"Moth-eaten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smacked of churchyard mould And musty odors of moth-eaten palls— A living death, a walking epitaph! No lover that for tingling flesh and blood To rest soft cheek on and change kisses with. Yet lover somewhere; from his sly cocoon Time would unshell him. In the interim What was to do but wait, and mark who strolled Of evenings up the hill-path ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank. There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked into the shape of an egg ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... very old bagatelle-table in one room, all moth-eaten, and a few old pictures still on the walls—a knight and his lady with Elizabethan ruffs, and a portrait of a greyhound. From a top window the farmer showed them ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... heavy volumes bound in leather, containing the archives. And also a most curious strong box bound in iron bands, nail studded, and with immense locks and keys, upon which reclined a strange, wooden figure with a grinning face, clad in the moth-eaten ancient dress of Malines, representing "Op Signorken" (the card states), but the attendant told me it was the "Vuyle Bridegroom," and related a story of it which cannot be set down here, Flemish ideas and speech being rather ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... nose as he slept in the sun before the door. His mother's gown showed proofs of his genius by sundry little round holes, which were considerably increased each time that it returned from the wash. Nay, heretical and damnable as is the fact, his father's surplice was as a moth-eaten garment from the repeated and insidious attacks of this young philosopher. The burning-glass decided his fate. He was bound apprentice to an optical and mathematical instrument maker; from which situation he was, if possible, to emerge into the highest grade of the profession; ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... to give something, even Silas, who sent home for a stuffed wild-cat killed in his youth. It was rather moth-eaten and shabby, but on a high bracket and best side foremost the effect was fine, for the yellow glass eyes glared, and the mouth snarled so naturally, that Teddy shook in his little shoes at sight of it, when he came bringing ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Maryland Colony in the days of the Calverts became the first home of true religious liberty on American soil has been so often blasted by historians that one is loath to enter upon this moth-eaten claim for fear of merely repeating what others have more exhaustively stated. Catholics seem to forget what Bishop Perry has called attention to: "The Maryland charter of toleration was the gift of an English monarch, the nominal head of ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... sat there boldly looking down upon the people in the street. There was one stepping along, proud of his purse; another, of the key he carried behind him, though he had nothing to lock up; another took a pride in his moth-eaten coat; and another, in his mortified body. "Vanity, all vanity!" he exclaimed. "I must go down there by-and-by, and touch and taste; but I shall sit here a little while longer, for the wind blows pleasantly at my back. I shall remain ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... man! And me with a white-faced cow that I'm afraid of my life of, and an old horse that looks like a moth-eaten hide trunk we to have in our garret at home when I was a little girl, and belonged to ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... closet hung various articles of apparel, upholstery lumber of all kinds filling the back part. Swithin thought he might find here a cloak of hers to throw round him, but finally took down from a peg a more suitable garment, the only one of the sort that was there. It was an old moth-eaten great-coat, heavily trimmed with fur; and in removing it a companion ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... her talents as an artiste and politician palled upon his old rum-soaked and emaciated brain, and ennui, like a mighty canker, ate away large corners of his moth-eaten soul, she would sit in the gloaming and sing to him, "Hard Times, Hard Times, Come Again No More," meantime accompanying herself on the harpsichord or the sackbut or whatever they played in those days. Then she instituted theatricals, giving, through the aid of the nobility, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... retorted. "I don't require the shave, thank goodness, but I certainly need a bath—and clothes. I wish I had the gray suit that's probably getting all moldy and moth-eaten at the Pine River cabin. I wonder if I can get anything fit ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... representation of the battle he had won five years before. From a throne he watched the manoeuvres executed under the command of Murat, Lannes, and Bessires. He had had the coat and hat he wore on the day of the battle brought from Paris. The coat was somewhat moth-eaten, and the odd hat would have seemed very much out of date if it had not recalled such precious memories. But Napoleon liked to recall that eventful day when he had managed to grasp victory when apparently beaten. After the manoeuvres ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... before my eyes now while I write. It is dusty with age; the paint on it is cracked; the ropes are tangled; the sails are moth-eaten and yellow. The hull is all out of proportion, and the rig has been smiled at by every nautical friend of mine who has ever looked at it. Yet, worn-out and faulty as it is—inferior to the cheapest miniature ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... me to M. le Comte and then go down to Jeanne and tell her that I for one have no intention of forgetting Worcester, or the pawned ring, or the sausages, and that the array of Grenoble louts dressed up for the occasion in moth-eaten liveries dragged up out of some old chests do not please me half as much round a dinner table as did her dear old, streaming face when she used to bring us the omelette straight out of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... his rime be ragged Tattered and iagged Rudely rain-beaten Rusty and moth-eaten If ye talke well therewyth Yt hath in ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... that has turned sour. At times the good Viscount drops molasses into the skin to take away the taste of vinegar; at other times, he drops in more vinegar to take away the sweet taste of the molasses. He is both moth-eaten and sublime. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of Bumpuses! A Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose like that, a Yankee with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and bunches of black, moth-eaten hair on either side! But Edward, too polite to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him; give him hell; he likes it. Come one, come all—all you moth-eaten, lousy stiffs from Stiffville. Come, tell Simp there's a reporter rubberin' around and you're scared to death. He'll sympathise with you—you ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... them out to the back yard. There were seven Rep Rho Betas on seven moth-eaten ponies which they had dug up from goodness knows where. The rigs they had on represented each fellow's idea of what a cowboy looked like, and would have made a real cowpuncher hang himself for shame. Petey confessed afterward that, of all the Rep Rho ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... this ain't a wild-goose chase I dunno what you calls it. Here you've gone an' took me away from my happy home, an' brought me across the ragin' Atlantic, an' dumped me in a moth-eaten little village where there ain't nothin' fit to drink, all because I happened to chum ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... medieval period in some phase of strength and power, at times predominant, at times little more than a title, had received its death-blow from the hands of Napoleon and vanished from the historic stage. It was Bismarck's design to restore the German Empire - not the old, moth-eaten fiction of the past, but an entirely new one - and give Prussia the position it had earned, that of the great center of German racial unity. In this project Austria, long at the head of the old empire, was to have no part, the imperial ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... him offers; he would be famous, perhaps a member of the Academy—though, to be sure, that institution was mildewed, moth-eaten, and ready ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... hold the damper off the string. See that the top button falls so low that the damper lever does not touch it when the key is released. This is accomplished by altering the lower button. Examine the damper felts to see if they are moth-eaten, or have become hardened or in any way impaired. Notice the adjustment of the shade; that it is not too low or too high. The purpose of the shade is to prevent the damper levers from flying up; but it should be high enough so ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... platter, or a piece of fine salt-glaze. On the top shelf of a long-locked closet, pushed back in the corner, you'd discover a full set of the most beautiful sapphire glassware, and a pagoda work-box with ivory corners; and on a lower shelf, wrapped in half a moth-eaten shawl, two glowing luster jugs in proof condition. Mary Magdalen salvaged a fine china sillabub stand, with little white-and-gold covered cups on it, from a sooty box under a kitchen cupboard. A back drawer of the dusty office desk yielded up ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... excellent spahi, whom my letter from head-quarters had considerably impressed, busied himself meanwhile on my behalf, and at seven in the morning a springless, open, two-wheeled Arab cart, drawn by a moth-eaten old mule, was ready for my conveyance to Gafsa. In this instrument of torture were spent the hours from 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., memories of that ride being blurred by the physical discomfort endured. Over a vast plateau ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... sure of not being interrupted, took my measure, and set to work, under the major's directions, to cut out and stitch a coat and breeches in what was considered approved nautical fashion. The difficulty was the buttons; but my mother fortunately discovered a moth-eaten coat and waistcoat of a naval lieutenant, a relative, who had paid a visit to Castle Ballinahone many years before, and, having been killed in action shortly afterwards, had never returned to claim his garments. There ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... those implements of chipped flint which have called him into such noisy activity,—and discover, as he will discover, that the assumed inference from the gravel and the bones is fallacious after all[321].—Let the Historian go spell a little longer over that moth-eaten record of dynasties which never were, by means of which he proposes to set right the clock of Time[322]. Let the Naturalist walk round the stuffed or bleached wonders of his museum, and guess again[323]. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... sedulous at church. Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stood up with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like an ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one fell back upon a standing column, a moth-eaten collection of alleged jests which had been set up years ago to meet the worst emergencies. It was, however, considered a confession of weakness and a degradation ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... dress he was as spick and span as a tailor at the trade's annual convention. But he had evidently been "going some" for several days; the sour, worn, haggard face rising above his elegantly fitting collar suggested a moth-eaten jaguar that has been for weeks ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... nobility, which had the right to impose its crowns on you. All the chairs, tables, sideboards, and things on the walls were made out of the horns of stags and other animals the Count had shot. Sometimes the chairs were covered with the skin of the same, minus the hair, which was missing and moth-eaten in spots. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... and saw a tall young man coming toward her, with long strides. Instantly, she forgot Simeon Harp, and did not even see him as he hobbled away, pulling on to his head the moth-eaten cap of squirrel fur which he always wore, summer and winter, as if for a ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... which was some rusty crape; a huge, old-fashioned thing that framed in her silver-white hair like a pent-house. The very shape and fashion of this bonnet was pathetic—it spoke of so long ago. The black dress and soft shawl with which she had come to the prison were a little moth-eaten, but not much, for they had been carefully hoarded; but the poor old woman looked with a sigh on her prison-dress as it fell to the floor, and wept bitterly before she went out, as if that gloomy mass of stones had been ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... humanity, wuz pressin' down on her generous young heart. And I could see in her sweet face the brave determination to do and to dare, to try to help ondo the wrongs, and try to lift the burdens from weak and achin' shoulders. But Lorinda kep' on with the same old moth-eaten argument so broke down and feeble it ort to be allowed to die ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... Ledsam, very much to my chagrin, announce his intention of abandoning a career in which he has, if he will allow me to say so,"—with a courteous bow to Francis—"attained considerable distinction, to indulge in the moth-eaten, flamboyant and melodramatic antics of the lesser Sherlock Holmes. I fear that I could not resist the opportunity of—I think you young men call it—pulling ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... metal hooks a few warped fragments of skins still hung, moth-eaten, riddled with holes, ready to crumble ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... carved chairs emblazoned elaborately with coats of arms, as old as the time of Albert Duerer—slender-legged tables in battered marqueterie—time-pieces in lack-lustre ormolu, still pointing to the hour at which they had stopped, who could tell how many years ago? bundles of moth-eaten tapestries and faded silken hangings—exquisite oval mirrors framed in chipped wreaths of delicate Dresden china—mouldering old portraits of dead-and-gone court beauties in powder and patches, warriors in wigs, and ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... in accordance with her directions; there were cheesecloth window-curtains, with rustic boughs in place of poles; there were barrels standing bottom upward for tables, draped with ancient "duds"—a changeable-silk skirt of her mother's over one, a moth-eaten camel's-hair shawl over another. The crack in the only mirror which a munificent landlord had provided was concealed by a kinikinick vine; a piece of Turkey-red at five cents a yard, their one bit of extravagance, converted Dan's ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... "There are the boys' canoes. They paddled over here this morning and dressed up in those old moth-eaten buffalo robes they had over there, on the island, and managed to ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... moth-eaten bowler started warbling to a certain extent with me. It was all very trying for a man of culture. He was a man who had, I should say, discovered that alcohol was a food long before the doctors found it out. A good chap, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... lank and lean, and his thick red hair strayed low over the forehead. His army overcoat was rent here and there beyond the salvation which lay in his wife's patient mending, and his old fur cap showed the skin in moth-eaten patches; yet Heman thought, with a wondering protest, how young he looked, how ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... relinquished it by giving up the ghost. It was afterward learned that he had hidden, almost undoubtedly, $6000 worth of registered United States bonds among the books in his sub-cellar den—presumably, concealed between the leaves of some of the moth-eaten volumes of which he was the appointed guardian. Certainly, there could be no better or less-suspected hiding-place, but this was just where the trouble came in for the heirs, in whose interest the books were vainly searched ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... bewitch him as if he were a heedless boy? When it could sit laughing at him until in its laugh he heard the sounds of old winds roaring and old seas standing on their heads, and he put on his black sweater—the moth-eaten badge of his sinfulness—and he put on his wooden leg and lifted out the handful of money from under the corner ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... understand. He reserves his most biting condemnation for those second-hand critics who accept other people's opinions for their criteria, and rave over "beauty," "soul," "character," "expression" and "tone" in wretched, dingy, moth-eaten pictures. He hated with the heartiest detestation such people—whose sole ambition seemed to be to make a fine show of knowledge of art by means of an easily acquired vocabulary of inexpressive ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... very funny, but so many innocent persons were wrought almost to the verge of nervous prostration by Algernon's ideas of sport, that at last the fiat went forth that he must die. He was shot at dawn, and, less lucky than Denis, reached England in a stuffed and rather moth-eaten condition. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... There was a strange musty smell about the house—a smell that brings to me now, when I find it in old and unlighted buildings, the memory of the high ceiling, the shining floor over which I moved so cautiously, and the long melancholy rows of moth-eaten stags' ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... calicoes were not common, but every one had woollen garments and pieces, and the quilts made of these were of grateful warmth in bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace garments and remnants of decayed gentility were pressed into service in these quilts: portions of the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia-men, worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some brilliant home-dye, old coat and cloak linings, well-worn petticoats. A magnificent scarlet cloak worn by a lord mayor ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... a turn up and down the street on his horse, then started for the dam site. As he cantered up the road, Billy Underwood, mounted on a moth-eaten pony, saluted with dignity. ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... heap about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he didn't pick up much information about the habits of our Missouri fauna. When it came to cows, he had had a liberal education and he made out all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing time and Jeff naturally bought a mule—a little moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and droopy, wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle as easy as if they ran on ball-bearings. Her owner didn't give her a very good character, but Jeff was too busy telling how much he knew about horses to pay much attention to what anybody was saying about mules. ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... verge of hardship, frankness bordering on rudeness, and a stolidity that was impolite; or soft, luxurious hypocrisy in a moth-eaten society—which shall it be? And Joseph Addison comes upon the scene and by the sincerity, graciousness and gentle excellence of his life ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... underlined words and superlative adjectives and intended to convey the impression that he was a mighty lucky chap to have married a fairy princess who would spend her ducats in rigging up an uncomfortable moth-eaten villa of the days ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... he had expected to see—until he spied the wheel chair. Then he seemed surprised, and greatly interested. He laid his hat among the breakfast cups and crossed the room softly to look down at the little old man crumpled, sleeping, in the folds of the moth-eaten coat, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... woke her dames; For shouts were heard 'mid fire and smoke, And twice ten hundred voices spoke "The playhouse is in flames!" And, lo! where Catharine street extends, A fiery tail its luster lends To every window-pane; Blushes each spout in Martlet Court And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, And Covent Garden kennels sport, A bright ensanguined drain; Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height Where patent shot they sell; The Tennis-Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' Hall, The ticket-porters' ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the Ring for the serious business of the day. After examining Transformation in the paddock and listening to the comments of the knowing ones—"Too thick in the barrel," "Too long in the pastern," "Too moth-eaten in the coat"—he will exercise caution and, instead of "putting his shirt" on Transformation and plunging to the extent of, say, L5, will put up not more than L3 10s. and await the result with calmness. When Transformation is returned unplaced (or, as "O. T." and "Disgusted" would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... house said, "In the words of one greater than I, 'Let the ax be laid at the roots of the tree.' And this also do I say, Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments moth-eaten! Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days! Behold! The hire of the laborers who have reaped down thy fields, which you kept back ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... red-faced, red-whiskered stage driver who nagged at his four horses incessantly and never was known to beat one of them; a garrulous, soft-hearted stage driver who understood very well how lonely these two young folks must be, and who therefore had some moth-eaten joke ready for whoever might be waiting for him at the macaroni box. Whenever Helen May apologized for the favor she must ask of him—which was every time she handed him a list—the stage driver invariably a nasal kind of snort, spat far out over the wheel, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... alone, I looked with some curiosity round the gloomy oak-paneled chamber, where the fire-light flashed on the carved four-poster, with its faded yellow damask curtains, and lit up the moth-eaten tapestry that adorned a portion of the upper part of the walls, but scarcely illumined the dark corners which lay beyond. There were quaint old presses and chests roomy enough to hide a dozen ghosts in, and a portrait ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... He calls the rich lordlings who exacted sweat and withheld wages, to "weeping and howling," assuring them that the complaints of the injured laborer had entered into the ear of the Lord of Hosts, and that, as a result of their oppression, their riches were corrupted, and their garments moth-eaten; their gold and silver were cankered; that the rest of them should be a witness against them, and should eat their flesh as it were fire; that, in one word, they had heaped treasure together for the last days, when "miseries were coming upon ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... away. Helen caught him, he yielded, and allowed her to lead him into the room. There she lighted a candle, and as it came gradually alive, it shed a pale yellow light around, and revealed a bare chamber, with a bedstead and the remains of a moth-eaten mattress in a corner. Leopold threw himself upon it, uttering a sound that more resembled a choked scream than a groan. Helen sat down beside him, took his head on her lap, and sought to soothe him with such tender loving words ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... interested in the next find, which was a complete court suit—silk stockings, buckled shoes, and all. Then came an old uniform, moth-eaten long before Dame Alison's careful hands had folded it away. Its gold lace was tarnished almost beyond recognition, and on it was a label written in the same delicate handwriting, "Worn by General ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... of her and made much of her. He took her into the country. He walked with her on the boulevards in the sunlight, and enjoyed the warmth the more for leaning on her arm. It delighted him to see her in good spirits. Often, to amuse her, he would take down a moth-eaten costume from his wardrobe and try to remember a fragment of some part that had gone from his memory. The mere sight of this little maid and her white cap was like a ray of returning youth to him. In his old age, Jocrisse leaned upon her with the good-fellowship, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... was taken up to the box-room and made as comfortable as possible in a snug nook between an old nursery fender and the wreck of a big four-poster. They gave him a big rag-bag to sit on, and an old, moth-eaten fur coat off the nail on the door to keep him warm. And when they had had their own tea they took him some. He did not like the tea at all, but he liked the bread and butter, and cake that went with it. They took it ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... was worth forty million dollars. This vast estate was mostly frittered away, honeycombed and moth-eaten, by hungry attorneys. The business was carried on by Hessians who worked both ends against the middle, and let the estate foot ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... remarkable in finding such clothes in a widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a really substantial incongruity of this complexion ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Massir said to them in Hindustani. He spoke words of comfort, telling them not to be afraid; and they listened. Even Bahut, the big elephant, as the slings tightened and he swung dizzily heavenward, cocked his moth-eaten ears to listen and refrained from whimpering, though the pit of his stomach was cold with fear; and he worked his toes when there was nothing under ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... still greater. All of the furniture which Louis had not dared to sell stood in the position he left it, but in what a state! All of the tapestry hangings and coverings were moth-eaten and in tatters; nothing seemed left but the dust-covered woodwork of the ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... satisfied Edna and she followed along through the deserted rooms, catching sight of a moth-eaten cover here, a bunch of withered flowers there. Books, long untouched, lay half open on a table in one room, the bed was still unmade in another, and ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... closeted in Miss Lavinia's room in reviewing the events of the last half century by means of the reminiscences which were inspired by one unearthed heirloom after another. Pete and Shoofly were happy on the floor enveloping themselves and each other in long wisps of moth-eaten yarn that Miss Amandy had unearthed in a bureau drawer and donated to their amusement. Mrs. Poteet had with her usual happy forgetfulness of anything but the very immediate occupation, lost sight of the fact that she had left young Tucker asleep ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to work against. It leaves a man nowhere, helpless. It lifts him off the ground and holds him kicking futilely in the air. Just that. By God, I'm desperate enough to try anything—to try building the ditch—try whipping Menocal even under this moth-eaten ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... pursued his master, seating himself upon the escritoire and swinging his leg, "I want some old clothes, shabby clothes—moth-eaten, stained, battered, and torn. Also a muffler and an old hat. Can you find ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... had spent together, the confidence there had been between them, the interest he had once felt in Bosio's fortune,—as an object once daily familiar, and fresh once and not without beauty, then long hidden for years, and coming suddenly to sight again, moth-eaten, dusty, and all but destroyed, is oddly painful to him who used it long ago, and then sees it when it is fit only to be ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... chap has just climbed over the rail, who looks like an early patriarch, but his dignity is impaired by the moth-eaten high silk hat which surmounts his white hair. The people regard him with apparent deference, due either to the hat or his inherent character. Looking at his fine old face, one is inclined to believe it is ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... sounds then of wheels on the gravel. The old dilapidated cab from Clinton with its ricketty windows and moth-eaten seats that smelt of straw and beer was standing at the door, the horse puffing great breaths of steam into the frozen air. Her aunt had arrived. Maggie, standing behind the window, looked out. The carriage door opened, and a figure, that seemed unusually tall, appeared ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... rooms beside each other and were amused at the heterogeneous collection of odd pieces of furniture in them. The old four-posted beds with funereal canopies and moth-eaten curtains had probably been brought from England a hundred years before. In small chambers off their rooms, with marble walls and floors, and windows filled with thin slabs of alabaster carved in the most exquisite tracery as ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... lantern from the prow of the vessel, which the conscienceless wretches declared dated from many centuries after the supposed battle; and there were the guild drums, and the glorious banner; and the moth-eaten hide of the lion, in which all his predecessors had encased themselves, lay now forgotten behind the altar, covered with cobwebs and dust, but it was none the less as authentic and worthy of reverence as the stones of ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... this, "to be satisfied with the manner in which you have executed an important mission. Since you left America, however, a document has come into my hands, which, had it reached me earlier, would have saved you a long and tedious search among mouldy and moth-eaten papers. It was nothing less than Captain ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. I saw something like them in Hampton Court, but they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten. But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror. There is not even a toilet glass on my table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before I could either shave or brush my hair. I have not yet seen a ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... about—motors, wireless, airplanes, new wrinkles and changed conditions—are better understood by them than the old people. It is easy for them to get the feeling that the old people's ideas are rather moth-eaten and of not much account. It is for the rising generation to tell and explain what's doing now and for the setting generation to listen and make the most ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... bird-like, and considered a great Romanizer by the others. There is also Brother Walter, who is only a probationer and is not even allowed wide sleeves and a habit like Brother Lawrence, but has to wear a very moth-eaten cassock with a black band tied round it. Brother Walter had been marketing in High Thorpe (I wonder what the Bishop of Silchester thought if he saw him in the neighbourhood of the episcopal castle!) and having lost himself on the way home he had arrived back late for Vespers and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... distinctions which had always steeled Cynthia against the friendly advances of her neighbours troubled the younger sister not at all. She remembered none of the past grandeur, the old Blake power of rule, and the stories of gallant indiscretions and powdered beaux seemed to her as worthless as the moth-eaten satin rags which filled the garret. She loved the familiar country children, the making of fresh butter, and honest admiration of her beauty; and except for the colourless poverty in which they lived, she might easily ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the long-troubled Duchess, who to her acquaintances had always seemed as unemotional as the dust-coated, moth-eaten parrot which stood in mummified aloofness upon her safe, had made a momentous decision that had sent through her old veins the thrilling sap of a great crisis, a great suspense. She had tried to guide ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... may be readily supposed, was the main thing in this establishment; insomuch indeed that it shouldered comfort out of doors, and jostled the domestic arrangements at every turn. Thus in the miserable bedrooms there were files of moth-eaten letters hanging up against the walls; and linen rollers, and fragments of old patterns, and odds and ends of spoiled goods, strewed upon the ground; while the meagre bedsteads, washing-stands, and scraps of carpet, were huddled away into corners as objects of secondary ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... herself inside a cupboard full of old lumber. The dust was thick, and surely had not been disturbed for years. Some broken chairs with moth-eaten seats were piled together, and some ancient boxes lay full of rubbish. Straw, old books, hanks of rope, and other miscellaneous things occupied the corner. There was a door opposite, without either latch or knob. Raymonde with some ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... would be a low estimate indeed. As for the sheets, blankets, and towels, we had better draw a veil. I therefore preferred to spread my own bedding on the floor, and slept there. The hotel boasted of three large dining-rooms in which a few moth-eaten stuffed birds and a case or two of mutilated butterflies, a couple of German oleographs, which set one's teeth on edge, and dusty, stamped cotton hangings formed the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a piker at it," I replied, modestly. "I can do a few moth-eaten tricks with the cards and I've studied out a few of the illusions, enough to know how to do them without breaking an ankle, but I'm not cute enough to be on ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... abiding, and retaining a being(or what you will call it), demonstrate the greatness and might of the soul? Alas! heaven and earth are short of this greatness, for these, though under less judgment by far, do fade and wax old like a moth-eaten garment, and, in their time, will vanish away ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... themselves in" for a bigger task than they had dreamed. Added to that, performing it by dim candle-light did not lessen its difficulties, but rather increased them tenfold. First they took turns sweeping, as best they could, with a very ancient and frowsy broom, the thick, moth-eaten carpet. When they had gone over it once, and taken up what seemed like a small cart-load of dust, they found that, after all, there remained almost as much as ever on the floor. Cynthia was for going over ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... led her from the flat of the delicatessen merchant, through various shabby lairs, into the pension of a vaudeville favorite of prehistoric fame. The house was dilapidated, and the brownstone front had the moth-eaten look of the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... of the old-time Southern colonel, with his absurd grandiloquence, his eccentric garb, his quaint idioms and phrases, his moth-eaten pride of family, and his really kind heart, fastidious sense of honour, and lovable simplicity, is the best delineation of a character role on the boards to-day. The coat worn by Colonel Calhoun is itself nothing ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... us have done with these follies! the rats of your garret are very welcome to these moth-eaten ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Estaminet.[1] I was conducted up a dark, narrow staircase into the close, dingy room, by an ugly, ignorant frau, who seemed to wonder what earthly inducement I had to visit her dwelling-house. Lumber and moth-eaten furniture were carelessly scattered around. A solitary window, partly blocked up by an old mattress, barely admitted light sufficient to make objects visible. All was neglect and desolation. It seemed almost impossible that so obscure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... to sally forth on their perilous path to safety, Gyng stood and cried angrily: "Well, why hasn't some one bundled up that moth-eaten Caliban? Curse it all, must I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... horridly those camphor things smell. I hung over her and asked questions every time she moved. She told me how the moth-millers lay eggs in the furs if they are not protected, and showed me an old muff that she had found in the attic, which was so badly moth-eaten that it had to be thrown away. I watched her lay the little balls all among the furs, and then tie them up in linen bags, and pack ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... their minds, shows an inattention to the details and probabilities, of a play, that must do the actresses an injury, if not give them corns. Let theatre-goers insist that the stockings be changed oftener, in these plays that sometimes cover half a century, and the stockings will not become moth-eaten. Girls, look to the little details. Look to the stockings, as your audiences do, and you will see how ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... perfunctory manner. However, he was there in person, as his voice, a clear and pleasant one, showed the denizens of the "closet," for they could not see out of it, except where Eugene had furtively enlarged a moth-eaten hole in the curtain, through which, when standing on the seat, he could enjoy an oblique view of the back of an iron-moulded surplice and a very ill-powdered wig. This was a comfort to him. It would have been more satisfactory to ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... floor of that garret was tossed A friendship too fragile to last, With pieces of dearly bought pleasures, that cost Vast fortunes of pain in the past. A fabric of passion, once ardent and bright, As tropical sunsets in spring, Was spread out before me—a terrible sight - A moth-eaten rag of a thing. ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... arrangement of the fruit, flowers, sprays and other accessories was a trifle different. The red cherries, for example, no longer bobbed at the peak of the roof; they now hung jauntily from the rear eaves, so to speak. The purple grapes had also moved and peeped coyly from a thicket of moth-eaten rosebuds. The wearer of this revamped millinery triumph seemed a bit nervous, even anxious, so it seemed to Martha Phipps, who, like Cabot and Galusha, was looking at her. Marietta kept hitching in her seat, pulling at her gown, and glancing from time to time at the gloomy ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... laid down, much to Rupert's surprise, and to his equal suspicion, his revolver on the top of a moth-eaten roll of old carpet that leaned against the wall near where ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... perspiring man, looking too fat to ever get cool, found the prize he had drawn was a moth-eaten fur overcoat. ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... thus, it even challenged the beholder's admiration, of which he was at all times sparing. Until that hour, he had found nothing but laughter for this same mount, likening the spectacle of it, with its castle and cottages, now to a senile monarch with moth-eaten ermine about his toes and a lop-sided crown on his head, now to ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... in this book is wonderful, even to me. It is a library of universal knowledge, and the facts contained in it are different from any other facts now in use. I have carefully guarded, all the way through, against using hackneyed and moth-eaten facts. As a result, I am able to come before the people with a set of new and attractive statements, so fresh and so crisp that an unkind word would wither them ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ—and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... there's a—," and paused, not knowing what on earth to call it. Then rapidly to cover up his ignorance he pointed confidently to a somewhat similar fowl and said sagely, "And there's another!" The curious moth-eaten and shabby appearance that captive camels always exhibit was accurately recorded in his addressing one of them as "poor old horsie." And after watching the llamas in silence, when he saw them nibble at some grass he was ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... neighboring villages. The ice seemed fairly alive. Men noticed the erect, easy carriage of women, and their picturesque variety of costume. There were the latest fashions, fresh from Paris, floating past dingy, moth-eaten garments that had seen service through two generations; coal-scuttle bonnets perched over freckled faces bright with holiday smiles; stiff muslin caps with wings at the sides, flapping beside cheeks rosy with health and contentment; furs, too, encircling the whitest of throats; and scanty ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of explanatory manuscript. With his own ghostly voice he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him—who might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor—to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public. "Do this," said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, emphatically nodding the head that looked so imposing within its memorable wig; "do this, and the profit shall be all your own. You will shortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was in mine, when a man's ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... humour that I added it to my childish repertory. And from this recollection I passed on to ponder upon the melancholy truth that originality will ever be an unpopular quality. For here were two or three hundred people absolutely and hilariously satisfied with such a battered and moth-eaten phrase, even to-day, and perfectly content that the orator should have so little respect either for himself or for them that he saw no disgrace in thus evading his duty and inventing ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... of objects that remind us of a much-loved departed relative or friend, he had allowed the contents to remain untouched; and when they saw the light, the general's uniforms, including the one in which he fell, were much moth-eaten, but the manuscripts were happily uninjured. On the return of the Editor from South America in May last, he for the first time learnt the existence of these effects; and a few weeks after, having hastily perused and assorted the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... the simplest. The walls were covered with tapestry so faded that the pattern could hardly be detected. The hearth yawned dark and dull, and by it stood one chair with a moth-eaten cushion. A heavy oaken table and two forms were in the middle of the room, and there was the dreary, fusty smell of want of habitation. The Queen, whose instincts for fresh air were always a distress to her ladies, sprang ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... containing these relics inclosed also the skin of a small rodent (Spermophilus sp.?) but in a torn and moth-eaten condition. This was used by the owner for purposes unknown to those who were consulted upon the subject. It is frequently, if not generally, impossible to ascertain the use of most of the fetiches and other sacred objects contained in Mid[-e] sacks of unknown ownership, as each priest ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... gave herself more readily to a rough embrace than a soft caress. She reserved her favors for those who wrested them from her...she had no patience with the soft delights of persuasion. It was strange how much rough-hewn vitality had poured into her embrace from the moth-eaten civilization of the Old World. Starratt was only a generation removed from a people who had subdued a wilderness ... he was not many generations removed from a people who wrestled naked with God for a whole continent—that is, they had begun to wrestle; the years that ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... feet by twenty, and it was bordered by a hedge of moth-eaten privet, but anyone who has ever attempted to induce a blade of grass to grow upon a sand dune will fully appreciate the deviltry of Mrs. Tunnygate's malignant mind. Already there was a horrid rent where Tunnygate had floundered through at her suggestion in order to save going round the pathetic ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... been seriously moth-eaten during our previous confinement, so that I did not hesitate to strike a bargain with Madame Sorret, and to request that la vivandiere might make her appearance on the theatre of action as soon as possible. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... out of the slough of the old folly of life, the leaders of the nation abandoned then-feuds. Out of the past voices called to them. Their blood thrilled to old sentiments and old traditions which had seemed to belong to the lumber-room of history, with the moth-eaten garments of their ancestors. There were no longer Liberals or Conservatives or Socialists, but only Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen and Welshmen, with the old instincts of race and with the old fighting qualities which in the past they had used against ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. He has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed manuscripts, for the benefit of the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity after a time has the grace of novelty, as old fashions revived are mistaken for new ones; and a certain quaintness and singularity of style is an agreeable relief ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... came or went without showing a pass, and I lugged about four pounds of brass keys around, for we didn't want to be stood up by a gang of moth-eaten brigands loaded with old hardware. They covered close by day, but at night we could see 'em sneakin' around the walls, like a bunch of second-story men new to their job. Neither the Boss nor I had a gun, never having ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... of the party sniffed audibly, and raised their somewhat moth-eaten eyebrows at each other in virtuous disapproval of a young female who provoked such remarks from strangers. The valet, who had the air of being engaged to the maid with the nose, confined himself to a non-committal ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... people are silent who ought to speak, and I touch some very closely when I say that owing to this silence the power of your experience has declined and become like a faded flower or a moth-eaten garment, and then when you would fain speak you find the assurance about the blessing has waned. My word, therefore, to you is, first of all get the blessing, then at every suitable opportunity, profess it openly and boldly for God, and by your happy testimony you will ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... "Forbidden to bring whiskey on the ranch? H'm." His eyes wandered to the jewelry-box. "H'm," said he again; and becoming thoughtful, he laid back his moth-eaten sly head, and spoke no ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... his knotted stick beside it, his blue tobacco bag and his short pipe, and then inspected his coats. He had two left—a moth-eaten overcoat and a black alpaca, out at the elbows. He decided for the overcoat; it was warm, certainly, but then he could carry it over his arm and only put it on when he met some one along the road. It was more respectable than ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Terraces are set upon the mountainside like a gigantic staircase, and fringed with railings of stone so artistically wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly tails are ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... shoulders, and his shirt-sleeves fastened at the wrist. He cared little for outward appearance. He wanted his clasps of gold, but it did not matter if the stuff did shine with grease, or the trimming was moth-eaten. From his broad Turkish girdle no sword hung, but behind was stuck a battle hammer, and above his boot-tops appeared a knife-hilt, studded with turquoises. In all his motions, there was an arrogance that brooked no contradiction, ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... metal and wood! Home-made chain armour, composed of wads of leather secured together by pieces of iron, bear witness to the secrecy with which the Ronins made ready for the fight. To have bought armour would have attracted attention, so they made it with their own hands. Old moth-eaten surcoats, bits of helmets, three flutes, a writing-box that must have been any age at the time of the tragedy, and is now tumbling to pieces; tattered trousers of what once was rich silk brocade, now all unravelled and befringed; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... bookes he contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age; but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... a present of Le Petit Trianon. Much has been said of the extravagant expense lavished by her upon this spot. I can only declare that the greater part of the articles of furniture which had not been worn out by time or were not worm or moth-eaten, and her own bed among them, were taken from the apartments of former Queens, and some of them had actually belonged to Anne of Austria, who, like Marie Antoinette, had purchased them out of her private savings. Hence it is clear that neither of the two Queens were chargeable to the State ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the lumber-room in Caleb's household. In an instant the whole troop had thrown themselves on the motley contents. Stray joints of clumsy fishing-rods; artificial baits; a pair of worn-out top-boots, in which one of the urchins, whooping and shouting, buried himself up to the middle; moth-eaten, stained, and ragged, the collegian's gown-relic of the dead man's palmy time; a bag of carpenter's tools, chiefly broken; a cricket-bat; an odd boxing-glove; a fencing-foil, snapped in the middle; and, more than all, some half-finished attempts at rude toys: a boat, a cart, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him roundly why he came hither, where neither ghosts nor Jesuit priests, whichever he may be, are wanted. What answered he, eh? Would I had been there to interrogate him! He should have declared how he became possessed of that old moth-eaten, blood-stained, monkish gown, or I would have unfrocked him, even if he had proved to be a skeleton. But I interrupt you. You have not told me ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... earliest youth," he wrote in 1803, "I had a passion for taking in all the antiques that I met with: moth-eaten furniture, tapestries, family portraits, Gothic manuscripts (that I had learned how to decipher), had for me an indefinable charm. A little later on, I loved to walk in the solitude of cemeteries; to examine the tombs ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... sailor with shoe-blacking, trimmed it with two neckties and an old blackbird badly molted; result perfectly hideous, but the sugar-bowl, clothing, and sundry fund are out of debt and doing well. Had my faded gray dress dyed black, and trimmed the jacket with pieces of my moth-eaten cock's-feather boa; perfectly elegant, almost too gorgeous for my humble circumstances. Mamma looks at me sadly when I don these ancient garments, and almost wishes I had n't such "a wealthy look." I tell her I expect the girls to ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... moth-eaten, fat man at the door. He is the mouthpiece of the People's, but he doesn't dislike to feast with the classes. He is probably telling Woodyard at this moment what the President said to him last week about Princhard's ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... soon made herself almost happy. By various tender shifts she had saved out of the wreck in Market Place Daddy's bits of engravings and foreign curiosities, his Swiss carvings and shells, his skins and stuffed birds; very moth-eaten and melancholy these last, but still safe. There, too, was his chair; it stood beside the fire; he had but to come back to it. Many a time in the week did she suddenly rise that she might go to the door and listen; or crane her head out of window, agitated by a figure, a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tides, winds and currents can be ignorant of the fact that the devout men and women of the present are earnestly inquiring, "What is sanctification? What does holiness mean?" They are demanding of the pulpit and of the church editor something more than the time-worn and moth-eaten excuses for not teaching a deeper work of grace. The "seven thousand" who have not "bowed the knee" to the modern Baals are insisting that, if God's Word teaches entire sanctification for the disciple of Christ obtainable by faith now, they must possess ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... bedstead had its moth-eaten, miserable attempt at a canopy swept back and heaped carelessly on the dirty counterpane by a man in a restless slumber, just as he had thrown himself down, ready dressed, long after daylight peered in through ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... ago on a wet autumn evening the household of Mallett's Lodge was gathered round the death-bed of Ursula Mallow, the eldest of the three sisters who inhabited it. The dingy moth-eaten curtains of the old wooden bedstead were drawn apart, the light of a smoking oil- lamp falling upon the hopeless countenance of the dying woman as she turned her dull eyes upon her sisters. The room was in silence except for an occasional sob from the youngest sister, Eunice. Outside the rain ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... string must 'a' truly been cracked, Don't you s'pose? or moth-eaten, p'raps; 'Tisn't pleasant to practice, I'm sure, But forlorn, when anything flaps. So I guess I have finished; hark, hark! He really IS coming—Oh my! Now, Banjo, I know mamma wants me, An' so I must ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... the waters. He also remembered that there were sundry little pathways winding up the chalky rocks, where he had seen people walk; and that, by God's good blessing, the packet might be found by some one wandering there. Having accomplished this object, he took his seat on a pile of moth-eaten clothes, and drawing forth his little pocket Bible, set himself to read the Holy Scripture, with as much diligence as if he had never before opened ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... pest, the moth, had made its appearance in Virginia, for in goods accounted for, are four pairs of moth-eaten hose and ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... in an impassioned speech advocates conciliation all round in Ireland, and refers to Mr. JOHN REDMOND as "a moth-eaten, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... illustrated a book on Vienna—that was where I learned my German. Let me see—oh, it's French that I haven't accounted for. Well, we have some French relatives. They love to have us visit them at their funny old chateau, because mother mends their moth-eaten tapestries beautifully, and father paints ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... gently, "I reckon there ain't no useless good vocabulatin' about that varmint, Silvertip. I should a-known better'n to trust a man o' his moth-eaten ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... roaring boyes When they intend to rock licentious thoughts In a soft roome, where every long Cushion is Embroydered with old Histories of peace, And all the hangings of Warre thrust into the Wardrobe Till they grow musty or moth-eaten. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... mules are too skittish for him to handle. Fine pair, eh, William?' And right there in the early dawn, almost in front of the garage that contained his touring Chauvinnais and my gray roadster, father stood in his velvet dressing-gown and admired the two moth-eaten old animals. Now, I honestly ask you, Matthew, could a woman of heart refuse at least to attempt to see those two great old boys through the rest of their lives in peace and comfort together? Elmnest is roof and land and that is about all, for Uncle Cradd never ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... present dingy and dust-covered as if it had been long deserted. It was the apartment in which Monte-Cristo as Sinbad the Sailor had welcomed the Baron Franz d' Epinay years before, but the crimson brocade, worked with flowers of gold, though it still lined the chamber as it did then, was now faded and moth-eaten, while the Turkey carpet in which the Baron's feet had sunk to the instep, as well as the tapestry hanging in front of the doors, was in the same condition. The divan in the recess had been riddled by worms and ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... in sanctity by its age: the moth-eaten furniture was hallowed by tradition. The rheumatic old dog of uncertain breed, to which he had never vouchsafed a caress became now, when banished to the stable, a tried and faithful companion ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... an incredibly short time, the five youngsters were dressed, each to satisfy his own peculiar taste: Joseph as an Indian in blanket and beads, with a crimson band about his head; Jacob, carrying a sword, wore a moth-eaten smoking jacket, a bright sash and crimson Turkish turban; Rachel and Matilda were two dainty ladies in full skirts of blue and pink, with deep bonnets; while Rebecca was rather splendid in a yellow silk wrapper, a long ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... lot in the attic," replied the oldest girl, smiling happily at the children's appreciation of her labor; but she did not explain that a gorgeous, moth-eaten, old afghan had been raveled to provide ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... rich, weep, wailing for your miseries that are coming upon you. (2)Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are become moth-eaten. (3)Your gold and silver is rusted; and the rust of them will be a witness against you, and will eat your flesh as fire. Ye heaped up ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... was bare and gaunt, with blotched walls and a stained uneven floor. On a divan lay a pile of "properties"—limp draperies, an Algerian scarf, a moth-eaten fan of peacock feathers. The janitor had forgotten to fill the coal-scuttle over-night, and the cast-iron stove projected its cold flanks into the room like a black iceberg. Ned Stanwell, who had ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... "I reckon there ain't no useless good vocabulatin' about that varmint, Silvertip. I should a-known better'n to trust a man o' his moth-eaten ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... of their stuffing and binding, and lay them as nearly as possible in a flat position They must then be subjected to a very brisk brushing, with a stiff clothes-brush; after this any moth-eaten parts must be cut out, and neatly replaced by new bits of ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... ever thrown away; even rusty nails find their way to the bazar. The miscellanies of a stall might upon occasion be what is left behind after a house removal. On one table at Batum I observed two moth-eaten rusty fezes, a battered but unopened tin of herrings in tomato-sauce, another tin half-emptied, a guitar with one string, a good hammer, a door-mat worn to holes, the clearing of a book-case, an old saucepan, an old kerosene stove, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Ah! [He looks up at MR BLY, struck by his large philosophical eyes and moth-eaten ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... goatish-looking deer which did not interest him, and came suddenly upon a paddock containing a bull moose, two cows, and a yearling calf. The calf looked ungainly and quite content with his surroundings. The cows were faded and moth-eaten, but well fed. He had no concern for them at all. But the bull, a splendid, black-shouldered, heavy-muffled fellow, with the new antlers just beginning to knob out from his massive forehead, appealed ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... my rhyme be ragged, Tatter'd and jagged, Rudely rain-beaten, Rusty, moth-eaten, Yf ye take welle therewithe, It hath in it ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... smothered out of her with comforts; we have too many rooms, too many carpets, too many vases and knick-knacks, too much china and silver; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets; the children all have too many clothes: in fact, to put it scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is cankered, and, in short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I have come to the agency office for distressed women to take you ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... years. Let us recall the blessings by the way—the streams in the desert, the pillar of fire that led us in the night. And yet what is the quality of our faith? It is often weak and reluctant, riddled with timidities, or moth-eaten with worldly ease. It is not mighty and daring, riding forth every morning like a chivalrous knight to inevitable conquest. It creeps along, like Mr. Halting, and ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... uniform," he said, "and it must be very old. It's all stuffy and moth-eaten, and the gold is nearly black. There are green things on it. I know what it is, Terry. It belonged to Gran'ma's uncle in the Irish Brigades. He was killed at Fontenoy. They sent home his things. Nursey ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland |
