"Nondescript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... How the cooks get their wood is a mystery to me. The Kaffir drivers always have it, too, though there are no visible trees. We always seem to sit up late, short though our nights are. A chilly little group gathers sleepily round the embers, watching mess-tins full of nondescript concoctions balanced cunningly in the hot corners, and gossiping of small camp affairs or large strategical movements of which we know nothing. The brigade camp-fires twinkle faintly through the gloom. A line of veldt-fire is sure to be glowing in the distance, looking like the lights of a sea-side ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... the Balonda men consists of the softened skins of small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle round the loins. The dress of the women is of a nondescript character; but they were not immodest. They stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on. But, while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity at ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... lie sleepily in the sun, dreaming of the days of splendour long by. In the square before the wonderful cathedral there would be stillness—here and there, perhaps, a pigeon would come fluttering down from the ledges and cornices of the Gothic facade; sometimes a nondescript dog would raise a lazy head to snap at the flies; occasionally the streets would send back a nasal echo as a group of American tourists, with their Baedekers and maps, came hurrying along to "do" the town before the next train left ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... language and the name were both derived (that is, were immediately so derived, for remotely the Ziph language may ascend to Nineveh) from Winchester. Dr. Mapleton, a physician in Bath, who attended me in concert with Mr. Grant, an eminent surgeon, during the nondescript malady of the head, happened to have had three sons at Winchester; and his reason for removing them is worth mentioning, as it illustrates the well-known system of fagging. One or more of them showed to the quick medical eye of Dr. Mapleton symptoms of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... us in possession, and led us undissuadably along a by-path to the river's edge. There, in a nook of the most attractive amenity, he bade us to sit down: the stream splashing at our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery enshrining us from above; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought us a cocoa- nut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to carve: the nut for present refreshment, the sandal-wood for a precious gift, and the stick—in the simplicity of his vanity—to harvest ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... collected the sheets of paper scattered on the deck around him, checked the date, 27 September, 1982, and rolled them up to fit in the slim round mailing container. Ten minutes later he was shouldering his way through the crowd of khaki-clad men, scowling up at the sky, his nondescript fedora jammed down over his eyes to keep out the rain, slicker collar pulled up about his ears. At the gangway he stopped before a tired-looking lieutenant and flashed the small fluorescent card in his palm. ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... the thicket and looked about him. A few yards back there was a deep depression in the ridge, fringed with a growth of nondescript weed. He approached this and peered into it. Quite recently a horse had been there. He could plainly see the hoof-prints—where the animal had pawed impatiently. He returned to the ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript: yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts had wings; and as the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... his business garments unceremoniously on to the floor. The next that he rootled at the bottom of a deep drawer and extracted a most disreputable tweed suit. It had once been what I believe is called a Lovat mixture, but was now a nondescript sub-fusc, with bright patches of colour like moss on whinstone. He regarded it lovingly, for it had been for twenty years his holiday wear, emerging annually for a hallowed month to be stained with salt and bleached with sun. He put it on, and stood shrouded in an odour of camphor. A pair ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... her a month, a girl of nondescript and nomadic habits. Someone had casually passed her on to Anthony, who considered her amusing and rather liked the chaste and fairylike kisses she had given him on the third night of their acquaintance, when they had driven in a taxi through the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... far past mid-day now, and we are more than ready for suggestions of alimentation. There is a sheltered table with benches just out of doors before the hospice, and here we seat ourselves, flanked by with two massive dogs, and soon are discussing a nondescript repast which is too late for lunch and too early for dinner but which is remarkably appetizing in either view. An hour later, we are again in Luchon, greeted by the deferential head-waiter of the Richelieu, whose starchy bosom expands with ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded—every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... confound them together. A seaman is ever so easily amused, so reckless of consequences, so cheerful amid difficulties, so patient under privations. His blue jacket is a symbol of enterprise and good humour. Even his nondescript hat—black, small, and shining as a japanned button, adhering to the back of his head by a kind of supernatural agency, with which landsmen are unacquainted—can never be seen by a true-born Englishman without ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess the ability to intelligently wage the battle in the interest of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... down behind a weather-cloth on the windward side, just as the two red eyes of the Needles glared upon them from the gloom, their pointed summits rising like shadowy phantom figures against the sky. It became necessary to go below to an eight-o'clock meal of nondescript kind, and Elfride was immensely relieved at finding no sign of Mrs. Jethway there. They again ascended, and remained above till Mrs. Snewson staggered up to them with the message that Mrs. Swancourt thought it was time for Elfride to come below. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... salt-cellar, a wooden spoon, and a comb and brush, each about four inches long. In the opposite corner under the window stood the plank bed, and on the floor were three tin utensils—a dust-pan, a water-can, and a nondescript lidded article for baser uses. Fortunately, the urn-shaped abomination I found in the Newgate cells, and have already described, was absent in Holloway. When a prisoner wished to visit the water-closet, he rang his bell, and sooner or later (often later) he was let out. Each wing had two closets ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... to be moved in the afternoon; and it soon appeared that nature would take more revenge than a day's sleep for the rough handling she had had the past week. Fleda could not rise from her bed the next morning; and instead of that a kind of nondescript nervous fever set in; nowise dangerous, but very wearying. She was nevertheless extremely glad of it, for it would serve to explain to all her friends the change of look which had astonished them. They would make it now the token of coming, not of past, evil. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... was thick, bushy, unkempt; sun-bleached to a nondescript blend of pale colors. Hers—long, heavy, meticulously middle-parted and dressed—was a startling two-tone job. To the right of the part it was a searingly brilliant red; to the left, an ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... if remelted, in the composition of pomatum for the hair, and gives more satisfaction to a customer than any of the "creams and balms," &c. &c., made up and scented with essential oils; the one smells of the flower, the other "a nondescript." ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... under the name of Raia torpedo; these are Torpedo narke, T. unimaculata, T. galvanii, and T. marmorata. The torpedo of the Cape of Good Hope, the subject of the recent experiments of Mr. Todd, is, no doubt, a nondescript species.) The torpedo of Cumana was very lively, very energetic in its muscular movements, and yet the electric shocks it gave us were extremely feeble. They became stronger on galvanizing the animal by the contact of zinc and gold. Other tembladores, real gymnoti ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the neck and shoulders. He can hardly keep his hands from shaking. His signature is a work of art. He can stick at his desk for six hours without stirring. While we lunch at a restaurant, he consumes at the office some nondescript provisions which he brings in the morning in a paper bag. On Sundays he fishes, for a change; his rod takes the place of his pen, and his can of worms ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... arm to keep him behind her, when the big door at the end of the hall opening on to the terrace was flung open, and on the threshold stood a tall figure, dark and distinct against the moonlit world beyond. His garments were of nondescript fashion, but his pose was not without grace. Under one arm he carried a fiddle, and the bow was in his hand. He raised it and waved it ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... plodded up the railway track toward the Big House. Presently they might have been discovered to be a man and a woman; the former tall, thin, dark and stooped; his companion, tall as himself, quite as thin, and almost as bent. The garb of the man was nondescript, neutral, loose; his hat dark and flapping. The woman wore a shapeless calico gown, and on her head was a long, telescopic sunbonnet of faded pink, from which she must perforce peer forward, looking neither to the right nor ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... course," Jeff urged. "They're all women, in spite of their nondescript clothes; nice women, too; good strong sensible faces. I guess we'll have ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... shaven upper lip, and a voluminous red "Newgate-frill" framing his face—exactly the type of face one associates with the Deacon of a Calvinistic-Methodist Chapel; there was the mother, a very grim-looking female; and the son, a nondescript hobbledehoy with goggle-eyes. It appeared that after their passports had been inspected on landing, the goggle-eyed boy had laid his down somewhere and had lost it. No hotel would take him in without a passport, but these people were so obviously genuine, that I had no ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... he milked twice a day, and drove in a curricle to visit the Queen of Madagascar. Doctor Lyall is writing a quarto from Madagascar, to deny the statement in toto; admitting, however, that there is a rumour of the being of some nondescript of the kind in the mountains, somewhat between the size of the elephant and the Shetland pony; but that he and we think the subject-matter will turn out asinine. But now a Mr. Ruppell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, comes at once to cheer and dishearten us by the discovery, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... carried by small majorities, and there were so many various parties in the House that it was never certain when a combination of adverse factions might outnumber the followers of the "Court." To these followers there was opposed a strong phalanx of ardent Republicans, and the balance was held by a nondescript element called the "Neuters," amongst whom there were some even of Royalist leanings. Hyde was in constant correspondence with Royalist adherents in England, as to the means by which these different parties in Parliament might be used to involve the Government of Richard in trouble, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Brainard! Had I struck an invaluable clue? Had I, through the weakness and doting fondness of this poor woman, come upon the one link which would yet lead us to identify this hollow-hearted, false and most vindictive man of great affairs with the wandering and worthless husband of the nondescript Bess, whose hand I had touched and whose errand I had done, little realizing its purport or the influence it would have upon our lives? I dared not believe myself so fortunate; it was much too like a fairy dream for me to rely on it for a moment; yet the possibility was enough ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... and at 9 p.m., to the accompaniment of several syrens blowing "Farewell," we steamed out, S.S. Duchess of Argyle leading. The Captain of the ship asked us to post a signaller to read any signals, Serjt. Diggle was told to keep a look out and assist the official signaller, a sort of nondescript Swede or other neutral, like the rest of the crew. We soon sighted some war vessel, and asked if they had any orders, the reply being, according to Serjt. Diggle, "No go"—according to the Swede, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... to explain to me what they are trying to do to make Dr. Claudius give up his property," said Margaret, who looked pale and beautiful in a morning garment of nondescript shape and of white silken material. The Duke was sitting by the window, watching a couple of men preparing to get into a trim dogcart. To tell the truth, the dogcart and the horse were the objects of interest. His Grace was not aware that the young men ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... with secret dissatisfaction, compared himself with this sartorial model. Gordon's attire, purely serviceable, had apparently taken on a protective coloring from the action of time and the elements; his shirt had faded from a bright buff to a nondescript shade which blended with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed the list of the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shore of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-hill, stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea and shore had equally contributed. It was built partly of logs and partly of driftwood and tarred canvas. Joined to one end of the main building—the ordinary log-cabin of the settler—was the half-round ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... seemed, cut off upon both sides: behind me the murderers, before me this lurking nondescript. And immediately I began to prefer the dangers that I knew to those I knew not. Silver himself appeared less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned on my heel, and, looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still sharply serrated, firmly set in pieces of the jawbone,—whales' teeth,—vertebrae of various species,—fragments of bone, great and small,—several species of shell-fish, among which chiefly abounded a kind called quahaug,—and many nondescript fragments, not easily classified. One of these was a little bone closely resembling the tibia of a child's leg, and may have belonged to some antediluvian infant lost at sea, (if Noah's ancestors were mariners,) or perhaps drowned in the Deluge,—for Mr. F. quoted an eminent geologist who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... such as might have been predicted for the owner of the nondescript bed resting on the cabin floor. His neck, grimed, red and wrinkled as that of an ancient turtle, rose above his bare brown shoulders and his upper chest, likewise exposed. His only body covering was an undershirt, or two undershirts. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... their jib," and their minds were not much given to any elaborate dressing for evening. As to the young gentlemen, if there were any dress-coats on the island, they took pains not to display them, but delighted in appearing in the evening promenade, and even in the ballroom, in the nondescript suits that made them so conspicuous in the morning, the favorite being a dress of stripes, with striped jockey cap to match, that did not suggest the penitentiary uniform, because in state-prisons the stripes run round. This neglige costume was adhered to even in the ballroom. To be sure, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... now passing Euston. It was a muggy, slushy night, with a thin brown fog wreathing the houses and fading away above their tops into a dull, slate-blue sky. The wet street looked like a black canal; the blurred forms, less like vehicles than nondescript boats, moving over its inky surface, were indistinctly reflected therein; the gas-lights flared redly through the murky haze. It was not a pleasant evening in which ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... dragon sustains a relation to the woman, analogous to that sustained by the nondescript beast (of Dan. 7:7), to the saints of the Most High; and his position respecting the man-child is like that of the exceeding great horn (Dan. 8:9), to the Prince of princes, Dan. 8:25. Like the beast referred to, the dragon has ten horns; and its characteristics ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... This from a nondescript fellow with no grains of a gentleman about him in form, feature, or apparel! The captain stared nonplussed, too much taken aback to be ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... of anecdote and episode, which to the stumbling reader reduce his books to collections of disconnected essays and instances, gave to German mediocrity a sanction to publish a mass of multifarious, unrelated, and nondescript thought and incident. It is to be noted that the spurious books such as the Koran, which Germany never clearly sundered from the original, were direct examples in England of such disjointed, patchwork books. Such a volume with a significant title is "Mein Kontingent zur Modelectre."