"Mud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good. As he is just also, it follows that his decrees and his operation do not destroy our freedom. Some men have sought some reason therein. They have said that we are made from a corrupt and impure mass, indeed of mud. But Adam and the Angels were made of silver and gold, and they sinned notwithstanding. One sometimes becomes hardened again after regeneration. We must therefore seek another cause for evil, and I doubt whether even the Angels are aware of it; yet they cease not to be happy and to ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... with a lot of young devils of his own sort, be fell to drinking wine in teacups,[92] so that before nightfall they were all as drunk as mud. Well, then, on the strength of this wine, as he was setting out for his father's house, he said, "Now, then, to try my luck," and stuck a long dirk in his girdle. He reached his own village just before nightfall, thinking to burst into the place where he imagined his relations to be gathered ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the 19th century, when efforts were initiated to secure the trade passing through Cartagena. The city is built on a low plain, is regularly laid out, and has many fine warehouses, public buildings and residences, but its greater part, however, consists of mud-walled cabins supported by bamboo (guadua) framework and thatched with rushes. The water-supply is drawn from the Magdalena, and the city is provided with telephone, electric light and tram services. Owing to periodical inundations, the surrounding country ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Nantes to L'Orient. About Rennes, it is somewhat leveller, perhaps less poor, and almost entirely in pasture. The soil always gray. Some small, separate houses, which seem to be the residence of laborers, or very small farmers; the walls frequently of mud, and the roofs generally covered with slate. Great plantations of walnut, and frequently of pine. Some apple trees and sweet-briar still in bloom, and broom generally so. I have heard no nightingale since the last day of May. There are gates in this country made in such a manner, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... except, tacitly, on those same terms, "I will achieve it or die!" For the world, in spite of rumors to the contrary, is always much of a bedlam to the sanity (so far as he may have any) of every individual man. A strict place, moreover; its very bedlamisms flowing by law, as do alike the sudden mud-deluges, and the steady Atlantic tides, and all things whatsoever: a world inexorable, truly, as gravitation itself;—and it will behoove you to front it in a similar humor, as the tacit basis for whatever wise plans you lay. In Friedrich, from ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... would be the first to blush Over your dancers' romp and rush, And your too hideous carnival, That turns your cheeks all chill and blue, And skips the mud in hob-nail'd shoe— A ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... FELLOW-CITIZENS OF CLEVELAND:—We have been marching about two miles through snow, rain, and deep mud. The large numbers that have turned out under these circumstances testify that you are in earnest about something or other. But do I think so meanly of you as to suppose that that earnestness is about me personally? I would ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Bles, where he stood to his knees in mud. The toil was beyond exhilaration—it was sickening weariness and panting despair. The great roots, twined in one unbroken snarl, clung frantically to the black soil. The vines and bushes fought back with thorn and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... pine poles or logs the right length of our tents, build up three or four feet, and over this pen the tent to be stretched. They were generally about ten feet square, but a man could only stand erect in the middle. The cracks between the logs were clinked with mud, a chimney built out of poles split in half and notched up in the ends of the log parts of the tent. An inside wall was made of plank or small round poles, with space between the two walls of five or six inches. This was filled with soft earth or mud, packed tightly, then a blazing fire ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... "As dangerous as for a clay Buddha to play with water." Children often amuse themselves by making little Buddhist images of mud, which melt into shapelessness, of course, if ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the door. He is soaked through and through with mud and dirt, it was clear that no roof had covered his head during last night's tempest. His feet peeped from out of his boots, his damp hair seemed glued to his temples, his eyes were sunken, his cheeks were mere bone, his lips were ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... fell upon his knees in the mud, uttering, with a lamentable voice, these words: "For Christ's sake, have mercy upon us, Mr. Rifle! we know you very well." "Oho!" cried the thief, "you do! But you never shall be evidence against me in this world, you dog!" So saying, he drew a pistol, and fired it ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... his daughter right from under the ducal nose. Then let the Burgundian follow at his peril. Castle Hapsburg would open his eyes. He would learn what an impregnable castle really is. If Duke Charles thought he could bring his soft-footed Walloons, used only to the mud roads of Burgundy, up the stony path to the hawk's crag, why, let him try! Harmless boasting is a boy's vent. Max did not really mean to boast, he was only wishing; and to a flushed, enthusiastic soul, the wish of to-day is apt to look ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... used for removing ink and rust stains, and remnants of mud stains, which do not yield to other deterrents. It may also be used for destroying the stains of fruits and astringent juices, and old stains of urine. However, its use is limited to white goods, as ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... and leaning in the door. "I haf a soul above frankfurters to-day. Dere is springtime in der air. I can feel it coming in ofer der mud of der streets and das ice in der river. Soon will dere be bicnics in der islands, mit kegs of beer under ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... of life about the dwelling was a curl of blue smoke. Without this signal of good cheer it had a menacing look, as it lay in its bed of mud glaring at me from under its eaves of eyebrows, shading eyes of windows a-glint in ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... German. "No more practicing in the early dawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your newscrubbed hall! It is better, is it not? All day you may rest ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little man in a sun hat, who, in order to save Leopold three salaries, holds four port offices, is being rowed to the gangway; on shore the only other visible inhabitant of Banana, a man with no nerves, is disturbing the brooding, sweating silence by knocking the rust off the plates of a stranded mud-scow. Welcome to our city! Welcome to busy, bustling Banana, the port of entry of ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... and stood gazing down at my legs, which now bore no traces of the brush which Eliza had lent me after supper. My boots were completely coated with mud as the result of the ditches into which I had floundered in my headlong flight, my stockings were splashed, and even my knickerbockers were freely covered with ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the crowd toward the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de Gery drew a long breath. The words he had just overheard had oppressed his heart. He felt as if he himself were spattered, sullied by the mud unsparingly thrown upon the ideal he had formed for himself of that glorious youth, ripened in the sun of art and endowed with such penetrating charm. He moved away a little, changed his position. He dreaded to hear some other calumny. Madame Jenkins' voice did him good, a voice famous ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Glencarn, although we did not accept Miss Campion's invitation. I was rather apprehensive of the effect these country stations would have on my fastidious curate; and I narrowly watched him, as we left our car on the hills, and strode through soft yellow mud and dripping heather to some mountain cabin. And I think there was a little kindly malice in my thoughts when I allowed him enter first, and plunge into the night of smoke that generally filled these huts. Then ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Hastings, on the Mississippi, with a complete outfit for a permanent settlement. A good story is told of his advent at Hastings. In those days of steamboating, all the belongings of an immigrant would be landed on the levee and his freight bill would be presented to him by what we called the mud clerk, and he would take an account of his stock and pay the freight. Legend reports that the general had five barrels of whisky among his paraphernalia, and when the first one was rolled ashore he seated himself upon it to ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... flights in flocks for the mere pleasure of the flight, is quite common among all sorts of birds. "In the Humber district especially," Ch. Dixon writes, "vast flights of dunlins often appear upon the mud-flats towards the end of August, and remain for the winter.... The movements of these birds are most interesting, as a vast flock wheels and spreads out or closes up with as much precision as drilled troops. Scattered among them are many odd stints ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... down to the bottom of the pond and bury themselves in the mud. They lie there without moving or breathing until spring, when out they come, as ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... arm each devouring jaw, And ostrich-like his all-digesting maw. My fancy drags this monster to my view, To shew the world his chief reverse in you. Of loud unmeaning sounds, a rapid flood Rolls from his mouth in plenteous streams of mud; With these the court and senate-house he plies, Made up of noise, and impudence, and lies. Now let me show how Bob and you agree: You serve a potent prince,[7] as well as he. The ducal coffers trusted to your charge, Your honest care may fill, perhaps enlarge: His vassals ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... it might be as well to know how the river bank was guarded. At this point a really happy inspiration seized me. There were many pools in the marsh land by the river—pools left by the recent floods. Possibly by hunting among these and stirring up the mud I might replenish my stock of leeches. I had the vaguest notion how leeches were gathered, but the pursuit would at the worst give me an excuse for dawdling ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the front of the inn, they encountered a little group of men conversing underneath the rusty old anchor signboard which dangled from a stout stanchion above the front door of the inn. Some men, wearing sea-boots and jerseys, others in labouring garb, splashed with clay and mud, were standing about. They ceased their conversation as the party from the motor-car appeared around the corner, and, moving a respectful ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... country Sherlock, getting on his knees and peering into the depths, but just then Bunch handed him a handful of hard mud which located temporarily over Harmony's left eye and put his optic on ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... feed on both vegetable and animal food. During the months of September and October, the weeds and wild oats swarm with them. They feed on the nutricious seeds, small snail shells, worms and larvae of insects, which they extract from the mud. The habits of the Sora Rail, its thin, compressed body, its aversion to take wing, and the dexterity with which it runs or conceals itself among the grass and sedge, are exactly similar to those of the more celebrated ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... astonished by what I had just seen. My vexation, however, was not dissipated by my reason, doubtless because it had not its source there. These meditations got me along through the shadows of the night and the mud of the thaw to the road of Saint Germain, where I met M. Jerome Coignard, who was returning home to the Cross of the Sablons after having supped ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... what he calls it. 'Ole Mam Higgins, she tole me. She say she wasn't gwyne to hang out in no sich a dern hole like a hog. Says it's mud, or some sich kind o' nastiness that sticks on n' covers up everything. Plarsterin', ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... magnifying glass, and often by the naked eye, we may detect the stinger which has been left behind by the greedy guest, and which should be removed by a pair of tweezers. Ice-water compresses will stop the swelling and even an old-fashioned mud dressing, which was used and appreciated by our great grandmothers, is a ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... toward the run and soon discovered the dam. It was a great pile of branches, stones, moss, grass, mud, bark, etc., that had been built across the stream and extended for rods on either side. It looked very solid, yet the water did not pour over it, ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... that will have God, the I of their I, to throne it in the temple he has built, to pervade the life he has lifed out of himself. My soul is now as a chaos with a hungry heart of order buried beneath its slime, that longs and longs for the moving of the breath of God over its water and mud." ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... in folds the most complicated, wreathed, and satin-shoed, with the homely figure that took a walk with you that afternoon, russet-gowned, tartan-plaided, and shod with serviceable boots for tramping through country mud. One does not think of loveliness in the case of men, because they have not got any; but their aspect, such as it is, is mainly made by their tailors. And it is a lamentable thought, how very ill the clothes of most men are made. I think that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the scene for anything. I might never see such a splendid one; when PONG went one shot. Every face went pale: R—R—R—R—R went the whole detachment [of troops], and the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies turned and cut. Such a scene!—-ladies, gentlemen, and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud, not shot but tripped up, and those that went down could not rise—they were trampled over.... I ran a short time straight on and did not fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty yards, and felt tolerably safe; looked for papa; did not see ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... all nater, I'd give a year's pay fer a smell o' one good blue-nose tater; The country here thet Mister Bolles declared to be so charmin' Throughout is swarmin' with the most alarmin' kind o' varmin'. He talked about delishes froots, but then it was a wopper all, The holl on't 's mud an' prickly pears, with here an' there a chapparal; You see a feller peekin' out, an', fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat an' you a copse, 'fore you can say, "Wut air ye at?" You never see sech darned gret bugs (it may not be irrelevant To say I've seen a scarabaeus ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... were long, low huts, made of sun-dried, mud-colored bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes, the Spaniards call these bricks, and Americans shorten it to 'dobies). The roofs, which had no slant to them worth 10 speaking of, were thatched and then sodded, or covered with a thick ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... and the ground in front of them had been beaten into dust, they took it up with their trunks and scattered it over their bodies, and then, withdrawing a quantity of water from their mouths, they in the same way sprinkled it over themselves, till the dust was converted into a cake of mud. From the quantity of water thus employed it seemed clear that they must have a large internal receptacle to contain it, as for a whole day or more they had had no opportunity of drinking, and had been exposed ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... read the like in the works of ancient philosophers. Remember too that these volumes of mine describe fishes only, distinguishing those that spring from the union of the sexes from those which are spontaneously generated from the mud, discussing how often and at what periods of the year the males and females of each species come together, setting forth the distinction established by nature between those of them who are viviparous and those who are oviparous—for ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... rebels; on board was a colored man who had not enrolled as a soldier, though his soul was full of sublime valor. The bullets hissed and split the water, and the rowers tried to get out of their reach, but all their efforts were in vain; the treacherous mud had caught the boat, and some one must peril life and limb to shove that boat into the water. And this man, the member of a doomed, a fated race, who had been trodden down for ages, comprehending the danger, said, "Some one must die to get us out of this, and it mout's well be me as anybody; ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... friend proceeded, and said: But when Christiana came up to the Slough of Despond, she began to be at a stand; for, said she, this is the place in which my dear husband had like to have been smothered with mud. She perceived, also, that notwithstanding the command of the King to make this place for pilgrims good, yet it was rather worse than formerly. So I asked if that were true. Yes, said the old gentleman, too ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... him, at the request of the old minister. They were rather a sorry looking group, though just as full of a desire to assist as ever. The fine new uniforms were bedraggled with mud and water. Several had holes burned in their coats, and that of Jack was a sight ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... it under the water, we would see that it thrusts its broad bill into the mud at the bottom, and brings out worms, water-bugs, and roots of ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... have their home in beds of clay, which are usually covered with calcareous rock. These beds are the remains of mud pits, due to volcanic action. Mr. Bryce, in his ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... roundabout and roundabout, through mud and brambles and swamps; over little brooks and through big miry ponds where they were nearly drowned,—roundabout and roundabout all night long. They wanted to rest, but she went so fast that they could not catch ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... places filled as ever with their built-up sacks. Each time Cleek passed them he chuckled aloud, and then—once more his face would become grim. For some moments they groped along in the gloom, their heads bent, to prevent them bumping the low mud ceiling, their lips silent, but in the hearts of each a sort of dull dread. Merriton Towers! Borkins, perhaps. But what if Borkins and Merriton had been working hand-in-glove, and then, somehow or other, had had a split? That would account for a good deal, and in particular the man's ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... these unattractive localities! Since I have been travelling in this part of the country the terrible irony of the names is a constant surprise to me. Some place that is remarkable for its barren aspect and the desolate sadness of the landscape is called Valleameno (Pleasant Valley). Some wretched mud-walled village stretched on a barren plain and proclaiming its poverty in diverse ways has the insolence to call itself Villarica (Rich Town); and some arid and stony ravine, where not even the thistles can find nourishment, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... brown suit, though worn and frayed, had once been such a suit as Messrs. Carter, tailors, of Pengarth, were accustomed to sell to their farmer clients, and it was crossed by an old-fashioned chain and seal. The suit was heavily splashed with mud; so were the thick boots; and on the drooped brow shone beads of sweat. John Brand was not much over fifty, but he was tired out in mind and body; and his ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with her finger-tip, while her eyes twinkled between the crevices of their lids—"canst mind the sherry-wine, and the zilver-snuffers, and how Joan Dummett was took bad when we were coming home, and Jack Griggs was forced to carry her through the mud; and how 'a let her fall in Dairyman Sweet-apple's cow-barton, and we had to clane her gown wi' grass—never such a mess as ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... fortunately keep my rifle dry. By clutching the grass, I get out and we follow the spoor of the hippo as rapidly as possible. This is very clearly marked, for the grass has been recently thrust aside and there are great holes in the soft mud over a foot wide and deep, made by the great feet of the beast. These holes were in pairs lying close together, showing that the hippo was galloping as he passed and unfortunately they ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... hated that mud-walled convent and those sisters who so easily forgot how to talk. The fragrance of the old days wrapped themselves around him, and although he had ceased to pine for his black-eyed Carmencita-well, it would be nice if he chanced to see her again. Spurring his mount into an ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... accustomed to border life, and compelled to rely for safety upon minute signs scarcely observable to the eyes of others. I had noticed a broken reed near where we turned into this new stream, so freshly severed as to show green from sap yet flowing, while the soft mud about the base of the big rock bore evidence of having been tramped, although the distance was so great the nature of the marks was not discernible. To be sure, native denizens of the forest might account for this, yet the sight aroused suspicion and a determination to examine more closely, while ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... corn and straw together, and threw it into the Tiber, which then was flowing with shallow water, as is usual in the heat of summer; thus the heaps of corn as they stuck in the shallows settled down, covered over with mud; by means of these and other substances carried down to the same spot, which the river brings along hap-hazard, an island[3] was gradually formed. Afterward I believe that substructures were added, and that aid was given by human ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... bluff will be a good place. Oh, Phil, I'm tired—dead tired! My very thoughts are tired. I can't even think anything funny about the ham. And yet we've got to set up the tent ourselves, and attend to the horses; and we'll have to scrape some of the mud off this beautiful vehicle." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... do laa me for publishing of this here letter, why they pours their water into a sieve. Ugh!" And with this exclamation he started, and then put his heavy boot on part of the letter, and ground it furtively into the mud; for a light hand had settled on his shoulder, and a keen young ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... mind a little mud," said I; "it washes off, whoever throws it"—and I looked to see what he thought of that, knowing he would ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... some twenty paces across—from the row of old kerosene-tins that constituted his flower-garden, past shed and woodstack to the post-and-rail fence. How often he walked it he did not know; but when he went indoors again, his boots were heavy with mud. For a brief summer storm had come up earlier in the evening. A dense black pall of cloud had swept like a heavy curtain over the stars, to the tune of flash and bang. Now, all was clear and calm again; the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... fly up in the tree; My sled be stuck in mud; And all my hopes of digging wells Be nipped ...
— The Nursery, August 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 2 • Various
... lively business quite as heartily as Father Orin. The only thing that Toby was strict about then, was that his friend should not forget to wear his best clothes, which he was too apt to do, even if he had not given them away, and that there should not be a speck of mud on his own coat, which had to be neglected in more urgent cases. Father Orin used to declare that Toby eyed him from top to toe when he knew they were going to a wedding; and that if there were a spot on his cassock, or a hole in it, Toby's eye never failed to find it. At such leisurely ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... the very end of things. That was the memory of Broadmorlands. While a man had a weapon left, even though it could not save him, he might pay up with it—get almost even. The whole Vanderpoel lot could be plunged neck deep in a morass which would leave mud enough sticking to them, even if their money helped them to prevent its entirely closing over their heads. He could attend to that, and, after he had set it well going, he could get out. There were India, South Africa, Australia—a dozen places that would do. And then he would ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... determine where the stick which he carried would do most good. At this critical moment, when the eager watcher felt that he was just about to learn the exact methods of these wonderful architects of the wild, a stick in the slowly settling mud beneath his feet broke ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the water's nearest the bottom," he muttered, and turned to pick a fastidious way through the mud. ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... left me stolid: I bore it some fifteen minutes stoically enough; but this hissing cockatrice was determined to sting, and he said such things at last— fastening not only upon our women, but upon our greatest names and best men; sullying, the shield of Britannia, and dabbling the union jack in mud—that I was stung. With vicious relish he brought up the most spicy current continental historical falsehoods—than which nothing can be conceived more offensive. Zelie, and the whole class, became one grin of vindictive ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... in. For several minutes there was the metallic slip and catch of the crank and Zeke's laboured breathing. Then there issued forth a reverberating roar as of a monster released in travail, and then slowly there emerged, back end first, a perfect scarecrow of an automobile, mud stained and rust streaked, with an arrangement on the back like a discarded chicken crate, with fenders that were battered and twisted as though torn by some elemental tempest, and with a sagging and flopping top ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... themselves with music, with carving, and drawing. Security and luxury destroy art, for it is no longer a necessity when a man is stuffed with foods, and his fat body whirled in hot compartments from point to point of a tame world. But when he tumbles in from a gusty night out of a trenchful of mud, with the patter from slivers of shell, then he turns to song and color, odd tricks with the knife, and the tales of an ancient adventure. After our group had brought food and clothing to a regiment, I remember the pride with ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... along with others and he expressed very great surprise, almost seemed desirous to turn the vessel about to look more closely. He had never seen the like before, and should have been alarmed had he seen it at the head; could only explain it by supposing that an iceberg with a quantity of mud had melted in that neighbourhood[7]. Had fiddle and dancing particularly well done by the steward, cook, and some of the sailors. Played another game at chess with Mr. B. and beat him. Although we have had a good fair breeze all day we have ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... us had had his clothes off for a week. Our ankle-puttees had long dropped to pieces, and our hose-tops, having worked under the soles of our boots, had been cut away and discarded. The result was a bare and mud-splashed expanse of leg from boot to kilt, except in the case of the enterprising few who had devised artistic spat-puttees out of an old sandbag. Our headgear consisted in a few cases of the regulation Balmoral bonnet, usually minus "toorie" and badge; in a few more, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... contrast awaited the eyes of those who entered. With a milking-stool for his table and the shepherd's rude bunk for a throne, the young King of the Danes was bending in scowling meditation over an open scroll. Against the mud-plastered walls, the crimson splendor of his cloak and the glitter of his gold embroideries gave him the look of a tropical bird in an osier cage; while the fiery beauty of his face shone like a star in the dusk of the windowless cell. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... done? The state of them was bound to be noticed, for the weather was fine and dry, Muggridge scraped off what he could with bits of stick, and tufts of grass, but his efforts were not very successful, for the mud was thick and clinging, and Paul clambered back into the cart with a very, very heavy heart. He did not gloss over to himself the wrongfulness of his behaviour, or the seriousness of the situation. He was bound to be found out, ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... high-road by a wicket-gate. On the other side of the way was the entrance to what at first sight looked like a neglected meadow, the gate being a rotten one, without a bottom rail, and broken-down palings lying on each side. The dry hard mud of the opening was marked with several horse and cow tracks, that had been half obliterated by fifty score sheep tracks, surcharged with the tracks of a man and a dog. Beyond this geological record appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with grass, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... transport—practically everything has to be brought on ox-carts up by the tremendous road from Kotor—they have recently given away 38,000 kilos of wheat and many mountain horses at Cetinje. I suppose it was all in the game for Devine and his assistants to throw mud at the Yugoslav Government if they believed that they would—for the happiness of the Montenegrins and themselves—help to restore Nikita. But what was the use of saying that "the poor people have no money and have nothing to eat; they are said to be living on a herb of some sort that grows ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... shore with all the strength he could. Mr. Carew did not imagine the horse would be able to reach it, but proposed to save himself by swimming when the horse failed, for the river was three miles over: however the horse reached the shore, but finding no place to land, it being a sandy mud, he was obliged to swim him along the shore, till he came to a little creek, which the horse swimming into, soon got sure footing, to the great joy of Mr. Carew, who, dismounting, kissed the horse, telling him he must now turn quaker as well ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... me live out my years in heat of blood! Let me die drunken with the dreamer's wine! Let me not see this soul-house built of mud Go toppling to ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... him; and now that they more narrowly scrutinised the spot where the white-pointed beak was still bobbing out and in, they could perceive that there was a patch or space of irregular roundish shape, slightly elevated above the bark, having a plastered appearance, and of the colour of dry mud. They had barely time to make this last observation, when Saloo, having got another peg planted so as to enable him to ascend high enough, turned the edge of his axe against the trunk of the durion, and commenced chipping off the mud, ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... was over, though it was still cloudy and the cold wind was strong. The road was a mass of mud; there was no walking in it. We made two long lines, one on each side of it, and took up our brisk walk. Mile after mile in every footing, through desolate country where the scrub was low, the land slightly rolling, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... situated along the Pacific "Ring of Fire"; the country is subject to frequent and sometimes severe earthquakes; mud slides; tsunamis ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... hours in any of our back streets and alleys, those nurseries of vice and feeders of the jails, and to assure himself that children of the same class as those he will see in [these] haunts—dirty, rude, boisterous, playing in the mud with uncombed hair, filthy and torn garments, and skin that looks as if it had not been washed for months—are always, throughout Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, and a great part of France, either in ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... there, sauntering or sitting, are groups of our khaki soldiers enjoying mightily a good rest after the hard work, marching and fighting, of the last ten days. From the river-bed come voices calling and talking, sounds of laughing, and now and then a plunge. Heads bob about and splash in the mud-coloured water, and white figures run down the bank and stand a moment, poised for a plunge. Three stiff fights in seven days doesn't seem to have taken much of ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... water. In a few minutes we were in it. Being unable to swim, but for my companion it would have been all up with me. When I rose to the surface he promptly seized me, and without much effort, clothes and all, swam with me to the bank, where we landed—a pair of sorry figures. Harold had mud all over his nose, and in general looked very ludicrous. As soon as ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... down from my bedroom at eight, and took a rummage in the way of putting things to rights. Dictated to Laidlaw till about one o'clock, during which time it was rainy. Afterwards I walked, sliding about in the mud, and very uncomfortable. In fact, there is no mistaking the three sufficients,[418] and Fate is now straitening its circumvallations round me. Little likely to be better than I am. I am heart-whole as a biscuit, and may last on as now for eight or ten years; the thing is not ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... into the library. It was a dark and frowning cavern. She went into the music-room, approached the piano, looked over the music, turned up "Go, Lovely Rose." The rose that Jim Dyckman said she was had been thrown into the mud. She went up to her room. The maid was arranging her bed for the night. She had turned down one corner of the cover, built up one heap of pillows, set one pair of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Laine again got in the old ramshackle hack and for two hours was shown the honors and glories of the little town which had hitherto been but a name and forever after was to be a smiling memory. Snow and slush covered its sidewalks, mud was deep in the middle of the streets, but the air went to the head with its stinging freshness, the sun shone brilliantly, and in the faces of ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... he went barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often have a dinner of roast beef, but he had an abundance of bean porridge, brown ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... last few days she had, as she would have expressed it, begun to discover herself all over again. Certainly the world had utterly changed, and was more like a fairy city than a place where it rained a great deal and where buses and taxicabs splashed pedestrians with mud. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... easily towed to the shore; but here it was wet and slippery, and it required considerable agility to get ashore without slipping in the soft mud. Every one accomplished it safely but Dimple, whose foot slipped, and over she went, full length into the mire. A sorry sight she was indeed, when she was picked up; plastered from head to foot; face, hands and hair full ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... and after a delay that seemed interminable, a four-wheeler appeared lumbering along in the mud, and was instantly hailed by my companion. "Just pull up here, will you?" he cried. "We have some baggage ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contrast with the lack of sanitary precautions observed by the average unclothed native. The only blacks who wash every day in the Congo are those who live on the rivers. The favorite method of cleansing in the bush country is to scrape off a week's or a month's accumulation of mud with a stick or a ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... the hidden worlds of plant, mineral, animal, and human, became vocal. It was the voice of the monstrous abortions of nature, the groan of the incomplete, experimental types, born for a day and shattered forever. All God's mud made moan for recognition; and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Polenka into some good orphan asylum, and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming of age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety about them. And I will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn't she? So tell Avdotya Romanovna that that is how I am spending her ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had gone back with a mule team to Siboney, to get supplies for the men. The night was pitch black and it was raining torrents. The road was a streak of mud. On the way back to the front, I heard noise and confusion ahead. I knew it was a mired mule team. An officer in the uniform of a Rough Rider was trying to get the mules out of the mud, and his remarks, as I said a moment ago, should not be quoted before ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... the teamsters out on the Castlereagh, when they meet with a week of rain, And the waggon sinks to its axle-tree, deep down in the black soil plain, When the bullocks wade in a sea of mud, and strain at the load of wool, And the cattle-dogs at the bullocks' heels are biting to make them pull, When the off-side driver flays the team, and curses them while he flogs, And the air is thick with the language used, and the ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... that Le Mans was in the same direction as La Touraine, and that by waiting two days, at most, he might travel with a friend. But D'Artagnan, more embarrassed than the count, dug, at every explanation, deeper into the mud, into which he sank by degrees. "I shall set out to-morrow at daybreak," said he at last. "Till that time, will you come with ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... see the row of submerged timber. They sank like stones in the thick ooze; they were sucked under to their knees, to their waists, to their shoulders, to their mouths; the yielding grasses, the clutching slime, the tangled weed, the bottomless mud, took hold of them; the water-birds shrieked and beat their wings; the hideous clamour of ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... would be from civilized regions into the desert. That is not the case. It will be carried out in the midst of civilization. We shall not revert to a lower stage, we shall rise to a higher one. We shall not dwell in mud huts; we shall build new more beautiful and more modern houses, and possess them in safety. We shall not lose our acquired possessions; we shall realize them. We shall surrender our well earned rights only for better ones. We shall not sacrifice our beloved customs; ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... above all, he possess a base nature, if, like Hebert, who was check-taker at the door of a theatre, and embezzled money out of the receipts, he be destitute of natural morality, and if he leap all at once from the mud of his condition into power, he is as mean as he is atrocious. Such was Hebert in his conduct at the Temple. He did not confine himself to the annoyances which we have mentioned. He and some others conceived the idea of separating the young Prince from his aunt and sister. A shoemaker named Simon ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... a screen flashed a series of pictures—a mangled tramp carried into the Parish House, my mother watching with a concerned and shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling feet of the clumsy bearers; the shaggy Poles, caps off, turning over to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin package they had found; I opening that package later and standing amazed and startled before its contents; ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... civilization has not been equally efficacious for all? Does this not show that progress itself is a privilege, and that the man who has neither wagon nor horse is forced to flounder about for ever in the mud? What do I say? The totally destitute man has no desire to improve: he has fallen so low that ambition even ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... visible. Neither did the kinsman appear to receive and greet his Highness. Otto knew well, it seems, that he could defy the Duke (however, I think if my gracious Lord of Wolgast had been there, he would not have suffered such insults, but would have taken Otto's banner and flung it in the mud). [Footnote: Marginal note of Duke Bogislaff, "And so would I."] Be this as it may, Duke Barnim never appeared to notice anything except Otto's two daughters. He was a little man with a long grey beard, and as he stepped slowly out of the carriage held a little puppet by the arm, which he ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... made, and in a few of these Mr. Sneed and Mr. Towne had to do "stunts" such as falling in the mud and water, or toppling down hills head over heels. But Mr. Pertell was careful to warn them ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... how they longed for a mud cabin, or a hole picked with a pickax in some ancient city wall, or a cow-house, or a cart-shed in ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... of her, and was got off with difficulty, on one occasion parting a hawser which killed two men and injured five others; but on the 7th of April, the powerful steamers of the mortar flotilla succeeded in dragging her and the Mississippi through a foot of mud fairly into the river. These two were the heaviest vessels that had ever entered. The Navy Department at Washington had hopes that the 40-gun frigate Colorado, Captain Theodorus Bailey, then lying off the Pass, might be lightened ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... well let it take us to Simpson's Bar, which, if ye don't know this bay, is a big shallow place, where there is always water enough for us, bein' a good deal on the flat-bottomed order, but where almost any steamin' craft at low tide would stick in the mud before they could run into us. So thinks I, If we want to get on in the direction of Widder Kinley's (whose is the last house I serve down the bay), and to feel safe besides, we had better up anchor, and I upped it. But I had ought to remembered about that light; it wasn't the square thing to be ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... worry, Mother. There is grass along the sides most of the way, and I am used to the mud and water. I will spy out the best track as I go in the morning and just follow my ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... passed. The gray mud of the chalk roads dried up into white dust almost beneath the travellers' feet as they came out again after temporary shelter; and that brightest, tenderest smile, with which, on such days, the sun makes evening atonement for his absence, shone and sparkled, danced and glowed ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... crossing it, although some few did by throwing across a ladder, the storming party stood exposed to a terrific fire. Captain Holland ordered a retreat, but it was not managed any better than the attack. The light guns were removed too quickly, and the heavy ones were stuck so fast in the mud that they could not be removed at all. The Taepings attacked in their turn, and the greatest confusion prevailed, during which the survivors of the larger half of the Ever Victorious Army escaped in small detachments back to Sungkiang. Twenty European officers were killed or wounded, besides ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... closer and closer. 'Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,' the crucified one called in a weak voice to the beggars, 'and keep the beasts and the birds from me.' But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds flew lower and lower. And presently the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his feet. 'Outcasts,' ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... to inquire; but I know they had something that looked like clay mud. I wonder if that was eaten ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... arm in arm. The path which led to Batz was not so much as traced. A gust of wind was enough to efface all tracks left by the hoofs of horses or the wheels of carts; but the practised eye of our guide could recognize by scraps of mud or the dung of cattle the road that crossed that desert, now descending towards the sea, then rising landward according to either the fall of the ground or the necessity of rounding some breastwork of rock. By mid-day, we ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... which, in our autumns, would have been ripe and yellow, were now covered with a thin, backward crop, so unnaturally green that all hope of maturity was out of the question. Low meadows were in a state of inundation, and on alluvial soils the ravages of the floods Were visible in layers of mud and gravel that were deposited over many of the prostrate corn fields. The peat turf lay in oozy and neglected heaps, for there had not been sun enough to dry it sufficiently for use, so that the poor had want of fuel, and cold to feel, as well as want of food itself. ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... then didst thou dare, Since God did not spare them, thus to presume To tempt him in his wrath, thee to consume. Nor did the angels from a Jesus fall, Redeemed they were not, from a state of thrall; But thou! as one redeem'd, and that by blood, Redemption hast despised; and the mud Or mire of thine own filth again embracest: A dying bleeding Jesus thou disgracest! What wilt thou do? see's not how thou hast trod Under thy foot, the very Son of God? O fearful hand of God! And fearful will Thy doom be, when his wrath ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Mrs. Paget. "Yes, Grandpa was a paymaster. He was on Governor Hancock's staff. They used to call him 'Major.' But Mark—" she turned off the water, holding her skirts away from the combination of mud and dust underfoot, "that's a very silly way to talk, dear! Money does make a difference; it does no good to go back into the past and say that this one was a judge and that one a major; we must live ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... Wakonda to look for them and to send them home. Wakonda was very angry when he heard about these naughty children running away so much, and so he set off in a hurry to find them. After a long search he discovered them on the bank of a muddy river making mud huts and mud animals. He was so angry at them that he at once turned them into swallows, and said, 'From this time forward you will ever be wanderers and your homes will always be made of mud,' and so ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... that our rich men are business men, and our poor ones always engaged, and partly because our climate is so different from yours. I think the climate is the most effective cause of the two; you see the year begins (here at the north, I mean) with deep snows; at the south they have rain and mud; then, when spring and mild weather come, they last but a very little while, and we have the melting red-hot sort of days that you've been through already. To be sure our Indian-summer is the finest weather for exercise in the world, but then it only lasts ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... immemorial houses that back on the river, in whose yellow flood they bathe their sore old feet. Anything more battered and befouled, more cracked and disjointed, dirtier, drearier, poorer, it would be impossible to conceive. They look as if fifty years ago the liquid mud had risen over their chimneys and then subsided again and left them coated for ever with its unsightly slime. And yet forsooth, because the river is yellow, and the light is yellow, and here and there, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... few minutes to obey papa's orders. We were already nearly dressed; and as sabots were worn at that time to protect the shoes from the mud and wet, we had them on in a moment. A thick shawl and a woolen hood completed our outfits. Alix was ready in ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... folly or pain. If you will have pure carbon, carbuncle, or diamond, to make the brain transparent, the trunk and organs shall be so much the grosser: instead of porcelain, they are potter's earth, clay, or mud. ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the men, crowding about the prisoner, who crouched, terror-stricken, in the trampled mud and moss, while those playing roulette and "bank" left the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... tremendous losers; all the past of Bay State, the doings of Addicks and Rogers, and the appointment of the receiver would come in for thorough investigation; an awful scandal would be aired in public; every one would be covered more or less with mud; and no one could possibly be the gainer but "Standard Oil," for Braman agreed with me that the deal we had made with Rogers would ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... bad in the cemetery of the Innocents! For his own part the poet can see no distinction. Much have the dead people made of their advantages. What does it matter now that they have lain in state beds and nourished portly bodies upon cakes and cream! Here they all lie, to be trodden in the mud; the large estate and the small, sounding virtue and adroit or powerful vice, in very much the same condition; and a bishop not to be distinguished from a lamp-lighter with even the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was in a nervous turmoil. Some persistently rational strain warned him that at bottom he and Marjorie had little in common, but in such cases there is usually so much mud in the water that one can seldom see to the bottom. Every dream and desire told him that he loved Marjorie, wanted her, had ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... how to hold his legs so that they would not be hurt. When gentle Sister South Wind came in the spring and took away all the snow, Mr. Otter hardly knew what to do with himself, until one day a bright idea popped into his head and made him laugh aloud. Why not make a slippery-slide of mud and clay? Right away he tried it. It wasn't as good as the snow slide, but by trying and trying, he found a way to make it better than at first. After that Mr. Otter was perfectly happy, for summer and ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... inconsiderable distance. Not to speak of the Campo Santo at Pisa, filled, or at least coated, with earth from the Holy Land, for quite a different purpose, it is affirmed that the garden of the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai is composed of Nile mud, transported on the backs of camels from the banks of that river. Parthey and older authors state that all the productive soil of the Island of Malta was brought over from Sicily. [Footnote: Parthey, Wanderungen durch Sicilen und die Levante, i., p. 404.] The accuracy of the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... clever doctor, and this woman he knew was poor. He did not expect payment from her, neither did he from the white-faced, crippled boy lying in the street, with mud on his face and clothes, and clinging to his brown hair. But he lifted him into his carriage tenderly and lovingly, and ordered his servant to drive ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... noble thought of truth, one holy emotion of love, one divine impulse of devotion, better than a whole planet of mud, a whole solar system of gas and dust? Who would not rather be the soul that gauges the deeps, groups the laws, foretells the movements, of the universe, writing down in a brief mathematical formula a complete horoscope of the heavens as they will appear ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... throbbed furiously and his palate dried in his mouth. The fog shut down again, and Maisie's face was pearl-white through it. No word was spoken, but Dick fell into step at her side, and the two paced the Embankment together, keeping the step as perfectly as in their afternoon excursions to the mud-flats. Then Dick, a little hoarsely—'What has ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... plucking out their eyes; and because of his wickedness in forgetting the people, his feathers, once white, had turned black. Then Naganschitn, the Badger, was sent to see if the land was good, but just as soon as he had crawled through he sank in the black mud and could go no farther, so Little Whirlwind was despatched to succor him. To this day Badger's legs are black. Next Keldinshe{COMBINING BREVE}n, the Skunk, was sent, because he was light in weight; but even he sank in the mud and blackened his legs. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the canoe had drifted near the shore. The girl at the bow shoved with her paddle. The boat would not move. It was stuck fast in the mud. ...
— Daniel Boone - Taming the Wilds • Katharine E. Wilkie
... the hillside after game, frequently above the snow line, so it was no new experience. If it rained or was cold, we generally managed to get into a hut; these are remarkably strongly built, good stone walls, and thick, flat, wooden roofs with a mud covering, a hole in the middle of the floor for the fire, and a hole in the roof for the smoke—at least that was what we supposed was the idea, but the smoke generally preferred ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... farm on the near side of it. About a thousand yards south of the drift was a convex and smooth hill, somewhat like an inverted basin, sparsely sown with small boulders, and with a Kaffir kraal, consisting of a few grass and mud huts on top. Between the river and the hills on the north the ground consisted of open and almost level veldt; on the south bank the veldt was more undulating, and equally open. The whole place was ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... ran against boulders, grated off with indignant "chuckering" of axle-boxes, hobbled over stumps and plowed through "honey-pots" of mud. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... portrait statue of the dead man's head and placing it along with the actual body in the burial chamber. These "reserve heads," as they have been called, were usually made of fine limestone, but Junker found one made of Nile mud.[29] ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... and fiery. This irregular snow-line has been steadily losing ground, and retreating higher and higher up the mountain-slopes during the latter half of February, and when March is ushered in, with clear sunny weather, and the mud begins drying up and the various indications of spring begin to put in their appearance, I decide to make a start. Friends residing here who have been mentioning April 15th as the date I should be justified in thinking the unsettled weather at an end and pulling out eastward again, agree, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and suck the blood Enriched by generous wine and costly meat; On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud, Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled feet. Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls, The oyster breeds, and the green ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... with the same importunate request: he replied, "I will give you nothing; plague have you and your grotto." The boys however persevered, till the gentleman, having lost all patience, gave one of them a gentle tap to get out of the way, but the boy being on the side of the foot-path fell into the mud, which had been scraped off the road, and in this pickle followed the gentleman, bellowing out, "That man knocked me down in the mud, and I had done nothing to him." In consequence, a number of persons soon collected, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... some of which rise to 12,000 feet above the sea-level. Many of these mountains are at the present time active." ("Yes, much too active," muttered the negro), "and more than half of them have been seen in eruption since Java was occupied by Europeans. Hot springs, mud-volcanoes, and vapour-vents abound all over the island, whilst earthquakes are by no means uncommon. There is a distinct line in the chain of these mountains which seems to point to a great fissure in the earth's crust, caused by the subterranean fires. This tremendous crack or fissure ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... women," cried Miss Adams, wrathfully. "One might as well try to preach duty and decency and cleanliness to a line of bolsters. Why, good land, it was only yesterday at Abou-Simbel, Mr. Stephens, I was passing one of their houses,—if you can call a mud-pie like that a house,—and I saw two of the children at the door with the usual crust of flies round their eyes, and great holes in their poor little blue gowns! So I got off my donkey, and I turned up my sleeves, and I washed their faces well with my ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... work in times of flood. It comes out from a great chasm in the rocks in the face of a precipice at a vast height from the ground; and, in times of flood, it brings down such a mass of sand, gravel, stones, rubbish, and black mud as sometimes to threaten to ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... went near seemed burning. The walls even sent forth a heat of their own; and if it hadn't been for the chatties down below, we should have had to give up, for the tank was now completely dried, and the flies buzzing about its mud-caked bottom. But the women went round from man to man with water and biscuit so that no one left his post, and every time the black scoundrels tried to make a lodgment near the gate, half were shot down, and the rest glad enough to get back ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... spice-bush swallow-tail, whose bugaboo caterpillar startled us when we unrolled a leaf of its favorite food supply; the small, common, white cabbage butterfly (Pieris protodice); the even more common little sulphur butterflies, inseparable from clover fields and mud puddles; the painted lady that follows thistles around the globe; the regal fritillary (Argynnis idalia), its black and fulvous wings marked with silver crescents, a gorgeous creature developed from the black and orange caterpillar that prowls ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... bracket, made of little mud balls and straw stuck on a beam in a hayloft. Eggs white, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... beneath me. The sight gave me strength again. I at once resumed my journey, and trotted down the hill at a pace which surprised myself. As I got warm with my exertions, the stiffness seemed by degrees to leave my limbs; I ran, I bounded along, over grass and stone through broad patches of mud which showed too plainly to what height the river had lately risen, out of breath, yet with a spirit that would not let me flag, I still flew on, nor slackened my speed until I had got to the first few houses of the town. There I stopped indeed, and fell; for it then seemed as if my ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... darkness, but pursuing her tracks with the unwearied perseverance of the Indian. For the purpose of finding out who she is, and who her accomplices are, whence they came, and how they have met to plot together such fearful crimes,—for that purpose I have walked in the deepest mud, and stirred up heaps of infamy. But I have found out all. And yet in the whole life of Sarah Brandon,—a life of theft and murder,—I have till this moment not found a single fact which would bring her within the reach of the law, so cunning ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the minor difficulties and annoyances that will not dissipate at the charge of the nonsense brigade. If the clothes line breaks, if the cat tips over the milk and the dog elopes with the roast, if the children fall into the mud simultaneously with the advent of clean aprons, if the new girl quits in the middle of housecleaning, and though you search the earth with candles you find none to take her place, if the neighbor in whom you have trusted goes back on you and ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... boys lifted the inverted tub over their heads, and resumed their march. When they came near enough, it could be seen that their breeches and stockings were not only dripping wet, but streaked with black swamp-mud. This accounted for the unsteady, hesitating course of the tub, which at times seemed inclined to approach the house, and then tacked away towards the corner of the barn-yard wall. A few vigorous calls, however, appeared to convince it that the direct course was the best, for it set out with ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... and your people can do," Ferdinand Frog replied. "Just bury yourselves in the mud during the winter, as I do, and you'd have no use for a dam, nor for ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... held one ear its hog. The hog slept lies on near the water. I waited. I leaved. I went from the hog. The hog awoke. It rose. It saw not me. It ran and jumped. The hog went from the water. The hog went in the mud and water. The hog wallowed in the mud and water became very dirty. It slept. I went. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... "Speaking in a general sense one can do many things in life—if the marble is at hand. Only most of us when we look for marble find sandstone or mud." ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the pirates came trooping, tarry, wet, soiled with the estuary mud as they were, and stood in a milling mob awaiting speech from Dolores, who entered from the rear and scanned their faces closely. Shuffling feet and whistling breath would not be stilled, even in her presence, for their ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... packed over ag'in in the wagon; some on 'em had to be stored up, so's to come another time. We was two days gettin' to the claim, the roads was so bad,—mostly what they call corduroy, but a good stretch clear mud-holes. By the time we got to the end on't, I was tired out, just fit to cry; and such a house as was waitin' for us!—a real log shanty! I see Russell looked real beat when he see my face; and I tried to brighten up; but I wished to my heart I was back with mother ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... also exercised his ingenuity in a very useful manner. In the prow of the boat, but under the tarpaulin, he spread a layer of mud about two inches thick. Protected from the rain, it soon dried, forming a hard, impervious, brick-like covering for the bottom of the boat, and upon this he built a small smothered fire of dry sticks, a supply of which they kept in the boat. Here Jim, with ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. Il y a des impressions ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... glanced before them. Cora was in ecstasy at the return to forest scenery, the Wards at its novelty, and the escape from town. Too happy were they at first to care for the shaking and bumping of the road, and the first mud-hole into which they plunged was almost a joke, under Mordaunt Muller's assurances that it was easy fording, though the splashes flew far and wide. Then there was what Philetus called 'a mash with a real handsome bridge over it,' i. e. a succession of tree trunks laid side ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he, my slave, presume to look so high? That crawling insect, who from mud began, Warmed by my beams, and kindled into man? Durst he, who does but for my pleasure live, Intrench on love, my great prerogative? Print his base image on his sovereign's coin? 'Tis treason if he stamp his love ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... grass, yellow and sere, mingling with the hot, white dust of the roads. Absolute stillness everywhere down here by the Yarra Yarra, not even the river making a noise as it sweeps swiftly down on its winding course between its low mud banks. No bark of a dog or human voice breaks the stillness; not even the sighing of the wind through the trees. And throughout all this unearthly silence a nervous vitality predominates, for the air is full of electricity, and the subtle force is permeating the whole scene. A ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... had done, the English and French admirals sent a squadron to capture the forts which guard the entrance to the river. They had been of late greatly strengthened, and from the ditches and wide extent of mud spread before them, were truly formidable. The force consisted of the Cormorant, Commander Saumarez, the Nimrod, Slaney, several French vessels, and a number of the smaller British gunboats, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... effort. She was struggling to conceal a natural anger and resentment against the inconvenience of their journey from Beacon Crossing, and the final undignified catastrophe of the wagon sticking fast in the slush and mud on the trail, and against Rosebud in particular, under a polite attempt at cordiality. She would probably have succeeded in recovering her natural good-humored composure but for the girl herself, who, in the midst of the good creature's expostulations, put ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... first it was not so bad. But some one touched the side of the tent and the rain began to dribble through. Then we found a tiny stream of wet slowly trickling along underneath the tent-walls towards the tent-pole, and by night time we were lying and sitting in a pool of mud. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... comparatively truthful and honest, but without credit or resources. They have broad acres which only require to be scratched and they bring forth sixty-fold; but they cultivate little patches surrounded with mud walls and within range of their matchlocks. During the greater part of the year these poor people dare not walk over their own fields for fear of being stripped of their tattered rags. And yet these are the most heavily ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... haw! ho!" said the sooty gnome, laughing obsequiously. "Lord, de fun! To see him stickin' in de mud,—chasin' and tarin' through de bushes, dogs a holdin' on to him! Lord, I laughed fit to split, dat ar time we cotched Molly. I thought they'd a had her all stripped up afore I could get 'em off. She car's de marks o' ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... crackle and a hiss and a smoke of scorching hemp, and the Gatling dropped straight as a plummet through the bottom of the flatboat and buried itself in twenty feet of water and five feet of river mud. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry |
