house with the rapture of an impatient bridegroom; and, till every thing was ready for the nuptial rites, no one at the factory ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... once taught by Leonard Lamb of Finsbury who wrote B.A. after his name, and that he, Raffles, originated the witticism of calling that celebrated principal Ba-Lamb. Such were the appearance and mental flavor of Mr. Raffles, both of which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers' rooms in the commercial hotels of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... neither very nice nor half enough for a famishing lad, that plate of cold mixed meats from the restaurant, with a hard stale roll to eke them out. But Pocket felt he had a fresh start in life when he had eaten every crumb and emptied his water-bottle. Nor was he without plan or purpose any longer; he was only doubtful whether to knock at Phillida's door and shout goodbye, or to leave her a note explaining all. Baumgartner ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... and in all seriousness, shocked to find such an immoral man as Pechorin set before them as an example. Others have observed, with much acumen, that the author has painted his own portrait and those of his acquaintances!... What a stale and wretched jest! But Russia, it appears, has been constituted in such a way that absurdities of this kind will never be eradicated. It is doubtful whether, in this country, the most ethereal of fairy-tales would escape the ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... a John to walk up to him, but, to his amazement, none came. As a man may walk unhurt amid a shower of bullets, he had walked unseen under twenty policemen's eyes. From Castlereagh Street came a murmur of voices. The theatres were out, and a huge crowd, fresh from the painted scenes and stale odours of the stalls and gallery, watched with hilarious interest the harlequinade on the roofs. In half an hour a procession was formed, two deep, guarded by the police, and followed by a crowd stumbling over one another to keep pace with it, shouting words ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... followers he came to join me, but my attempt at hospitality was thrown away, for he would not touch the excellent wine which I had unpacked for him, nor would he eat any of my dainties, contenting himself with stale bread, dried dates, and water. After this meal we sat alone by the smouldering fire, the magnificent arch of the heavens above us of that deep, rich blue with those gleaming, clear-cut stars which can only be seen in that dry desert air. Our camp lay ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one apprehend that this subject can ever become trite and vulgar. Custom cannot stale its infinite variety. It is in the main obvious, and palpable enough for every common understanding; yet it leads to disquisitions of exquisite subtlety, it branches into innumerable ramifications, and involves consequences of surprising importance; it may exercise the ingenuity of the subtlest ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... feeling for life the attraction and amusement of possibilities so projected were worth more to you, in nineteen moods out of twenty, than the sufficiency, the serenity, the felicity, whatever it might be, of your stale personal certitudes. You were intellectually, you were "artistically" rather abject, in fine, if your curiosity (in the grand sense of the term) wasn't worth more to you than your dignity. What was your dignity, "anyway," but just the consistency ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... which Lord Wimbourne never heard of, which Sir Bryan Mahon, Commander-in-Chief, told Lord French he flatly disbelieved in, and which, when, after more than two years, the documents are produced, proves to be a stale rehash of negotiations before the Easter Week Rising, with some sham "German Irish Society" in Berlin. On this pretext the Sinn Fein leaders, Messrs de Valera and Griffith (whom there is not a shadow of proof to connect with the German plot), were arrested and deported, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the great pillared house the tall young son wandered aimlessly about after his father's abrupt departure. In the house there was little to interest him; the books were old and stale, the local newspaper flat, and the women had retired with headaches and sewing. He tried a nap, but it was too warm. So he sauntered out into the fields, complaining disconsolately, "Good Lord! how long will this imprisonment last!" He was not a bad fellow,—just a little spoiled and self-indulgent, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that he had ordered that these people be well fed; that he had supplied the money to buy them good and nourishing food. Now, if his poor pensioners received nothing but dry bread, and very stale, hard bread at that, while he paid for good food for them, somebody must be making money out of him, to whom he had no idea of being ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... for a while together by the fire, happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner. That people should laugh over the same sort of jests, and have many a story of "grouse in the gun-room," many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and better sounding in the world's ears. You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... religious knowledge and a sense of humor, he included all the Jewish institutions on the list, and they wrote to the paper and rather objected to being represented as decorating Christmas trees, or in any way celebrating that particular day. But of all stale, flat, and unprofitable stories, this releasing of prisoners from Moyamensing was the worst. It seemed to Bronson that they were always releasing prisoners; he wondered how they possibly left themselves enough to make a county prison worth while. And ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... staff—coachman, grooms, stablemen. I think myself that it is more in the nature of a parade, to insure that none of the establishment are out sweethearting, than of a religious exercise. Usually I am delighted when the sermon is ended. Even Barrow or Jeremy Taylor would sound dull and stale if fired off in a flat, fierce monotone, without emphasis or modulation. To-night, at every page that turns, my heart declines lower and lower down. It is ended now; so is the short prayer that follows it. We all rise, and ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times In which the meagre, stale forbidding ways Of custom, law and statute, took at once The attraction of a country ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... cleaned up from roof to cellar by Moulton-Barrett and his myrmidons, but it was not perfect at first. My bed was a mass of stale blood-stains from the wounded who had lain there before we came, and St Andre, whose bed was not of the cleanest and exuded an odd and unpleasing smell, routed about below it, and extracted the corpse of a hen, which must have been there ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... remote from markets for poultry production. The locations around the big cities in this section are excellent for poultry farming, as they are so far removed from the great farm region that their bulk of imported eggs are of necessity somewhat stale. California is good chicken country. The Puget Sound country is rather too damp. In the interior western regions the chicken business has not done well, chiefly because the atmosphere is too dry for the methods of artificial ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... play, giving an opportunity for bringing in a father of the usual play-house type,—a Sir Richard Hurry, who is, of course, as stupid, covetous, proud, and tyrannical and unfeeling, as play- house fathers were then bound to be: but it is a plot of the most commonplace form, turning on the stale trick of a man expecting to be hanged for killing some one who turns out after all to have recovered, and having no bearing whatsoever on the real plot, which is this,—Mrs. Wilding, in order to win back her husband's affections, persuades ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... "Oh, this stale excuse of duty!" said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of scorn that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent. "I have often heard it before, from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know precisely what it signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... always do. There were men shouting for people to come and see their shows for a dime, ten cents, and there were shooting galleries and everything. Sandwiches were thirty cents and the bread on them was stale, because Wig bought one. There was a ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and Nieces wished to see a little more of me; and I thought also that Lowestoft would be more amusing than Woodbridge to a young London Clerk, a Nephew of the Cowells, who comes to me for a short Holyday, when he can get away from his Desk. But early in October I shall be back at my old routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people should ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... Astiers took it. There she found her husband already at table, looking preoccupied and almost grumpy. In the ordinary way 'the Master' came to his meals with a smiling serenity as regular as his appetite, and with teeth which, sound as a foxhound's, were not to be discouraged by stale bread or leathery meat, or by the miscellaneous disagreeables which are ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to cuff (to strike), cleft, din, earnest money, egg on, greenhorn, jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail, ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever came to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine; but I submit that any one who sets forth to write about the English of England ought to have sufficient acquaintance with the language to check and reject Halliwell's amazing classification. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... then all that was under me would be swept away. I descended into the muffled saloon, which was a little box enclosing light and warmth partially submerged in the waters. There it smelt of hot engine-oil and stale clothes. I got used to the murmuring transit of something which swept our outer walls in immense bounds, and the flying grind of the propeller, and the bang-clang of the rudder when it was struck . . . and must have gone to sleep. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... the first, with its stale air, its chink of louis d'or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about the tables, and its general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Italiens fifteen or twenty years ago, has disappeared since Paris has become the world's railway terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the observation, proceeds to be very clever. Scratch the Russian, and you know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the one barbarous material! The ladies of these are charming, ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... human being lives it. She was filled with a rebellious sense of the banality of her surroundings this afternoon. Even from her coign of vantage upon the balcony, whence wide prospects disclosed themselves, everything looked foolish, pointless, of the nature of an unpardonably stale joke. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... piquet or hombre; or rode out, if it was absolutely necessary. All was now over for the day. He supped copiously with his familiars: was a great eater, of wonderful gluttony; a connoisseur in no dish, liked fish much, but the stale and stinking better than the good. The meal prolonged itself in theses and disputes, and above ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Toasting Bread—The cornpopper can be used for toasting odds and ends of stale bread which ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... out their own territory. The whole metaphysical realm consisted in nothing more than creatures of fancy and heavenly things at the precise time when real beings and earthly things were beginning to concentrate all interest upon themselves. Metaphysics had become stale. Helvetius and Condillac were born in the same year that Malebranche and Arnauld, the last great French metaphysicians of ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... and as it took almost my last dollar to pay for deck passage thereon, I lived on some small cakes of my own baking, which I carried in a bag. I was now in a sad predicament unless I should connect at Lake Bennett with some one who would carry my outfit back to Skagway on credit. I ate my stale cakes and drank lake water, and thus fooled the little Jap steward out of two dollars. It was ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the luck, there's not a fresh egg to be had—no, nor a fresh chicken," continued I, "nor a stale one either; nor a tayspoonful of souchong, nor a thimbleful of bohay; nor the laste taste in life of butther, salt or fresh; ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hold of it and began to clear the stale tobacco out of the bowl with the point of his ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... worse, as I wrestled with this confusion I found it was growing stale to me. In those Spring days I was fagged and dull, my imagination would not work. And this gave me a scare. I must not grow stale, I must keep right on making money to meet the bills that were still piling up at home. And so for a Sunday paper I undertook a series on "The Harbor from a ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... pretty merry, but saw no sights, my wife having a mind to see the play "Bartholomew-Fayre," with puppets. Which we did, and it is an excellent play; the more I see it, the more I love the wit of it; only the business of abusing the Puritans begins to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that, at last, will be found the wisest. And here Knepp come to us, and sat with us, and thence took coach in two coaches, and losing one another, my wife, and Knepp, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... with watchful eyes In silence, for the tongue cannot avail. Vex not his wounds with rhetoric, nor the stale Worn truths, that are but maddening mockeries To him whose grief outmasters all replies. Only watch near him gently; do but bring The piteous help of silent ministering, Watchful and tender. This alone ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... he had been through the first half of the year before, Haynes actually did go somewhat stale in some ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... had been no breach of good taste in the Governor's manner, no warning reminder of an origin that was certainly obscure and presumably low, no stale, dust-laden odours of the circus ring. He had looked and spoken as any man of Stephen's acquaintance might have done, facetiously, it is true, but without ostentation or vulgarity. When the break came, therefore, it was the more shocking to the younger man because he had been so imperfectly ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... that John Kollander was opening a can of something, gathering the boys around him and as they ate, recounting the hardships of army life to add spice to an otherwise stale and unprofitable meal. Afterward probably he would go to some gathering of his comrades and there fight, bleed and die for his country. For he was an incorrigible patriot. The old flag, his country's honor, and the preservation ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... flary upon his twitching, aching eyelids; and finally, towards dawn, with every nerve behind his eyes taut with pain and strain, awakening unrefreshed to consciousness of that nimbus of unrelieved false glare which encircled him, and the stench of melted tallow and the stale reek of burned kerosene foul in his nose. That, now, had been the hardest of all to endure. Endured unceasingly, it had been because of his dread of a thing infinitely worse—the agonized, twisted, dying face of Jess Tatum leaping at him ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... was laid for them in a small private room, which smelt principally of stale tobacco and stale chimney soot. The water-bottle on the table was encrusted with a white enamel advertisement of somebody's whisky, and had another such recommendation legible on its base. The tray used by the girl in attendance was enamelled with ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... The Crags, the light of dawn stole in through the windows and turned the brilliant light of the lamps into a pale glow. The odor of stale flowers was all about. Mrs. Wellington, with a headache, stood in the doorway. Her husband sat in an armchair with legs outstretched, smoking about his fortieth cigar. Sara Van Valkenberg stood in the middle of the floor. She had ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... "I don't know that I care to live for long on stale sandwiches and pie, washed down by the most miserable coffee ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... Breathing the stale and stuffy air Of office or consulting room, Our thoughts will wander back to where We heard ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... herrin'-gutted bush-ranger over yonder? He'd stale the milk out of your tea, he would, be the same token. Well, last night he got vicious and took a crack at my lines. I had rayson to suspect he'd be afther tryin' somethin' on, so I laid for him. I planted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... not contented now to give his single "Imprimatur," but brings his chair into the title-leaf; there sits and judges up or judges down what book he pleases. If this be suffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear?—which may in time bring in round fees to the Licenser, and wretched mis-leading to the people. But to the matter. He approves 'the publishing of this Book, to preserve the strength and honour of Marriage against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Could I be a witness of sixty yet to come, would there be any thing new, or which I had not seen before? It is high time we should intrude ourselves into the invisible abodes, when all things satiate and grow stale upon us here below. I will this very night enclose myself in my wigwam, and, setting it on fire, depart with the thin vapour that shall arise from the dried wood of the forest, when piled around me—No, no,' continued he, tasting the remains of his cider 'there ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... The sort of attraction these unchaste, nakedly adorned, women "of fashion" hold out can never inspire that precious, priceless thing which "passeth all understanding," which survives all the travail of tribulation, that beautiful emotion that "age cannot wither nor custom stale," which radiates the dark places ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... people have not got tired of quoting "Heureux en jeu; malheureux en amour." It seems one of the least true of all stale, stupid proverbs. Luck will run itself out in more ways than one; and sometimes you will never hold a trump, however often the suit changes. The ancients knew better than we when they called the double-sixes "Venus's cast." The monotony of Guy's reckless dissipations was soon broken up by an event ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... made all things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours— and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor 'the cup of blessing' ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... have the narrative gift—that great and rare endowment—have with it the defect of telling their choice things over the same way every time, and this injures them and causes them to sound stale and wearisome after several repetitions; but it was not so with the Paladin, whose art was of a finer sort; it was more stirring and interesting to hear him tell about a battle the tenth time than it was the first ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to live for myself. I have one inseparable companion—that is myself. I want to suffer my own sufferings, and enjoy my own enjoyments. This living for others is absurd. I hate second-hand emotions; they are stale and dull. But, Pensee, you haven't told me ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... to her lips then. The crowd had gone. The great room contained not more than half a dozen people. Confetti littered the floor. Here and there a napkin, crushed and bedraggled into an unrecognizable ball, lay under a table. From an overturned bottle the dregs were dripping drearily. The air was stale, stifling, poisonous. ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... intelligence; indeed, I half doubted whether there were not some conspiracy to deceive in that torrent of outlandish sounds which she and they were so rapidly pouring forth to one another. However, all turned out well, and there we were, in a compartment of a French railway-train, smelling of stale tobacco, with ineffective zinc foot-warmers, and an increasing veil of white frost on the window-panes, which my sisters and myself spent our time in trying to rub off that France might become visible. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... have always some remains of muscular action in the claws, which may be excited by pressing the eyes with the finger; when this cannot be produced, the lobster must have been too long kept. When boiled, the tail preserves its elasticity if fresh, but loses it as soon as it becomes stale. The heaviest lobsters are the best; when light they are watery and poor. Hen lobsters may generally be known by the spawn, or by the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... began. "The reddleman is coming for you!" had been the formulated threat of Wessex mothers for many generations. He was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by Buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence. And now the reddleman has in his turn followed Buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... pence, many had warned him off harshly, but this man had looked straight into his eyes, and had at once stopped and questioned him, had singled out the one true statement from a mass of lies, and had given him—not a stale loaf with the top cut off, a suspicious sort of charity which always angered the waif—but his own food, bought for his own consumption. Most wonderful of all, too, this man knew what it was to be hungry, and had even the insight and shrewdness to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... would have created Justice Shallow. Nay, is not there, too, that offensively supercilious creak of the boots with which he enforced his remarks on the war in Europe, when he last caught you at the corner of the street and decanted into your ears the stale settlings of a week of newspapers? Now, did not Shakespeare tell us that the imagination bodies forth? It is indeed the verbum caro factum—the word made flesh ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... were shut, and he was apparently quite insensible of her presence. For the first time she was conscious of a distressful faintness, which, as she had come suddenly out of the stinging frost into the little overheated room, which reeked with tobacco smoke and a stale smell of cooking, was not astonishing. She mastered it, however, and presently, seeing that Hawtrey did not move; glanced about her with some curiosity, for this was the first time she had entered ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... had made up their mind to oppose Lord George Bentinck's bill. But seeing that he had a large following, and that the Irish members, and many independent English members too, would support him, they had recourse to the stale trick of weak governments—the threat of resignation. The affairs of the country were at the moment in a most critical position, and every hour's delay in sending relief to Ireland would add hundreds ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... condition of the modern stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, however, that hitherto the attempts made by younger writers in the direction ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... men. They lie so close to the surface that a shell, anywhere near, brings them up. Three quarters of your casualties are from disease. The wound doesn't heal; it gets gangrene and tetanus from the stale old soil. And instead of having a good fighting man back in trim in a fortnight, you have a sick man in a London hospital for a couple of months, and ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... forthwith painted its legs out of the contents of his bottle, and placing the thus decorated bird by the side of one just killed, he asked who now was able to see the difference between the fresh bird and the stale one? The old women were seized with admiration. They are a curious set of beings, those dames de la halle; their admiration is unbounded for successful adventurers—witness their enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon. They adopted our friend's idea without hesitation, made an agreement with him on ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... work—that's all! [Suddenly looking up at him] Don't think me worse than I am-please! It's working under people; it's having to do it, being driven. I have tried, I've not been altogether a coward, really! But every morning getting there the same time; every day the same stale "dinner," as they call it; every evening the same "Good evening, Miss Clare," "Good evening, Miss Simpson," "Good evening, Miss Hart," "Good evening, Miss Clare." And the same walk home, or the same 'bus; and the same men that you mustn't look at, for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... creatures of the field or forest do, and with as little prejudice against surroundings. George Henry tried to philosophize again and to be like these people, but he failed. He noted before him on the table a jar of that abject stuff called carelessly either "French" or "German" mustard, stale and crusted, and remembered that once at a dinner he had declared that the best test of a gentleman, of one who knew how to live, was to learn whether he used pure, wholesome English mustard or one of these ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... to look at the Moon," she said, turning around, and then it was all gone—the face, the night, the Moon, the magic—and she was back in the grubby, stale little hole, facing an angry, stale little man. It was then that the eternal thud of the air-conditioning fans and the crackle of the electrostatic precipitators that sieved out the dust reached her consciousness again like the ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... themselves, ridiculing that young man! For five good minutes they stood there, shouting ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him. They peppered him with stale jokes, they even made a few new ones and threw at him. They hurled at him all the private family jokes belonging to our set, and which must have been perfectly unintelligible to him. And then, unable to stand their brutal jibes ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... independent character." Thus did Mr. Jarvice gracefully paraphrase the single word "expelled" which was written on his slip of paper. "Ah, Mr. Hine," he cried, smiling indulgently at the sullen, bemused weakling who sat before him, stale with his last night's drink. "You and Shelley! Rebels, sir, rebels both! Well, well! After you left school, at the age of sixteen, you pursued your studies in a desultory fashion at home. Your father died the following year. Your mother two years later. You have since ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... places, no bread is to be had, or if there be, it is of such poor quality as to be uneatable. One finds there only an oaten cake, known as flat brod, dry, black, and hard as pasteboard, or a coarse loaf composed of a mixture of birch-bark, lichens, and chopped straw. Eggs are a luxury, and a most stale and unprofitable one; but there is any quantity of poor beer to be had, a profusion of buttermilk, either sweet or sour, and sometimes a little coffee, so thick and muddy that it is much more like distilled soot than the products of Mocha or ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... maybe, when a man's a fool and talker. OWEN — sharply. — Well, go, take your choice. Stay here and rot with Naisi or go to Conchubor in Emain. Conchubor's a wrinkled fool with a swelling belly on him, and eyes falling downward from his shining crown; Naisi should be stale and weary. Yet there are many roads, Deirdre, and I tell you I'd liefer be bleaching in a bog-hole than living on without a touch of kindness from your eyes and voice. It's a poor thing to be so lonesome you'd squeeze ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... of energy which momentarily satisfies a public demand that something shall be done. It also afforded Canning the peg on which to hang a grievance, and dexterously to prolong discussion until the matter became stale in public interest. By the irrelevancy of the punishment to the crime, and by the intrusion of secondary matters into the complaint, the "Chesapeake" issue, essentially clear, sharp, and impressive, became hopelessly confused ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and commonwealth. That he shall be imprisoned in the tower of London, during the king's pleasure. That he shall pay unto our sovereign lord the king a fine of 50,000 pounds. That he shall never sit in Parliament any more, and that he shall never come within the verge of the court." 2 Howell's Stale ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... him. For he decided that any opportunity of an interview with the king must be paid for, and gave out that no one should have any conversation with him who brought no presents. Access, he announced, to so great a general must be gained by no stale or usual method, but by making interest most zealously. He wished to lighten the scandal of his cruelty by the pretence of affection to his king. The people, thus tormented, vented their complaint of their trouble in silent groans. None had the spirit ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... tempted to see in his mysterious mortification an instance of that strain of disillusionment which runs like a dark thread through the brilliant texture of the literature of the Grand Siecle. Racine had known to the full the uses of this world, and he had found them flat, stale, and unprofitable; he had found that even the triumphs of his art were all compact of worldliness; and he had turned away, in an agony of renunciation, to lose himself in the vision of ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... matrons, and cooks were giving the students warm, nourishing, and appetizing food upon which to begin the day's work on the farm and in the shops and classrooms. Nothing made him more indignant than to find the coffee served lukewarm and the cereal watery or the eggs stale. For such derelictions the guilty party was promptly located and admonition or discharge followed speedily. Probably in nothing was his instinct for putting first things first better shown than in his insistence upon proper ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... interrupted by any one. This meeting, he said further, had been called to discuss the South African aspect of the war. It had nothing to say about the operations in Europe; all that they wished to protest against was the invasion of German South West Africa. Hereupon dead cats, brickbats, stale eggs and other things were hurled into the hall through the windows, occasioning an indescribable commotion. Angry Afrikanders jumped out of the windows and seized some of the offenders and administered such a sound thrashing to one ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... a shout at Charlie's expense, and I resumed my work, grave as an owl. That furnished amusement until it grew stale, when Charlie came to ask me my name, and I told him ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... possibility, because one's whole life is one continual sacrifice of inclinations, which to indulge, however laudable or innocent, would draw down the malice and reproach of those prudent people who never do ill, 'but feed and sleep and do observances to the stale ritual of quaint ceremony.' The charming and beautiful Mrs. Robinson: I pity her from the bottom of ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... room on the right, whose walls were decorated with various sporting prints chiefly illustrative of steeple-chases, with here and there a stunted fox-brush, tossing about as a duster. The ill-ventilated room reeked with the effluvia of stale smoke, and the faded green baize of a little round table in the centre was covered with filbert-shells and empty ale-glasses. The whole furniture of the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... ever eat a piece of custard pie made out of stale eggs? Well, that is just about the same as the Carlsbad water, only the water is not baked with a raw crust on the bottom. But the doctor dad consulted was the peach. Dad asked him how much of the water he ought to drink, and the doctor held a counsel with ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... waiting in the hall of the opera house. The groom to conduct them to the spot where the drag was waiting; the footman to carry wraps and take his mistress's final orders. There was a Bohemian flavour in the little walk to the great fruit garden, which was odorous of bruised peaches and stale salads as they passed it. Waggon-loads of cabbages and other garden stuff were standing about by the old church; the roadway was littered with the refuse of the market; and the air was faint and heavy with the scent of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Mother. He had brought back to the flat the strenuousness of business. But inactivity was hard on his merry heart; he fretted and fussed at having nothing to do; he raged at having to throw away unused bread because it was growing stale. It was Mother who reminded him that they couldn't expect ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... the faithful hand of Bolton in economical patches of the woodwork; but she was not sure that they had not been there eleven years before; and there were darnings in the carpets and curtains, which affected her with the same mixture of novelty and familiarity. Certain stale smells about the place (minor smells as compared with the prevalent odour) confused her; she could not decide whether she remembered them of old, or was reminded of the odours she used to catch in passing the ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... intended. So probably was Uzzah's steadying the ark—But some of these do help on the cause of God, and even more than the stale attendance on Lord's day duties. So thought those who introduced images and paintings into churches. [Some indeed attend those who ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... or estimate of middle-class London would be complete without mention of that very important factor in its commissariat—beer, or its various species, mild or bitter, pale or stale. Your true Cockney East-Ender, however, likes his 'arf and 'arf, and further admonishes the cheery barmaid to "draw it mild." Brewers, it would seem, like their horses and draymen, are of a substantial race; many of the leading brewers of the middle nineteenth-century ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... B. Yea. Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety. Wonderful, all the same, what perversely bad hits he will persist in making, at times. Does things now and again you'd think a school-girl with a bat ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... of food which the big rabbit ate, for I could touch nothing. For two days they came, and then I think they forgot all about us. I grew very hungry, and at night filled myself with some of the remaining food, such as stale cabbage leaves. By next morning all was gone, and the big rabbit grew hungry also. All that day it hopped about sniffing at me ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... keep of dancing girls, by persons wedding before their elder brothers are wedded, by professional panegyrists and bards, and by those that are gamblers, the food also which is brought with the left hand or which is stale, the food which is mixed with alcohol, the food a portion of which has been already tasted, and the food that forms the remnant of a feast, should not be taken (by a Brahmana). Cakes, sugarcanes, potherbs, and rice boiled in sugared milk, if they have lost their relish, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... say—for I live in a very honest neighborhood. The only two thieves that were in it—Charley Folliott and George Austin—were hanged not long ago, and I don't know anybody else in the country side that would stale it." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... an it please you, be dull, (For Britons deem dulness "respectable"); Stale flowers of speech you may cull, With meanings now scarcely detectable; You may wallow in saturnine spite, You may flounder in flatulent flummery; Be sombre as poet YOUNG'S "Night," And dry as a Newspaper "Summary"; As rude as a yowling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... opportunities for corruption, and the tradition of sharp practice is of long standing. We bribed, intimidated, and filibustered in swaddling clothes, and stole a governorship as early as 1791. The tricks of to-day have all gone stale with handling, for the patriots we ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... potatoes—they they were called 'taters then—artichoke pickles, tea cakes, pies, and good old healthy lye hominy. There was plenty of meat served, but I was not allowed to eat that, as I was never a very strong child. I was a fool about stale bread, such as biscuit, cornbread, and light bread. Mother was a fine cook and her battercakes would just melt in your mouth. Of course, you know we had no stoves in those days and the cooking was done in open ...
— 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
... house of antique ease Within the smoky city's pale, A spot wherein the spirit sees Old London through a thinner veil. The modern world so stiff and stale, You leave behind you when you please, For long clay pipes and great old ale And beefsteaks in the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... is now my misery— love's yearning No more unspeakably torments my heart, Yet bearable alone through thee, my being— All thou art not is idle, stale and dying, Colourless, withered, dead,—save where ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... waiting-room where a paraffin-lamp with blackened chimney struggled feebly with the fog. It was not a cheery room, and he was glad to be called back from a contemplation of a roll of texts hanging on the wall, and a bottle of stale water on the table, to human things by the entry of a drowsy official who was discharging the duties of station-master, booking-clerk, and porter all ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... accept them. Though gas is as dreadful a description of champagne as entomological is of a certain type of secretary, I would venture to point out that it expands, effervesces, soars ever to greater heights; but beer, froth and all, tends to become flat, stale, ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... months, the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer, smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I fancy, from my fowls—always alone, and always ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... room of the cabin was littered up with a variety of things, the wings of birds, feathers of chickens, shells of eggs, bones, bits of tree branches, an old iron chain, a tiny square looking-glass, badly cracked, some stale bread and cake, cores of apples and pears, and a ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... the voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to New York or to Quebec, just as they have been able to entice a cargo to either port. Then come the horrors of a long voyage and short provisions, and high prices for stale salt junk and biscuit; and, at the end, if illness has been on board, the quarantine, that most dreadful visitation of all—for hope deferred maketh ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... having shown in many ways he was growing stale on the job and in need of a vacation, I decided to take him with me. Besides, if the thought of using the weed as a source of cheap rawmaterial came to anything, the engagement of his interest at an early stage would increase his usefulness. Before setting out for the field I read reports ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... had praised London as the only place to live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... longer, and it has been told by Lockhart in one of those capital passages of English literature on which it is folly to attempt to improve or even to comment, and which, a hundred times quoted, can never be stale. Sir Walter Scott died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832, and was buried four days later at Dryburgh, a post-mortem examination having disclosed considerable softening ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... cliff was long and black, and the air was stale and thick with the stench of rodents. Stanton stood still for a minute, stretching his muscles. Crawling through that cramped little opening had not been easy. He looked around him, trying to probe the luminescent gloom that the goggles ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the beginning of true kingship! The Lord would rather wash the feet of his weary brothers, than be the one only perfect monarch that ever ruled in the world. It was empire he rejected when he ordered Satan behind him like a dog to his heel. Government, I repeat, was to him flat, stale, unprofitable. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... New-College Puddings:—Grate a penny stale loaf, and put to it a like quantity of beef-suet finely shred, and a nutmeg grated, a little salt, some currants, and then beat some eggs in a little sack, and some sugar, and mix all together, and knead it as stiff as for manchet, and make it up in the form and size ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the fruits of the Ficus glomerata, should never be eaten by one who is desirous of his own good. The flesh of goats, of kine, and the peacock, should never be eaten. One should also abstain from dried flesh and all flesh that is stale. The man of intelligence should never eat any salt, taking it up with his hand. Nor should he eat curds and flour of fried barley at night. One should abstain also from flesh of animals not slain in sacrifices. One should, with concentrated attention, eat once on the morning and once ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Some nice ragout, or charming fricasee. What earth and waters breed, or air inspires, Man for his palate fits by torturing fires. But, though my edge be not too nicely set, Yet I another's appetite may whet; May teach him when to buy, when season's pass'd, What's stale, what choice, what plentiful, what waste, And lead him through the various maze of taste. The fundamental principle of all Is what ingenious cooks the relish call; For when the market sends in loads of food, They all are tasteless till ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... made from stale bread, which should be cut in one-third to one-half inch slices. A single slice of toast may be made by holding it over the fire on a fork. In camp a forked stick answers every purpose. The easiest way to make several slices is to put them in a wire ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... a mind that is filled with negative, discordant or inharmonious thoughts, I am separating myself from the full expression of the Divine within me. I am the bucket of water going stale on a human island; but, when I make my spirit at one with the Father by harmonious thinking, by love, kindness, good will, fellowship and co-operation, I am not only maintaining all of my original properties, but I am in correspondence ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... read and seen, do fall In our opinions; yet not seen at all, Whom would they please? To an heroic tale Would you not listen, lest it should grow stale? ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... car, as he finished his explanation, and then we began to wade jerkily through a thick layer of loose stones that had been spread over the road like hard butter over stale bread. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... done put up now, Jud?" grinned a tall weaver with that blank look of expectancy which settles over the face of the middle man in a negro minstrel troupe when he passes the stale question to the end man, knowing the joke ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... familiar mendicant was a vender of printed ballads. These effusions were so stale, atrocious, and unsalable in their character, that it was easy to detect that hypocrisy, which—in imitation of more ambitious beggary—veiled the real eleemosynary appeal under the thin pretext of offering an equivalent. This beggar—an ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... courtesy could not withstand that. There was a roar of delight from the cowpunchers, and, instantly, the phrase became a part of the vocabulary of the Bad Lands. That day, and on many days thereafter when "Get a git on yuh!" grew stale and "Head off them cattle!" seemed done to death, he heard a cowpuncher shout, in a piping voice, "Hasten ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Toddles pestered everybody for a job. He pestered Carleton, the super. He pestered Tommy Regan, the master mechanic. Every time that he saw anybody in authority Toddles spoke up for a job, he was in deadly earnest—and got a grin. Toddles with a basket of unripe fruit and stale chocolates and his "best-seller" voice was one thing; but Toddles as anything ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... cafe was found, in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... I don't come into that sort of scheme. I never ought to have been there at all. Still, I'm glad I showed him he'd got something in himself beside the stale accumulations of many banker ancestors; if it's only for the sake of the next litte banker, who may want to lay ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... "Will that give me back my twenty years? Bah! the palate is as stale as the spilt wine, and when the good of life is gone life itself may go. There is Saxe knocking at the door. My faith! but you have indeed scared him into discretion; he never knocks for me. Perhaps he ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... an eagerness ludicrously at variance with the difference of their respective situations. It seemed—as Charles Lamb said of humorous letters to distant lands—as though eagerness must grow so stale before it reached the summit of this big ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... draw aside the veil behind which the truth is hidden. At Bonn young Marx felt as if a blaze of light had flashed before him; and from that moment his studies, his companions, and the ambitions that he had hitherto cherished all seemed flat and stale. At night and in the daytime there was just one thing which filled his mind and heart—the beautiful vision ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the business of her voyage. Later in the day another droger hove in sight, rolling as badly as her predecessor. I threw out no flag to this one, but got the worst of it for passing under her lee. She was, indeed, a stale one! And the poor cattle, how they bellowed! The time was when ships passing one another at sea backed their topsails and had a "gam," and on parting fired guns; but those good old days have gone. People have hardly time nowadays to speak even on the broad ocean, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... grew up in Northern Illinois and could go out on a day like this and gather two or three bushels of hickory nuts. How I enjoyed the black walnut, especially when it was just shriveled so it would leave the shell—it got rather too rich when it was dried and stale in the winter time—but how delicious it was when just wilted! Also there was the butternut and the wild hazelnut. I used to take a one-horse wagon into the woods on a Saturday and gather enough hazelnuts ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... tost on ill fortune's waves, Ordain'd by fate to be the land of slaves; Shall moving Delos now deep-rooted stand; Thou fix'd of old, be now the moving land! Although the metaphor be worn and stale, Betwixt a state, and vessel under sail; Let me suppose thee for a ship a while, And thus address ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... simply stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of accumulated epithelial cells, and are at first dry and pearly white in appearance, but as a result of fatty degeneration they break down into a greyish-yellow pultaceous and semi-fluid material having a peculiar stale odour. It is probable that the decomposition of the contents is the result of the presence of bacteria, and that from the surgical point of view they should be regarded as infective. A sebaceous cyst may remain indefinitely without change, or may slowly increase in size, the skin ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... might, And falling, with a thrill again Of pleasure shot from feet to brain; And both paced deck, ere any knew Our peril. Round us press'd the crew, With wonder in the eyes of most. As if the man who had loved and lost Honoria dared no more than that! My days have else been stale and flat. This life's at best, if justly scann'd, A tedious walk by the other's strand, With, here and there cast up, a piece Of coral or of ambergris, Which, boasted of abroad, we ignore The burden of the barren shore. I seldom write, for 'twould ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown, And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down; Creep home and take your place there, The spent and maimed among: God grant you find one face there You loved when ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... Times, when Priest-craft was at height, And all the Deadly Sins esteemed light; When that Religion only was a Stale, And some bow'd down to God, and some to Baal; When Perjury was scarce esteem'd a Sin, And Vice, like flowing Tides, came rowling in; When Luxury, Debauch, and Concubine, The sad Effects of Women and ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... a very good restaurant and one of the most popular. They serve here a dejeuner at 1 kr. 50 oere consisting of an excellent dish of eggs (a speciality of the place) and meat and cheese or so-called "sweet" (generally a very unwholesome stale cake with cream). The table-d'hote dinners are excellent, one being at 3 kr. 50 oere and the other at 2 kr. 50 oere; the first consisting of soup (thick soups being a speciality of the place), fish, entree, meat, and releve (generally ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... gloss it over by calling me novel names. I hate stale thunderbolts. You might have breathed a word in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... porter, who with the utmost gruffness produced some lukewarm coffee, with stale, dry slices of over-night bread, and flavoured the whole ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Mel. A song, that's stale here, will be new there a twelvemonth hence; and if a man of the town by chance come amongst them, he's reverenced ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... compel a man to play golf if he does not wish to. I figured that a rest for half a day would improve my game. The fact is, and the best golfers are coming to realise it, that a man can play so much that he goes stale. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... all others combined, was the great mass of the English {17} people—hard-working, much-suffering, poor, patient, and almost absolutely indifferent to changes in governments and the humors and struggles of parties. "These wrangling jars of Whig and Tory," says Dean Swift, "are stale and old as Troy-town story." But if the principles were old, the titles of the parties were new. Steele, in 1710, published in the Tatler a letter from Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff, asking for "an account of those two religious orders which have lately sprung ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... as I wrestled with this confusion I found it was growing stale to me. In those Spring days I was fagged and dull, my imagination would not work. And this gave me a scare. I must not grow stale, I must keep right on making money to meet the bills that were still piling up at home. And so for a Sunday paper I undertook a series on "The Harbor from ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palled upon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign; after having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed, it was high time that he ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... n't saying a great deal, he reflected, one seldom enough, in our staid, our stale society, meets a person of whom one can say so much;—and again ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... a holy temple. And really, when I recall our gatherings, upon my word there was much that was fine, even touching, in them. Imagine a party of five or six lads gathered together, one tallow candle burning. The tea was dreadful stuff, and the cake was stale, very stale; but you should have seen our faces, you should have heard our talk! Eyes were sparkling with enthusiasm, cheeks flushed, and hearts beating, while we talked of God, and truth, of the future of humanity, and poetry ... often what we said was absurd, and we ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... because a little girl he had seen for five minutes failed to appear! Where was his common sense, his "gumption," as old Robert Williamson would have said? Naturally a man liked to look at a pretty face. But was that any reason why he should feel as if life were flat, stale, and unprofitable simply because he could not look at it? He called himself a fool and went home in a petulant mood. Arriving there, he plunged fiercely into solving algebraical equations and working out geometry exercises, determined to put out of his head forthwith all vain imaginings ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... indescribable mantel-piece atrocities, that there is not a simple or restful corner anywhere. Yet I find myself touched by its very hideousness, when I think that it probably looked even so, smelt even so stale and sweet, in the days of my dear father's boyhood. There is a picture in the large drawing-room that gives me infinite pleasure. It is a portrait of my own grandmother with papa in a white frock on her knees, and my poor ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... becomes of this trite assumption when there are iron facts like these to fall upon it? Again, it is objected that the freshness disappears in elaborate preparation, and an oft-repeated sermon becomes stale to its author. Shiel, we are told, "always prepared the language as well as the substance of his speeches. Two very high excellences he possessed to a most wonderful degree—the power of combining extreme preparation ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... carnival is so dull and spiritless that one can plainly see it is nearing the end. For more than two hours we have been strolling about the boulevards, but have not met with one adventure. Everywhere the stereotyped faces and masks; the same jokes as last year; even the coffee and the cake look stale to me. Arthur, don't you agree ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... expression was full of reproach. "The very thought of that place, with its smell of stale beer and those awful creatures behind the bar, makes me shiver," he confessed. "I shall walk for an hour before lunch in Kensington Gardens. If I have a moment to spare I shall run into the Museum and spend a little time with the mosaics. What a charming effect the sunlight has ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dainty entree. To prepare the canapes take some slices of stale bread about two inches thick and cut into neat rounds with a large biscuit cutter. With a smaller cutter mark a circle in the center of each round and scoop out the crumbs from it to the depth of one inch. This must be carefully done, so there will be a firm bottom ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... but stale the schools, Revamped as the mode may veer, But Orm from the schools to the beaches strays And, finding a Conch hoar with time, he delays And reverent lifts it to ear. That Voice, pitched in far monotone, Shall it swerve? shall ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... though with your assistance, my friend, I might easily prove who I am, still, as you know I might find the detention inconvenient, I shall therefore sail early in the speronara. Your letters may be addressed to me as before, but bear in mind that your information is generally too stale. Now I will get a little rest, if you will show me where I am ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Emperour needs her not, Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stocke: Ile trust by Leisure him that mocks me once. Thee neuer: nor thy Trayterous haughty sonnes, Confederates all, thus to dishonour me. Was none in Rome to make a stale But Saturnine? Full well Andronicus Agree these Deeds, with that proud bragge of thine, That said'st, I beg'd the Empire at ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... it is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden posture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir. But this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed; that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not danger, and inconveniences. Therefore it is ill in counsel, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... electrotypes have been destroyed. In taking this course, which was sanctioned by William Morris when the matter was talked of shortly before his death, the aim of the trustees has been to keep the series of Kelmscott Press books as a thing apart, and to prevent the designs becoming stale by constant repetition. Many of them have been stolen and parodied in America, but in this country they are fortunately copyright. The type remains in the hands of the trustees, and will be used for the printing of its designer's works, should special editions be called for. Other ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... ground that the right to strike is not absolute, the Court in a similar manner upheld a statute by the terms of which an officer of a labor union was punished for having ordered a strike for the purpose of enforcing a payment to a former employee of a stale claim for wages.[161] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... condition, however, that I should not smoke while working at them. He himself did not smoke, and could not bear the smell of smoke, and he showed me several of his MSS. which had become quite useless to him, because they smelt of stale tobacco smoke. I did all I could to guard these sacred treasures ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... we 're ca'd a wee before The stale "three score an' ten," When Joy keeks kindly at your door, Aye bid her welcome ben. About yon blissfu' bowers above Let doubtfu' mortals speir; Sae weel ken we that "heaven is love," Since ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid underground, or suspended overhead, connecting by branch wires with private dwellings, shops, etc., and uniting them through the main cable with a central office." This remarkable prophecy has now become stale reading, as stale as Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." But at the time that it was written it ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... Why did Florette not come? Who had walked across the plank roof of that musty prison? The fact that they could only guess at the time increased their dread and made their dreadful predicament the harder to bear. Moreover, the air was stale and insufficient and their heads began ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... on the sofa again. "One life is over and another is begun, then that one is over—a third begins, and so on, endlessly. All the ends are snipped off as it were with scissors. See what stale things I'm telling you. Yet how much truth there ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fear, tells disappointingly little about the mammoth, giving no measurements nor any description of his appearance. The earlier part, too, about the distribution of the elephant family, is doubtless also stale ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... was interrupted by shouts of "Shut up" and "'Old yer jaw" and "Put a sock in it" and "Let's get a bit o' sleep," but there was no chance of further sleep. The air was heavy with the rank smell of stale tobacco. Several men lit cigarettes and the ends glowed in the darkness, each one illuminating a face as the smoke was drawn in. Someone lit a candle and the bright flame dazzled us at first. Another man got up and threw immense black shadows. The recesses of the ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... was disposed to put off the lighting of our fire upon the roof as long as it appeared safe to do so, in order to husband our fuel. The animals, disappointed of the forage usually furnished them at this hour, stamped impatiently and nosed disdainfully the stale straw and pine plumes which we had emptied from the bunks and which were now ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... went with him into an early public-house, haunted by unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts, farmers' men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... dormitory from the fresh, pure, night air he thought at first that he would choke in the atmosphere laden with stale tobacco-smoke and foul odours; but in the end he slept splendidly, despite his ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Pollnitz, in a fawning voice. "If your majesty designed to be angry, it was not necessary to light the pipes and fill the beer-mugs; for while you are neither smoking nor drinking, the pipe goes out, and the beer becomes stale." ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... swallowed two glasses of whiskey to start his blood moving again, and then sat down and played poker disasterously until daylight made the lamps grow a sickly yellow and the air of the room seem suddenly stale and dead. But Happy never thought of blaming the schoolma'am for the eighteen dollars ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... assurance, Sith, since, Sithen, afterwards, since, Skift, changed, Slade, valley, Slake, glen, Soil (to go to), hunting term for taking the water, Sonds, messages, Sort, company, Sperd, bolted, Spere, ask, inquire, Spered, asked, Sperhawk, sparrowhawk, Sprent, sprinkled, Stale, station, Stark, thoroughly, Stead, place, Stert, started, rose quickly, Steven, appointment,; steven ser. appointment made, Steven, voice, Stigh, path, Stilly, silently, Stint, fixed revenue, Stonied, astonished,; became confused, Stour, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... Grace were sitting on the stoop of the boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported the conception of life's origin to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... given some biscuits and stale cake, looked up at them inquiringly, as much as to say, "Aren't we going home now?" Visions of his comfortable bed rose before him, and he felt very inclined for a noon-day nap. But the children told him he was not to go home yet, and he agreed, with ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... unexceptionable," but "despicable in his Britannic government." To account for this seeming change in a man who, from his first to his last day, was always the same, required a more sober historian. She tells us also, he affected "a sententious wit;" but she adds, that it consisted "only of quaint and stale conceits." We need not take the word of Mrs. Macaulay, since we have so much of this "sententious wit" recorded, of which probably she knew little. Forced to confess that James's education had been "a more learned one than is usually bestowed on princes," we find how useless ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... was a union to distance every wonder of the kind.—The attachment of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax became commonplace, threadbare, stale in the comparison, exciting no surprize, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or thought.—Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!—Such an elevation on her side! Such a debasement on his! It was horrible to Emma to think how it must sink him in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of it was in certain events, political and even personal. They roughly resolve themselves into two: the marriages of Henry VIII. and the affair of the monasteries. The marriages of Henry VIII. have long been a popular and even a stale joke; and there is a truth of tradition in the joke, as there is in almost any joke if it is sufficiently popular, and indeed if it is sufficiently stale. A jocular thing never lives to be stale unless it is also serious. Henry ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... a theatre of the lowest description. Smoking was, of course, permitted. When they arrived the performance was over. People were still sitting at many of the tables. Reeking as the auditorium was with the stench of stale beer, it left the impression of a dark, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... shape into the actuality of fight; but what an hour to go out fighting! Why should they be hauled out to fight in the dark? Why could not men wait for light? Wait until the world was aired? He was thirsty and uncomfortable, with the taste of stale tobacco in his mouth, and joined in the variegated imprecations muttered by the men when he found there would be only a few minutes to get anything to eat and no time for hot coffee. Presently he is a unit in a long ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... or stale beer, put to it one ounce of isinglass, beat well and cut or pull'd to small pieces; put it to the perry or beer, and let it steep three or four days. Keep whisking it together, or else the glass will ...
— The Cyder-Maker's Instructor, Sweet-Maker's Assistant, and Victualler's and Housekeeper's Director - In Three Parts • Thomas Chapman
... Fanny, King, Ratke—doubtful, he may go—Emma, Mary, Belle; weapons: eight revolvers and a shot gun, and swords galore; but we're pretty far gone when we come to the swords. It has been rather a lark arranging; but I find it a bore to write, and I doubt it will be cruel stale to read about, when all's over and done, as it will be ere this goes, I fancy: far more ere ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... ways to cut down crashes was by making sure that the pilot was in good condition physically. Flight surgeons assigned to every camp were detailed to make a study of the very delicate relationship between a sick and stale pilot and the crash. It was discovered, for instance, that a man who went up not in the best condition multiplied by many times the ordinary hazards in the air. It became the duty of these surgeons to conduct ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... raid, and were seeking a supposed new "listening post" of the enemy. There had been a very heavy bombardment of the German trenches all day, and it was only held up for three-quarters of an hour to let us do our job. The new-stale earth turned up by the shells extended fifty yards in No Man's Land. (Only earth that has been blown on by the wind is fresh "over there." Don't, if you have a weak stomach, ever turn up any earth; though there may not be ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... and jumped up, upsetting the bottle, which trickled a stale stream to the floor. "Oh, that's all right, Mr. Johnson, I wasn't ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Travennes had been entertained in the manner narrated, Mr. Connors had passed the time by relating stale jokes to the uproarious laughter of his extremely bored audience, who had heard the aged efforts many times since they had first seen the light of day, and most of whom earnestly longed for a drink. The landlord, hearing the hilarity, had taken advantage of the opportunity offered ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... for a second invitation, but, groping out the provisions, began to munch at the stale black oaten loaf with as much heartiness as we have seen him play ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... mirando la tierra, y andar con mas gravedad, y hazer mejor vida, zimulando por venture algunos mas la virtud, que exercitando la." (Cosas Memorables, fol. 182.) "L'hypocrisie est l'hommage que le vice rend a la vertu." The maxim is now somewhat stale, like most others ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... instant the blades touched, each felt them tingle to their very points with a personal vitality, as if they were two naked nerves of steel. Evan had worn throughout an air of apathy, which might have been the stale apathy of one who wants nothing. But it was indeed the more dreadful apathy of one who wants something and will care for nothing else. And this was seen suddenly; for the instant Evan engaged he disengaged and lunged with an infernal violence. His opponent with ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... I laughed at the story at first, but when we came across it about every other week, it began to get rather stale. It was one of those canards that stick, and I shall be spoken of always as the man who forgot his wife within an hour ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... long used has this man been to the terrific game of war, and the scenes and sights which that reveals, stirring to their depths all the direst passions of our nature, that now, at home and at peace, life grows stale and flat, and needs the artificial stimulants which violent and extreme modes of action can alone supply. The death of a horse on the course, answers now for a legion slain in battle; an unruly, or ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... runs up through the crowd and whispers in Campbell's ear, "Put Balfour and Martin in the scrim. They are fresher." He has noticed that the scrim line on both sides is growing stale, and can do no more than grimly hold on. At once Campbell sees the wisdom of this suggestion. The Don, though not so heavy as Shock, is quite as strong, and is quicker than the big centre, who is beginning to show ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... into a very low, close, swampy country, and our goat's flesh began to be very stale through the heat, not only of the sun, but the muletto's back: however, we pleased ourselves we should have one more meal of it before it was too bad to eat; so, having travelled about three miles from the river, we took up our lodging on a little ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... 88: Rigorous law)—Ver. 796. Cicero mentions the same proverb in his work De Officiis, B. i., ch. 10, substituting the word "injuria" for "malitia." "'Extreme law, extreme injustice,' is now become a stale proverb in discourse." The same sentiment is found ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... of storms which he, Bragg, encountered—of dinners which he, Bragg, has received from the Governor-General of India—of jokes which he, Bragg, has heard; and however stale or odious they may be, poor Mrs. B. is always ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from habit. They crowded into the shop; one man shut the door, Fevrier lighted a match and disclosed by its light staved-in barrels, empty cannisters, broken boxes, fragments of lemonade bottles, but of food not so much as a stale biscuit. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... that worthy unwatched for a moment, but it was scarcely for more. The room below was fitted with a bath and a lavatory basin, which Raffles pointed out to me without going all the way down himself. At the same time he handed me a stale remnant of the sandwiches removed with Levy ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... judge by the length of night required; or perhaps it took three nights, like the making of Heracles. What has come over him, that he babbles such puerilities? memorable things indeed, a child in bed, and a very ancient, worn-out dream! what stale frigid stuff! does he take us for interpreters of dreams?' Sir, I do not. When Xenophon related that vision of his which you all know, of his father's house on fire and the rest, was it just by way of a riddle? was it in deliberate ineptitude that he reproduced it? ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... painful as his blase indifference to all emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow. He lingered—he hesitated—he repeated many times how glad he should be to see Beechwood again; how all the world was to him "flat, stale, and ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... senses turn quicksilver. And so I say, sirs, that these troubadours richly deserve to be banished to the isles of the lizards. Though it is not they that are in fault, but the simpletons that extol them, and the fools that believe in them; and had I been the faithful duenna I should have been, his stale conceits would have never moved me, nor should I have been taken in by such phrases as 'in death I live,' 'in ice I burn,' 'in flames I shiver,' 'hopeless I hope,' 'I go and stay,' and paradoxes of that sort ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lessons for two solid weeks, but it's no use my protesting. One can't protest with Kloster. He says he won't teach me any more if I don't go. He was quite angry at last when I begged, and said it wouldn't be worth his while to go on teaching any one so stale with over-practising when they weren't fit to practise, and that if I didn't stop, all I'd ever be able to do would be to play in the second row of violins—(not even the first!)—at a pantomime. That shrivelled me up into silence. Horror-stricken silence. Then he got ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... o'er much, Yet thy incessant grin I would not see, 15 For naught than laughter silly sillier be. Thou Celtiber art, in Celtiberia born, Where man who's urined therewith loves a-morn His teeth and ruddy gums to scour and score; So the more polisht are your teeth, the more 20 Argue they sipping stale in ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Dutch. All this talk about hands across the sea and such rot makes me sick. The English are the most benighted and the most conceited and condescending race on earth; the Germans and Austrians are stale beer-vats, and the Italians and French are ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... is worth something!" he exclaimed. "It may be stale news, and it may be something for the future, but it's worth trying. I wonder I didn't think ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... Creation heard some of this older stuff for the first time, he would hardly believe that the man who in his age wrote so much fresh, vital music, charged with colour and energy, could in the prime of physical life have written music that is now so old-fashioned and stale. To this general verdict exceptions must be made in the cases of some of the quartets, the clavier pieces, and The Seven Words, the last especially being, as I have already said, in his most splendid ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... eat, affecting to forget his presence. The logs on the hearth burned sullenly, and gave no light. The poor oil-lamp, casting weird shadows from wall to wall, served only to discover the darkness. The room, with its low roof and earthen floor, and foul clothes flung here and there, reeked of stale meals and garlic and vile cooking. I thought of the parlour at Cocheforet, and the dainty table, and the stillness, and the scented pot-herbs; and though I was too old a soldier to eat the worse because my spoon lacked washing, I felt the change, ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... of treeless dust, like soiled packs of cards. Each was similar to the next, as one old five-spot of clubs resembles another. Houses, empty bottles, and garbage, they were forever of the same shapeless pattern. More forlorn they were than stale bones. They seemed to have been strewn there by the wind and to be waiting till the wind should come again and blow them away. Yet serene above their foulness swam a pure and quiet light, such as the East never sees; they might be bathing in the air of creation's first morning. Beneath sun ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Arabian tale. There is no chimney, there is no window, there is no drainage. We are in a cubic sink, where we can scarcely stand erect. From the small door pours a dense volume of smoke, some of it stale smoke, which our entry has forced out of the corners; the kitchen will only hold so much smoke, and we have made havoc among the cubic inches. Underfoot, the thin planks sag into standing pools, and there is a glimmer of poisonous blue just along the base of the blackened walls; thousands ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Peter was conscious of faces watching them. "Bucket Lane" was the street's title to fame. Windows showed dim candles, in the distance a sharp cry broke the silence and then fell away again. The street was very narrow and from the running gutters there stole into the air the odour of stale cabbage. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... a crowded back seat, where, leaning one elbow on his knee, he shaded his eyes with his hand. On his right a big, sweaty farmer was smoking a stale pipe. The smell of the cheap, vile tobacco, bad as it was, became a welcome substitute for the odor of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... ships can sail, We've founded many a mighty state, God grant our greatness may not stale Through craven ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn
... which the young life of the earlier chapters of the book comes surging upon the scene of its elders. A current of newness and freshness is set flowing in the atmosphere of the generation that is still in possession. The talk of a political drawing-room is stale and shrill, an old man in his seclusion is a useless encumbrance, an easy-going and conventional couple are living without plan or purpose—all the futility of these people is obvious to an onlooker from the moment when their ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... Top of which stood a Cocoa Nutt shell full of fresh water, and on the side of the post hung a small Bag, wherein was a few pieces of Bread Fruit roasted ready for eating. Some of the pieces were fresh and others Stale. The Natives did not seem to like that we should go near the body, and stood at a little distance themselves while we examin'd these matters, and appeared to be pleased when we came away. It certainly was no very agreeable place, for it stunk intollerably, and yet it was not above 10 yards ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... ring in it not altogether lovely. "Stand aside, Mr. Devant! See, he must have brought his work out after we left yesterday. It was orderly enough then; but look at it now! Let us examine this upon the easel. But first, open the door. I smell stale wine. The untidy fellow ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... pocket." And Bab produced from that chaotic cupboard two rather stale and crumbly ones, saved from lunch for the fete. These were cut up and arranged in plates, forming a graceful circle around the cake, still in ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... was with its droning old-world smell of ancestor, dry rot, and stale incense. As the clouds came and went, the grey-green, cobweb-chastened, light ebbed and flowed over the walls and ceiling; to watch the fitfulness of its streams was a sufficient occupation. A hen laid an egg outside and began to cackle—it ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... what were the feelings of Madeline, as love, with its royal longing to give, was born in her heart. With what lilies of virgin innocence would she fain have rewarded her lover! but her lilies were yellow, their fragrance was stale. With what an unworn crown would she have crowned him! but she had rifled her maiden regalia to adorn an impostor. And love came to her now, not as to others, but whetting the fangs of remorse and blowing the fires ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... have brought him into occasional contact with it among the middle classes, and even in the manor-houses and parsonages for which he made up the medicine in his master's surgery. But his treatment of the subject was too palpably imitative of one poetic model, already stale from repetition. Not only did he choose Pope's couplet, with all its familiar antitheses and other mannerisms, but frankly avowed it by parodying whole passages from the Essay on Man and The Dunciad, the original lines being duly printed at the foot of the page. There is little ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... many shattered windows. We woke to the rumbling of distant cannon, which might more correctly be called a trembling of the air rather than a true sound. Still hoarding our provisions, we ate a frugal breakfast of stale bread and of tea made from the dried leaves of linden trees. We started off at half-past seven, receiving a very friendly God-speed from ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... never do, unless a bit of Heaven it had. Men needed eyes divinely blue to toil by day and still be glad. A world where only men and boys made merry would in time grow stale, And so He shared His Heavenly joys that faith in Him should never fail. He sent us down a thousand charms, He decked our ways with golden curls And laughing eyes and dimpled arms. He let ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... spoke these sensible words, felt that they were "flat, stale, and unprofitable." She felt, also, that they were not true in sense; that they did not come from her heart; that they were not such as Frank deserved at her hands, and she was ashamed ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... (the sum is variously stated) from Sadleir. "He saith, whatever pretence they make, the principal mark they shoot at is to make an alteration of the State and authority." This at least is explicit enough. The Reformers were actually renewing the civil war on charges so stale and so false. The Duke had possibly promised to desert her if she broke the truce, and now he seized on the flimsy pretence, because the Congregation, as the leaders said, had "tempted him" sufficiently. They had ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... for myself. I have one inseparable companion—that is myself. I want to suffer my own sufferings, and enjoy my own enjoyments. This living for others is absurd. I hate second-hand emotions; they are stale and dull. But, Pensee, you haven't told me ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... it you do. I don't mean of course that one shouldn't be rationally persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to preach. He was a duly ordained priest in good standing—technically, at least—in the Catholic Church. He had all the confidence of a sophomore—age did not wither him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety. He questioned and contradicted everybody, young or old, regardless of position. But so cleanly was the man's mode of life, so intellectual, so personally unselfish and sincere was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... guide into a parlour, redolent of stale cigar smoke, with oilcloth on the floor and varnished walls, an abode even more horrible than Hassan's lair. Joseph closed the door carefully behind him, and made no apology for his ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all thy tricks and sleights to cheat, And sell thy carrion for good meat; Not all thy magic to repair 750 Decay'd old age in tough lean ware; Make nat'ral appear thy work, And stop the gangrene in stale pork; Not all that force that makes thee proud, Because by bullock ne'er withstood; 755 Though arm'd with all thy cleavers, knives, And axes made to hew down lives, Shall save or help thee to evade The hand of Justice, or this blade, Which I, her sword-bearer, do carry, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the combat were over, the speech loomed up, perfect and whole, a permanent thing in history or literature, while the loud thunders of opposition had too often died away into low mutterings, audible only to the adventurous antiquary who gropes in the "still air" of stale "Congressional Debates." The rhetoric of sentences however melodious, of aphorisms however pointed, of abstractions however true, cannot stand in the storm of affairs against this true rhetoric, in which thought is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... was not exactly a success. We invited all the foreigners in Hiroshima, twelve in number, and everybody talked a great deal and laughed at everybody's stale jokes, and pretended to be terribly hilarious. But there was a pathetic droop to every mouth, and not a soul referred to home. Each one seemed to realize that the mere mention of the word would ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... filled with vague and highly colored notions of a smugglers' cave, his narrow lungs filled with air, Bubbles dove, swam between two slimy barnacled piles, and came up presently in a dark, dank, stale, gurgling region, wonderfully cool after the blazing sunlight which ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... the oil of the machines and the new leather—a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight, Not quite a Felon, yet but half a Knight. [xiv] The gibbet or the field prepared to grace; A mighty mixture of the great and base. 170 And think'st thou, SCOTT! by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance, Though MURRAY with his MILLER may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? [24] No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade, Let such forego the poet's sacred name, Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame: Still for ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... fish must be fresh when canned. No time should be lost in handling the fish after being caught. Putrefaction starts rapidly, and the fish must be handled promptly. The sooner it is canned after being taken from lake, stream or ocean, the better. Never attempt to can any fish that is stale. ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner wall of ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... lightly pardoned him, For was he not her Mowgli and her Kim? But now the neighbourhood remonstrance roars, He's naughty still, and naughty out of doors. 'Tis well enough that he should tell Mamma Her sons are tired of being what they are, But to give friendly bears, expecting buns, A paper full of stale unwholesome Huns— One might be led to think, from all this work, That little master's ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... ungrammatical, roughly clad men, and of having no maid to serve her and not even the comfort of privacy, loomed large in the mind of Mrs. Singleton Corey. Never before in her life had she drunk coffee with condensed cream in it, or eaten burned bread with stale butter, and boiled beans and bacon. Never before had she shared the bed of another woman, or slept in a borrowed nightgown that was too tight in the arms. To Mrs. Singleton Corey these things bore all ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... all he gives us a sense of the exuberant joyousness and buoyancy of life is in the sketches of the seaside—the newly discovered joys of which had then not become commonplace to people of the middle class. The good old seaside has grown rather stale by this time—the very children of to-day dig and paddle in a half-perfunctory sort of fashion, with a certain stolidity, and are in strange contrast to those highly elate and enchanting little romps that ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... But don't borrow of any but your own people again, Berk. We don't do that. No, no!—no thanks! Shut up all that. If ever you get in a hole, I'll take you out if I can. Good-by—will you go to the Lords? Better not—nothing to see, and still less to hear. All stale. That's the only comfort for us—we are outside!" he said, with something that almost approached hurry in the utterance; so great was his terror of anything approaching a scene, and so eager was ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... for a day's journey—and it was with the utmost difficulty that the horses performed it. Though they had started so early, it was quite late in the afternoon when they turned the flank of an eminence which formed part of the upland called Greenhill. While the horses stood to stale and breathe themselves Tess looked around. Under the hill, and just ahead of them, was the half-dead townlet of their pilgrimage, Kingsbere, where lay those ancestors of whom her father had spoken and sung to painfulness: Kingsbere, the spot of all spots in the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... underfoot which I recognized as snow; and in a hard-surfaced roadway there were a number of wheeled vehicles moving, which caused the liquefying snow to splash about me. I adjusted my coat controls for warmth and deflection, but that was the best I could do. The reek of stale decay remained. Then there were also the buildings, painfully almost vertical. I believe it would not have disturbed me if they had been truly vertical; but many of them were minutes of arc from a true perpendicular, all of them covered with a carbonaceous material which I instantly perceived ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... weighed the package and examined it to find how much it had been cut. He issued them slips, which they added as part of the contributions. "Good work—you, too, Gordon. Best week in the territory for a couple of months. I guess the citizens like you, the way they treat you." He laughed at his stale joke, and Gordon was willing to laugh with him. The credit on the dope had paid for most of the contributions. For once, he had money to ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... at Charlie's expense, and I resumed my work, grave as an owl. That furnished amusement until it grew stale, when Charlie came to ask me my name, and I told him it ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... to write down a full description of the country immediately behind our present line. The Skipper, for fear we should become stale, allowed us plenty of leave. We would make little expeditions to Bethune for the baths, spend an afternoon riding round Armentieres, or run over to Poperinghe for a chop. We even arranged for a visit ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... in individual dishes, paper cases, or china shirring-cups, about twelve minutes. Serve at once from the dish or dishes. The souffle will "stand up" a little better, if three-fourths a cup of milk be used in place of the half-cup as given, and half a cup of stale grated bread be added before the cheese; but it will not be ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... see—well, they see Battersea through a kind of a bright gaze. Then comes Sunday, and a dry throat, and waiting for the pubs to open. The streets are all a litter of dirty newspaper and cabbage-stumps, and worse; and the air's kind of sick and stale.' ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... man can tell.[101] Douglas made the stronger impression, though Whigs professed entire satisfaction with the performance of their protagonist. There were some in the audience who took exception to Lincoln's stale anecdotes, and who thought his ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... that to leave the home Of the Waywode, my father, for the house Of some count palatine, a grateful bride? What do I gain of new from such a change? And can I joy in looking to the morrow When it brings naught but what was stale to-day? Oh, tasteless round of petty, worn pursuits! Oh, wearisome monotony of life! Are they a guerdon for high hopes, high aims? Or love or greatness I must have: all else Are unto me alike indifferent. Smooth off the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... novel is just that close and enervating. Every page is like the next morning taste of a champagne supper, and is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. There is no fresh air in the book and no sunlight, only the "blinding light shed by the electric globes." If the life of New York newspaper men is as unwholesome and sordid as this, Mr. Crane, who has experienced it, ought to be sadly ashamed to tell it. Next morning when Coleman ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... macaroni is the best among the ordinary kinds. Better still, however, is the macaroni made with fine wholemeal flour which is stocked by some food-reform stores. Parmesan cheese is nicest for this dish. Stale cheese spoils it. ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... don't want your soul; it's somewhat of a stale sole, for aught I know; and there are plenty of fresh ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... of the next fortnight they admitted twelve more kittens to the home; and the Terror had yet another idea. Milk alone seemed an insufficient diet for them; and he approached the village baker on the matter of stale bread. There were more negotiations; and in the end the Terror made a contract with the baker for a supply of it at nearly his own price. Now he fed the kittens on bread and milk; they throve on it; and it went further ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... with tobacco-smoke and redolent of stale beer. At the far end a small stage with faded red hangings. The card read No. 7, and the programme informed me that the turn was "A Bouquet of Ballads." A slight, fair-haired girl appeared on the stage. Her cheeks were burning, and she kept her eyes ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... "evidently is the result of other peculiarities which nullify the harmony of the more important features; in the first place the thinness of the cheeks and their hue of old wood dotted here and there with freckles, calm stains of the colour of stale bran; then the flat braids of white hair drawn smooth under a frilled cap, and finally the modest dress, a black dress clumsily made, dragging across the bosom, and showing the lines of her stays stamped ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... marble, and gilding, and frescoes; the Duomo is of black and white marble, of mixed architecture, and highly ornamented—all stinking to a degree that was perfectly intolerable, and the same thing whether empty or full; it is the smell of stale incense mixed with garlic and human odour, horrible combination of poisonous exhalations. I must say, as everybody has before remarked, that there is something highly edifying in the appearance of devotion which belongs to the Catholic religion; ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Ancient Without so much ado. What you do grant, I'm very free To use now at my pleasure: Another Month, or Year, d' ye see I'll bate, as I have leasure; So Hair by Hair, from the Mare's Tail I'll pull, as well I may. So what is good, is quickly stale, Though Writ ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... is somewhat stale. Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale, Wampum and calumets and forests dreary, Once so attractive, now begins to weary. Uncas and Magawisca please us still, Unreal, yet idealized with skill; But every poetaster scribbling witling, From the majestic oak his stylus whittling, Has helped to ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the spread of education have impaired the vitality now of Christian presentations of ethics.) So that to have announced it positively, at that time, would have served his purpose but little: men would have said, "We have heard all that before; had he nothing better to give us than stale ideas from the Mysteries or Pythagoras?" What he wanted to do was to take it out of the region of religion, where familiarity with it had bread an approach to contempt; and restate it robbed of that familiarity, and clothed anew in a garb of sweet reasonableness. So once more, and as ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... 'when you and me was up to de president's plantation, his cook was makin' plum pudden, he was. Now how in natur does you rimagine he did it? why, Missus, he actilly made it wid flour, de stupid tick-headed fool, instead ob de crumbs ob a six cent stale loaf, he did; and he nebber 'pared de gredients de day afore, as he had aughten to do. It was nuffin' but stick jaw—jist fit to feed turkeys and little niggeroons wid. Did you ebber hear de likes ob dat ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of as the "water of life." These false teachers are wells without water. Their preaching does not feed and water their flock. Their empty forms and stale essays contain no spiritual food. For this reason there is a famine throughout Babylon. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... travellers on the platform, or in the little waiting-room where a paraffin-lamp with blackened chimney struggled feebly with the fog. It was not a cheery room, and he was glad to be called back from a contemplation of a roll of texts hanging on the wall, and a bottle of stale water on the table, to human things by the entry of a drowsy official who was discharging the duties of station-master, booking-clerk, and porter all ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... against tobacco, observes that "merchants often lay it in bog-houses, that, becoming impregnated with the volatile salts of the excrements, it may be rendered brisker, stronger, and more f[oe]tid." It is said to be a fact, that in manufacturing tobacco, it is frequently sprinkled with stale urine. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... be a familiar sight to see the saloons of Baxter, Mott and Mulberry streets filled with these boys. It was only a few years ago that they had their own theatre, yclept "The Grand Duke's Theatre," at 21 Baxter street, in the cellar under a stale beer dive, where really clever performances were given of an imitative character, by a company of boys; and which, by the way, was the only theatre which for years defied the efforts of the authorities to ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... stew them till they are tender enough to be eaten. Lean juicy beef, mutton, or veal, form the basis of good broth; and it is therefore advisable to procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and such as is fresh slain. Stale meat will make the broth grouty and bad tasted, and fat is not so well adapted to the purpose. The following herbs, roots, and seasonings, are proper for making and giving a relish to broths and soups, according as the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... here and there a half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that this large body of clergymen, who were, I should say, to be ranked amongst the finest samples of their class, had entirely given up the ancient landmarks, and transported the conception of life's origin to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... severe fit of sickness by a christian, became a great favourer of the christians in general; but the prejudice and fury of the ignorant multitude prevailing, obsolete laws were put in execution against the christians. The progress of christianity alarmed the pagans, and they revived the stale calumny of placing accidental misfortunes to the account of its professors, A. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... [200] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate drawing, than India-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... clean bite since I come aboard," Harrison said to me at the galley door, as he returned the dinner pots and pans from the forecastle. "Somehow Tommy's grub always tastes of grease, stale grease, and I reckon he ain't changed his shirt since ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... to Dell seems stale and old, Often she sits and sighs; Life to me is a tale untold, Each day is a glad surprise. Dell will marry, of course, some day, After her belleship is run; She will cavil the matter in worldly way And wed Dame Fortune's son But, ah, well! sweet to tell, I shall not dally and ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... at the Wrangle House, was awkward and not entirely agreeable. To be sure the landlord gave us the parlor, and most of the men came in, now and then, to speak to us; but they managed the principal matters all by themselves, in the bar-room, which was such a mess of smoke and stale liquor smells, that it turned my stomach when I ventured in ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... was her master's, and where the occupation of the Major was made manifest by divers articles of apparel lying on the chairs and hanging on the pegs, and, furthermore, by a powerful effluvium of stale tobacco, and a collection of pipes ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... vulgar man that sometimes—but he's deep.) We all sign the initials of the society after our names, in the fashion of the R. S. A., Royal Society of Arts—the S. D. U. K., Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, &c, &c. Dr. Moneypenny says that S. stands for stale, and that D. U. K. spells duck, (but it don't,) that S. D. U. K. stands for Stale Duck and not for Lord Brougham's society—but then Dr. Moneypenny is such a queer man that I am never sure when he is telling me the truth. At any rate we always add to our ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... we have found you out, and what your trust comes to, ye're well feathered, thank us, and think now of an honest course, 'tis time; men now begin to look, and narrowly into your tumbling tricks, they are stale. ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... it from some of those old plays he sees on the stage, or some of those old books he finds up in garrets. Ten to one, he has lugged home from auction a musty old Seneca, and sets about stuffing himself with that stale old hay; and, thereupon, thinks it looks wise and antique to be a croaker, thinks it's taking a stand-way above ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... wisdom, I inspected the scenes of past foolishness. Would that it might please God to fill with His clear and strong wine this vessel, in which at that time the champagne of twenty-two-year-old youth sparkled uselessly away, leaving stale dregs behind. Where and how may Isabella Loraine and Miss Russel be living now? How many of those with whom I then flirted, tippled, and played dice are now dead and buried! How many transformations has my view of the world ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... canned. No time should be lost in handling the fish after being caught. Putrefaction starts rapidly, and the fish must be handled promptly. The sooner it is canned after being taken from lake, stream or ocean, the better. Never attempt to can any fish that is stale. ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... start, to find the room flooded with golden sunlight. A glance at the clock on the mantel-shelf showed that it was after nine. My body was cramped and stiff and I felt stale and musty from having slept in my clothes. It was only after a cold shower and a complete change that I felt refreshed enough to pick up the threads where I had dropped ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... was a lovely September night. A dark, clear sky. The sweet scent of the petunias was mingled with the stale and rather unwholesome smell of the canal sleeping darkly below the terrace wall. Great moths, pale and sphinx-like, fluttered about the flowers, with a little whirring sound. The even voices of the neighbors sitting at their doors on the other ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to work—perhaps through life! A low lean-to room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... know what the sincerest form of flattery is, and certainly our dear old pet, Alice in Wonderland, whose infinite variety time cannot stale, will gracefully acknowledge the intenseness of the compliments conveyed in Olga's Dream, as written by NORLEY CHESTER, illustrated by Messrs. FURNISS AND MONTAGU (the illustrations will carry the book), and published by Messrs. SKEFFINGTON. It would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... is, however, highly improbable that he would in the slightest degree care for this letter, though he might suffer some remorse for his spiteful attack on so good-natured a fellow. Cibber says in this letter that people "allow that by this last stale and slow endeavour to maul me, you have fairly wrote yourself up to the Throne you have raised, for the immortal Dulness of your humble servant to nod in. I am therefore now convinced that it would be ill-breeding ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... this keeps the baker busy day and night baking 'em bread, not to speak of the cakes and pies, and he says he feels he hadn't orter stand it any longer. He's going to strike. As for the populace, your Majesty, they only get the stale loaves or none at all, and they're wild, your Majesty, very ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... Hattie, "don't you get awful tired of being a jackass? Sometimes I want to kiss you, and sometimes I feel as if I had to kick you. I 'll compromise with you now by letting you bring me some more beer. This got all stale while your sister was here. I saw she did n't like it, and so I would n't drink any more for fear she 'd try to keep up ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... might have tried it. But it would be uphill work, a sort of Sisyphus affair: you may get the stone to the top, but the chances are against it. And which party is one to join, when he sees nothing in either but selfish greed and stale traditions? Viewed as a missionary field, Bob, it's just like the ministry: you are weighed down with a lot of dead conventions which you must pretend to believe have life and juice in them yet. Before you can do anything ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... Paris has become the world's railway terminus. M. Emile Villars, who is so obliging as to make the observation, proceeds to be very clever. Scratch the Russian, and you know what you will find. I answer, a gentleman uninfluenced by a stale proverb; we have a delightful specimen in this very house. M. Villars is great at scratching, since his readers are recommended to grate Peruvians and Javanese. Under the three articles, we are told, lies the one barbarous ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... cleaned, it will spoil the fresh yeast. Yeast made in this manner will keep good a fortnight in warm weather; in cold weather longer. If your yeast appears to be a little changed, add a little saleratus to it before you mix it with your bread. If it does not foam well, when put in, it is too stale to use. Milk yeast makes sweeter bread than any other kind of yeast, but it will not keep good long. It is very nice to make biscuit of. Take half the quantity of milk you need for your biscuit—set it in a warm place, with a little flour, ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... this black shadow of war had loomed up with its deadly menace a great party of German editors had returned our visit and once again I had listened to speeches about the blood- brotherhood of the two nations, a little bored by the stale phrases, but glad to sit between these friendly Germans whom I had met in their own country. We clinked glasses again, sang "God Save the King" and the "Wacht am Rhein," compared the character of German and English literature, of German ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dulld ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... he had the well cleaned out for me only last month. We always do do it twicet a year, lest somebody comes along an' drinks it stale. More'n that, the well's fed by a spring, runnin' in an' out, so really don't need any ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... curious and shy Eye of the Game; having your Net so ready that the least pull may do your work, strew'd over with Grass as it lies to hide it: A live Hern, or some other Fowl lately taken, according to what you seek for, will be very requisite for a Stale. And you will have sport from the Dawning, till the Sun is about an hour high; but no longer; and from Sun-set till Twilight; these ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... at the mature age of "NOTES AND QUERIES," commonplace compliments as to its usefulness and high general value, begin to be very stale; but I cannot close without a hearty "God speed" to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... in a hard-surfaced roadway there were a number of wheeled vehicles moving, which caused the liquefying snow to splash about me. I adjusted my coat controls for warmth and deflection, but that was the best I could do. The reek of stale decay remained. Then there were also the buildings, painfully almost vertical. I believe it would not have disturbed me if they had been truly vertical; but many of them were minutes of arc from a true perpendicular, all of them covered with a carbonaceous material ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... with a casement through which the King, if he wished to be private, might watch the game. Its sole furniture consisted of a little table with a mirror, a seat for his Majesty, and a couple of stools, so that it offered small scope for investigation. True, the stale sherbet and the water were still there, the carafes standing on the table beside an empty comfit box, and a few toilet necessaries; and it will be believed that I lost no time in examining them. But I made no discovery, and when I had passed my eye over everything else ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... rear-ranks were bidden to close up, and the subalterns dashed into the stew—alone. For the rear-rank had heard the clamour in front, the yells and the howls of pain, and had seen the dark stale blood that makes afraid. They were not going to stay. It was the rushing of the camps over again. Let their officers go to Hell, if they chose; they would get ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... gave us plenty of food which the big rabbit ate, for I could touch nothing. For two days they came, and then I think they forgot all about us. I grew very hungry, and at night filled myself with some of the remaining food, such as stale cabbage leaves. By next morning all was gone, and the big rabbit grew hungry also. All that day it hopped about sniffing at me and showing ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... and sometimes with instructive correction. What delightful companionship! Mr. Casaubon seemed even unconscious that trivialities existed, and never handed round that small-talk of heavy men which is as acceptable as stale bride-cake brought forth with an odor of cupboard. He talked of what he was interested in, or else he was silent and bowed with sad civility. To Dorothea this was adorable genuineness, and religious abstinence from that artificiality which uses up the soul in the efforts of pretence. For she ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... you have some before I go. Come; don't move till I have done." And as he spoke to her he went on tugging at the bone, and swallowing the lumps of stale bread. He had already finished the bowl of milk. "And, now," said he, "tell me who ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... near where they lived, and it was rather a grand shop—only they kept this little girl to go messages, not to the grand people that came there, you know, but to the people that bought the bread when it wasn't so new—and currant cakes that were rather stale—like that, you know. And on Sunday mornings she had the most to do, because they used to send a great lot of bread very early to a room where a kind lady had breakfast for a great many poor people—for a treat because ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... no complaint at the bit of bacon and stale bread with which each plate had been served. There were excitement and hilarious good-humor, as though the flood had come for their especial benefit to give them an experience new and unusual. A bit of bacon and stale bread! One could get along very well for a few hours on that. But ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... accumulated epithelial cells, and are at first dry and pearly white in appearance, but as a result of fatty degeneration they break down into a greyish-yellow pultaceous and semi-fluid material having a peculiar stale odour. It is probable that the decomposition of the contents is the result of the presence of bacteria, and that from the surgical point of view they should be regarded as infective. A sebaceous cyst may remain indefinitely ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... Bolton in economical patches of the woodwork; but she was not sure that they had not been there eleven years before; and there were darnings in the carpets and curtains, which affected her with the same mixture of novelty and familiarity. Certain stale smells about the place (minor smells as compared with the prevalent odour) confused her; she could not decide whether she remembered them of old, or was reminded of the odours she used to catch in passing the pantry on ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... from the tree into his bowl. We shifted our seats—and ate some more, and then made the astonishing discovery that the breakfast food was full of worms. We looked at the package and found that the grocers had palmed off some stale goods on us and that the box was fairly alive. We all enjoy the recollection of it more than we did ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... carouses as there were letters in the names of their mistresses, or lovers; so easily were they overcome with this vice, who by their virtue some other time, became masters of the world; but these devices are peradventure stale now; there be finer devices to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... with a Thousand Songs." Audiences had been invited by the stage manager to name any selection they might choose, assured that Belle would sing it from memory. No wonder that her singing never grew stale to Tom Lorrigan! ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... it must be admitted that she made a brave attempt to drink. But the mixture was undoubtedly flat, stale and unprofitable. She sighed, put it back on the counter, and rose to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... round her head, was mounted on the top step of the stairs which led down to her door, and was employed in setting out her goods—that is, on one side of her door she placed a tin milk-can, and on the other some bunches of stale vegetables, flanked with yellowed cabbages. At the bottom of the steps, in the shadowy depths of the cellar, one could see the light of the burning charcoal in a little stove. This shop situated at the side of the passage, served as a porter's ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... choice of items of news, variety in the manner of stating them, and logical order in arranging and connecting them should be cultivated. The writing of good, plain English, rather than "smart" journalese should be the aim. Stale, vulgar and incorrect phrases, such as "Sundayed," and "in our midst," should be avoided. There are two tests in selecting a news item: (1) Will it interest readers? (2) Ought they to know it? When by these tests an item is proved to be real news that demands publication, it should ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... absurdity. Especially it is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden posture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir. But this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed; that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not danger, and inconveniences. Therefore it is ill in counsel, good ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... elation, for no tradition had a brighter household life with us than that of our father's headlong impatience. He moved in a cloud, if not rather in a high radiance, of precipitation and divulgation, a chartered rebel against cold reserves. The good news in his hand refused under any persuasion to grow stale, the sense of communicable pleasure in his breast was positively explosive; so that we saw those "surprises" in which he had conspired with our mother for our benefit converted by him in every case, under our shamelessly encouraged ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... sticks in the ground to mark the place where they may be found, and they are the next morning dug out in enormous quantities, and exported to various parts of Borneo and the adjacent islands. The eggs have a stale fishy flavour, are very sandy, and to my mind extremely nasty, although they are considered a great delicacy by the natives, who eat them ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... grow "stale and rung-upon," however much the chilly hand of a pedantic psychology seeks to brush the bloom away from the wings of the bird ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and matches, and six eggs for the morning's breakfast, and I was to tell you, if you please, as you was to put in seven, steads of six, for one in the last lot was stale. And have you heard, please, there's been an accident with that there Mr. ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... met by chance at a coffee-stand one beautiful summer dawn in one of the markets,—the Treine, most likely,—where, perched on high stools at a zinc-covered counter, with the smell of fresh blood on the right and of stale fish on the left, they had finished half their cup of cafe au lait before they awoke to the exhilarating knowledge of each ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... a Judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the Town; They reason and conclude by precedent, 410 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of author's names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality, 415 A constant Critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... what Zilah thought, however. He wondered if this happy hallucination which had lasted so many years, these eternal love-scenes with Vivian, love-scenes which never grew stale, despite the years and the wrinkles, were not the ideal form of happiness for a being condemned to this earth. This poetical monomaniac lived with his dreams realized, finding, in an asylum of Vaugirard, all the fascinations and chimeras of the Breton ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... HABITS ought naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass their maximum long before the time when the true decline of life begins, if we may judge by the experience of the ring. A man is "stale," I think, in their language, soon after thirty,—often, no doubt, much earlier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceedingly apt to keep their vital fire burning WITH ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... promised us. Here was a roof anyhow, so we entered, hoping for supper and beds in the wayside inn. All our host could produce was a very good bottle of Servian "black" wine and some coarse bread of the country, so stale that we could hardly break it. This wine, which is almost as black as ink, comes from Negotin, lower down the Danube, and is rather a celebrated ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... mail-coach and steaming horses. It halts for a minute while the wheel is skidded and the horses stale.] ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... plura meant. He snorted. "Hoo! Stale! It means, what are you crying about? naturally. Who said it? That letter? Who's it from? Mr. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... out upon the pavement of a well-like court arched over, three stories above, by a handkerchief bit of sky. Very little light or air ever entered the box-like place; during the day its atmosphere was stale and heavy, at night almost fetid. Whenever we ventured to pass an hour there our struggle was always against fate. Slyly we would leave the one door an inch ajar, or surreptitiously unclose the window a fraction as much. Scarcely, however, had we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... made his way to the bedroom occupied by Paul Drayton. He opened the door without knocking. It was dark within. Thin streaks of dusty sunlight shot from between a pair of heavy curtains. The air was noisome with dead tobacco smoke and the fumes of stale beer. Hugh's gorge rose, but ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the gray cat sat on the arm of Vere's chair, speculative yellow eye observant of his master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina served us her good food with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood events—how perfect a beginning for the day! How stale beside our breeze-swept table was any board at which I had ever sat! I do declare that I have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my little cousin whom her world had pronounced "plain." Vere and I basked ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... a front parlour, the principal features of which were fresh sand and stale tobacco smoke. Mr. Pickwick bowed to the three persons who were seated in it when he entered; and having despatched Sam for Perker, withdrew into an obscure corner, and looked thence with some ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... completed her last clean copy. She had worked hard each afternoon, and conscientiously, only to be filled at the last with despair and despondence. She had read, re-read, written and re-written it, until she knew every word by heart, and all seemed stale, dull, and trivial. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Thirty-Nine Articles! Happy Georgiana!" Now if Sydney had been what some foolish people think him, merely a scoffer, there would be no fun in this; it would be as impertinent and in as bad taste as the stale jokes of the eighteenth century about Christianity. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... pilchards. The colony of artists here is almost as famous as that of Newlyn, and there are at least sixty different studios. Pictures from St. Ives have won world-wide fame; in fact, artistically, Cornwall would have long since become stale were it not for its inexhaustible charm. The painters bring something of a Latin Quarter element with them, and are by no means limited to British in nationality. Mr. Stanhope Forbes says: "I remember finding in a house at St. Ives ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... jokes, however stale, He jumps about and wags his tail, And Human People clap their hands And ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford
... of memory, however great, are stale compared with those of hope; for hope is the parent of all effort and endeavour; and "every gift of noble origin is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." It may be said to be the moral engine that moves the world, and keeps it in action; and at the end of all there stands ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... extremely small door, which is in close proximity to its unusually little window. A little library with a scanty supply of books hangs near the stove-pipe, as if the owners thereof thought the contents had become somewhat stale, and required warming up to make them more palatable. A locker runs along two sides of the apartment, on the coverings of which stand several lanterns, an oil-can, and a stone jar, besides sundry articles with ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... mentioned these circumstances, worthy reader, to show you the whimsical crowd of associations that are apt to beset my mind on mingling among English scenes. I hope they may, in some measure, plead my apology, should I be found harping upon stale and trivial themes, or indulging an over-fondness for any thing antique and obsolete. I know it is the humour, not to say cant of the day, to run riot about old times, old books, old customs, and old buildings; with myself, however, as far as I have ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Barcelona looks across the brilliantly-lighted square from the south side. On the pavement in front of it and of its neighbour, the Cafe Continental, the vendors of lottery tickets were bawling the lucky numbers they had for sale. Even in this wide space the air was close and stale. Within, a few people left over in the town had strayed in to dine at tables placed against the walls under flamboyant decorations in the style of Fragonard. At a table Hillyard was sitting alone over his coffee. Across the room one of the panels represented a gleaming marble terrace overlooking ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... and McCoys, they were reckless mountain boys," whose history is now as stale as that of the Capone mob. Their feud, which ... threatened to provoke a civil war between two states, gave rise to the general belief in the lasting endurance of the hill dwellers. A race must be hardy as the ragweed when it could not be exterminated even ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... his species, it gave him an entirely innocent but delightful pleasure merely to see a flapper. The reaction from the battle-field produced a condition of hyperaesthesia in which all the theatrical values were altered. Trivial things gained intensity and stale things novelty. The actor, instead of having to coax his audiences out of the boredom which had driven them to the theatre in an ill humor to seek some sort of distraction, had only to exploit the bliss of smiling men who were no longer under fire and under military discipline, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... and abuse, from the cruel ploughman; and I return home at the end of the day, and indeed my sides are torn and my neck is flayed. Then they shut me up in the cow-house and throw me beans and straw mixed with earth and husks, and I lie all night in dung and stale. But thy place is always swept and sprinkled and thy manger clean and full of sweet hay and thou art always resting, except that, now and then, our master hath occasion to ride thee and returns ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... or by the exactions of a strenuous social programme. The milk of a mother who persists in eating irregularly, or who willfully caters to an appetite which craves the rich, highly seasoned articles of diet, or who attempts to satisfy a legitimate hunger by drinking large quantities of stale tea or coffee and eating bread, is unfit ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... blamed independent, anyhow." I suspect I must have been a rather unlovely customer, take it all together. Still, every once in a while it boils up in me yet against the discretion that has come with the years, and I want to slam in after the old fashion. Seems to me we are in danger of growing stale with all our ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... disappear. Lectures often contain only 3, as their purpose is only to convey information. Usually, however, a speech without an argument is like a gas engine without gas; it has no "go." The speech that does not aim to get people to do something is usually flat, stale, and unprofitable. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... an' it's a mighty small turkey—it's stale enough, too, I'd be sworn; poor it is, too! ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... afraid the cigars will be on you, Walter. Crowded over on the second page by a lot of stale sensation that everyone has read for the fiftieth time, now, you will find what promises to be a real sensation, a curious half-column account of the sudden ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... good soft bed, and al therto belongyng and certain plate besydes that she gaue them moneye, chargynge them that if the Gentilman came agayne, they shold entreate him better not beyng knowen al this while that she was his wyfe, but fayued her to be her sister. Not long after her husband stale thether againe, he sawe the howse otherwyse decked, and better fare then he was wounte to haue. He asked, frome whence commeth al this goodly gere? They sayde that an honeste matrone, a kynsewoman of hys hadde broughte it thyther and commaunded thenm that ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus
... compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops Got 'tween asleep and wake?—Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word—legitimate! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... lives, talking big about 'glorious war' and all that, I've said to myself, 'Aha, my fine fellows! if you had been where I have, marching for days and days over ankles in mud, with nothing to eat but stale black bread, so hard that you had to soak it before you could get it down; and if you'd had to drink water through which hundreds of horses had just been trampling; and to scramble up and down steep hills under a roasting sun, with your feet ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... well-known firm in England puts up a tin which they term an Army Ration, consisting of meat and vegetables, nicely seasoned and very palatable. For a time this ration was eagerly looked for and appreciated, but later on, when the men began to get stale, it did not agree with them so well; it appeared to be too rich for many of us. We had plenty of jam, of a kind—one kind. Oh! how we used to revile the maker of "Damson and Apple'!" The damson coloured it, and whatever they used for ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... railing that divided the spectators from the dancers, and drew a deep breath of satisfaction. Here, at last, was something different from the everlasting hospital barracks: glowing lights, holiday decorations, the scent of flowers instead of the stale fumes of ether and disinfectants; soul-stirring music in place of the wheezy old phonograph grinding out the same old tunes; and, above all, girls, hundreds of them, circling in a bewildering rainbow of loveliness ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... trembling before him, the priest seemed to ponder the request. Then suddenly he sprang to his feet, crying: "Come with me!" and, seizing Iskender's arm, dragged the terrified youth into the church, of which the door stood open. In there the sudden gloom, combined with a stale smell ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... of old soot-speckled snow left against the north walls of houses have no power to inspire; rather, they are dreary reminders of sports long since carried to satiety. One cares little even to eat such snow, and the eating of icicles, also, has come to be a flaccid and stale diversion. There is no ice to bear a skate, there is only a vast sufficiency of cold mud, practically useless. Sunshine flickers shiftily, coming and going without any honest purpose; snow-squalls blow for five minutes, ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... smell of stale tobacco smoke Ere many days I fear, And hear full many a rattling joke, And feel, perhaps, ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... most successful of them all; but his versions are not to be compared with Mr. Young's for adherence either to the bard's own meaning or music. In pouring out the Frenchman's champagne, the latter somehow suffers the sparkle and bead to escape, while the former cheats us by making his stale liquor foam with London soda. We shall be impatient for Mr. Young's book, which will be published by Putnam, in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... newspaper and read therefrom every paragraph bearing upon it, the remainder of the party listening intently and open-mouthed as they sat in a semicircle before the blazing fire. And if the item happened to be so stale as to have passed out of the notice of the papers, the cook would recapitulate for our benefit its leading features, together with any similar events or singular coincidences connected with the case which might occur to her memory at the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... Guard and of the Main Body will depend on information received, and not only must information be gained by every available means, but it must also be communicated without delay to all concerned while it is fresh and before it becomes stale. It must also be remembered that negative information (e.g. that such and such a village has been thoroughly searched and no trace of the enemy found) is at least of equal value to positive information. The repetition or confirmation of information already sent are also of ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... glance, and vanish'd. He, as one Caught in a burst of unexpected storm, And pelted with outrageous epithets, Turning beheld the Powers of the House On either side the hearth, indignant; her, Cooling her false cheek with a featherfan, Him glaring, by his own stale devil spurr'd, And, like a beast hard-ridden, breathing hard. 'Ungenerous, dishonorable, base, Presumptuous! trusted as he was with her, The sole succeeder to their wealth, their lands, The last remaining pillar of their house, The one transmitter of their ancient name, Their child.' ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... eating hunches of stale bread and knocking the necks from wine bottles with their bayonets. One lumpish fellow came to the door and offered me part of a sausage which he was devouring, a kindly act that touched me, and I wondered ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... everything flat and stale. He did the things he had always done, hunted up the friends he had always known. He spent week-ends at various country places, and came always back to town with an undiminished sense of his need of Becky, and his need ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... familiar. It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. His ears almost immediately detected water noises running close by, and he could feel the pull of stout oak timber that formed the inner wall ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... of a suitable size, clean it well, and rub the inside with pepper and salt. Make a stuffing of bread, butter, parsley, sage and thyme; if the bread is stale, pour a little boiling water on it; mix altogether; fill the pig, and sew it up with strong thread; put in the skewers and spit, and tie the feet with twine; have a pint and a half of water in the bottom of the tin kitchen, with a spoonful of lard and a little salt, with this ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... former made far more fuss about it, and she was at the same time preparing a new mantle wherein to attend the tournament, of which Amphillis was summoned to do all the plain and uninteresting parts. The result of this preoccupation would have been very stale pastry on the counter, if her father had not seen to that item for himself. Ricarda was less excited and egotistical, yet she ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... too bad I know;—again I've erred And deviated sadly from my tale; I'm sorry that it should have thus occurred, I know, and you know too, that I am frail And everything I've said is very stale, At least it is to me, I daresay too To some of you on p'raps a different scale, Much more familiar, if one only knew. It is quite marvellous ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... desk and a spittoon were allowed to each honourable member,—the latter article being deemed as necessary as the former. Whether smoking was suffered during the hours of business or not I cannot tell, but the room smelt horribly of stale tobacco. Between fifty and sixty members were present, and never certainly, either in the Old World or in the New, did I see an assemblage of worse-looking men. They seemed fitted for any deeds of robbery, blood, and death. Several distinguished duellists ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all," growled Borrow. "Fancy kissing a woman's mouth that smelt of stale tobacco—pheugh!" ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... so horribly stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... postprandially, in full livery of seisin, to the vulturous sun. Wasted, yet daily renewed, enduring, yet murmuring not, he hurled defiance at Fat, scoffed at the vain rage of Jupiter Pinguis, and proffered to the world below a new life in his fiery gift of stale bran-bread. Would you could have heard that vesper hymn stealing hirsute through the mellow evening-air! It sung the Peptic Saints and Martyrs, explored the bowels of old Time, and at last died away in dulcet cadence as it chanted the glories of the coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... four stones. Ropes stretched across these, and covered by a blanket, constituted the bed. A board, of which one end rested on the bedstead and the other was thrust between the logs that composed the wall, sustained the stale fragments of a rye-loaf, and a cedar bucket kept entire by withes instead of hoops. In the bucket was a little water, full of droppings from the roof, drowned insects, and sand. A basket or two neatly made, and a hoe, with ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the money," said she, giving him a little push towards the door; for her old gentility was contumaciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin, and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the child's pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread. "No matter for the cent. You are welcome to ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... did talk. She was an American girl, she told him, and had studied art a little, but would never be much of a painter. She had been teaching classes in a city high school in the Middle West, when suddenly life there seemed to have gone humdrum and stale. She had a little money saved, not much, but enough if she managed well, and she'd boldly resigned and determined, once at least before she was too old, to follow spring around the world. She had almost given up the idea of painting now, but thought presently ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... grin, and retreated to the hotel, where he swallowed two glasses of whiskey to start his blood moving again, and then sat down and played poker disasterously until daylight made the lamps grow a sickly yellow and the air of the room seem suddenly stale and dead. But Happy never thought of blaming the schoolma'am for the eighteen ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... formidable dyke Between his own and others' intellect; But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like Joanna Southcote's Shiloh[215] and her sect, Are things which in this century don't strike The public mind,—so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale Virginities Have proved but ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... was eligible for promotion to a lieutenancy. Unless an officer had family interest he often stuck there, and as often had to serve under one more favoured, who was not born when he himself was getting stale. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... for upwards of thirty years, since my poor father and mother both died before I was twenty. I do not say that I was not for the most part well enough treated, because I hope I did my best, and I believe I generally gave satisfaction. I had my happy hours like other people. But it was all getting so stale, flat, and unprofitable—I suppose because I was growing weary of it all, and longing for a change. You see I had not quite come to the age when we cease to want changes, and are resigned just to go on as we are to the end. In reality I could see no end, except the poorest of poor lodgings and ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... elbow the Devil during prayer Sate familiarly, side by side, Declared that, if the Tempter were there, 35 His presence he would not abide. Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that's a very stale trick, For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil, In your carriage you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... "When I ran after her she was standing in some spruces, screaming and pointing in front of her. I saw the blood on the ground, and——Here's Dudley's cap! I found it, all chewed, close by." She pulled out a rag of fur from under her snow-caked sweater; and as the stale reek of the Skunk's Misery wolf dope rose from the thing, I knew the smell in the room had been no fancy, and how Dudley Wilbraham had died. I wheeled and saw Macartney's face,—the face of a man who took me for a fool whose nose would tell ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... to bet on any man's trick; and the more they see others doing so, the more sanguine they are that no one could ever catch them with chaff. I have met many of the latter class, and always tried to down them. They, of course, would not bit at the monte bait, for it was too stale for them; so I would study sometimes for hours how to take the conceit ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... and its white puddings. He would give much to be in a chair by one of those hearths and in the thick of that blowsy fragrance. Now his nostrils were filled with rain and bog water and a sodden world. It smelt sour, like stale beer in a mouldy cellar. And cold! He crushed down his hat on his head and ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... good restaurant and one of the most popular. They serve here a dejeuner at 1 kr. 50 oere consisting of an excellent dish of eggs (a speciality of the place) and meat and cheese or so-called "sweet" (generally a very unwholesome stale cake with cream). The table-d'hote dinners are excellent, one being at 3 kr. 50 oere and the other at 2 kr. 50 oere; the first consisting of soup (thick soups being a speciality of the place), fish, entree, meat, and releve (generally hjaerpe), with ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... in motion by the heat of the sun, causing breezes and winds, it would become stale and wouldn't do at all for our lung-bellows to use. The air we breathe must be kept moving and fresh if it is to make us feel bright and strong and happy. Mother Nature has given us miles upon miles and oceans upon oceans of this clear, fresh air to breathe—"all outdoors," in fact, as far as ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... the correct things to the family lawyer of the aged man concerning the responsibilities of being his heiress. So there you have it. I doubt whether anything even temporarily unpleasant so much as suggests itself; for "O. DOUGLAS" has apparently discovered that, in a world still struggling with stale peace-bread, her pink sugar-cakes are not only cheerful to cook but likely to prove ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... almost he would ask, in Italian, 'Do you understand?' His young wife laughed heartily at the story of his dressing up in woman's clothes." A dull, garrulous husband, boring people with stories of which they were sick; a childish little wife, trying to make the best of things, and laughing over the stale old jokes; this is what may be called the idyllic moment in the wedded life of Charles Edward and Louise. What would she have felt, that strong, calm lady, growing old far off in the Isle of Skye, had she been ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the talk turned upon Mme. de Bargeton and Lucien. Young Rastignac evidently was entertaining the party; he had raised the laughter that needs fresh fuel every day in Paris, the laughter that seizes upon a topic and exhausts it, and leaves it stale and threadbare in a moment. Mme. d'Espard grew uneasy. She knew that an ill-natured speech is not long in coming to the ears of those whom it will wound, and waited till the end ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... village. It was a warm summer night, and the scent of the prairie was strong upon the air. As yet Barnriff was neither large enough, nor shut in enough by its own buildings to hold to itself that stale, stifling atmosphere which cities obtain. The air was the pure breath which swept over the vast green rollers of the grass world in the midst of which ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... spirit of many men should revolt and that they should retort by denying the existence of order in the business world, by declaring that the spectacle which they see is one of discord, confusion and chaos. And then we are engulfed in a controversy as stale, flat and unprofitable as that between the ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... in the shoulder look blue or bright red, it is newly killed; but if black, green, or yellow, it is stale. The leg is known to be new by the stiffness of the joint. The head of a calf or a lamb is known by the eyes; if sunk or wrinkled, it is stale; if plump and lively, it ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... him. But there is no twilight in these parts, and the curtain of the dark falls upon the scene as suddenly as the screen of the theatre upon the denouement of the tragedy. Then comes a cup of truly infernal tea, the mastication of a stale roll, with butter, also stale,—then, more sitting on the piazza,—then, retirement, and a wild hunt after mosquitoes,—and so ends the first day at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Japanese and Hindustani; the stagnation of scientific thought, which Buckle, only a few years before, had so deeply lamented, gave place to a widespread and fruitful activity; masses of accumulated observations, which had seemed stale and unprofitable, were made alive; facts formerly without meaning now found their interpretation. Under this new influence an army of young men took up every promising line of scientific investigation in every ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... forth from the palace barefoot and he walked in a short sleeved gown, wearing on his head a skull cap of felt[FN74] seven years old and carrying a scone three days stale, and in the deep glooms of night betook himself to the portal of al-Arij of Baghdad. Here he waited for the gate being opened and when it was opened, he was the first to pass through it; and he went out at random and wandered about the wastes night and day. When the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... drank the water from the sheet as we caught it (we holding it above him as he lay so as to let it run into his mouth), for we had now nothing left capable of holding water, unless we had chosen to empty out our wine from the carboy, or the stale water from the jug. Either of these expedients would have been resorted to had ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
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