[77] ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... unable to read a note. On the whole the prison was as cheery and pleasant as fitted such an institution, except the women's ward, into which a vicious-looking girl admitted me sulkily at sight of the comandante's order. A silent, nondescript woman of forty took me in charge with all too evident ill-will and marched me around the patio on which opened the rooms of female inmates, while the fifty or more of them left off their cooking and washing for the male prisoners and stood at disgruntled attention in sullen silence. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... silver-mounted family carriage drawn by a jackass and a cow, loaded inside and out with everything the country produced, vegetable and animal, dead and alive. There would be an ox-cart, similarly loaded, and drawn by a nondescript tandem team equally incongruous. Perched upon the top would be a ragged forager, rigged out in a fur hat of a fashion worn by dandies of a century ago, or a dress-coat which had done service at stylish balls of a former generation. The jibes and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... young Jack Smith (to keep for him the nondescript name he had for unknown reasons chosen to assume) should be the first man to awaken in the misanthropic Adrian the charm of human intercourse, was singular indeed; one who followed from choice the odious trade of legally chartered corsair, who was ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... valued, there being, in their estimation, so little amongst his remains worthy of the reputation he gained. The truth is that no maker, with the exception of the great Cremonese artists, has been so persistently counterfeited. The name of Duke has been stamped upon every wretched nondescript, until judges who had not the opportunity of seeing the genuine article mistook the copies for the original, and hence the confusion. When, however, a really fine specimen of Duke is once seen, it is not likely to be forgotten. As copies of Amati such instruments are scarcely surpassed, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... of town, or ill, or something. Anyway, there will be two or three ambassadors and some learned Germans, and the usual nondescript crowd of tourists and Russian princes and literary club people, and a few French officers; nobody else that I know of—except, of course, the new satirist, who is to be the attraction ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... the Edgware Road, climbing upon omnibuses which were bound for Notting Hill, Ealing and Acton, drifting towards the wide and gloomy spaces of the Park. He crossed the great roadway and went into the Park, too. Attracted by a small gathering of dark figures he joined them, and standing among nondescript loungers he listened for a few minutes to a narrow-chested man with a long, haggard face, a wispy beard and protruding, decayed teeth, who was addressing those about him on the mysteries ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... hollows, and graced with as delicate and fine an aquiline nose as Martin had ever seen. There was nothing remarkable about the size of the eyes. They were neither large nor small, while their color was a nondescript brown; but in them smouldered a fire, or, rather, lurked an expression dual and strangely contradictory. Defiant, indomitable, even harsh to excess, they at the same time aroused pity. Martin found himself pitying him he knew not why, though ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... tea there stalked into the kitchen a nondescript sort of dog, a creature of fairish size, of a rambling structure, so to speak, coloured a puzzling grayish brown with underlying hints of yellow, with vast drooping ears, and a long ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say, and not too much of either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through thirty years ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... completed the costume. On our return I proceeded to prepare breakfast, while Dick looked after the sick boy. Breakfast was not sumptuous; all my energies were reserved for dinner, and Dick had to make out as best he might on damper left from the night before, and the cold remains of a nondescript joint of mutton. He came back just as I had got the rough meal ready, reporting poor Wilson as a little better and awfully hungry. Then he tipped the tea—post and rails we used to call it—into our tin pannikins, and proceeded to boil part ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... made to feel utterly unhappy, mention not the matter to him. He is eccentric like the old lord, and would fall into the spleen, which condition, when entered into by his lordship, becomes of the temperature of that nondescript bourne the other side ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... a nondescript young and old together; a goodly number of both were gathered from Randolph and the neighbouring country. There were games for the young, dancing for the gay, and a superb supper for all; and the big, bright rooms ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... "supplied" the villages round, she never would join the church as a member. She never agreed with the minister, and he never could make anything out of her. They did not quarrel, but she thought nothing of his sermons, and he was perplexed and uncomfortable in the presence of a nondescript who did not respond to any dogmatic statement of the articles of religion, and who yet could not be put aside as "one of those in the gallery"—that is to say, as one of the ordinary unconverted, for she used to quote hymns with amazing fervour, and she quoted them to him with a freedom and a ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... grey, a complexion suggesting sea-air, splendid teeth in a humorously inclined mouth, and a nicely rounded chin. Very few people have beautiful noses; on the other hand, not the most beautiful nose will redeem an otherwise unattractive countenance, whereas an ordinary nondescript nose in a charming face simply becomes part of it. Marjorie's was nondescript, but did not turn up or droop excessively. Without being guilty of stoutness, she lacked the poorly nourished look of so many young ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... was put to bed Cutty changed. A nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of coal dust ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... facchini—those doers of nondescript smallest services, quarreling amiably to pass the time, springing forward for custom as the gondolas neared the steps; gransieri—the licensed traghetto beggars, ragged and picturesque, pushing past with their ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... to glance down and discover that the yellow nondescript was no more than a pup when a burly youth charged into the restaurant and demanded in no uncertain tones to know where that ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... personne, pour s'amuser?" Madame found that rather difficult to answer, and turned the conversation to her life on the barge. The minute little cabin looked clean, with several pots of red geraniums, clean muslin curtains, a canary bird, and a nondescript sort of dog, who, she told me, was very useful, taking care of the children and keeping them from falling into the water when she was obliged to leave them on the boat while she went on shore to get her provisions. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... flaming red, the rim of setting Jupiter, still silhouetted Porno, sprawled inside its high, electric-wired fences, and the flood of fading light brushed the town with beauty. The rows of tin shacks which housed its dives, the clustered, nondescript hovels, the merchants' grim strongholds of steel—all merged into a glowing mirage, a scene far alien to the brooding swamp and savage jungle in whose breast it lay. Here and there several space-ships reared their sunset-gilded flanks, glittering high-lights in the final glorious ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... on the only cow in the place, who is descended from the scriptural lean ones, was munching the discarded tail of a large codfish which probably still held a faint flavor of the salt with which it had been preserved. Nondescript dogs, bearing very little resemblance to the original well-known breed, wandered aimlessly under ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... situation, and might be indiscreet. These considerations were stated to Captain Nicholls, but his sister-in-law insisted on seeing me. A small, fairy-like creature, plucky as a "Dandie Dinmont" terrier, and with a heart as big as Massanutten, she was seated in a nondescript trap, drawn by two mules, driven by a negro. One look from the great, tearful eyes made of me an abject coward, and I basely shuffled the refusal to let her pass on to Jackson. The Parthian glance of contempt that reached ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... disappointed by the contrast between the exterior and the contents. It would probably be far from easy to fill a small case with examples where a really valuable book was enshrined in a covering of corresponding character. It is our ordinary experience to meet with some obsolete nondescript classic, or some defunct theological treatise of alike infinitesimal worth, in a sumptuous morocco garb, bestowed on it by the author as a compliment to his sovereign, or by the sovereign as an oblation to his mistress. In those princely ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... wall brackets in darkness, the light was almost dazzling. This wonderful saloon, where ten Czars had eaten bread and salt with ten generations of Yaroslavs, was thick with humanity. Some of the men were in uniform, some were in a nondescript costume which was the Soviet compromise between evening-dress and diplomatic uniform. One man wore a correct evening-jacket and a white waistcoat with a perfectly starched shirt, over uniform trousers and top-boots. The women were as weirdly clothed. Some were shabby to ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... as he went on his way, he saw at various points large bodies of men standing silent in their ranks, waiting the call of duty and the word of command. Here were the vigorous journeymen of the different trades, and the stalwart country-people; there the trusty miners, some with nondescript weapons, others armed with pick-axes, mattocks, and long guns, or provided with ladders and great buckets of water, in readiness for an alarm of fire. In the streets adjoining the Erbis and Kreuz Gates, bustling activity was the order ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... the claws-of two owls, with the skin and leg feathers adhering, sewed together so closely and skilfully, by the Indian, women, as to resemble a nondescript with eight claws. It was only by a close inspection that we could ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... lot. Always of a nondescript type, dirty, ragged and greasy, the Yaquis were even worse now, for they had been on the trail for some time, and had taken part in at least two fights. They had had no time to recuperate since making the raid ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... she had brass guns on her forward deck, and a considerable force of soldiers or sailors. But she was a nondescript craft, and he was unable to make her out accurately, though by this time she was not more than half a mile distant. No immediate danger was to be apprehended from her, unless she opened fire with the field-pieces on her deck. As the Leopard was in the service ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... pipe, opened the window, and focussed the opera glasses on the door of the bookshop. It brought the place tantalizingly near. He could see the table at the front of the shop, Roger's bulletin board under the electric light, and one or two nondescript customers gleaning along the shelves. Then something bounded violently under the third button of his shirt. There she was! In the bright, prismatic little circle of the lenses he could see Titania. Heavenly creature, in her white V-necked blouse and brown skirt, ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... do NOW, sense I've come into the room." She pointed to a nondescript garment, half cloak, half habit, hanging on the wall. "I've been outer bed and on Pitchpine's back as far ez the trail five minutes arter I heard the ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... striking appearance of Dickens and Pickwick in 1837 can hardly be said to have turned it distinctly: for the Dickensian novel is a species by itself—neither strictly novel nor strictly romance, but, as Polonius might say, a picaresque-burlesque-sentimental-farcical-realist-fantastic nondescript. Not till Vanity Fair did the novel of pure real life advance its standard once more: while the historical novel-romance of a new kind may date its revival with—though it should scarcely trace that revival to—Esmond, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... for many generations. There are long stretches which are never touched except by a stray Indian or Chinaman with a grasshopper or bit of salmon roe on a string tied to a long willow pole. Some years ago a nondescript individual who said he was a Cherokee half-breed turned up at Savona's Ferry and earned a living by fishing. Every day he caught more fish than he could carry, though he never revealed his secret. Some believed that he used set lines. ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... ejaculations—a vast deal of good do those inward conversations produce, such mollifiers of the temper are they. "So, so," said I to myself, "my Aunt Lina's paragon is a 'lady-help.' Of all kinds 'of help' the very one I have endeavored most to avoid; it is such a nondescript kind of creature that lady-help;" and as I soliloquized, recollections of specimens of the kind I had been afflicted with, came in sad array before my memory—maids with slip-shod French kid slippers, that had never been large enough for their ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... at daybreak. Yet even now I could perceive no sign of departure. There was but the thinnest suggestion of smoke from the single stack, no loading, or unloading, and the few members of the crew visible were idling on the wharf, or grouped upon the forward deck, a nondescript bunch of river boatmen, with an occasional black face among them, their voices reaching me, every sentence punctuated by oaths. Above, either seated on deck stools, or moving restlessly about, peering over the low rail at the shore, were a few passengers, all men roughly dressed—miners ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... he was looking for a nondescript boy in knickers and jacket and cap and heavy boots, it was little wonder that he looked in vain among the crowd of travellers who poured out of the big train on the Junction platform, and he was proportionately surprised when a young lady with red-brown ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... farm I did four times more pastoral work than I had ever done in my life. I was the minister of the nondescript and the destitute. I presided over funerals, weddings, baptisms, strikes, protests, mass meetings. Nobody thought of paying anything. To those I served I had a sort of halo, a wall of mystery; to me it was ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... equipped with their great double-ender boats that tell a tale of boisterous sea-beaches. These steal out and in again, unnoted by the world or even the newspaper press, save for the line in the clearing column, "Schooner So-and-so for Yap and South Sea Islands"—steal out with nondescript cargoes of tinned salmon, gin, bolts of gaudy cotton stuff, women's hats, and Waterbury watches, to return, after a year, piled as high as to the eaves of the house with copra, or wallowing deep with the shells of the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... plays: that "The Medal" in comparison with "The Hare" seems something clean, artistic, and having form and semblance. There you have it! Literary men are swept out of the theatre, and plays are written by nondescript people, old and young, while the journals and newspapers are edited by tradesmen, government clerks, and young ladies. But there, the devil ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... reception-room for patients. Looking about, Esther wondered why physicians' reception-rooms were invariably so uninviting, so lacking in personality. This one was particularly drab and cold, though she could not say that it was shabby or in more than usual bad taste. It was furnished in nondescript French style, a mixture of periods, with heavy olive-green curtains at the windows shutting out most of the light, and pale cotton brocade on the modern Louis Seize chairs. A plaster bust of Voltaire on the mantel-piece was flanked by ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... compatriots who fill our southern seaside towns. There were men from the Donets, too, with red stripes on their breeches, and emigrants from the Tavritchesky province. There were a good many pilgrims of a nondescript class, like my Alexandr Ivanitch; what sort of people they were and where they came from it was impossible to tell from their faces, from their clothes, or from their speech. The path ended at the little landing-stage, from which a narrow road went to the left to the Hermitage, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... soul in Hunston must dimly suspect what he had come for. It must be gum-shoe work from start to finish, and the Cypriani's motto would be the inspiring word, "Sh-h-h." Though he had to find a nondescript child whom he did not know from Eve, he was forbidden to do it in a natural, easy, and dashing way. He could not ring her mother's door-bell, ask for her, throw a meal-sack over her head, and whip his waiting horses ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... dears?" interrupted a brisk voice. In the doorway stood a plump middle-aged woman, nodding her head rapidly. She wore a faded alpaca gown, patched here and there, a shawl of shepherd's plaid stained with the weather, and a nondescript bonnet. Her face was red and roughened, as if she lived ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to the tips of his fingers. But far from being that he was in danger of remaining a sort of nondescript dilettante all his life. He had pushed the habit of universal raillery to a point where it blinded him to the genuine impulses of his own nature. To be suddenly selected for the executive member of the patriotic small-arms committee of Sulaco seemed to ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... trouble in finding the house. It was one of a row of houses, nondescript but comfortable, in a pleasant street. It seemed familiar—I had seen Molly's snapshots of it often. I cannot tell you what it felt like to be really there—to walk down the street, up the path, up the steps to the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... are the Swedish and Norwegian houses, armed against winter. Then the Japanese cottage with sides all open, mats on the floors and no furniture to speak of. Then comes a Moorish pavilion of Spain with nondescript ornaments, the bulbous domes and pinnacles supporting the flags of yellow and red—of barbaric ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road, filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul with disgust. But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It carried the mail and some of the express, ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... "(the seal) of Baletan."[790] This cylinder was found recently in the Lebanon.[791] Nos. 3 and 4 come from Salamis in Cyprus, where they were found by M. Alexandre Di Cesnola,[792] the brother of the General. No. 3 represents a robed figure holding two nondescript animals by the hind legs; the creatures writhe in his grasp, and turn their heads towards him, as though wishing to bite. The remainder of the field is filed with detached objects, scattered at random—two ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... to the teeth, having a long gun with a heavy wooden stock and nondescript lock, and a sword of excellent metal. It was, in fact, a weapon of the old Greek empire, and the cross was still enamelled in gold at the root of the blade, in spite of all his efforts to scratch it out. He was something of a fakeer, having made ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... his face, and took a childish pleasure in ducking his head suddenly and seeing the little stream of water spouting from his hat-brim. How healthy they looked, these East-end workers, these Italian dock-hands, these Jewish tailors, these nondescript, greasy beings who sometimes saw the sun. Many of them, he knew well, labored in cellars; but he had learnt that there are cellars and cellars. Ah! it was glorious, this ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... the topics on which wise and profitable observations will be found in this book would be superfluous. The wine is good, and needs no bush. So much may be said that the book is one to interest that nondescript person, the general reader in Europe or America, as well as the Anglo-Indian official. Besides good advice and sound teaching on matters of policy and administration, it contains many charming, though inartificial, descriptions of scenery and customs, many ingenious speculations, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... pass; will they never cease? One's spine shivers at the sight of the endless, green snake which crawls along, insinuating its greedy length into the gardens of plenty. This morning four new officers came to the chateau; three of them were nondescript, but the fourth, to all appearances, was an Englishman, pure blood. He spoke English absolutely without accent and had a perfect English drawing-room air. It was as funny as an impersonation and as he ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... White Hall really was magnificent, though the building was falling into decay: it was of immense size, with two rows of windows, with an old-fashioned ceiling covered with gilt carving, with a gallery with mirrors on the walls, red and white draperies, marble statues (nondescript but still statues) with heavy old furniture of the Napoleonic period, white and gold, upholstered in red velvet. At the moment I am describing, a high platform had been put up for the literary gentlemen who were ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... small crowd had collected round the aeroplane. Mr. Daventry and Mr. Van Kloof were there, with several other Englishmen, and a number of Chinese coolies and nondescript natives stood at a little distance, gazing in wondering silence. Rodier had his watch in his hand, and looked reproachfully at his employer. Smith pressed through the crowd, shaking hands with the Englishmen one after another, but declaring that he had no time for talking. He shook hands with ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... arrived first, having chartered the station hack for the evening. As the minds of both were above such minor details as clothes, their attire was of the nondescript variety, but their exuberant youth and high spirits gallantly concealed all defects and the tact of their hosts quickly set ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... owner; a Spanish toledo, a Scottish broadsword, a Turkish scymetar, with bows, quivers, and other warlike weapons; musical instruments of several different kinds; a silver crucifix, a sepulchral antique vase, and several of the little brazen Penates of the ancient heathens, with other curious nondescript articles, some of which, in the superstitious opinions of that period, seemed to be designed for magical purposes. The library of this singular character was of the same miscellaneous description with its other effects. Curious manuscripts of classical antiquity ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... glass, and carvings of shields, animal heads, colonnettes and other devices between and above these windows. The council-house or town-hall has a beautiful colonnade supporting arches, and a quaint nondescript creature whose abyss-like maw opens wide and gapes horribly at the beholder each time the clock strikes. A bas-relief in the hall represents a curious incident in the civic history of the town, the successful struggle of Burgomaster Gryn with a lion, the show ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... by-and-by, becoming extremely obstreperous and doing all sorts of naughty things, for Holly had no intention when at school to be good or to learn much. She went solely and entirely for her own happiness, because she preferred the girls with the blue, gray, and nondescript eyes to the kitchen cat, Jean, and to the great loneliness which had descended on ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... the bow of a tall, somewhat hard-featured matron who looked dignified even in the somewhat nondescript costume which most of the ladies were wearing. But her eyes ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... pointed chin protruding into space to quite a dangerous extent. Her large dark eyes were her one redeeming feature. But the level brows above them were much too ready with their frown. A sallow complexion and nondescript hair deprived her of that charm of colouring on which youth can generally depend for attraction, whatever its faults of form. Nor could it truthfully be said that ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... pecuniary partitions, and to add it up glibly with the rest, calendar and coin together. But Aaron, although he was not averse from honestly misrepresenting the value of goods, drew the line at trickery, and so he was kicked out. It took him a year of nondescript occupations to amass a little stock of mock jewellery wherewith to peddle, and Manchester he found a more profitable centre than the metropolis. Yenta dead, profit and holy learning divided his thoughts, and few of his fellows achieved less ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the east end of the parish, are some fine trees, remnants of a former avenue. The ancient well, said to be Roman, in the rectory grounds, has already been mentioned. The church was re-fashioned in 1879, and an old, nondescript, flat-ceiled structure was converted into a substantial and well-designed edifice of Early Decorated style, with clock-tower and good clock, which gives out its notes ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... should enjoy the shelter and repose of a habitation. As we went along, indications of the new power, which had already effected the easy transit of the desert, were visible in small patches of coal, scattered upon the sand; presently we saw a dark nondescript object, that did not look at all like the abode of men, civilized or uncivilized; and yet, from the group hovering about an aperture, seemed to be tenanted by human beings. This proved to be an old ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... familiar. With a little applied education, Americans can bring the charm of the French table to their own homes rather than when they are, as they say, tired of the same old round of "eats," seeking out a nondescript table d'hte restaurant and eagerly consuming what is set before ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... to examine me from top to toe as a European naturalist would a nondescript animal. They, however, found and pronounced me to be a perfect human being, except in the colour of my hair and eyes; the former, they said, was like the stained hair of a buffalo's tail, and the latter, being ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... Forest of Fontainebleau is remarkably varied; Denecourt gives seventy varieties of plants and flowers which grow and propagate here naturally, to which are to be added a great number of nondescript vines, lichens ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... an uproarious pack which greeted them. Every Old Gentleman owned a dog, and there was Peter's Mamie, two or three eager-eyed pointers, setters, hounds and Chesapeake Bay dogs. Old Mamie was nondescript, and was shut up in the kennels to-night only because Eric was away. She was eminently trustworthy, and usually ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... seeking," because it converts the preposition and participle into I know not what; and it may be observed, in passing, that the want of it, in such as "the going on," leaves us a loose and questionable word, which, by the conversion of the participle into a noun, becomes a nondescript in grammar. I dissent also from Dr. Murray, concerning the use of the preposition or prefix a, in examples like that which he has here chosen. After a neuter verb, this particle is unnecessary to the sense, and, I think, injurious to the construction. Except ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... with an elaborate cane and wonderfully vacant countenance, who is anticipating, in feeble follies, an estate that has been in the possession of his ancestors since the reign of Henry the Eighth. There is a hairy, high-nosed, broken-down nondescript, in appearance something between a horse-dealer and a pugilist. He is an old Etonian. Five years ago he drove his four-in-hand; he is now waiting to beg a sovereign, having been just discharged from the Insolvent Court, for the second time. Among the women, a pretty actress, who, a few years ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... on the first of May, with all of them, except one of the nondescript collegians and the air-current student, more or less trained aviators. Carl was going out to tour small cities, for the George Flying Corporation. Lieutenant Haviland was detailed ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Sennacherib's exhibits four harpers arranged in two pairs, all playing with the plectrum on the antique harp. Another of the same date, which is incomplete, shows us a tambourine-player, a cymbal-player, a player on the nondescript instrument which has been called a sort of rattle, and another whose instrument cannot be distinguished. In a sculpture of a later period, which is represented above, we see a band of four, composed of a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... black sheep. Look where he stands. As he grows weary, he grasps the straps on either side to steady him. His attitude is a cunningly devised mode of tormenting his fellow-passengers. Either elbow of our nondescript just reaches the hat of your opposite neighbor or yourself. With each jolt of the stage, by a little dexterity of movement, or want of it, he can knock the hats over the eyes of two persons at a time, and by a little shifting of his position he can frequently bring down four by a single spasmodic ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... coenae tempus". "After taking the air he bathed; after that he broke his fast on a bit of biscuit, and took a very slight siesta: which done, as if awaking to a new day, he set in regularly to his studies, and pursued them to dinner-time." Gustabat here meant that nondescript meal which arose at Rome when jentaculum and prandium were fused into one, and that only a taste or mouthful of biscuit, as ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and cold, with frosty nights between, and as we were all in tents, and these sometimes leaked, which did not improve the head cook's temper and he grew almost abusive; we retired, went to town, and left him alone to meditate. Here he hastily and angrily for a few days longer tossed up nondescript messes for the men, which none could eat, and was then ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... nondescript nose, and his amiable but dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... heard. But one was a Patterne; the other a Whitford. One had genius; the other pottered after him with the title of student. One was the English gentleman wherever he went; the other was a new kind of thing, nondescript, produced in England of late, and not likely to come to much good himself, or do much ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... corner a hoarse voice belonging to a horrible, nondescript, shaggy being with a black face like the muzzle of a bear ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... deep water near an island. In a moment the river was alive with nondescript craft, worked by amphibious creatures, half naked, swarthy, and grim, who rent the air with shrill, wild jargon as they scrambled toward us. In the distance were several hulks of Siamese men-of-war, seemingly ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... and passed through a strong gateway, it is found you are at the building. St. Mary's has a strong, heavy, compact appearance. Its front is arched below and storied above; it has ivy creeping up its walls—trying probably to get to some of the five nondescript ornaments above the tower—and has a half baronial, half old hall look at first sight. Some years ago there was much ivy about the general building; but the "rare old plant" engendered dampness and had to be pulled down. At each side of the front there is a small pinnacle, and flanking the gables ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Aunt Sarah, with some exasperation, as she saw the pony and cart, with its nondescript crew, start off one afternoon for a jog around the Parade Ground. "I do declare! What riffraff Tess manages to pick up. For she certainly must be the biggest influence in gathering every rag, tag and bobtail child in the neighborhood. I never ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... The nondescript individual whom he was addressing, and whom everyone in the ship's hospital called Pavel Ivanitch, was silent, as though he ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the stalk changed into a stick. A slight bend in it seems to have suggested a centre-bit (6); this passed into a sort of pin passing through a metal plate (7), this again into a lock (8), and afterwards into a nondescript shape (9), distantly suggestive of the original cross-bow. Here Mr. Henslow endeavoured to force his will upon the visions, and to reproduce the cross-bow, but the first attempt was an utter failure. The figure changed into a leather strap with ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... gazing at the Frochard's neck, sensing something or other vaguely familiar. The old woman, who has been drinking, has unloosened her nondescript rig. The girl's gaze sees ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... apothecary. He is no apothecary; he has never been an apothecary; there is not an apothecary in this neighbourhood—the only inconvenience of the situation perhaps—but so it is; we have not a medical man within reach. He is a Haden, nothing but a Haden, a sort of wonderful nondescript creature on two legs, something between a man and an angel, but without the least spice of an apothecary. He is, perhaps, the only person not an apothecary hereabouts. He has never sung to us. He will not sing ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... well-spoken he was a nondescript individual, and the flash of his dark eyes was not reassuring. Yet the man was so ill that Brett forthwith dismissed him from his thoughts, though he took care to occupy the centre seat himself, thus ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... marvellous powers, she owes none to any tincture of European blood. Her voice is truly wonderful, both in its compass and truth. A more correct intonation, so far as our ear can decide, there could not be. She strikes every note on the exact centre, with unhesitating decision.... She is a nondescript, an original. We cannot think any ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... compasses. These arguments were not without effect. I sprang from my seat, and endeavoured to escape along a double line of benches, thronged with boys of all ages, from the urchin of six or seven, to the nondescript of sixteen or seventeen. It was like running the gauntlet; every one, great or small, pinching, kicking, or otherwise maltreating me as I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... not take his big chance at life as other boys equally in need of it would have done. He did not lose his head. He showed no pride in it. Green River, soon seeing this, rewarded him in various ways, each significant in its own fashion. Nondescript groups round the stove in his uncle's little store ceased to look for signs that he felt superior to them, and welcomed him as before, restoring to him his privilege of listening to talk that was ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... What was he, Morrison, doing there, talking like this? Morrison knew no more of Heyst than the rest of us trading in the Archipelago did. Had the Swede suddenly risen and hit him on the nose, he could not have been taken more aback than when this stranger, this nondescript wanderer, said with a little bow across ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... A nondescript-clad figure came out of the brushwood into the open clearing, walking towards the spot where the mountain-sheep lay stretched on the sward, which was partly covered with the snow that remained unmelted under the lee of the cliff; and a voice, without doubt appertaining to the figure, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the hopefulness of inexperienced travellers, began already to speculate about our proximity to Bartram-Haugh, and were sorely disappointed when we heard from the nondescript courier—more like a ostler than a servant, who sat behind in charge of us and the luggage, and represented my guardian's special care—at nearly one o'clock, that we had still forty miles to go, a considerable portion of which was across the high Derbyshire mountains, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... as he pushed open the green-baize doors, which worked on springs, he saw they had entered one of those nondescript shops, so numerous in certain parts of New York, where a person can obtain any kind of alcoholic drink, a cigar, a lunch, a "square meal," or a ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... their fascinating big dogs, with brandy-bottles round their necks, incessantly hauling happy travellers out of the snow. The only dog at the settlement was an Irish terrier, and the good fellows who owned him, and were owned by him, in common, wore clothes of the most nondescript order, and mostly cultivated side-whiskers. I had wandered up there one day, searching (as usual) for something I never found, and had been taken in by them and treated as friend and comrade. They had made me free of their ideal little rooms, full of books and pictures, and ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... the tradition down almost to the present in British verse, but for the most part its popularity is now limited to American rhymes. One is rather indignant, after reading Keats' own manly words about hostile criticism, to find a nondescript verse-writer putting the puerile self-characterization ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... time to communicate with Mrs. Hannaford, a letter from her occasioned him new anxiety. His sister wrote that Olga was bent on making a most undesirable marriage, having fallen in love with a penniless nondescript who called himself an artist; a man given, it was suspected, to drink, and without any decent connection that one could hear of. A wretched, squalid affair! Would the Doctor come at once and see Olga? Her father was away, as usual; of course the girl would not be influenced ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Doret and the trader in conversation with a man he had not met before, a ragged nondescript whose overalls were blue and faded and patched, particularly on the front of the legs above the knees, where a shovel-handle wears hardest; whose coat was of yellow mackinaw, the sleeves worn thin below the elbows, where they had rubbed against his legs in his work. As the soldier entered, the man ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... sort from most of Edna's friends," he muttered, as he lighted his pipe and retired to the nondescript apartment that was called his study. "There does not seem much nonsense about her. What do you think about it, Mac?" as the hound laid his head on his knee. "I imagine, as a rule, women have a precious lot of it." And he whistled a bar from ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the hall poured the others of Edgemere Cottage, attired in a nondescript collection of garments hastily donned. Will, in his bath robe, had his collar and tie in his hand, though it is doubtful if he wore an article of dress to which it could be attached. From the servants' rooms came frantic demands to know if the house ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... frightful. And if you keep it up it just ruins your hair. You have such nice hair, Kate!" She picked up a sterilized brush and began stroking Kate's hair soothingly. It was not such nice hair. It was very ordinary hair of a somewhat nondescript color; but Kate was her dearest friend, and praise is a part of the profession. "What do you want?—a scalp, shampoo, or just dressed, or ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... influence that Margaret was arrayed always in the latest mode. The girl's taste inclined to be artistic, and her sense of colour was apt to run away with her discretion. Except for the display of Susie's firmness, she would scarcely have resisted her desire to wear nondescript garments of violent hue. But the older woman ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... she went about the city was not to be distinguished from a working-woman. Her friends, indeed, said that she had not the least care for her personal appearance, and unless she was watched, she was sure to go out in her shabbiest gown and most battered hat. She wore tonight a brown ulster and a nondescript black bonnet drawn close down on her head and tied with black strings. In her lap lay her leathern bag, which she usually carried under her arm, that contained medicines, lint, bandages, smelling-salts, a vial ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... between them. The curate was not what is known as a gentleman by birth; he had the misfortune to count among his near kinsfolk not only very poor, but decidedly ungenteel, persons. His only sister had married an uneducated man, who, being converted to some nondescript religion, went preaching about the country, and unluckily, in the course of his apostolate, appeared at Hollingford. Here he had some success; crowds attended his open-air sermons. It soon became known that the preacher's wife, who was always at his side, was a sister of Mr. Bride of ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... resolution with which he had locked the door below, Byrne threw open one after another the doors in the corridor. All the rooms were empty except for some nondescript lumber in one or two. And the girl seeing what