"Drab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on, and the drab autumn country flew by the windows, and still the bride sat wrapped in her dream, smiling, musing, rousing herself to notice the scenery. The lap of the cream-coloured gown held magazines and a box of candy, and in the rack ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... said Elise, "would give anything if I could see and put on canvas the lovely colors that you can. I can't see anything but drab, somehow. It must be a somberness of disposition ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... world of grey wrack and driving rain. The Tower roof showed mistily beyond the ridge of down, but its environs were not in their prospect. The lower regions of the House had been gloomy enough, but this bleak place with its drab outlook struck a chill to Sir Archie's soul. He dolefully lit ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... copy of Burns. On Whittier's first visit to Boston, an occasion honored by his wearing "boughten buttons" on his homespun coat, and a broad-brim hat made by his aunt out of pasteboard covered with drab velvet, he purchased ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the matter, except that she doesn't look like the sort of girl who would be an acquaintance of the Pelhams. She doesn't look like their kind, you know. She wears the plainest sort of dresses,—just little straight up and down frocks of brown or drab, or those white cambric things,—they are more like baby-slips than anything; and her hats are just the same,—great flat all-round hats, not a bit of style to them; and she's a girl of fourteen or fifteen certainly. Do you suppose people of the ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... New Rochelle. Following the directions they had received, they hired a carriage at the steamboat-landing, to convey them to a farm-house a few miles distant. As they approached the designated place, they saw a slender man, in drab-colored clothes, lowering a bucket into the well. Mr. King alighted, and inquired, "Is this ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... a gloomy maze of narrow, winding streets, we came to Poplar Workhouse. On a low stone wall we spread our handkerchiefs, and each in his handkerchief put all his worldly possessions, with the exception of the "bit o' baccy" down his sock. And then, as the last light was fading from the drab-coloured sky, the wind blowing cheerless and cold, we stood, with our pitiful little bundles in our hands, a forlorn group ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... his marked failings was an inability to estimate the true value of things. He possessed something of the spirit of adventure and a desire to escape from the drab monotony of his early life, but these found expression in betting on the exploits of others on the football field and the turf, a haunting of the music-halls, and the cultivation of acquaintances on the lowest rung ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... well-nigh as Spanish as its exterior. There were cool, dim spaces in the big rooms; and here and there were bright spots of color. Her very costume for the evening showed the same discrimination. She wore drab riding clothes. But from her own garden she had chosen a scentless blossom of a kind which Red Perris had never seen before. The absent charm of perfume was turned into a deeper coloring, a crimson intense as fire in the darkness of her hair. ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... presently appeared, brought not as usual by the footman, in scarlet and drab, but by the old butler, in threadbare but well-brushed black, who, as he was placing it on the table, said—'If you please, Sir Christopher, there's the widow Hartopp a-crying i' the still room, and begs leave to ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... soft, dry pulp under the bark. There were no insects abroad except the white-faced pine hornets, crawling stiffly across the moss. He noticed no birds, either, at first, until, glancing up, he saw a great drab butcher-bird staring at him from a ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... brightly coloured gowns, beribboned, and ruffled, and gaily trimmed, which she had worn as a girl; and as soon as she was able she carefully folded and put them away in lavender, like relics of the dead. For herself, she dressed henceforth in drab or black. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... sea. The flat open country, with its few dwarf trees and its mangy hedges, lay prostrate under the sky in all the desolation of solitary space, and left the famous restorative air free to build up dilapidated nerves, without an object to hinder its passage at any point of the compass. The lonely drab-colored road that led to the nearest town offered to visitors, taking airings, a view of a low brown object in the distance, said to be the convent in which the Nuns lived, secluded from mortal eyes. At one side of the hotel, the windows looked on a little wooden pier, sadly in want ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... tried, and he certainly never tried; but he certainly did not return to the outward simplicities of his life as I first knew it. There was no more round- hat-and-sack-coat business for him; he wore a frock and a high hat, and whatever else was rather like London than Cambridge; I do not know but drab gaiters sometimes added to the effect of a gentleman of the old school which he now produced upon the witness. Some fastidiousnesses showed themselves in him, which were not so surprising. He complained of the American lower class manner; the conductor and cabman ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... faded into drab. The trees, dripping with moisture, gradually took shape. The day ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... by the ties of a common nature, affinity, sympathy or worth, that is the luminary of the moral world. Without it there would have been "a huge eclipse of sun and moon;" or at best, as a well-known writer(29) expresses it in reference to another subject, we should have lived in "a silent and drab-coloured creation." We are prepared by the power that made us for feelings and emotions; and, unless these come to diversify and elevate our existence, we should waste our days in melancholy, and scarcely be able to sustain ourselves. The affection we entertain for those towards whom ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... cannot be got to see that we are all white men. The ordinary eye is unable to perceive in the Northeast Teuton anything that marks him out especially from the more colorless classes of the rest of Aryan mankind. He is simply a white man, with a tendency to the gray or the drab. Yet he will explain in serious official documents that the difference between him and us is a difference between "the master race ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... almost sheer for a thousand feet, and from the edge of this cliff ore-buckets, a-slide on invisible cables, appeared in the sky, swooping like eagles, silently dropping one by one, to disappear, tamely as doves, in the gable end of a huge, drab-colored mill which stood upon the flat beside the stream. Beyond the mill Mount Ignacio rose darkly ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... ain't going to begin puling in the next. But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room. Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll grow, he'll grow. When his mother—poor, worthless drab—gave birth to him and died, I told her it was the best day's ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... both the lamp and the shade for one day's work! Aren't you glad you wore your pink gingham now, even if mother did make you put on flannel underneath? You do look so pretty in pink and red, Rebecca, and so homely in drab and brown!" ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wheels, supporting a flimsy tail, wheels that strike one as incongruous as if a monster began kangaroo and ended doll's perambulator. (These wheels annoy me.) They are not steely monsters; they are painted with drab and unassuming colours that are fashionable in modern warfare, so that the armour seems rather like the integument of a rhinoceros. At the sides of the head project armoured checks, and from above these stick out guns ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... up in a dark, close box behind the chair of state is a humble, drab individual who, from time to time, applies his mouth to the wrong side of the filigreed hole and whispers things. If he were visible at all, he would look like the absurd prompter under the hood at the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... with sticks, and Joe Willis and the gipsy man have drawn the first lot. So the rest lean against the rails of the stage, and Joe and the dark man meet in the middle, the boards having been strewed with sawdust, Joe's white shirt and spotless drab breeches and boots contrasting with the gipsy's coarse blue shirt and dirty green velveteen breeches and leather gaiters. Joe is evidently turning up his nose at the other, and half insulted at having to ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... a straight figure, and was dressed in drab tunic and hose. His dark hair was long and straight, and his face held a dreaming strength, altogether different from the battered visages of the soldiers or the changeless mask of the Inquisitor. The latter regarded the prisoner for a moment, and then lifted ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... some of the time may have been, and drab- colored as most of the days certainly were, there were, bright passages here and there, and one reminiscence was related in later years, in her poem "In Honour of Du Bartas," the delight of Puritan maids ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... prepare your dinner. You will find it something of a job to get all the Fuddles together, so I advise you to begin on the Lord High Chigglewitz, whose first name is Larry. He's a bald-headed fat man and is dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, a pink vest and drab breeches. A piece of his left knee is missing, having been lost years ago when he scattered himself too carelessly. That makes him limp a little, but he gets along very well with half a knee. As he is the chief personage in this town of Fuddlecumjig, he will be able to welcome you and assist ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... passing taxi-cab, and following, bade the driver go straight to the Yard. Arrived there, he locked Spargo and himself into the drab-visaged room in which the ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... talking sense when you assume that such a creature as Cuckoo Bright can really love anybody. And even if she did, Julian's the last man—oh, but the whole thing is absurd. Why should you and I talk about a street-girl, a drab whose life begins and ends in the gutter? Julian will be here directly. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the hill-field. If any smothered delight in the loveliness of the spring-time found a hiding-place anywhere in the well-ordered chambers of his heart, it never relaxed or softened the straight, inflexible lines of his face. As easily could his collarless drab coat and waistcoat have flushed with a sudden gleam of purple ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... carbuncles. Apathetic as he had become, he was surprised at her absence. It was either caprice or serious illness. She had dwindled to a skeleton, with a maleficent smile. Her teeth were yellow, her hands become claws, the scarlet of her clothes a drab hue, the plumes on her hat gone. Ambroise wondered. About midnight a mean-looking fellow entered and asked for him. A lady, a very ill lady, was in a coupe at the door. He hurried out. It was Aholibah. Her eyes were ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... life itself. Of all that "walking out" implied: of love, even as it was understood in Bloomsbury basements, Janie's anaemic little heart suspected very little; but romance was there, fluttering tattered ribbons, luring her on through the drab ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... a long, thin, nervous man, looking too brittle and delicate to be used even for a pipe-cleaner. The narrow oval of his face sloped to a pointed, untrimmed beard. His linen was reproachable, his dingy boots were down at heel, and his cocked hat was drab with dust. Such are the effects of a love for ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... answered Mrs. Huzzard, and turned around to face the speaker, who was an apologetic-looking stranger with drab-colored chin whiskers, and a checkered shirt, and a slight ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... studied the progress of the frontier in the lives of its victors; Mr. Garland studied it in the lives of its victims: the private soldier returning drably and mutely from the war to resume his drab, mute career behind the plow; the tenant caught in a trap by his landlord and the law and obliged to pay for the added value which his own toil has given to his farm; the brother neglected until his ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... Chief Inspector was driven westward through the early morning traffic. Fine rain was falling, and the streets presented that curiously drab appearance which only London streets can present in all its dreary perfection. Workers bound Cityward fought for places inside trams and buses. A hundred human comedies and tragedies were to be witnessed upon the highways; but to all of them Kerry ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... observation one proved to be the taller, one the plumper, and one decidedly the younger of the three; then, although they were dressed so exactly alike,—according to what be, I suspect, a sumptuary law in England—and although their stout travelling-dresses, drab cloaks, thick boots, the shaggy shawls severally carried by each on one arm, the faded blue cravats tied round their throats, were so precisely alike and had been subjected to so exactly the same amount of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... that preceded dawn we saw shadowy columns of infantry and artillery and cavalry passing by our camp. The costumes of the different regiments made a break in the drab monotony. The Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force was composed of varied components. Steel helmets could be worn only in winter. In many of the native regiments the British officers wore tasselled pugrees, and long tunics that were really shirts, and an adaption of the native ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... lintels of the massive marble front, and exclaimed: "Upon my soul, gentlemen, it is so grand I begin to fear I shall not be comfortable in it." He had scarcely concluded this sentence, when a distinguished politician, habited in soiled drab trousers and a shabby brown dress coat, and a badly collapsed hat, which he wore well down over his eyes, rushed eagerly out, and was followed by a mellow faced policeman, with a green patch over his left eye and a club in his right hand. Constituting ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Drab forms blur into greenish vapor. Through boughs like cross-bones, Pale arcs flare and shiver Like lilies in ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... might not want even her to see this; that he might not want her to know of this drab tent where he crawled for sleep off the field of battle. She went to the narrow bed and laid her hand gently where his ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... his sallow face. His small, black eyes were expressive in their rapid glances, especially when he was engaged in debate, and his high-toned and thin voice would ring through the Senate Chamber like the shrill scream of an angry vixen. He generally wore a full suit of heavy, drab-colored English broadcloth, the high, rolling collar of his surtout coat almost concealing his head, while the skirts hung in voluminous folds about his knee-breeches and the white leather tops of his boots. He used to enter ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of their journeying drew to an end, a sudden vision of green, like an emerald dropped on the drab face of the plain, brought a flush to Honor's cheeks, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... chosen sect, Although but in this single point agreed, "Desert your churches and adopt our creed." We know full well how much our forms offend The burthen'd Papist and the simple Friend: Him, who new robes for every service takes, And who in drab and beaver sighs and shakes; He on the priest, whom hood and band adorn, Looks with the sleepy eye of silent scorn; But him I would not for my friend and guide, Who views such things with spleen, or wears with pride. See next our several Sects,—but first behold ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... one long changing of garments and moving from one show to another. Tuesday was Viceroy's Cup Day at the races, a very pretty sight. One side of the ground was crowded by pretty women in lovely gowns, and on the other side the natives sat in their hundreds and chattered, not the drab-coloured crowd we produce, but gay and striking as a ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... confessed that I liked to cheat the railway company, and I excused it on the ground that "a ten-mile journey without a ticket is the only romantic experience left in a drab world." That was a delightful bit of rationalisation. The real reason for my delinquency lay in my unconscious. As a child I impotently rebelled against the authority of parents and teachers. Later ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... Company and of the Oriente Hotel. These buildings are the finest modern structures in Manila. Carriages are waiting in the street in front of the hotel, and at the entrance may be seen a group of army officers in khaki uniform, in white and gold, or—very much more modern—olive drab. The dining-room is entered through the rustling bead-work curtain. Here the Chinese waiters, in long ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a shaft, hollow eyed, vntoothed, furrowed on her face, hauing her lips trembling with the palsie, going mumbling in the streetes, one that hath forgott[e] her pater noster, and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head, to call a drab, a drab. If shee haue learned of an olde wife in a chimnies end: Pax, max, fax, for a spel: or can say Sir Iohn of Grantams curse, for the Millers Eeles, that were stolne: All you that haue stolne the Millers Eeles, Laudate dominum de coelis: ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... her. "Say, yer all right!" He turned, swiftly, and ran through the crowd, and in a moment had disappeared like a small drab-coloured city chameleon. ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... scrub-breed horse or a half-starved mule is tied (for we can't call it harnessed) between the thills, with a few pieces of rope and withes; and, provided with a piece of wool-tanned sheep-skin, the lord of the family, with peculiar dress, a drab slouched hat over his eyes, and a big whip in his hand, mounts on the back of the poor animal, and placing his feet upon the thills to keep them down, tortures it through a heavy, sandy road. The horses are ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... against his brethren of the law by expulsion from the bar in case of non-payment, and so tenacious of life, that, before departing from the Territory, he solicited and received from Brigham Young a patriarchal blessing; Drummond, as an amorous horse-jockey, who had taken to Utah, as his mistress, a drab from Washington, and seated her beside him once upon the bench of the court; Stiles as himself a Mormon, so far as the possession of two wives could make him one. From the early days of Joseph Smith, his disciples have never minced their language, and they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... or sixty; but hers was one of those faces that time seems to touch only to brighten and adorn. The snowy lisse crape cap, made after the strait Quaker pattern,—the plain white muslin handkerchief, lying in placid folds across her bosom,—the drab shawl and dress,—showed at once the community to which she belonged. Her face was round and rosy, with a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by age, was parted ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules: amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineations of 'that noble and liberal casuist' (as Shakespeare has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man, or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess, we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... predecessor, Mr. Simon Saunders, had been a small, wrinkled, spare old gentleman, with a short cough and a thin voice, who always seemed as if he needed an apothecary himself. He wore generally a full suit of drab, a flaxen wig of the sort called a Bob Jerom, and a very tight muslin stock; a costume which he had adopted in his younger days in imitation of the most eminent physician of the next city, and continued to the time of his death. Perhaps the cough might have been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... are paying for the war. Sightless soldiers led by little children come selling you sticking-plaster in the restaurants. Germany is too poor to care for them. It is they who are paying for the war. The drab, many-headed middle class of Berlin with its poverty-stricken breakfast-table, the old black bread of the war and no sugar and paper table-cloths; the women going about the streets with great bundles on their ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... record you are able. This is true to some extent at least of all coverings of fur, feathers, or scales, and the stronger the light the more damage. I have seen a mounted mink placed in direct sunshine, bleached to a drab and the yellow feathers on ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... quite outside the restricted limits of Methodism, and shone in it with an unflagging brilliancy altogether beyond the traditions of Tyre. Delightful as she was in other people's houses, she was still more naively fascinating in her own quaint and somewhat harum-scarum domicile; and the drab, two-storied, tin-roofed little parsonage might well have rattled its clapboards to see if it was not in dreamland—so gay was the company, so light were the hearts, which it sheltered in these new days. As for Theron, the period ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Time; and instead of pleasant Jests at Table, Dishes and Trenchers have flown about. The Husband, instead of my dear Soul, has been call'd Blockhead, Toss-Pot, Swill-Tub; and the Wife, Sow, Fool, dirty Drab. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... I said, deciding to feed his stomach before I really tried to convince him. "It all comes under the heading of the drab, routine duties of a housewife. Come on ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne
... departed, leaving Powers and Mazechazz staring at each other in the council chamber, their gaudy uniforms looking a little dull and drab. ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... smouldering logs of the camp fire curled thinly upwards. Little chipmunks scuttled out from their holes to the packs, which lay in a heap on the ground, and then scuttled madly back again. A couple of drab-colored whisky-jacks, with bold mien and fearless bright eyes, hopped and fluttered round, picking up the scraps, and uttering an extraordinary variety of notes, mostly discordant; so tame were they that one ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... of his affection for Sue showed itself on the morrow and following days yet more clearly. He could no longer endure the light of the Melchester lamps; the sunshine was as drab paint, and the blue sky as zinc. Then he received news that his old aunt was dangerously ill at Marygreen, which intelligence almost coincided with a letter from his former employer at Christminster, who offered him permanent work of a good class if he would come back. The letters were almost ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the day, and see the Paymaster snuff above his tepid second day's broth, and hear the Cornal snort because the mince-collops his toothless-ness demanded on other days of the week were not available to-day, would be, somehow, to bring a sordid, unable, drab and weary world close up on a vision of joy and beauty. He felt it in his flesh, in some flutter of the breast It was better to be out here in the sun among the chattering people, to have nothing between him and Glen Shira but a straight sweep of wind-blown highway. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... shallow waters of the lake look pink. Fortunately they had not been hunted for their plumage and were not timid. After two days of familiarity with the boat they were willing to let me approach within twenty yards before finally taking wing. The coloring, in this land of drab grays and browns, was a delight to the eye. The head is white, the beak black, the neck white shading into salmon-pink; the body pinkish white on the back, the breast white, and the tail salmon-pink. The wings are salmon-pink in front, but the tips and the under-parts are black. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... observed that the account of the dragon in the Siward story suggested the further development of the story in the Hrlfssaga. Olrik says: "I n henseende bar Sivard den digres kamp dog noget eget. De almindelige norrne dragekampe lige fra Sigurds drab p Fvne har stadig til ml at vinde dragens guld. For Sivard digre eksisterer dette motiv ikke; han vil frelse de hjemsgte mennesker. Af alle de islandske dragekampe har kun Bjrn Hitdlekmpes noget tilsvarende, og her er det nppe tilfldigt at ogs den er henlagt ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... not about time, in our dreary, drab, listless procession of economics, stringing helplessly across the world, that we have a band of music? What economics needs now ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to carry his clever brush to the welcome of a wider world, without a word or a thought of thanks for the creature who had worshipped and waited upon him hand and foot; and then I saw her life from day to day unroll its long monotonous folds, all in the same pattern, all drab duty and joyless sacrifice, and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Evensong. A sentimental observer, had he been present, might have imagined that the old town was glad to have once again an excuse for some display, and preened itself and showed forth its richest and warmest colours and wondered, perhaps, whether after all the drab and interesting citizens of to-day were not minded to return to the gayer and happier old times. Quite a noise, too, of chatter and trumpets and bells and laughter. Even the Archdeacon forgot his official smile and laughed ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... wore also her aunt Maria's black alpaca dress, which had been somewhat decreased in size to fit her, and her aunt Lucretia's purple hood with a nubia tied over it. She had mittens, a black quilted petticoat, and her aunt Maria's old drab stockings drawn over her shoes to keep the snow from her ankles. If young Lucretia caught cold, it would not be her aunts' fault. She went along rather clumsily, but quite merrily, holding her tin dinner-pail very steady. Her aunts had charged ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... because coats were too hot, and you can't climb with your arms held by coat-sleeves. We had our coats in the packs, for emergencies. We wore blue flannel shirts with the Scouts' emblem on the sleeves, and Scouts' drab service hats, and khaki trousers tucked into mountain-boots hob-nailed with our private pattern so that we could tell each other's tracks, and about our necks were red bandanna handkerchiefs knotted ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... was once seriously angry, and that in a grave, quiet manner, because they supplied no fish on Friday; for Barney was a conscientious Catholic. He had likewise strict notions of refinement; and when, late one evening, after the women had retired, a young Scotsman struck up an indecent song, Barney's drab clothes were immediately missing from the group. His taste was for the society of gentlemen, of whom, with the reader's permission, there was no lack in our five steerages and second cabin; and he avoided the rough ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tents of the God of plenty, in the Autumnal bivouac; and throughout the long days and dreary lagging nights. Beryl was fully conscious of a ceaseless surveillance, of an ever-present shadow, which was tall and gaunt, wore a drab overcoat and slouched hat, and was redolent of tobacco. As silent as two mummies in the crypts of Karnac they sat side by side; and twice when the officer touched her arm and asked if she would take some refreshments, she merely shook her head, and tightened the folds of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... all that curious lot of masculinity classified under the general head of "men about town," crowded into the theatre that night, and when, after being heralded at length by the chorus, the returned prima donna appeared, in shining drab tights, she had a long and ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... ways fate had of deciding great issues. Four weeks ago he was something of a piece of mechanism, fairly content with his drab-colored life; and now a girl had entered it and brought to him visions too fair and beautiful to be viewed unveiled, and he knew at last the mystery and power of love. Almost a week of her stay had gone before he met her. In those that ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... are a young people, but only in the sense of healthy-mindedness. There is no real taste among us for the erotic or the decadent. It is foreign to us because, as a people, we have not felt the corroding touch of decadence. Nor is life here all drab. Hence I expect lights as well as shadows in every play ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... the sound of the heavy object being dragged away from the door at the top of the steps. They both sprang to their feet. An oblong patch of drab, gray ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... own smart gig, drawn by his famous fast-trotting mare. It was his habit to drive himself; and it was one among the trifling external peculiarities in which he and his son differed a little, to affect something of the sporting character in his dress. The drab trousers of Pedgift the elder fitted close to his legs; his boots, in dry weather and wet alike, were equally thick in the sole; his coat pockets overlapped his hips, and his favorite summer cravat was of light spotted muslin, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... scrag you, my man, if you speak of the Jew till we are out of the Porta San Zuan," growled Petruccio, the leader: "Avanti!" And the drab-coloured crew moved off towards ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... drab overcoat, and fox-skin cap and gloves, sat upon the coachman's box with the proud air of a king upon his throne. And why not? It was Oliver's very first visit to the city, and the suit of clothes he ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... too little. You ask me whether I saw your pearls. When I first spoke to you—a child with all autumn's glory blazing at your back, did I have eyes for trees and skies and landscapes; though they were splendid and profligate in their beauty? No. I saw you—only you! If you had stood against a drab curtain it would have been the same. You were a child, too young to stir an adult heart to love or passion.... What was it then that fixed you from ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... be too late? He had no idea how long it would take to reach Gravesend; he knew nothing of the race track's location. As the train whirled him through Emerson, where his mother lived, he could see the little drab cottage, and wondered pathetically what the good woman would say if she knew her son was going to a race meeting. At twelve ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... mother), and even "wonders why daughter doesn't take an interest in girls her own age." That ugly couple on the porch of the apple-sauce and wash-pitcher boarding-house—the mother a mute, dwarfish punchinello, and the daughter a drab woman of forty with a mole, a wart, a silence. That charming mother of white hair and real lace with the well-groomed daughter. That comfortable mother at home and daughter in an office, but with no suitors, no ambition beyond the one at home. They are all ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... drew nearer I perceived he was dressed in clothes as dusty and filthy as my own; he looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged through a culvert. Nearer, I distinguished the green slime of ditches mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches. His black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and sunken, so that at first I did not recognise him. There was a red cut across the lower part ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... was monotonous. There was a shading of individuality in the girls and newly-wed women, but it faded soon into the dull drab that seemed the only possible wearing-colour of the place. Occasionally, though, the sameness had been relieved by a vivid touch, but only for a short hour. The Fate who snips the threads, had invariably clipped such colouring ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... spirit brave men for it fight; And though against him causeless hatreds rise, And daily where he goes, of late, he spies The scowls of sullen and revengeful eyes; 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear, And serves a cause too good to let him fear: He fears no poison from incensed drab, No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid, Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all blockheads have ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... damp insidiousness Creeps into the night; A drab numbness sets in Dripping in lugubrious drops From the haggard ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... or Muslins, of tea, drab, or olive, colors, look best, washed in hay-water. Put in hay enough, to color the water like new brown linen. Wash them first in lukewarm, fair water, without soap, (removing grease with French chalk,) then wash and rinse them ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... of the hill they breathed their horses a few minutes and admired the view, then struck into a bridle-track across the heath, and regained the high-road about a mile from Beechhurst. Scudding along in front of them was the familiar figure of Miss Wort in her work-a-day costume—a drab cloak and poke bonnet, her back up, and limp petticoats dragging in the dust. She turned swiftly in at the neat garden-gate that had a green space before it, where numerous boles of trees, lopt of their branches, lay about in picturesque ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... kitchen, you baggage! Out of it, do you hear me? Go an' get your garments packed up, and out ye go into the street. Child o' my flesh, are ye? Out of my house, you drab, or maybe I'll be doing you a harm. I'll teach the like o' you to be stoppin' out o' nights an' then to come back wi'out a word of explainin'. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... Seine. Occasionally, however, he crossed the roadway, and, strange to say, exchanged a few remarks with a neatly dressed, long-bearded gentleman, who wore gold-rimmed spectacles over his nose and drab silk gloves on his hands. This individual exhibited all the outward characteristics of eminent respectability, and seemed to take a remarkable interest in the contents of an ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... guns and limbers passed in a steady stream going south—a sure indication that all efforts were being concentrated in widening the breach already made. That evening the Battalion returned to the huts at Couin much depressed at the prospect of taking up again the drab monotony of trench life after hopes aroused in the last few days. The weather now became very bad with almost incessant rain, and we relieved the 5th Gloucesters on July 8th in trenches waist deep in water, badly damaged by the bombardment, and affording the depressing view to right and left ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... rather a drab, middle-aged type of revery, and youth might show more life and color; but the linkages between one thought and the next are typical of any revery. The linkages belong in the category of "facts previously observed". I had previously observed the ownership of this dog by my neighbor, and this observation ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... all the female virtues? Why, Sally Salisbury's niece! and the equal of Sally herself for worthless good looks and behaviour. She is not yet well known to the town or I could not have been so took in. But you will recall that Molly Skerret observed the likeness to that drab Sally on seeing her. Good Heaven, that I had heeded, and ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... of the green gate to meet us. She had a soft, drab dress and a long thin neck, and her hair was drab too, and ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... was a sedate individual dressed in sober drab; he proposed to buy a horse and wagon and sell oats in bags, trusting that no one would be particular in measuring after ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Renaissance of modern Belgium might have been expected. The worship of colour and form had always been a strong characteristic of the race, and even in the drab years of the Austrian regime Belgian painters had never ceased to work. A far more startling development was the appearance, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, of a national Belgian school of literature. ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... of dreams that he can even endure the supreme test when the lonely man finds himself sitting in the wan light with no one near him to whom he is dear. Of the strength and peacefulness which bring him safely through that hour of desolation he owes much to the players, who have shot the drab texture of life with an infinity of bright and tender hues, so that he can bear to turn it in his hands and look upon it with a wistful pleasure. I say, then, let the shy man frequent the playhouse, and there facet and burnish his dulled mind until it reflects, if ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... sorrow of finding out our limitations which, on their first acquaintance, often seem more appalling than they actually are. While youth may be saved by hope, by what is to be, middle life is often lost in the drab reality of what is. Every youth, who is not as indifferent to his possibilities as though he were nothing more than a lump of flesh, is about to become a numeral in the world. The tragedy enters when he knows himself to be what in a sense he must ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... accepted, and Mr. Lillyvick continued to repeat; "Morleena, child, my hat! Morleena, my hat!" until Mrs. Kenwigs sunk back in her chair, overcome with grief, while the four little girls (privately instructed to that effect) clasped their uncle's drab shorts in their arms, and ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... one of the jokes of contemporary playwrights, not only that men bankrupt in purse and character were "food for the Plantations," (and this before the settlement of New England,) but also that any drab would suffice to wive such pitiful adventurers. "Never choose a wife as if you were going to Virginia," says Middleton in one of his comedies. The mule is apt to forget all but the equine side of his pedigree. How early the counterfeit nobility of the Old Dominion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... down her knitting, and she went over to the beans. Now, never believe me, if she didn't see sitting right before her a bit of an old man, with a cocked hat on his head and a dudeen (pipe) in his mouth, smoking away! He had on a drab-coloured coat with big brass buttons on it, and a pair of silver buckles on his shoes, and he working away as hard as ever he could, heeling a ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... through the streets with old Oliver and Dolly; and now that the hour was positively come he felt very light-hearted and full of spirits, defying the wind which wrestled with him at every turn. Dolly must be wrapped up well, he said to himself, and old Oliver must put on his drab great coat, with mother o' pearl buttons, which he had brought up from the country forty years ago, and which was still good for keeping out the cold. He ran down the alley, and passed through the shop whistling cheerily, and disdaining to lift ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... down through the window he saw that Earth was now a huge gray ball beneath them, white cloud-oceans obscuring the drab details of its surface here and there. "—31—32—" The plane was climbing more slowly, and at a lesser angle. Even the X-type had to struggle to rise in the attenuated air now about them. Only the super-light, super-powered plane could ever have ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Lamartine, to Victor Hugo. Theophile Gautier has told us that the fiery chiefs of the romantic school who suddenly conquered France at the close of the Restoration, divided the whole world into flamboyant and drab. In the literature of the past they counted Voltaire one of the Drab, and Diderot a Flamboyant.[290] If it be not too presumptuous in a foreigner to dissent, we cannot but think that they were mistaken. Nothing could be farther removed at every part from Diderot's dramatic scheme, than Faust ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... in contact with a display of spurious passion which is the outcome of the head rather than of the heart. Thus Johnson tells us that Prior's Chloe "was probably sometimes ideal, but the woman with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab of the lowest species." The case of popular and patriotic poetry is very different. It is wholly devoid of affectation. Whatever be its literary merits or demerits, it always represents some genuine and usually deep-rooted conviction. It enables us to gauge the national aspirations ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... steward. "Captain Percival is coming aboard of you, sir." "Well, ask him to walk down into the cabin"; and shortly down comes old Captain Percival, a white-haired, thin-visaged, weather-worn old gentleman, in a blue Quaker-cut coat, with tarnished lace and brass buttons, a pair of drab pantaloons, and brown waistcoat. There was an eccentric expression in his face, which seemed partly wilful, partly natural. He has not risen to his present rank in the regular line of the profession; but entered the navy as a sailing-master, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... insulation was about him, removing him from all things that thrill, all things that distend; there was no color, no vibration in the world; iridescences had ceased; the chamber of his soul had been painted a dull drab. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... There was an artist's perception in Jeff in spite of his drab years of EI patrol duty; the white puff of sail on dark-green sea, gliding across calm water banded with lighter and darker striae where submerged shoals lay, struck something responsive in him. The ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... graceful terns (sea-swallows) skim the waves; a great blue heron stalks across the hard sand, majestic, solitary and shy of man's approach; and dainty little beach-birds, piping plover in snowy white and drab, glide rapidly past the surf-line. A mile below Beach Avenue is a high sandhill shelving abruptly toward the beach, half-buried trees projecting from its western slope: it is now known as "Eagle Cliff," so called by the proprietor of Dungeness from the fact of my shooting an eagle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... 5, represents, in compact yellow limestone, the speckled Eagle (K'iae[']-k'iae-li su-tchu-tchon-ne) of the Upper regions, the drab color of the body being varied by fragments of pure turkois inserted into the eyes, breast, and back. A notch in the top and front of the head probably indicates that the specimen was once supplied ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... was gray. His heart was not his own. His life was at best only a grim, drab thing of ugly memories and angered determinations. If a home should ever come to him, it must be in company with some one to whom he owed the gratitude of friendship in time of need; not love not affection, but the paying ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... safety. On the left-hand side now was the rock-strewn beach, and the almost deafening roar of the Atlantic. On the right and in front, fields, no longer like patchwork but showing some signs of cultivation; here and there, indeed, the stooping forms of labourers—men, drab-coloured, unnoticeable; women in bright green and scarlet shawls and short petticoats. He passed a little row of whitewashed cottages, from whose doorways and windows the children and old people stared at him with strange ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rich with embroideries. "People," said William Morris, "have long since ceased to take in impressions through their eyes," indeed so insensible, so atrophied to colour have the eyes of moderns grown amid their drab surroundings, that the aspect of a building wherein skilful hands have in some small degree essayed to realise the splendour of the past dazes the beholder; a sense of pain rather than of delight possesses him and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... there's a difference, Mr. Floyd; I wish he had your true blue yeoman's honour, and the spirit that becomes his father's son: if the lad was mine, I'd cut him off with a shilling, to buy a halter for his drab of a wife. Dang it, Mrs. Floyd, it'll never do to see so queer a Mrs. Jonathan Junior, a standing in your tidy shoes ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the war against Austria ended. And not youth only, nor Italians only. The British troops loudly and healthily and almost riotously sang also, all the temporary soldiers and nearly all the regulars. Yet here and there were gloom, and drab, wet blankets, trying to make smoulder those raging fires of joy. In a few officers' Messes, especially among the more exalted units, men of forty years and more croaked like ravens over their impending ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... in the very act of removing the binoculars from his eyes his keen sight detected what appeared to be an infinitesimally small moving dot against the bare drab face of the cliff, some two miles away. Focussing his glasses afresh upon the spot, Dick watched it steadily for two or three minutes until he became certain that it was moving. Yes, moving downward along the cliff face toward ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... darker hue, contained the treasures of the toilet; a writing-table to match served for inditing love-letters on scented paper; the bed, with antique draperies, could not fail to suggest thoughts of love by its soft hangings of elegant muslin; the window-curtains, of drab silk with green fringe, were always half drawn to subdue the light; a bronze clock represented Love crowning Psyche; and a carpet of Gothic design on a red ground set off the other accessories of this delightful retreat. There ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... large (see measurements); general tone of upper parts drab; sides Ochraceous Buff (capitalized terms are of Ridgway, Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, Washington, D. C., 1912); lateral stripes Fuscus Black washed with Ochraceous Tawny; ventral side of tail near (14' h) Ochraceous Orange and fringed ...
— A New Chipmunk (Genus Eutamias) from the Black Hills • John A. White
... understood; almost immediately a boat was lowered by some novel machinery and pulled toward the steamer. There were two men in it, the skipper and the negro. The skipper came up the side of the Springbok. He was loosely dressed in some light drab-colored stuff and a huge straw hat; a man with a long Puritanical head, a nose inclined to be aquiline, a face bronzed by weather and heat, thin, resolute lips, and a square chin. But for a certain breadth between his keen gray eyes, which revealed more ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... a stout door and two ladders, one running to the second story and another to the roof. From here the keen eyes of Hildebrand Anne, Baron of Ardrochan, scanned often the countryside, looking for travelling merchants or wandering knights; while his gallant steed Black Rudolph, whose coat was drab and dingy, waited saddled and bridled below, and Blazer the bloodhound sniffed about the burn hard by. Blazer had a weakness for ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... a leader. The new manta was of yellow wool and cotton, bordered with dull green and little squares of flaming scarlet woven in it by patient Indian hands of the far south coast. It made her look a bit royal in the midst of the drab-colored, weary band. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the wicked harassed his slumbers. Suddenly he awoke, and dismal groans and unearthly rumblings struck his terrified ear. "Sally! Sally!" said he, leaping from bed and giving his sleeping spouse a vigorous shake, "why sleepest thou? arise and don thy drab camlet and high-crowned cap, and prepare to meet thy Lord; ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... he looked out upon the cheerless drab roofs of the barracks, with their wisps of pale smoke swirling upward into the leaden sky; counted the dozen gnarled and scrubby trees, as had become a habit with him; rested his eyes upon the black and shriveled remnants of summer flower-beds thrusting their frost-shrunken ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... and you stay awhile, and you find that the woman you've been thinking of as Queen of Sheba is no more nor a common drab. And the publican you thought of as the grand generous fellow has no more use for you and your bit silver gone. It's a queer thing, but they on land think of nothing but money. And one day you think, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... young, strong mower going forth with his mower for to mow spareth the tall and drab hornet's nest and passeth by on the other side, so Time, with his Waterbury hour-glass and his overworked hay-knife over his shoulder, and his long Mormon whiskers, and his high sleek dome of thought with its gray lambrequin ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... everybody began to have the restless feeling engendered by the usual summer drought in California prolonged beyond its appointed season. The country and the people needed rain. Claire, always responsive to the moods of wind and weather, longed for the cleansing flood to descend and wash the dust-drab town colorful again. She awoke one morning to the delicious thrill of the moisture-laden southeast wind blowing into her room and the warning voice of her mother at her ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... a narrow passage from the door of entrance to the room. General Washington stopped at the end to let Mr. Adams pass to the chair. The latter always wore a full suit of bright drab, with loose cuffs to his coat. General Washington's dress was a full suit of black. His military hat had the black cockade. There stood the 'Father of his Country' acknowledged by nations the first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... colours and extravagance in dress carried to such an extreme. Large numbers of the Quakers yielded to it, and even the very strict ones carried gold-headed canes, gold snuff-boxes, and wore great silver buttons on their drab coats and handsome ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... run down in the machine for his sister's guest at half-past eleven on the day in question, and Ruth hurried her tasks as much as possible so as to be all ready when he appeared in the big drab automobile. She even rose a little earlier, and the way she flew about the kitchen and porch at her usual Saturday morning tasks was, as Aunt Alvirah said, "a caution." But before Tom appeared Ruth saw, on one of her excursions into the ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... secret of the fact that, from the point of view of the ordinary unconventional man or woman, Mrs. Clarke had often acted unwisely, and, with not too fine a sarcasm, he described for the jury the average existence of "a careful drab woman" in the watchful and eternally gossiping diplomatic world. Then he contrasted with it the life led by Mrs. Clarke in the wonderful city of Stamboul—a life "full of color, of taste, of interest, of charm, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Cathedral at the far end, and unbelievable candy-cane construction of fanciful spirals, and every-colored turrets; the red marble mausoleum, Mecca of world Communism, housing the prophet Lenin and his two disciples; the long drab length of the GUM department store opposite. But it ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... reclining in an invalid's rolling-chair, clapped both large, pale hands to the wheels and pushed himself out along the porch. He had shawls pinned about him, an untidy, drab-colored hat on his head, and, when he looked ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... being a complete American, and therefore he was fain to take his place only as a noble ingredient in that wonderful mixture. By degrees, the singularities which distinguished him were softened; his thee and thy yielded to the common forms of speech; his drab suit altered its cut and hue; his hat came off occasionally; his women abated the rigor of their poke bonnets; he was able to say to the enemy of his country, "Friend, thee is standing just where I am going to shoot." The disintegration of his individuality set free ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... needing to be always busy on it: raised causeways with incessant bridges, black sedgy ditch on this hand and that; many meres, muddy pools, stagnant or flowing waters everywhere; big muddy Oder, of yellowish-drab color, coming from the south, big black Warta (Warthe) from the Polish fens in the east, the black and yellow refusing to mingle for some miles. Nothing of the picturesque in this country; but a good deal of the useful, of the improvable by economic science; and more of fine productions ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... window in the night Is but a drab inglorious street, Yet there the frost and clean starlight As over Warwick ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... still dusting. She was no longer a drab of the streets but a young lady who, thanks to Dick's check, had paid her premium and was entitled to pull beer-handles with the best. Being neatly dressed in black she did not hesitate to face Mrs. Beeton, and there passed between the two women certain regards ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... burning, from the banks of the Red River to the Pacific Coast, from the winding shores of the Missouri and Mississippi to the everlasting snows of the Arctic. Their lives of heroism furnish a bright splash on the rather drab and bleak landscape of what was known as the Northwest Territories. The Church of Canada will ever remain indebted to these noble pioneers of the cross, apostolic bishops and priests of the first hour; their saintly lives are forever emblazoned ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... away from this smoky little den on a drab November day, sick at heart. The winter. He tried to face it, and at what he saw he ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Miss Dunham noted how Gilbert used to make a mysterious sign in the air as he lit his cigar. That sign, says Dorothy, was the sign of the cross. Long ago he had written of human life as something not grey and drab but shot through with strong and even violent colours that took the pattern of the Cross. He saw the Cross signed by God on the trees as their branches spread to right and left: he saw it signed by man as he shaped a paling or a door ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... face downwards with my picture spread before him, "I believe that any one who knew the dodges, when he saw that everything looked one pale, yellowish, brownish tint with the glare of the sun, would have boldly taken a weak wash of all the drab-looking colours in his box right over everything, picked out a few stones in his foreground wall, dodged in a few shadows and so on, and made a clever sketch of it. And the same with Eleanor's. If he had got his birch-trees ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... emerged—remolded. In one brief year and a half I had lived my life, dreamed the undreamable, accomplished the unaccomplishable. Much had gone from me, yet much had come—and it was this which had come that distorted my vision of future days; making them drab, making my fellows who had not taken the plunge seem purposeless and immature. Either they were out of tune, or I was—and I thought, of course, that they were. What freshness could I bring to an existence of peace when my gears would not mesh ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... doubtless, "First come, first served." Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene became animated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to the most accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab. The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and after going before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled, and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy black feather coats and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... where girls as graceful as goddesses and as yellow as guineas wore robes of flaming feathers and sang lullabies in soft, impossible tongues; lands of coral and ivory and all the glories of the earth, where life was full of golden possibilities and a world away from the drab respectability of a mercer's life ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... here with us under a sky that would make of Job an optimist. All around are light and color, the evidences of life and hope. Here the whites are white, and not a dirty drab. The streets glisten clean in the sunlight, and every window is a reflector of glad promise. In London, choked with fog, and grimy with soot-dust, the Englishman cannot see the future for smoke, cannot extract ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... creatures, wrapped in great-coats and thick cloaks, and defended with oil-skin hoods, travel all their lives long? Not a soul was more punctual in attendance than Johnny Darbyshire. He was a little man, wearing a Quaker suit of drab, his coat long, his hat not cocked but slouched, and his boots ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... to return with two exceedingly rusty keys tied together with a drab piece of tape. He jingled them on his long, slender forefinger with an air ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... case, though you are genuinely preoccupied with thoughts of literature, bears certain disturbing resemblances to the drab case of the average person. You do not approach the classics with gusto— anyhow, not with the same gusto as you would approach a new novel by a modern author who had taken your fancy. You never murmured to yourself, when reading Gibbon's *Decline and Fall* in bed: "Well, ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... Crebillon into ROME SAUVEE of Voltaire, and the other samples of dead into living,—that stupid old Crebillon himself and the whole Universe may judge, and even Pompadour feel a remorse!—Readers shall fancy these things; and that the world is coming back to its old poor drab color with M. de Voltaire; his divine Emilie and he rubbing along on the old confused terms. One face-to-face peep of them readers shall now have; and that is to be enough, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... was only one coach on the stand; one Crane drove the coach; I saw the gentleman get out of the chaise into the coach, he stepped out of the one into the other; I opened the door, and let down the step for him; he had a brown cap on, a dark drab military great coat, and a scarlet coat under it; I only took notice of the lace under it. The gentleman ordered the coach to drive up to Grosvenor-square; I do not remember that he told me the street in Grosvenor-square. I really think that ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... and filled with the dread of the future that had once looked so engaging to her. The picture that avarice and greed had painted was gone. In its place was an honest bit of colour on the canvas,—a drab colour ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Danube and its junction with the Save, is a really charming park known as the Slopes of Dreaming, where, on fine evenings, almost the entire population of the capital appears to be promenading, the rather drab appearance of an urban crowd being brightened by the gaily embroidered costumes of the peasants and the silver-trimmed uniforms of ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... not let these great things keep them from the pleasant little details of life. Even in the olive drab flannel shirt and serge skirt of their uniform, or in their trim serge coats, the exact counterpart of the soldier boy's, except for its scarlet epaulets, and the little close trench hat with its scarlet shield and silver lettering, they are ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill |
