"Dilapidation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... No. 104. (Reports of the Councillors of State on mission in the year IX.) Report by Lacuee on the first military division. Three central schools at Paris, one called the Quatre-Nations. "This school must be visited in order to form any idea of the state of destruction and dilapidation which all the national buildings are in. No repairs have been made since the reopening of the schools; everything is going to ruin.... Walls are down and the floors fallen in. To preserve the pupils ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... uncommonly pleased as he surveyed himself in a glass in his new equipment; for it was now eight months since he had landed in the Crimea, and the dilapidation of his garments had from that time been rapid. The difficulties of toilet had, too, been great, and white shirts were things absolutely unknown; so that Jack had never felt really presentable from ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation which even she did not care should be seen. She wore a black stuff apron full of fine tones from fruit-stains and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... travellers for firewood; its earthen floor was dank and wet with slimy tricklings from its leaky roof; the wind and rain drove with a mournful howl down through its chimney-hole; its door was gone, and it presented altogether a dismal picture of neglected dilapidation. Nothing daunted, Viushin tore down another section of the ruined side to make a fire, hung over teakettles, and brought our provision boxes under such shelter as the miserable hut afforded. I never could ascertain where Viushin obtained the water ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... they would hardly have given the name to the one they founded in the New World. Boston is full of ancient structures, among them Shodfriars Hall, one of the most elaborate half-timbered buildings in the Kingdom. The hotels are quite in keeping with the dilapidation and unprogressiveness of the town and there is no temptation to linger longer than necessary to get an idea of the ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... upon the ruins of the once famous inn the very name of which has been transformed by time. It is now known as the 'Talbot,' but the inscription above the doorway contradicts the modern signboard and proclaims the house to be 'The Ancient Tabard Inn.' The whole yard is redolent of dilapidation. Facing the visitor on entering is an interesting block of old buildings, forming part of the left side, and the bottom of what once was an ample courtyard. This part of the building contains not improbably the shell of the corresponding portion of the original inn. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... white wooden houses and churches rapidly succeeded each other; the tall, sharp, white church spire contrasting beautifully with the dark back-ground of trees. It was delightful to see all the houses and cottages looking trim and neat, and in perfect order and repair. There was no such thing as dilapidation or poverty apparent, and the necessary repairs being so easily made, and the paint-brush readily available, all looked in the most perfect order. We could do little else than admire the scenery, and arrived at Boston at about six o'clock; the last few minutes of the journey ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... reflection. I have half a mind thus to spend one of my three remaining days. True, the Coliseum will seem vaster close at hand, but from no point can it be seen so completely and clearly, in its immensity and its dilapidation combined, as from that. The Tarpeian Rock seems an absurd fable—its fatal leap the daily sport of infants—but in all ancient cities the same glaring discrepancy between ancient and modern altitudes is presented, and especially, we hear, at Jerusalem. The ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... and soon the trio was galloping through a little-frequented street toward the northern, hilly environs of Lustadt. They rode in silence until they came to an old stone building, whose boarded windows and general appearance of dilapidation proclaimed its long tenantless condition. Rank weeds, now rustling dry and yellow in the November wind, choked what once might have been a luxuriant garden. A stone wall, which had at one time entirely surrounded the grounds, had been almost completely removed from the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Laon the country is uninteresting except from the late events. With the exception of the first view of the plain and town of Laon, we passed village after village in the same state of ruin and dilapidation. Chavignon, about 4 miles from Laon, seemed, however, to have been more particularly the object of vengeance; it was throughout nearly a repetition of the suburbs of Soissons. Laon rises like a sort of Gibraltar from a rich and beautiful ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... death of the elder Hollis), the stable, and one other building for the storing of miscellaneous articles. Hollis inspected them all and was not quite convinced that they had reached the stage of dilapidation ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hopes and visions that had come to her the first day she and her father had come to the farm, and through all its dilapidation and neglect, she had seen that it could be made into a home of comfort and prosperity, and now the dream had come true. The Watson family were thriving; their farm had not failed them; comforts, and even a few luxuries were ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Journal, having reference to the Newstead Abbey estate, formerly the property of Lord Byron's family, which, amongst other matters, contain some severe remarks on the conduct of one of its proprietors, the great uncle and predecessor of our great poet, and having reference to dilapidation. Mr. Pettigrew, in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... unsoldierly men lounged about with muskets in their hands. All the houses and church walls and spires, not only in the square, but in the town, bore evidence, in the form of cracked walls and twisted windows and doorways, of the prevalence of earthquakes; and there was a general appearance of dilapidation and dirt around, which was anything but agreeable to men who had just come from the free, grand, sweet-scented scenery of ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... first place, that if he visited the great Abbey now, he would not have noticed that look of dilapidation at which he hints—and perhaps had a right to hint—some forty years ago. Dilapidation, dirt, and negligence are as hateful to us now, as to the builder of the newest house outside. We too, for more than a generation past, have felt, in common with the rest of England and with all ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... terrible disaster was to befall the palace and the people. The dweller amongst mountains must be always exposed to their dilapidation; and a season of unusual rain, continuing to a much later period than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Your first impression must have been that Pekin is the greatest city in the world. You came in by a street two hundred feet wide, with shops on each side; but when you have seen more of it, you will find dilapidation and decay, and about the same filth you have observed in other Chinese cities. But it is one of the most ancient cities in the world, for this or another city stood here twelve hundred years before Christ. Kublai, a grandson of ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... the house of my birth and formative years; how I sometimes remained away for months at a time, and how once an office boy mis-addressed me to a lady in New Jersey who very graciously herself forwarded me to my parent; how my poor parent was obliged at length by the increasing dilapidation of my appearance to go to the expense of having me completely re-typed by a public typist, and how directly after this he entirely re-wrote, expanded, and elaborated me at the instigation of one firm of publishers; ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... this obscene state of dilapidation but a Nuisance? What is a man in your obscene state of dilapidation but a Nuisance? Then, as you very well know, you cannot do without an audience, and your audience is a Nuisance. You attract all the disreputable vagabonds ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... and be obeyed? Will he be able to search out a universal antidote to disease? Will he discover the means of supplying the human frame with such recuperative power as will nullify the law that prescribes to all flesh the dilapidation and decay of age, of weakness and of death? Will he search out some secret agency which will hold his body in perpetual youth, defying alike the attritions of age, and the ravages of disease? Will he discover how it is that time saps the strength, and steals away the vigor of the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... flags stuck on long poles, which fluttered about in the breeze. According to the account of our interpreter, which had to pass from Thibetian into Hindostanee before it could clothe itself in English, the cause of this dilapidation was the state of wealth and ambition at which the Lamas had arrived, and the consequent interposition of Gulab Singh to take down their pride and ease them of a little of their wealth, both of which he accomplished ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... some die of inherent maladies which the tortures of those passions prematurely force into destructive action. The sound by nature undergo these tortures, and are racked, shaken, shattered; their beauty and bloom perish, but life remains untouched. They are brought to a certain point of dilapidation; they are reduced to pallor, debility, and emaciation. People think, as they see them gliding languidly about, that they will soon withdraw to sick-beds, perish there, and cease from among the healthy and happy. This does not happen. They live on; and though they cannot regain youth and gaiety, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of the architect's calling. But he had the good sense not to be above his trade, and he had the resolution to work his way upward, so that he only got a fair start. One hot day in July a friend found him sitting astride of a house roof occupied with his dilapidation business. Drawing his hand across his perspiring countenance, he exclaimed, "Here's a pretty business for a man who has been all over Greece!" However, he did his work, such as it was, thoroughly and well; he persevered until he advanced by degrees ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... was in the year 1797, in a small workshop and smithy situated in Wells Street, Oxford Street. It was in an awful state of dirt and dilapidation when he became its tenant. He entered the place on a Friday, but by the Saturday evening, with the help of his excellent wife, he had the shop thoroughly cleaned, whitewashed, and put in readiness for beginning work on the next Monday morning. He had then the pleasure ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... breadth, and solidity, defying time and the elements, and far too mighty to be demolished by an ordinary earthquake. Here you may see a modern dwelling, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees, perched on the lofty dilapidation of a tomb, which forms a precipice of fifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a home on that funereal mound, where generations of children have been born, and successive lives been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the stern Roman whose ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long years ago. I marveled at the small number left. The next day I visited the old school. As I stood at the door I slowly surveyed the scene and my thoughts went down the vista of time and filled my heart with sadness at the dreadful dilapidation of the school where so many bright minds had been educated and gone forth to make names and reputations among the most honorable women in the state. After I was admitted and allowed to survey the place I stood in the entrance of the old schoolroom. In my mind I could recall the faces of ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... would have settled near Monticello, perhaps, but for the system of slavery, which perpetuated a wasteful mode of farming, and disfigured the beautiful land with dilapidation. ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty: this is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is true following out of the ideal character of the building; nay, far greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for there are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by advanced dilapidation; but when the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to interfere with his ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... apple bloom, and off in the forest of the tree stems, lying lazily in the high-grown grass, dappled yellow with sunlight, you will find in every orchard a boy, idly beating a monotonous tattoo to scare away the birds. A collection of tin pots in various stages of dilapidation, each one emitting a different hollow note, are spread around him, and there he lies the day through till nightfall, eating the meals that are brought him, humming a tune between them to pass away the time; but ceaselessly beating a discordant dominant ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... in 1853, had to borrow chairs from an adjoining office as the sheriff had walked away with their own for debt. Even a railroad with such a territory as the Hudson River Valley, and extending from New York to Albany existed in a state of chronic dilapidation; and the New York and Harlem, which had an entrance into New York City as an asset of incalculable value, was looked upon merely as a ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... sofas were all of wicker, and though in various stages of dilapidation, were cool and comfortable. A table in the center was covered with a white cloth, and the sofa pillows were ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot aforementioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of Simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the highest of the hills, at the base of which is spread the town. It is precisely in the state most agreeable to antiquaries, as its extreme dilapidation permits them to indulge those various conjectures and hypotheses relative to its original destination, in which they delight. They see in their "mind's eye" all these interesting works of antiquity, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... is indispensable to assume that there is a sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus, even the theory of partial sleep has come into play; but the characteristics of the sleeping state have been found not in the dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessation of the psychic system dominating the day, arising from its desire to sleep. The withdrawal from the outer world retains its significance also for our conception; though not the only factor, it nevertheless helps the regression to make possible ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... by no means an inviting place. It was an old stone edifice, two stories high, which had once been covered with, stucco; but the stucco had fallen off in most places, disclosing the rough stones underneath, and giving it an air of dilapidation and squalor. The front was by the road-side. A door opened in the middle, on each side of which was a small, dismal window. In the second story were two other small, dismal windows. At the end they law a window on each story, and a third in the attic. These were all small and dismal. Some ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... and beheld it in its lustre, the labour of so much opulent magnificence and curious art, and designed to be 'exceeding magnifical, of fame, and of glory throughout all countries', should be occupied with the prospect of its utter ruin and dilapidation, and that too under the 'opprobrium' of God's vindictive judgment upon it, nor to imagine how that strain of sinister prophecy, that forebodes of malediction, should be ascribed to him, if he had no such ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... colours, developed in the Yangtze valley, was adopted by Japan and found its highest refinement there. But the Ming are also famous for their monumental architecture which largely followed Mongol patterns. Among the most famous examples is the famous Great Wall which had been in dilapidation and was rebuilt; the great city walls of Peking; and large parts of the palaces of Peking, begun in the Mongol epoch. It was at this time that the official style which we may observe to this day in North China was developed, the style employed everywhere, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... southern end, we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of dilapidation. It had been a great vessel of three masts, but had lain so long exposed to the injuries of the weather that it was hung about with great webs of dripping seaweed, and on the deck of it shore bushes had taken root, and now flourished ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... at the pictures—which, though not in his regular line of study, interested Somerset more than the architecture, because of their singular dilapidation, it occurred to his mind that he had in his youth been schoolfellow for a very short time with a pleasant boy bearing a surname attached to one of the paintings—the name of Ravensbury. The boy had vanished ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... woodland that characterized the face of that country, the houses of the farmers, or rather, to use the grandiloquent language of the inhabitants, "the mansions of the planters," were objects of peculiar interest. In their quaint appearance and general air of dilapidation, they stood as relics of the civilization of another age. Centuries, seemingly, of important events in the law of progress are crowded into years of our campaigning. The social status of a large country semi-civilized—whether you regard the intelligence of its ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... mansion had been the town residence of the first Duke of Touraine, Archibald the Tineman. It had been occupied by the English for military purposes during their tenancy of the city, and now that they were gone, it had escaped by its very dilapidation the fate of the other possessions of the house ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... found such a volume it was left about in the dust, on the stove, on the ground, in the kitchen, and even in what the clerks called the "chamber of deliberations"; and thus it obtained a mouldiness to delight an antiquary, cracks of aged dilapidation, and broken corners that looked as though the rats had gnawed them; also, the gilt edges were tarnished with surprising perfection. As soon as the book was duly prepared, the entries were made. The following extracts will show ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... in the wall of Confucius's old house, and was deciphered and edited by K'ung An-kwo. The present Work is by Wang Su of the Wei (Q) dynasty, grounded professedly on the older one, the blocks of which had suffered great dilapidation during the intervening centuries. It is allowed also, that, since Su's time, the Work has suffered more than any of the acknowledged Classics. Yet it is a very valuable fragment of antiquity, and it would be worth while to incorporate it with the ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... the shadow of the lemon-house on to the roof of the section below us. When we came to the brink of the roof I sat down. The padrone stood behind me, a shabby, shaky little figure on his roof in the sky, a little figure of dilapidation, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... admirably. That look of falling to pieces and ageing prematurely—a general dilapidation of mind and body—which it had grieved and startled him to see in Jane as she sat before him on the music-stool, was gone completely. She looked a calm, pleasant thirty; ready to go happily on, year by year, towards an equally agreeable and delightful forty; and ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... that the imagination could desire. The Court itself was old, and many-gabled and mellow-red and fine. Rosalie had learned from no precedent as yet that houses of its kind may represent the apotheosis of discomfort and dilapidation within, and only become more beautiful without. Tumbled-down chimneys and broken tiles, being clambered over by tossing ivy, are pictures to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... estimate is true, I know too feelingly. Would that it were not! would that it were false! Were it so, I might the better justify to myself that commerce with fraudulent Jews which led me so early to commence the dilapidation of my small fortune. It is true; and true for a period (1804-8) far dearer than this. And to any man who questions its accuracy I address this particular request—that he will lay his hand upon the special item which he disputes. I anticipate ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... life, proudly declared that so long as he was at the head of affairs, and, indeed, for a year afterwards, he would accept no national recompense. Sometime after we went to visit the palace of the 18th Brumaire. Bonaparte liked it exceedingly, but all was in a state of complete dilapidation. It bore evident marks of the Revolution. The First Consul did not wish, as yet, to burden the budget of the State with his personal expenses, and he was alarmed at the enormous sum required to render St. Cloud habitable. Flattery had not yet arrived at the degree of proficiency ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... dilapidation of her tailor-made, which looked the fresher for being pressed under the mattress; she always travelled boot-trees, so her shoes were all right, and the two Jacob's ladders, falling on the outside of her stockings, looked just like clocks neatly mended; her lovely hair rioted under ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... of any other image by which it may please us to represent the improvement of the species? The hundred years that followed the usurpation of Henry IV., were a hurling-back of the mind of the country, a dilapidation, an extinction; yet institutions, laws, customs, and habits, were then broken down, which would not have been so readily, nor perhaps so thoroughly destroyed by the gradual influence of increasing knowledge; and under the oppression of which, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... soon came in sight of a deserted house. It evidently had been abandoned, for it was in a bad state of dilapidation. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... southern Mississippi, which had been, in the days of slavery, a somewhat famous resort, but which had lost its prestige, and entered upon a general decline; the hotel and all its surroundings presenting the appearance of general dilapidation. I remained here with the doctor for two weeks—until they succeeded in getting another person to care for him. I then took a run down ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... his eyes became, accustomed to the tobacco smoke, he surveyed the room. There was a bowl on the floor, the chair where it belonged being occupied. There was a very inhospitable looking bed, two shake-downs, and four Windsor chairs in more or less state of dilapidation—all occupied likewise. A country glass lamp was balanced on a rough shelf, and under it a young man sat absorbed in making notes, and apparently oblivious to the noise around him. Every gentleman in the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the profane, in the presence of such a monument, can only admire and hold his tongue. The great impression, on the whole, is an impression of wonder that so much should have survived. What remains at Nimes, after all dilapidation is estimated, is astounding. I spent an hour in the Arenes on that same sweet Sunday morning, as I came back from the Roman baths, and saw that the corridors, the vaults, the staircases, the external casing, are still virtually there. Many of these parts are wanting in the Colosseum, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... battery, to the northward of the lighthouse, and exploding, committed great damage to the enemy. At length, the fire from most of the forts being silenced, and the batteries on the mole being in a state of dilapidation, the ammunition of the attacking ships falling short, Lord Exmouth took advantage of a light air of wind off the land to cut his cables, and stand out of fire, ordering the other ships to follow his example. Severe as had been the punishment inflicted on the Algerines, the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... dilapidation, which you will observe includes the total loss of the date, signature and stamp, I am forced to the reluctant conclusion that your bankers will show a marked disinclination to honour what was ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated, and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out, sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation of its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its inhabitants, and the ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... that everything about us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimensions of our minds. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a great empire must fall by mean reparations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ruins of the old abbey, which stood on this spot some centuries before the palace was built. There was nothing left of this ancient edifice but the walls, and some of the pillars of the chapel. The roof was gone, and every thing was in a state of dilapidation and ruin. ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... any bargain to escape a Sunday in the Plaster Cove hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. There is the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, and slow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, the mouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But there is nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union of smartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a house smelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... observer might have imagined that the passionate plaint was directed at him. If so it passed harmlessly over his broad shoulders. In his immaculate evening dress he looked strangely out of place there. Enid had escaped the prevailing dilapidation, but her gown of grey homespun was severe as the ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... of Orange, however, deserve credit for the substantial style in which they have repaired one end of it, to prevent farther dilapidation, and for the manner in which the road is diverted from it on both sides in a handsome sweep, leaving a green space in the middle, in which the arch stands. We returned to it immediately after breakfast, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... eyes, in or out of his home, damp dilapidation, waste appeared. Painting, glazing, roofing, fencing, finishing—all were wanting. The backyard and even the front lawn round the windows of the house were filled with loungers, followers, and petitioners; tenants, undertenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent were to have audience; and they all ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... but the old man was in no humour of compliance. He guided the newcomer across the court-yard, looking sharply and quickly in his face, and grumbling all the time about the cold, and the discomfort and dilapidation of the castle. He was sure he hoped that Mr. Archer would like it; but in truth he could not think what brought him there. Doubtless he had a good reason—this with a look of cunning scrutiny—but, indeed, the place was quite unfit for any person of repute; he himself was eaten ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... church, with a conspicuous tower or spire; but in how many villages in this riding do you find no church at all, as in the case of Staithes and Runswick? Many of the old churches of Yorkshire were in a state of great dilapidation at the beginning of last century, and a great effort having been initiated by the then Archbishop, a fund was instituted to help the various parishes to restore their buildings. It was a period when architecture was at a low ebb, and the desire to sweep away antiquity was certainly ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... visited the Oratoire, a seminary for education, which is now suppressed. The building is immense, and admirably calculated for the purpose, but is already in a state of dilapidation; so that, I fear, by the time the legislature has determined what system of instruction shall be substituted for that which has been abolished, the children (as the French are fond of examples from the ancients) will take their lessons, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... walls which had here and there intersected the broad park, were, in many places, broken down, so as no longer to answer their original purpose as fences; piers were now and then to be seen, but the gates were gone; and to add to the general air of dilapidation, some huge trunks were lying scattered through the venerable old trees, either the work of the winter storms, or perhaps the victims of some extensive but desultory scheme of denudation, which the projector had not capital or perseverance ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the petty-governor of the nearest village. The "Tribunal," which served the double purpose of Town Hall and Dak Bungalow for wayfarers, was often a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves, whilst others, which had been decent buildings generations gone by, lapsed into a wretched state of dilapidation. In some villages there was no Tribunal at all, and the official business had to be transacted in the municipal Governor's house. I first visited Calamba (La Laguna) in 1880, and for 14 years, to my knowledge, the headmen had to meet in a sugar-store in lieu of a Tribunal. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... from public burdens, the other enslaved and oppressed with a land tax—the former full of spacious mansions, of walled towns, and moated castles—the latter occupied with thatched cabins, and ancient walls in a state of dilapidation. This peopled with the happy and the idle, with soldiers, courtiers, knights, and nobles—that with miserable men condemned to labour as peasants and artisans. On the one side he beholds luxury and insolence, on the other poverty and envy—not the envy of the poor at the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... but imposing block of masonry that appears from a little distance to be clinging, after the manner of a swallow's nest, to the precipitous face of the rock, and which is reached from below by more than 200 steps in venerable dilapidation[*], contains the church of St. Sauveur, the chapel of the Virgin, called the Miraculous Chapel, and the chapel of St. Amadour, all distinct. The last-named is a little crypt, and the Miraculous Chapel conveys the impression of being likewise one, for it is ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... while to himself as he surveyed the condition of each bird, and blaming alternately the carelessness of the under-falconer, and the situation of the building, and the weather, and the wind, and all things around him, for the dilapidation which time and disease had made in the neglected hawking establishment of the Garde Doloureuse. While in these unpleasing meditations, he was surprised by the voice of his beloved Dame Gillian, who seldom was an early riser, and yet more rarely visited him when he ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... were in a state of physical dilapidation little removed from destruction, save for those that had been captured and kept in partial repair by the Federal troops. The rolling stock had been lost by capture, by destruction to prevent capture, in wrecks, which were frequent, or had been worn out. ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... fronts of the houses were fresh white-washed; in the Lane they were new-painted. Even the pavement and the road-way exhibited an improvement. If you penetrated into garrets and cellars you no longer found squalor and dilapidation; poverty in plenty, but at all events an attempt at cleanliness everywhere, as far, that is to say, as a landlord's care could ensure it. The stair-cases had ceased to be rotten pit-falls; the ceilings showed traces of recent care; the walls ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... though it would not now be regarded as by any means a novel one, I had thought out for myself, and which possessed for me, in consequence, the charm of originality. In these poor creatures, I thus argued, we find, amid much general dilapidation and brokenness of mind, certain instincts and peculiarities remaining entire. Here, in Angus, for instance, there is that instinctive cunning which some of the lower animals, such as the fox, possess, existing in a wonderful degree of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... at this reckless offer, but promised to attend to that important branch, though she confessed that darning was her weak point. Whereupon Uncle Alec engaged to supply her with socks in all stages of dilapidation, and to have a new set at once, so that she could run the heels for him ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... governments on their secret political services, so that the efforts of its agents cannot be ascribed to cupidity. Also it must be admitted that the kingdom of Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, thanks to the internal chaos and dynastic scandals of the previous forty years, resulting in superficial dilapidation, intellectual stagnation, and general poverty, lacked the material as well as the moral glamour which a successful Piedmont should possess. Nobody could deny, for instance, that, with all its natural advantages, Belgrade was at first sight not nearly such an ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... enter one of the professions, which at that time did not place so much importance as at present upon lengthy preparation and a degree. The expenses were as light as was the fare. The rooms were scantily furnished; chairs, tables and beds were in the last stages of dilapidation from the rough usage of a generation of students. No one felt or was held responsible for their condition. Some of the students boarded themselves in the dormitory, which did not add to the tidiness and order of their rooms. Books, clothing, plates and pots, wood and food were scattered ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... in length and a furlong broad. On the north-eastern corner there are fragments of an old building, supposed to have been a fortress, while about half-way up the accent there are similar indications of a church now in a state of complete dilapidation. There is preserved, however, a large font of an octagon form, composed of red and white marble; as also pieces of broken pillars ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... garments. It was a work of destruction, for I wanted to make them appear as disreputable as possible. I slyly enlarged the holes, wrenched off the buttons, and decorated my person lavishly with spots and stains of all kinds. Day by day I watched, with a secret joy, the rapid progress of this work of dilapidation. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his corrupt proceedings; he therefore gets the Nabob to appoint Sir John D'Oyly his agent here, with a view of stopping his mouth, and by the hope of another 160,000l. a year to prevent his giving an account of the dilapidation and robbery that was made of the 160,000l. which had ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... anyone would come if they came. That was why she was the first of the Manor household to spy the dilapidated Ford approaching, snorting up the incline. Something about it made her think of the general dilapidation of the Forgotten Village. It might be some word! She rushed down the stairs, two steps at a time, past the startled Harkness, through the big front door. The strange-looking car had turned into the Manor gate. A man with long white whiskers was driving ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... let his hand be shaken, and it was a moist hand. He looked like a Gibson young man who has grown elderly. He had the manly profile and shoulders, but they sagged and stooped. There was a dilapidation about him, a look of blurred edges. His hair lay on his forehead in disorder, and his tie had been put on carelessly and had wriggled up to the ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... original Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided in this country; and an original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library exhibiting marks of dilapidation. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... foreplane of trees, with branches which interlaced at the top, made, with the addition of a stone wall below, an encasement for the picture proper, which lay beyond. The lower line, i.e., the stone wall, was in constant process of change, obliterated by shadow or despoiled by natural dilapidation, sometimes vine-grown. In its several stages it showed always the most critical weighing of the part, and a ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... hands. I got Uncle George to follow along with hammer and nails to mend the chaise, as the floor was so broken I could not put my feet on it, and the bag of oats had dropped through on the way. I had tied the halter to the dasher and wound it round the bag, so there was no loss. The dilapidation was a pleasing reminiscence of old times, and George was pleased enough to earn a quarter by patching it up. Then I drove on to the house, where are only a Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair left in charge. Mrs. S. was very polite, and asked me up into our old parlor, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... The door stood wide open, and admitted us into a small court-yard. Thence we passed through a Gothic portal into the chapel, without seeing a human being. We then traversed two interior cloisters, equally vacant and silent, and bearing a look of neglect and dilapidation. From an open window we had a peep at what had once been a garden, but that had also gone to ruin; the walls were broken and thrown down; a few shrubs, and a scattered fig tree or two, were all the traces of cultivation ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... selected for his private reading. They were not boys' books, books of adventure and the like. His favourite author was one writing of Heroes, in (so she esteemed it) a style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed; a wind-in-the-orchard style, that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster; sentences without commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a sea-wall, learned ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will see how reasonable my attitude is and how little he has to complain of. He will recognise that one cannot deal with complicated properties of this sort without a certain amount of inevitable dilapidation and loss. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... remained unmortgaged of a vast colonial estate on Crab Island in the bay, consisting of several thousand acres of land and water,—mostly water,—a manor house, once painted white, and a number of outbuildings in various stages of dilapidation and decay. ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for no place was safe from these screeching messengers of death. Hard roadways were rent in twain and deep gulfs dug in their midst. Gardens, from being trim and neat, became a scene of upheaval and dilapidation; the open veldt was strewed with dust and debris, and rocks were shot from their positions and sent hurtling here and there to assist in the work of wreckage. It was curious to notice upon different ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... dreary enough. There was no fire, and the loss of the patch of tapestry from the wall gave the whole an air of dilapidation. The wind howled fearfully in the chimney and about the door on the roof, and the rain came down on the leads like the distant trampling of many horses. But I was not in an imaginative mood. Charley was again my trouble. I could not bear ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... exaggerated iron knockers, and queer old lamps; dreary balconies on the first floor, with here and there a plaster vase containing some withered member of the palm tribe, or a faded orange-tree; everywhere and in everything an air of dilapidation and decay; faded curtains, that had once been fine, flapping in the open windows; Venetian shutters going to ruin; and the only glimpse of brightness or domestic comfort confined to the humble parlour of the portress, who kept watch and ward over one of the dismal ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... opened, and a steward and several serving-men appeared. The steward addressed Theodora and Lothair, and invited them to dismount and enter what now appeared to be a garden with statues and terraces and fountains and rows of cypress, its infinite dilapidation not being recognizable in the deceptive hour; and he informed the escort that their quarters were prepared for them, to which they were at once attended. Guiding their captain and his charge, they soon approached a double flight of steps, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... which, if less agreeable, is certainly more profitable to himself. Occasionally one of these professional bookstallers blossoms into a shopkeeper in some court or alley off Holborn; but more generally they are too far gone in drink and dilapidation to get out ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... was the very same village in which I was born. How astonished I was! How the tears of joy ran down my cheeks as a thousand strange memories came back to me! There were a great many changes; new houses had been built, others, which had then only recently been erected, were now in a state of dilapidation. I came across places where there had been a fire. Everything was a great deal smaller and more crowded than I had expected. I took infinite delight in the thought of seeing my parents again after so many years. I found ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... missing from the chimney, and shingles from the roof. The frame was out of repair and there were only traces left of former coats of paint. Of the picket fence which had once bounded her possessions in front, not even a post remained. Years before, the slats had begun to decay, until the dilapidation became an eyesore to even Miss Elizabeth herself. But when the cow-boys in search of their charges that always pastured along the sides of the road, rattled their sticks over its surface, it became a nuisance she ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... restoration was set on foot in 1864, and Sir Gilbert Scott reported that L15,000 was necessary to make good the dilapidation and decay which extended, in his opinion, from the foundations to the roof. The necessary amount was not forthcoming for several years. Then a new committee was appointed, with Sir Edmund Lechmere as its chairman. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... they may have been appropriated; while the broken galleries outside, intricate and black and cavernous, like Piranesi's etchings of the 'Carceri,' present the wildest pictures of greatness in decay, fantastic dilapidation. The ruins of the smaller theatre, again, with their picturesquely grouped fragments and their standing columns, might be sketched for a frontispiece to some dilettante work on classical antiquities. For the rest, perhaps the Aliscamps, or ancient ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... extends, great and, it is to be feared, sometimes irreparable injury has already been done in the various processes by which man seeks to subjugate the virgin earth; and many provinces, first trodden by the homo sapiens Europae within the last two centuries, begin to show signs of that melancholy dilapidation which is now driving so many of the peasantry of Europe from their native hearths. It is evidently a matter of great moment, not only to the population of the states where these symptoms are manifesting themselves, but to the general interests ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... existence almost any garment may be made to last and wear to preserve an appearance of respectability by a judicious and persevering use of needle and thread. But boots, especially boys' boots, are unmanageable in a woman's hands, and, indeed, in any hands beyond a certain stage of dilapidation; and every one knows, that whatever else may be old, and patched, and shabby, good boots are absolutely indispensable to the keeping up of an appearance of respectability, and, indeed, one may say, with some difference, to the keeping of a lad's self-respect. The ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... been about that number of Spaniards at Daiquiri that morning, but they had fled even before the ships began shelling. In their place we found hundreds of Cuban insurgents, a crew of as utter tatterdemalions as human eyes ever looked on, armed with every kind of rifle in all stages of dilapidation. It was evident, at a glance, that they would be no use in serious fighting, but it was hoped that they might be of service in scouting. From a variety of causes, however, they turned out to be nearly useless, even for this purpose, so far as the Santiago ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... heightened when I entered his rooms. He occupied two rooms at the top of a dreary building devoted to men of law. The rooms were well enough in themselves, but the furniture was in the last stage of dilapidation, there were holes in the carpet, and everything looked forlorn and poverty-stricken. I glanced at my companion. Certainly, his clothes were a little shabby, but quite good, and he was oblivious to the decayed atmosphere of his surroundings. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... dilapidation, My memory kindles with joy, To think that the foes of our nation, No longer these valleys destroy; By sowing his fields in the winter, In hope of a rich harvest-home, The husbandman now feels no terror Of war with its ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... and the bishop-dukes for the possession of the buildings. It lasted for nearly a century, and when the prelates at last were declared to be the owners, in 1645, the stately edifice had fallen into a sad state of dilapidation. The Cardinal d'Estrees restored the facade in 1660, but one of his successors actually unroofed it and sold the lead. In 1750, a bishop-duke of quite another type, the Cardinal de Rochechouart, spent great sums of money upon it, restored it, and decorated it throughout, and made ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... over the severe weather might be attributed most of the annual ranching failures in the West. The MacDavid establishment bore a well-ordered aspect, unlike many of the unthrifty, ramshackle ranches, of his neighbours. The fencing was of the best, and there were no signs of decay or dilapidation in any of the buildings. Dwarf pines were planted about and a Morning Glory vine over-ran the house, giving the place an air of restful domesticity. As they entered the store the trio noticed a saddle-horse tied ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... before it will be accepted. Sooner or later, indeed, it will be accepted. For though most of our buildings seem even in decay to resist the harmonizing hand of Nature, and to grow only ghastly and not venerable in dilapidation, yet leave them long enough and what of beauty was possible to them will appear, though it be only a crumbling heap of bricks where the chimney stood, or the grassy slope where the cellar-wall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Northington and Clarke were from Westminster School (Campbell's Chancellors, v. 176). The schoolhouse, famous though it was, was allowed to fall into decay. A writer in the Gent. Mag. in 1794 (p. 413) says that 'it is now in a state of dilapidation, and unfit for the use of either the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... engraved above, and it will be seen that it has suffered some little dilapidation since the last published engraving of it. The legs have been cut down to suit the height of one of his successors in the ministry!! With regard to the pulpit, an old resident in Bedford says—The celebrated John Howard presented a new pulpit in the room of the old one, which was cut ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... but thriving village of Pushton. But the indications around the house do not denote thrift. Quite the reverse. As the neighbors expressed it, "there was a screw loose with Lacey," the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... ahead of them, led the way around behind a barn that was skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with excitement vibrating ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... in which he found her was a small ruinous building, sagged and jutting forward, as if struggling to sustain itself against time and dilapidation. The windows were broken; the doors and shutters unhung, except a solitary one of the latter, which creaked as it flapped to and fro in the wind; and this was the home ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... signs of it. It was a burnt red pile standing four-square on a little eminence, about the base of which the river went winding turbulently; it was turreted at each of its four angles, imposing in its way, but in a sad state of dilapidation and disrepair. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... early debt of gratitude, in clothing it with poetic and romantic associations, by his tale of "The Eve of St. John." It is to be hoped that those who actually possess so interesting a monument of Scott's early days, will preserve it from further dilapidation. ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... mildewed antiquity about it all that was, at least to the nostrils of the outsider, not unpleasing. And when the ships were painted, and had departed, it resumed very easily its more regular aspect of picturesque dilapidation. For in spite of its sordid surroundings and its occasional lapses into bustle, Blackpool Dock, as Rainham would sometimes remind himself, when its commercial motive was pressed upon him too forcibly, was deeply permeated by the spirit ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... would not give—but a litigious agent suggested to him a plan for raising it, by demanding a considerable sum from the executors of the late Dr. Leicester, for what is called dilapidation. The parsonage-house seemed to be in good repair; but to make out charges of dilapidation was not difficult to those who understood the business—and fifteen hundred pounds was the charge presently made out against the executors of the late incumbent. It was invidious, it was odious for the new vicar, in the face of his parishioners, of all those who loved and respected ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... road, stands the house. As I drive that way it always seems to look out at me like some half-earnest worker, inviting a chat about the weather or the county fair; hence, probably, its good-natured dilapidation. At the gate I heard a voice, and a boy about three years old, in a soiled gingham apron, a sturdy, blue-eyed little chap, whose face was still eloquent of his recent breakfast, came running to meet me. I stopped ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... on the suit-case gazed about him at the general air of dilapidation and neglect characteristic of a country town on the down grade, and recalled the congenial life of the city which he had left, with all its busy competition, with all its absorbing activities, the companionship of the men he loved, and the restful, inspiring intimacy with a certain young woman, ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... Henry—I think that's his name—by and by. But he's not rich; quite the contrary, he's very poor for a baronet; and I incline to think that is one of the reasons that influenced your father. Being so fond of the Elliotts, he wished to repair, in some degree, the dilapidation of their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... of Loglukabad are in an advanced state of dilapidation, and do not repay the trouble of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... by leaves, shut in among the green, stood a small cottage, or hut. My second glance showed it to be tenantless, for the thatch was partly gone, the windows were broken, and the door had long since fallen from its hinges. Yet, despite its forlornness and desolation, despite the dilapidation of broken door and fallen chimney, there was something in the air of the place that drew me strangely. It was somewhat roughly put together, but still very strong, and seemed, save ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the obvious retort that the property was not looked after, but allowed to fall into dilapidation; but Mr Farrell understood without the need of words, and his ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the vehicle, that Mr Dombey had been doubled up, ably to his old recommendation, and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentleman awakened in Miss Nipper some considerable astonishment; for, having been defeated by the Larkey Boy, his visage was in a state of such great dilapidation, as to be hardly presentable in society with comfort to the beholders. The Chicken himself attributed this punishment to his having had the misfortune to get into Chancery early in the proceedings, when ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... billingsgate with which his vocabulary had been furnished in the forecastle of the "Gil Blas." His criticism of the real Jim was by no means agreeable to the patrons of the fictitious one. In a moment there was a row; and the result was, that Lunes after a thorough dilapidation of his finery departed in custody of the police, more, however, for the negro's protection than ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... roses are, by being eagerly handled and smelt. I observe, too, that the most ancient romances are not in every case the most severely worn. It is the pace that tells in horses, men, and books. There are Nestors wonderfully hale; there are juveniles in a state of dilapidation. One of the youngest books, "The Old Curiosity Shop," is absolutely falling to pieces. That book, like Italy, is possessor of the fatal gift; but happily, in its case, every thing can be rectified ay a new edition. We ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... emitted from a low chimney, the din of the workman's hammer, and the dull heavy sound of the bellows, is distinguished as the abode of the village Vulcan; while the surrounding yard, with drays in various stages of dilapidation, wheels, poles, axles, and other dismemberments strewing the ground, presents the appearance of a perfect vehicular golgotha. With one or two wool-laden drays drawn up before a public-house, in which the guardians of the tractive animals, and who are designated bullock-drivers, are solacing ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... know that bonnet well, because it has been sent to me often for renovation. On one particular occasion it arrived in a cardboard box. On the top of the bonnet was a bunch of flowers, beautiful enough to make any bonnet accompanying it welcome, in whatever state of dilapidation. Aunt Cecilia has a knack of sending just the right sort of flowers, and they always bring a message, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... in getting a shop in which to carry on your business in this district cannot say that I had. I was offered this place by the Busta trustees. It was in a state of dilapidation when I took it, and they offered it to me on condition that I would make the necessary ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... all that," said he; "and I think it likely that my estate may be liable for the expense of removal. The chapel may be brought in as a dilapidation. But that which I can answer with my purse, need not lie upon my conscience. I could let the bit of land, I have no doubt,—though ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... which belongs to later hours of the day. I stand in the open place, under its shadow, and lift my eyes with wonder to the amazing and crowded cluster of spires and towers: its antique air, and even look of shattered dilapidation showing that the restorer has not been at his work. There was no smugness or trimness, or spick-and-spanness, but an awful and reverent austerity. And with an antique appropriateness to its functions the Flemish women, crones ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... rings wore bone circlets carved by idle soldiers. There were no more genuine tears than those which flowed from the eyes of the Southern women resident within the Federal lines when they saw the rig of their kinswomen, at the cessation of hostilities. And all this grotesqueness, all this dilapidation, was shot through by specimens of individual finery, by officers who had brought back resplendent uniforms from beyond seas, by heroines who had engineered themselves and their ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... original coloring and interwoven sickly streaks of yellow. The old sofa, too, was yet in existence with its sleek brown leather covering, and by its side stood the two leather armchairs, with their high, straight backs and awkwardly turned feet. No one had taken the trouble to repair these inroads of dilapidation, and, long as they had been expecting the Electoral Prince, no preparations whatever had been made for his reception. Four years had passed over these chambers without leaving any further trace of their presence than dust and cobwebs, and ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... as you two, I could go on forever. Consider yourselves clapped jovially on the back, my gentle Briggs; I can't get up to do it from the hollow of your bed here. As you were saying, the wonder about these elderly widows who keep boarding-houses is the domestic dilapidation they fall into. If they've ever known how to cook a meal or sweep a room or make a bed, these arts desert them in the presence of their boarders. Their only aim in life seems to be preventing the escape of their victims, and they either let them get into debt for their board or borrow money ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... of the castle looked down upon the house and church. The house, built of pebbles and mortar, had but one story surmounted by an enormous sloping roof with gable ends, in which were attics, no doubt empty, considering the dilapidation of their windows. The ground-floor had two rooms parted by a corridor, at the farther end of which was a wooden staircase leading to the second floor, which also had two rooms. A little kitchen was at the back of the building in a ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... the crazy looking vehicle and found the seats ample and comfortable despite the appearance of dilapidation everywhere prevalent. The driver mounted the box, cracked his whip, and the lean nags ambled away at a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... haste to become offensive to every sense and sentiment of reasonable man. It had been built in the Spanish style,—a massive, dark, grim, huge, four-sided block, the fissure-like windows of its cells looking down into the four public streets which ran immediately under its walls. Dilapidation had followed hard behind ill-building contractors. Down its frowning masonry ran grimy streaks of leakage over peeling stucco and mould-covered brick. Weeds bloomed high aloft in the broken gutters under the scant and ragged eaves. Here and there the pale, debauched face of a prisoner peered shamelessly ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... least three epochs, a not unusual feature in some of the smaller cathedrals. It has a mean little house built into its northwest corner, a crude and ugly clock-face stuck unmeaningly on its facade, and a general air of dilapidation, with respect to the statues originally contained in its archivolts and niches, which, to say the least, is not creditable to those who have been responsible for its care. It would seem that so ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... loosely knocked together, to proceed from the back, forming a sort of skilling to the main building. These rooms led direct into one another, and, consisting of little more than timber and plaster, were in a woeful state of dilapidation. Everywhere the laths grinned through torn gaps in the ceilings and walls; everywhere the latter were blotched and mildewed with damp, and the floor-boards rotting in their tracks. Fallen mortar, rusty tins, yellow teeth of glass, whitened ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... be habitable. The rapid succession of palaces, the fact that, at any rate from Sargon downwards, each monarch raises a residence, or residences, for himself, is yet more indicative of the rapid deterioration and dilapidation (so to speak) of the great edifices. Probably a palace began to show unmistakable symptoms of decay and to become an unpleasant residence at the end of some twenty-five or thirty years from the date of its completion; effective repairs were, by the very nature of the case, almost impossible; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... foreclosure, appointing receivers in the interest of the debtor, etc., he is in many States so delayed in getting possession of his security that by the time he acquires it he will find it burdened with overdue taxes and in a state of general dilapidation. We have already alluded to the practice in California of compelling the executor of a mortgage to submit himself to the jurisdiction of the local public administrator, which practically results in a sequestration of ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... resort in Munich for lovers of good beer. In spite of its remaining, as of yore, a place of rude benches beneath equally rude, open sheds, with cobwebs festooning the rafters and a general air of dilapidation about it; in spite of the innovation of dozens of modern beer-gardens with waving palms, electric lights, military music, and all modern improvements, the Konigliche Hofbrauhaus is daily and nightly thronged with thirsty visitors, who for the trifling sum of twenty-two ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... few fishing-boats and litter of ropes and nets, above which rises the little town, house piled on house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch past a shrine of Madonna, you enter the long shadowy street, where red and green vegetables and fruits, purple grapes, and honey-coloured nespoli and yellow oranges are piled in the cool ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... wished to find out all he could about Katusha and her baby, and when and how it had died. He got to Panovo early one morning, and the first thing that struck him when he drove up was the look of decay and dilapidation that all the buildings bore, especially the house itself. The iron roofs, which had once been painted green, looked red with rust, and a few sheets of iron were bent back, probably by a storm. Some of the planks which covered the house from outside were torn away in several places; ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... to the village of Ducie, where there is good fishing, a nice little village inn, and a deserted chateau in the Louis Quatorze style, and of sumptuous dimensions, which, if it was ever completely finished, is now in a state of great dilapidation. No doubt it shared the fate of its fellows, when the Revolution proclaimed "peace to the cottage, war to the castle." The peasantry almost everywhere rose, like galley-slaves whose chains had been suddenly struck off, and gutted the chateaux, the strongholds of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... teapot (broken in three pieces) and some cups and saucers. The stock-in-trade "consisted of various tools, an iron ladle, a chafing-pan, and small bellows, sundry pans and kettles, the latter being of tin, with the exception of one which was of copper, all in a state of considerable dilapidation." The pans and kettles were to be sold after being mended, for which purpose there was "a block of tin, sheet-tin, and solder." But most precious of all his possessions was "a small anvil and bellows of the kind which are used in forges, and two hammers ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... is told of a gentleman in Monmouthshire, which exhibits the pride of ancestry in a curious point of view. His house was in such a state of dilapidation that the proprietor was in danger of perishing under the ruins of the ancient mansion, which he venerated even in decay. A stranger, whom he accidentally met at the foot of the Skyrrid, made various enquiries respecting the country, the prospects, and the ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... before the commencement of this legend, the Baron lost his path whilst hunting, and was benighted in the forest. After much fatigue, he was attracted by a light amongst trees which he found to proceed from a low building. It was in a state of extreme dilapidation, though a sort of wing appeared to have been recently tenanted. His knocks for admittance not having been answered, he lifted up the latch and boldly entered. Nothing greeted his sight save the almost extinguished remains of a fire. The apartment was lone and destitute of furniture. Having ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... seat in cortes, possessed by every city which had once been represented there, and this equally whether summoned or not, if we may credit Capmany, [51] must have gone far to preserve the popular branch from the melancholy state of dilapidation to which it was reduced in Castile by the arts of despotic princes. Indeed, the kings of Aragon, notwithstanding occasional excesses, seem never to have attempted any systematic invasion of the constitutional ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... two friends reached before long a forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; they went along this track in the direction of the highway to Paris, and reached another large gateway. Through the railings they had a complete view of the facade of the mysterious house. From this point of view, the dilapidation was still more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls of the main body of the house built round three sides of a square. Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were holes in the roof, broken slates and ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... not a fault of the sculptor; but the attitude is noble, and the likeness of the head to the undisputed bust of Pompey in the Florentine gallery, struck me immediately. The Palazza Spada, with its splendid architecture, dirt, discomfort, and dilapidation, is a fair specimen of the Roman palaces in general. It contains a corridor, which from an architectural deception appears much longer than it really is. I hate tricks—in architecture especially. We afterwards visited the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a state of chronic decay; and as the city flourished twelve hundred years before Christ,—indeed may be said to have been at the zenith of its glory at that period,—it is not surprising that it should be in a tumble-down condition in our day. This very dilapidation, however, renders the river front one of the most picturesque sights imaginable. Being a British possession, there is a European quarter of the town, quite modern in aspect, ornamented with large and fine public structures, churches, post-office, and government buildings, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... of Trahoir was a small irregularly shaped space, surrounded by miserable hovels, with high pointed roofs, most of which were in a state of dangerous dilapidation; the broken casements in every instance replaced by rags or straw; the doors ill-hung and swinging upon their rusty hinges, and the whole of the buildings lost in dirt and wretchedness. The inhabitants of this filthy nook were of the lowest and most depraved ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... further, when they drew near to the ruinous walls of a considerable town, situated in a fertile and delightful region, and retaining amidst its dilapidation many marks of grandeur. Entering through a ruinous gateway, they paused in the grand praca. "This," said L'Isle, "is Ville Vicosa, 'the delightful city.' What a pity we have but time to take a hasty glance ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... kitchen entrance of the house. A single candle burned in the great paved kitchen, which was destitute of the customary furniture; and as the party proceeded to ascend from thence by a flight of winding stairs, a prodigious noise of rats testified still more plainly to the dilapidation of the house. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the old palace was there; it was a house of the class which in Venice carries even in extreme dilapidation the dignified name. "How charming! It's gray and pink!" my companion exclaimed; and that is the most comprehensive description of it. It was not particularly old, only two or three centuries; and it had an air not so much of decay as of quiet discouragement, as if it had rather missed its ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James |