he would be at stopped every time, raising the smoky light in each doorway patiently. Meantime she observed him with sustained attention. The last door of all ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... rough old fellow, with a wind-blown face and beard and hair enough to make his head look to be as big as a bushel basket. He was dressed in a long, faded "duster" over his other nondescript garments, and his battered hat was after the shape of those worn by Grand Army men. He limped, too, and was slow in his movements ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... enough to come back. Then we went to the house of the Blazers, in 'Cow Bay,' and used to lodge there with Yellow Bill. They said Bill was a thief by profession; but I wasn't old enough to be a judge. Little Lizza Rock, the nondescript, as people called her, used to live at the Blazers. Poor Lizza had a hard time of it, and used to sigh and say she wished she was dead. Nobody thought of her, she said, and she was nothing because she was deformed, and a cripple. She was about four feet high, had ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... he said. "I wonder if this town's going on building up things and rolling over them, as poor father once said it was rolling over his poor old heart. It looks like it: here's the Amberson Mansion again, only it's Georgian instead of nondescript Romanesque; but it's just the same Amberson Mansion that my father built long before you were born. The only difference is that it's your father who's built this one now. It's all the same, in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Hooper,[6] G——,[7] and Mack; also with Mr. Forbes.[8] There is a general medley of cabin passengers, recruits, sutlers' and quartermasters' agents, and crew, the latter not being dressed in uniform, but in nondescript old garments such as can be found at any old Isaac's shop. Those passengers who are outside our party are coarse-looking and disagreeable,—Mr. Forbes and Mr. Augustus Hurd of Boston being almost the only exceptions. I ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... windows on the upper story were, like the entrance, Moorish; but the principal ones below were square bays, mullioned. The castle was considered grand by the illiterate; but architects and readers of books on architecture condemned it as a nondescript mixture of styles in the worst possible taste. It stood on an eminence surrounded by hilly woodland, thirty acres of which were enclosed as Wiltstoken Park. Half a mile south was the little town of Wiltstoken, accessible by rail from London ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... stands side by side with a dwarfish, Dutch anachronism, but neither possesses any right of precedence over the other. They are equal in the eyes of the proletary. Classic and nondescript, marble and brick, granite and iron, unite to form the most heterogeneous collection of fashions the earth's surface anywhere exhibits. Even Milton's blind eyes pictured nothing so fantastic as this architectural chaos of Manhattan, so hopeless of eventual order. And yet are there ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... when I reached the top, I found four other men lying in the grass with him. I took in the scene and knew them for what they were—American gypsies. In the open space that extended back among the trees from the edge of the bank were several nondescript wagons. Ragged, half-naked children swarmed over the camp, though I noticed that they took care not to come near and bother the men-folk. Several lean, unbeautiful, and toil-degraded women were pottering about with camp-chores, and one I noticed who sat by herself ...
— The Road • Jack London
... don't know—a sort of nondescript. I did not choose my costume; it was made up for me by my friends. They called me Mark Antony, but that was because they did not know what else to call me. But they promised me Cleopatra if I would come ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... angles, formed one side of the enclosure. It had been built at a period when castles were no longer necessary, and when the Scottish architects had not yet acquired the art of designing a domestic residence. The windows were numberless, but very small; the roof had some nondescript kind of projections, called bartizans, and displayed at each frequent angle a small turret, rather resembling a pepper-box than a Gothic watch-tower. Neither did the front indicate absolute security from danger. There ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... car from which they had emerged. Only people worthy of being customers of the house could afford such cars, and he saw that Steptoe was a servant. What Letty was he couldn't see, for servants of great houses never looked so nondescript. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Anderson's fiercely wistful little face was growing more and more like that of the little statue in the grounds behind the church—the stone face of John Anderson's frail bride of a year—long since turned a dull, nondescript gray ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... scientific interest was keen in certain directions— as ethnology, drugs, and zoology—it had totally blind spots. Thus the Leopard Woman kept invariably on her table the bowl of fresh flowers; and she manifested an unfailing liking to investigate such strange shrubs, trees, flowers, or nondescript ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... old friend, it is a nondescript—original—Effingham upon Doolittle, if you will; and, as for models, it is rather more English than ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... by Miss Poppleton to her schoolfellows at tea-time, she certainly did not answer the expectations which had been formed of her. She was short and rather squat, with heavy features and nondescript eyes and hair. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... creatures. But you see another use for my nondescript building over there. Shall we go and look ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... mere scraps and fragments, which in any other house would have been flung away, but which were so artistically and scientifically handled by the young ladies, and so tossed up, and titivated, and eked out with gravies, and sauces, and strange devices of nondescript pasty, that Happy Jack, feasting upon these wonderful creations of ingenuity, used to vow that he never dined so well as when there was nothing in the house for dinner. To their wandering, predatory life the whole family were perfectly accustomed. A sudden turn out of quarters they ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... respectful distance, a number of swarthy individuals of both sexes in nondescript garments smoked and stared at the trio with the interest always accorded strangers by the dwellers of the Out Places. They eyed the uncompromising back of the tall one, the easy lounge of the red one, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... hand. Inside it contained an enclosure, but the sheet was blank. With wildly beating heart and trembling fingers Paul undid the smaller packet's folded ends. And there the morning sunbeams fell on a tiny curl of hair, of that peculiar nondescript shade of infant fairness which later would turn to gold. It was less than an inch long, and of the fineness of down, while in tender care it had been tied with a thread ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... side of the Edgeware Road. The house of Margaret's aunt was plainly enough indicated to me, as soon as I entered the street where it stood, by the glare of light from the windows, the sound of dance music, and the nondescript group of cabmen and linkmen, with their little train of idlers in attendance, assembled outside the door. It was evidently a very large party. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... gallant commander of the Orient was secretly amazed by the metamorphosis effected in Robert's appearance since he scrutinized him through his glasses. Iris, too, unaccustomed to the constraint of high-heeled shoes, clung to the nondescript's arm in a manner that shook the sailor's faith in Lord Ventnor's ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... vegetation of waste, barren lands, grew all over his cheeks and chin (a negro with an ample, honest beard is an anomaly), and a huge bush of wool—unkempt, I dare swear, from earliest infancy—seemed to repel the ruins of a nondescript hat. Whether he was really uglier than his fellows I cannot remember—I was so absorbed in contemplating and realizing his surpassing squalor—but the expression of the uncouth face (if it had any whatsoever) was, I think, neither ferocious nor ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence |
