"Sultry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sunny orchard-closes, While the warblers sing and swing, Care not whether blustering Autumn Break the promises of Spring; Rose and white the apple-blossom Hides you from the sultry sky; Let it flutter, blown and scattered, On the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... sudden unnaturally sultry: before us a cloud fell like a huge black curtain, until resting upon the lofty bluffs between which the river now ran, it was draped in folds down to the water; over this curtain broke a lurid silvery sort of light, making all things hideous; a heavy moaning sound as of wind was heard throughout ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... for Christ being confined in a 'soler,' or room, close under the roof of his prison, in which an Italian sun must have rendered the heat intense. The word 'sooly' may be derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'swool,' sultry; the Dutch use swoel, zoel, and zoelheid, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... always, and the sultry west wind was sweeping the filth down the street canons. Here in the district of wholesale business houses a kind of midsummer gloom reigned. Many stores were vacant, their broad windows plastered with play-bills. Even in the warehouses along the river a strange stillness ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... prey, Returns; and with that very light the peer, With the black host, sets out upon his way, And lets the victual follow in his rear. Towards Mount Atlas with his whole array In safety goes the glorious cavalier. Through shifting plains of powdery sand he past, Nor dreaded danger from the sultry blast; ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... entering the priesthood had come to naught, we were all three glad to leave the sultry city of Rome. We went to Como, occupying our villa at the lake. It was an old house with wainscotings of yellow stucco and a sad air of ruined stateliness, of a splendor that even in its prime had pretended to more than it really was. It was quite different ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... thoroughfares whilst the young lady distributed her charity to the Fakirs and the paupers. But when all the gold with her had been expended and naught of it remained, they turned homewards making for the Palace; and, the day being sultry, drowthiness befel the young lady. So she said to her companion, "O mother mine, I am athirst and want a draught of water to drink;" and said the other, "We will call aloud to the Water-carrier[FN101] who shall give thee thy need." Replied the Princess, "Drinking from ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... there, in the fainting hour Of sultry noon the burning sunbeam fell Like a warm twilight; so bereft of power, It gained an entrance thro' the leafy bower; That scarcely ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... of this injunction, Mrs. Heathcote determined that he should sleep all day if he would. Even the nights were fearfully hot and sultry, and on this Monday morning he had come home much fatigued. He would be out again at sunset, and now he should have what rest nature would allow him. But in this resolve she was opposed by Jacko, who came in at eleven, and requested to see the master. Jacko had been ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... stillness, perhaps, of exhaustion. It was late afternoon, the fighting had been heavy. The air was filled with smoke; in the water were floating spars and wreckage of the ships we had destroyed. The weather was sultry and still. The dogged booming of a gun from a shore battery sounded lonely and remote as a bell buoy. The tide was falling; there were sand-bars enough between us and Sewell's Point. We waited an hour. The Monitor was rightly content with the Middle Ground, and would not come back for all our charming. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... grown sultry, the afternoon was very hot, and there was a general desire to lie in the shade and doze. Margery's plans for a siesta were a little more complicated than those of the others. She longed to lie in a hammock under great trees, surrounded by ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... A sultry August evening, a smoky boarding-house lamp, much skirmishing of mosquitoes, and—a manuscript system of philosophy! The prospect was not inviting. The reading of other people's manuscripts is surely the crucial test of a devoted benevolence. There are few ways in which I am so little ready ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... now the tenth of June—an intensely sultry day; a misty heat brooded over everything, and not a breath of air stirred the leaves in the trees. The girls wandered about languidly, too enervated by the heat to care to join in any noisy games. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... her smiles, and thankful for our preservation and good fortune, and satisfied with our mutual affection, we passed a most happy evening. Somehow or another Bramble, having sent Mrs. Maddox on a message, found out that it was very sultry indoors, and that he would take his pipe on the beach. He left me alone with Bessy; and now, for the first time, I plainly told her the state of my affections, and asked her to consent to be my wife. I did not plead in ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... dog?" sez I, consternation showin' in my foretop. "Don't you know that dogs roamin' round loose and overhet in this sultry weather is apt to ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... southern, and all the western hemisphere; from them we have learned that the earth is surrounded by the ocean, and that all the countries under the torrid zone are inhabited, and that, quite contrary to the notions that were formerly entertained, they are very far from being the most sultry climate in the world, those within a few degrees of the tropics, though habitable, being much more hot, for reasons which have been elsewhere explained. By their voyages, and especially by the observations of Columbus, we have been taught the general motion of the sea, the reason ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... beams bemock'd the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway A still ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... so novel and wonderful that we could hardly believe our senses except when hungry or while father was thrashing us. When we first saw Fountain Lake Meadow, on a sultry evening, sprinkled with millions of lightning-bugs throbbing with light, the effect was so strange and beautiful that it seemed far too marvelous to be real. Looking from our shanty on the hill, I thought ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... swept back, wasted, stubborn, hungrier than ever. On a sultry September afternoon, Dan, who had gone down with a sharp return of fever, was brought, with a wagonful of the wounded, and placed on a heap of straw on the brick pavement of Shepherdstown. For two days he had been delirious, and Big Abel had held him to his bed during the long nights when the terrible ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... labor and waiting he is enjoying a delightful climate, in which no blizzard drives him from his work. No cyclone endangers his life and fortune. No snakes lurk in the underbrush. No clouds of dust blind his eyes. No sultry summer suns make him gasp for breath, and no intense cold freezes his face or feet. He can work if he wishes as many days as there are in the year, and know that every stroke of his axe or mattock is a part of his capital safely ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... Joshua Reynolds, while he was studying his art at Rome, was a fellow-pupil of the name of Astley. They made an excursion, with some others, on a sultry day, and all except Astley took off their coats. After several taunts he was persuaded to do the same, and displayed on the back of his waistcoat a foaming waterfall. Distress had compelled him to patch his clothes with one of ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... of Madame de Menon; and the pleasant gaiety of the pavilion seemed peculiarly to adapt it for the scene of social delights. On the evening of a very sultry day, having supped in their favorite spot, the coolness of the hour, and the beauty of the night, tempted this happy party to remain there later than usual. Returning home, they were surprised by the appearance of a light through the broken window-shutters of an apartment, belonging to ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... for my curiosity over my visitor lent wings to my corkscrew, and in five minutes I was back with the tempting beverages in the tall glasses, the lemon curl giving it the vertebrate appearance that all stiff drinks should have, and the ice tinkling refreshingly upon the sultry air. ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... toil to sleep! And though the sultry noon With heavy drooping wing oppress thee now, Good cheer! good cheer! the cool of evening soon Shall lull to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... not sultry, Stanton had said to his friend that they could enjoy their cigars and a ride at the same time, and that he would drive around for him in a few minutes. Ida overheard the remark, and, quietly slipping off to her room, returned with her hat ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... glorious, sultry days that sometimes occur early in the year, when summer seems actually to have arrived for the season—a delusion invariably dispelled by the biting blasts of the blackthorn winter. Lovely as it appeared it was a very oppressive day for a long walk; the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... sultry Glebe I faint, Or on the thirsty Mountain pant; To fertile Vales and dewy Meads, My weary wand'ring Steps he leads; Where peaceful Rivers, soft and slow, Amid ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... mushrooms, flowers, caught birds and snakes, hunted, sang, and fished. If something went wrong and his blood was up, he mounted the fieriest horse in his stable and rode over the most dangerous paths across the rocks, to Rieux. In winter, in the early cold hours, he was seen bathing in the river; in sultry summer nights he lay naked and feverish under the open sky. He declared then that he saw the stars dance and the earth tremble. At vintage time he was, without ever drinking, as if intoxicated; he organized festivals with music and torch-light processions, and was the patron of all the love-affairs ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... kind of dreaming set in, and the next thing he knew it was Sunday morning, with a promise of a sunny, sultry, sleepy kind ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... arranged with her mother that an informal meal should be served in the place of the ordinary late dinner, and that even this should be postponed until nine. It was impossible to walk to Brail in the heat of the afternoon—the weather was sultry, even at Rutherford, and Audrey proposed not to start until after ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in sultry summer weather, and towards evening all of us boys and girls went out for a ramble on the plain, and were about a quarter of a mile from home when a blackness appeared in the south-west, and began to cover the sky in that quarter so rapidly that, taking alarm, we started homewards as fast ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... in the sultry glebe I faint, Or on the thirsty mountain pant; To fertile vales and dewy meads My weary, wand'ring steps He leads; Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow, Amid the verdant ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... gulf thunderstorm was raging, when after a long passage and at the end of a sultry calm day, wasted in drifting helplessly in sight of his destination, Lingard, taking advantage of fitful gusts of wind, approached the shores of Wajo. With characteristic audacity, he held on his way, closing in with a coast to which he was a stranger, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... water were in every ravine; the abundant grass was sufficient to maintain the swarming hordes of wild animals and to give rich pasture to horses and oxen. The journey across these prairies, while long and hard, could rarely have been tedious. Tremendous thunderstorms succeeded the sultry heat of the West, an occasional cyclone added excitement; the cattle were apt to stampede senselessly; and, while the Indian had not yet developed the hostility that later made a journey across the plains so dangerous, nevertheless the possibilities ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... publick stations, he is yet too great not to be traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found, by Mr. Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting "before his door in a grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so, as well as in his own room, receiving the visits of the people of distinguished parts, as well as quality." His visiters of high quality must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might reasonably court ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... wavering with our slight weight. A wind would have blown us away, but there was no wind. Instead, there was a heavy, sultry air, warm as a mid-summer Earth night, warmer even than ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... event further expressions (of a sultry character) may be expected from all round ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... passed through Eric's mind as he sat in his study after Billy had gone. It was a sultry summer day; all the study-doors were open, and all their occupants were absent in the cricket-field, or bathing. He stole into Montagu's study, hastily got the key, and took ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... menace of Maternity. These had received a curt refusal, accompanied with wholesome advice, for which they revenged themselves now, in graceful womanly fashion, by being quite sure the wretched man was guilty. More than possible, was it not? they whispered behind their palm-leaf fans: it was sultry weather, and the vendors of these made little fortunes, hawking them outside. Was it not more than possible that he had been the dead woman's lover? The Crown Counsel improved on this idea. Wretched little Mrs. Bough, of infinitesimal account in Life, had become through Death a person of importance. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... chess, morris, backgammon, fencing matches, recitations, debates, or dramatic performances of a darkly tragical nature. In summer the barn was the rendezvous, and what went on there no uninitiated mortal knows. On sultry evenings the Club adjourned to the brook for aquatic exercises, and the members sat about in airy attire, frog-like and cool. On such occasions the speeches were unusually eloquent, quite flowing, as one might say; and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... can afford wilfully to forget, and I—well, you know as well as I do that I am only a mortal canonised. I never understood the incident, I confess. I lay down among the ferns to sleep, after an unusually heavy day's bag of monsters. It was sultry weather; I woke to an oppressive sense of singeing, I found myself enveloped in a blaze of leaves and brushwood.... But I bore you, and what does it matter ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... there, and was in command during the engagement. He had been sent with a company, the night before, about a thousand strong, to throw up a redoubt on Bunker's hill. He made a mistake, and performed the work on Breed's hill. The British had no suspicion of the work that went on during that sultry June night, and were greatly alarmed when they saw a formidable breastwork overlooking their shipping in the harbor, and menacing the city. During the engagement, General Putnam was on Bunker's hill, urging on reinforcements for Prescott. Dr. Warren, ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... upon her as she sat alone in the garden by the fountain. It was a sultry spring day, and heavy clouds hung low on the horizon. Thin and frail in her black frock, she rose to meet him, the ghost of the girl who had once bloomed like a flower in her ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... of Tennessee, spring has a trick of dropping down on the world like a steaming wet blanket. The season that Johnnie Consadine went to work in the mills at Cottonville, May came in with warm rains. Stifling nights followed sultry, drenching days, till vegetation everywhere sprouted unwholesomely and the mountain slopes had almost the reek ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... often took coffee here. And after this she affected not to look up again from her work, as if she was completely absorbed in it. Now and then, while seeming to look between the trunks of trees toward the sultry distance, toward the yard, on which the sun blazed fiercely and which glowed like a brazier, she stole a glance from under her long lashes up to the doctor's windows. Nothing appeared, not a shadow. And ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... when I was so young that I can remember neither what went before nor what immediately after it. It stuck in my infant mind when other things slipped through it. We were all in the house one sultry summer evening, when there came a rattle of kettledrums and a clatter of hoofs, which brought my mother and my father to the door, she with me in her arms that I might have the better view. It was a regiment of horse on their way from Chichester to Portsmouth, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Mr. PUNCHINELLO, himself; was composed by him so long ago as July, 1780, and copyrighted in August of the same year. It may be asked how the idea of snow-flakes happened to occur to him in July. That question is easily settled. The day was sultry; thermometer 98 deg. in the arbor. Drowsed by the sultry air—not to mention the iced claret—Mr. PUNCHINELLO posed himself gracefully upon a rustic bench, and slept. Presently the lovely lady who was fanning him, fascinated by the trumpet tones that preceded from his nose, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... is hot and sultry here in the city: my blood becomes heated: it will, also, soon be a year since I saw ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... One sultry noon, she descended into this retreat with a mind more than usually disturbed by reflections on the past. She lay in her favourite position, sometimes gazing on the cataract; looking sometimes up the steep sylvan acclivities, into the narrow space of the cloudless ether; ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... in his vine-grown arbor one fine afternoon in August. A fine afternoon, I call it—a little sultry, to be sure, which made Moses Grant's eyes heavy; but the hum of the bees that played around the white clover-blossoms, and the sound of the leaves as they rustled in the warm wind, and the richly colored clouds that floated around in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... family; but in activity, life, joy, and animal spirits, the little negro, unconscious of his future situation seems to me to enjoy more pleasure in this period of existence, than his pale companions. The sultry climate of Louisiana, perhaps, is more congenial to the African constitution, than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... whose purple gum bestows A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes, Forms with its shadowy boughs a cool retreat To shield us from the noontide's sultry heat. Ah Humphrey! now upon old England's shore The weary labourer's morning work is o'er: The woodman now rests from his measur'd stroke Flings down his axe and sits beneath the oak, Savour'd with hunger there he eats his food, There ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... in fine broadcloth and jaunty beaver came down the path, fumbling his seals, and met the Captain with a puffing snort of salutation. To Blecker, whose fancy was made sultry to-night by some passion we know nothing of, he looked like a bloated spider coming out of the cell where his victims were. "Gorging himself, while they and the country suffer the loss," he muttered. But Paul was a hot-brained young man. We should only have seen a vulgar, commonplace trickster in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... 23.—Summer has come at last,—the longest days, with blazing sunshine, and fervid heat. Yesterday glowed like molten brass. Last night was the most uncomfortably and unsleepably sultry that we have experienced since our residence in Concord; and to-day it scorches again. I have a sort of enjoyment in these seven times heated furnaces of midsummer, even though they make me droop like a thirsty plant. The sunshine can scarcely be too burning for my taste; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... unheeded on the deep— Tossed by the restless billow and the breeze, It drifts o'er sultry leagues of tropic seas. Where long Pacific surges swell and sweep, When pale-faced stars their silent watches keep, From their far rhythmic spheres, the Pleiades, In calm beatitude and tranquil ease, Smile sweetly down ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... birds below, and that he was at once glad to get away from Charlock House and sorry for her that she should have to be left there, alone with Mrs. Bray. But to Amabel it was a dream after a nightmare. A strange, desolate dream, all through those sultry summer days; but a dream shot through with radiance in the thought of the magnanimity that had ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... by storms or insects, would be about three pints measure of beans, which always find a ready sale. The tree is most delicate; a slight laceration of the root, or stagnant water near it, may kill it; it needs a moisture-laden sultry air, which, however, must ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... a little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." He ploughed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he found things the same—dinner on the table, but his wife out in the garden ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... that keep the angry heat Of fire that crawls and leaves an ashen The dust of this devouring flame she hath Upon her cheeks and eyelids. Fresh and sweet In days that were, her sultry beauty now Is pain transfigured, love's impenitence, The memory of a maiden innocence, As a crown set ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... travel in it two: Yonder masterful cuckoo Crowds every egg out of the nest, Quick or dead, except its own; A spell is laid on sod and stone, Night and Day 've been tampered with, Every quality and pith Surcharged and sultry with a power That works its will on age ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... troublesome to poor Kitty, and that the rest of the party might suffer uneasiness on her account. Without any adventure from bull or bull-dog, without endangering her life in the bog, which turned out to be almost non-existent at this time of year, she reached the Towers at the most sultry time of the day, and appeared upon the scene between one and two o'clock, a tired, flushed, and very thirsty Annie. All during her walk she pictured Boris's state of despair. She saw in her mind's eye a vision of his little, flushed, tear-stained face. She thought ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... It was a sultry August morning. Within the hour Colonel Clark and Tom and myself were riding over the dusty trace that wound westward across the common lands of the village, which was known as the Fort Chartres road. The heat-haze shimmered in the distance, and there was no sound in plain or village save the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... greater or less number of elegant, tall, slender minarets or towers, are attached to each mosque in proportion to its size. They are dazzlingly white, like the edifices to which they belong, and are surmounted by golden crescents that flash and sparkle in the brilliant sunbeams of this sultry clime; and, as the number of public religious foundations is immense, independently of thousands of private mosques; the united splendour of so many glittering objects, added to the beauty of the deep blue cloudless sky, contribute to render the view of ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... from distant Naples, making the journey without ice, under a broiling Italian sun. Often it came to table so shorn of its pristine freshness that not the hungriest of us could condone its odor. One sultry night everybody's plate went away untouched, save two or three. Flesh and fowl were "high,"—yea, "twice high," as the British gourmet prefers his game. St. John's plate was not sent away. That ideal being was served three times, after which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... pressing on. The day was sultry, and only at long intervals was there the slightest breeze. The colors of the mysterious column hung drooping on the staff. General Beauregard tried again and again to decide what colors they carried. He used his glass repeatedly, and handing it to others begged ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... turn to Kentucky, and note the opposite influences of slavery. A narrow and unfrequented path through the close and sultry canebrake conducts us to a wretched hovel. It stands in the midst of an unweeded field, whose dilapidated enclosure scarcely protects it from the lowing and hungry kine. Children half clad and squalid, and destitute of the buoyancy natural to their age, lounge in the sunshine, while their parent ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... be about seven years ago that I happened to be far down yonder to the west, on the other side of England, nearly two hundred miles from here, following my business. It was a very sultry day, I remember, and I had been out several hours catching creatures. It might be about three o'clock in the afternoon, when I found myself on some heathy land near the sea, on the ridge of a hill, the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... morning; but the day promised to be sultry, and all the windows of Ishmael's chamber were open to facilitate the freest passage of air. Ishmael lay motionless upon his cool, white bed, letting his glances wander abroad, whither his broken limbs could no ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... but, when they separated for the night, the mother took herself for awhile into the daughter's chamber in order that they might weep and rejoice together. It was now all but midsummer, and the evenings were long and sultry. The window of Fanny's bedroom looked out on to the garden of the mill, and was but a foot or two above the ground. This ground had once been pleasant to them all, and profitable withal. Of late, since the miller had ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... The sultry heat of summer always brings with it, to the idler and the man of leisure, a longing for the leafy shade and the green luxuriance of the country. It is pleasant to interchange the din of the city, the movement of the crowd, and the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... appointed hour proceeded to the Duke's apartments, taking no farther precaution than to carry his passport about him. The palace seemed deserted. Everywhere an air of apprehension and mystery hung over the long corridors and dimly-lit antechambers. The day had been sultry, with a low sky foreboding great heat, and not a breath of air entered at the windows. There were few persons about, but one or two beggars lurked as usual on the landings of the great staircase, and Odo, in passing, felt his sleeve touched by a woman ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... this sultry noontide, I am cupbearer to the parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist Like a dramseller on the public square, on a muster day, I cry aloud to all and sundry, in my plainest accents, and at the very tiptop of my voice. "Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... morning everybody was very gay, walking about and having drinks with one another, and saying that it was all right now. Then it was that I remembered that it was already June—the historic month which has seen more crises than any other—and I became a little gloomy again. It was so terribly sultry and dry that it seemed as if anything could happen. I felt convinced that the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry, motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Rhoda agreed. There seemed to be so little for her to offer or say that she was relieved when they parted. The afternoon grew really sultry, but, when the shadows had lengthened, she encountered Jeremy Ammidon wandering aimlessly about the hall and, his fine palmetto hat and wanghee in her hand, urged him out to the East India Marine Society. "It's much too beautiful a day for the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... practice. If we were to measure organic matter in soils along the Mississippi River where soil moisture conditions remain pretty similar from south to north, we might find 2 percent in sultry Arkansas, 3 percent in Missouri and over 4 percent in Wisconsin, where soil temperatures are much lower. In Arizona, unirrigated desert soils have virtually no organic matter. In central and southern California where skimpy and undependable winter rains peter ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... One sultry evening, many weeks after our travellers had passed the uncomfortable night on the floating island in the Gapo, they came to a place where the banks of the river rose boldly up in rugged rocks and hemmed in the waters ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... curiosity, and which had already attracted my attention. As neither you nor he were at hand, I walked the short distance alone, and ordered Biondello to wait for me at the door. The church was quite empty; a dim and solemn light surrounded me as I entered from the blazing sultry day without. I stood alone in the spacious building, throughout which there reigned the stillness of the grave. I placed myself in the centre of the church, and gave myself up to the feelings which the sight was calculated to produce; ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... lovely valley, watered well With flowery streams, the July feast befell, And there within the Chief-priest's fair abode They cast aside their trouble's heavy load, Scarce made aweary by the sultry day. The earth no longer laboured; shaded lay The sweet-breathed kine, across the sunny vale, From hill to hill the wandering rook did sail, Lazily croaking, midst his dreams of spring, Nor more awake the pink-foot dove did cling Unto the beech-bough, murmuring now and then; All rested ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... weather suddenly prove unfavorable, look with great confidence for a swarm. As the old queens, which accompany the first swarm, are heavy with eggs, and fly with considerable difficulty, they are shy of venturing out, except on fair, still days. If the weather is very sultry, a swarm will sometimes issue as early as 7 o'clock in the morning; but from 10 to 2, is the usual time, and the majority of swarms come off from 11 to 1. Occasionally, a swarm will venture out as late as 5 P. M. An old queen ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... was lying down and the rest of the party was gathering about the camping place of the boys, some roaming about restlessly and others sitting upon the grass. It was a sultry, scorching day, when not a breeze came to temper the heat—a day when the slightest movement produces the effect, as Mollie had said, "of a fire lighted right under your nose." The young people were restlessly on edge, ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... busy night and day, As o'er the earth we take our way. We are bearers of the rain To the grasses, and flowers, and grain; We guard you from the sun's bright rays, In the sultry summer days." ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... some time doing what we could that he might be prepared for the great change that was drawing near. In the low doorway, sat an old hag-like woman, who stared at us with a look of rage, as we passed by her into the room where the sick man was. Sultry as was the day, there was a hot blaze in the cavernous fireplace. Over it hung an iron kettle, from which most sickening odors emanated. The sick man was in a heavy stupor. We tried in vain to arouse ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... the weather 'Cause it seems a little hot; You will find it rather sultry Over yonder, like as not! And unless you mend your manners You will land without a doubt, Where the brim-stone keeps a blazin' And the fire is ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... black vulture, and the cormorant; and when at sunset the voyagers drew their boat upon the strand and built their camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the owls whooped around them all night long, and when morning came the sultry mists that wrapped the river were vocal with the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... all day, and 'Lock ho! Lock!' thrice in the ensuing night, but no return of Bradley. The second day was sultry and oppressive. In the afternoon, a thunderstorm came up, and had but newly broken into a furious sweep of rain when he rushed in at the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of June,—a hot, sultry day,—just before night, a huge bank of clouds rolled up from the south. There had been hardly a breath of air through the day, but now the wind blew a hurricane. The air was filled with dust, whirled up from the sand-bars. When the storm ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... In hot, sultry weather, with the men carrying the full pack, the rate of march would naturally be considerably less than on a cool day, with the command not carrying the pack. It is most important that these and ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... New York in the midst of a snowstorm, but here the scent of lilac and of jonquil, the song of birds, the breath of spring, were all about them. The occasional stretches of brick sidewalk under their green canopy looked cool and inviting; for while the chill of winter had fled and the sultry heat of summer was not yet at hand, the railroad coach had been close and dusty, and the noonday sun gave some slight foretaste of his ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... "It seems terribly sultry to me this evening!" said Henrik, wearily: "we cannot manage any family assembling to-night; not a bit of music; not a bit of entertainment. The air seems as if an earthquake were at hand. I fancy that Africa sends us something of a tempest. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... south side of the house, fifteen feet from a large bow-window, and, parting the branches, I commanded a full view of the dancing-room. I had no business here, and I knew it; I meant but to look and be gone. The May night was warm and even sultry, so that the sashes were all raised and the curtains drawn aside. I saw with ease ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... use; and her own possessions had been removed into the sitting-room next it, that, sleeping or waking, she might be within call. All the family portraits held a conclave in the other front-parlor, and its north and east windows were shut all the year, save on some sultry summer day when Keery flung them open to dispel damp and must, and the school-children stared in reverentially, and wondered why old Madam Hyde's eyes followed them as far as they could see. Visitors came now and then to the kitchen-door, and usurped Keery's flag-bottomed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Smith one sultry Sunday afternoon, It was in the month of May, the early month of June, Up stepped a walking skeleton with a long and lantern jaw, Invited me to his hotel, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... afternoon in the height of the summer. The town looked like a desert of stones, like a moon landscape. There was not a cat to be seen, nor a sparrow, hardly a fly on the sunny wall. Not a chimney smoked. There was not a breath of air in the sultry streets. The whole was only a stony field, out of which ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... to melt into evening had been sultry, the class-rooms airless, their tasks fatiguing. The pavement beneath their feet was hot; both were glad to breathe what tiny breeze was astir; both were tired. They walked side by side in that best of all companionships which demands no effort at sprightliness, nor the utterance of one ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... he had not seen such a handsome female for years. She wore a ruffled, transparent crepe de Chine waist that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a lustrous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth drooping like her father's, but more warmly bowed. Kate Polder met the direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission that she understood and subscribed to it. Here, at last, was a girl up to the standard of old days, the divinity ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sultry hours have passed, and a chill breeze blows from the outside ocean, they have thrust their heads through the central slits of their cloaks—these being mangas—leaving the circular skirts to droop down below their knees—while draping back, cavalry fashion, over the hips of their ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... they all, in the chance of remembrance among men, to that little bark, the Mayflower, which reached these shores on December 22, 1620. Yes, brethren of New England, yes! that Mayflower was a flower destined to be of perpetual bloom! [Cheers.] Its verdure will stand the sultry blasts of summer, and the chilling winds of autumn. It will defy winter; it will defy all climate, and all time, and will continue to spread its petals to the world, and to exhale an ever-living odor and fragrance to the last syllable of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... over on the Baltic," she explained, "I guessed I'd find you here. Fourteenth Street was getting a little sultry. The old man hopped it to San Francisco the day ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which her want of vigilance encourages. She rises at a late hour, and having dressed herself and decorated her hair with sprigs of jasmine and orange blossom, she takes her breakfast. That meal being ended, she goes out to make visits. During the sultry hours of mid-day she reposes, either by swinging in a hammock or reclining on a sofa, and meanwhile smokes a cigar. After dinner she again makes visits, and the evening is spent in the theatre, on the plaza, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... course, in hopes of trading — Yet ere he lands he 'as ordered me before, To make an observation on the shore. Where are we driven? our reck'ning sure is lost! 15 This seems a barren and a dangerous coast. what a sultry climate am I under! Yon ill foreboding cloud seems big with thunder. ('Upper Gallery'.) There Mangroves spread, and larger than I've seen 'em — ('Pit'.) Here trees of stately size — and turtles in 'em — ('Balconies'.) 20 Here ill-condition'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... high Lawns appear'd Under the opening eye-lids of the morn, We drove a field and both together heard What time the Gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the Star that rose, at Ev'ning, bright 30 Toward Heav'ns descent had slop'd his westering wheel. Mean while the Rural ditties were not ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... from sultry London to a world of smoke and rain, with furnaces flaring through the blurred windows, and the soot laid with the dust in one of the grimiest towns in the island; but he soon shook both from his ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... "'The sultry breeze of Galilee Creeps through its groves of palm, The olives on the Holy Mount Stand glittering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... in sight of this island and in the middle watch were becalmed. The night was close and sultry, and we had made all ready for a blow of some sort. For two hours we waited, and then in an instant the whole heavens were alight with chain and fork lightning. My Malay crew bolted below, and as they reached the fore-scuttle, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... on, and he was sent with two men to examine into the fact, who returned in the evening with the information of its being below us but that there was an open channel through it. This day was very sultry and several plants appeared ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... become wearied of the heat of Florence. He longed for quiet and seclusion. He wished to spend the sultry summer months in some cooler and more ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... was still and sultry, with a full moon hanging low in the sky. The weather had been unnaturally warm for the time of year, all ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... The day was sultry, and without a breath of air, so that in a short time, the atmosphere we were in became overpowering; at last a fresh breeze sprang up, and the disagreeable sensation wore off. The whole of the islands between Loo-Choo and Japan appear to be volcanic, and at ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... with alternate stripes of different colored greenness. They could smell the acrid juices of newly cut grass. Beyond the islands of flowers and vivid candelabra of trees, they could see the wild fowl of the Serpentine rise and drift like phantoms across the sultry stretch of blueness. Wheels of a water-cart grumbled sleepily against the gravel. Moving through the sunlit shadows of the Row, riders were returning from ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... as might strike a foolish woman as an inspiration. Believing that the long way round was the short way home, she thought to atone for her past foibles by casting them into sudden insignificance—to clear the sultry air by ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... turned she noticed a stain on the crisp sleeve of her white dress. It came, evidently, from one of the grapes she had eaten that morning under the maple tree. A current of cool air blew past her. It was the first relief from the stagnation of the sultry day and, sitting down on the landing, she lost ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... opinion of Venables, the soldiers were disembarked without guides ten leagues distant from the town. They wandered four days through the woods without provisions, and was still more intolerable in that sultry climate, without water. The Spaniards recovered spirit, and attacked them. The English, discouraged with the bad conduct of their officers and scarcely alive from hunger, thirst, and fatigue, were unable to resist. An inconsiderable number of the enemy put the whole army ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... The air was sultry, light whisps of mist lying low over the plain. The weight of these vaporous films seemed to rest on them heavy as the weight of water, and before the meal was finished, Susan, overborne by a growing dread ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... dying—to enlighten the millions and hundreds of millions of heathen, who have never heard the precious name of Jesus, and are entirely ignorant of the consolations of his grace? Is it too much, even to expose one's self to an early grave in a sultry clime, if necessary, that some ray of hope may break in upon the gloom of the benighted and perishing nations? God be praised, that the prospect of death did not daunt the ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... remarkable for striking incident (though never failing of interest and picturesqueness) than for a slow and psychical development which ultimately gained a great hold of the sympathies. The poem leaves behind it a sense as of a sultry day. Judging first of its merits as a song (using the word in its broad and simple sense), the poem flows on the tongue with unbroken sweetness and with a variety of cadence and light and shade of melody which might ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... since, despite the wrappings of canvas, the valuable mass gave most decided proof of its being in the vicinity, and when the boat started for the shore Neal and Teddy clambered into the hammocks, for even leaning over the rail was an exertion in the sultry atmosphere. ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... was as sultry as the day. There was no coolness after dark unless on the grass. Roads, garden-paths, the house-fronts, the barton-walls were warm as hearths, and reflected the noontime temperature ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... is very sultry,—as 'twere—I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a great wager on your head. Sir, this is ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... beautiful river waters the sultry plain of Bengal. God made this river to be a blessing, but man has turned it into a curse. The Hindoos say the River Ganges is the goddess Gunga; and they flock from all parts of India to worship her. When they reach the river they bathe in it, and fancy they have washed away ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... meanest and fiercest; of all his friends, he was now the warmest and most enthusiastic. To turn Clinton's enemies into friends was as earnestly and daringly undertaken by Spencer, as the old-time work of turning his friends into enemies; and before the summer of 1816 had advanced into the sultry days of August, Spencer boldly proclaimed Clinton his candidate for governor to take the place of Tompkins, who was to become Vice President on the 4th of March, 1817. It was an audacious political move; and one of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... that seven league boots—the storyteller's prerogative—are in special demand as it regards our story, for once more we must return through a period of years to the date, or thereabouts, on which our story opens. It was on one of those close, sultry afternoons that characterize the climate of summer in India, that two of our characters were seated together in a graceful and rather elegant villa in the environs of Calcutta. The air of the lady—for the couple were of either sex, was one of beauty in repose. She was evidently ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... effected at once. The separate scenes of the Franceschini tragedy sprang to life in Mr. Browning's imagination within a few hours of his reading the book. He saw them re-enacted from his terrace at Casa Guidi on a sultry summer night—every place and person projected, as it seemed, against the thundery sky—but his mind did not yet weave them into a whole. The drama lay by him and in him till the unconscious inspiration was complete; and then, one day ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... sultry afternoon, and as I lay on my oars half-a-mile from shore I made up my mind I had little help to look for from the breezes; nor, as the tide was then running, could I afford to drift. I must row steadily, unless I wished to find myself out in the open, without supplies, before ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... fire. The lye must be prepared and tried in the usual way. The grease must be tried out, and strained from the scraps. Two pounds of grease (instead of three) must be used to a pailful; unless the weather is very sultry, the lye should be hot when put to the grease. It should stand in the sun, and be stirred every day. If it does not begin to look like soap in the course of five or six days, add a little hot lye to it; if this does not ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... many summer days, they are seldom sultry enough to breed the heavy, overhanging heat-haze which shrouds the heaven nearer the tropics. Sharp as are the frosts of winter nights in the central and southern part of the South Island, the days even in mid-winter are often radiant, giving seven or eight ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Opera in time for the end of the first act—it was Aida, I think. My little friend had a free pass all over the house. I had not been in it for years. In the old days I had always seen the stage from a great height, craning over people's heads in a sultry twilight; now I saw it on a level, seated at my ease. I had only the power of the Press to ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... [Since writing the above, Strauss has given the world his ballet The Legend of Joseph, in which he has said nothing novel, but has with his customary skill mixed anew the old compound of glittering colours and sultry, exotic harmonies.] ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... It was a sultry June day, the first of the summer vacation, and toward noon Mrs. Cadge set out to take her husband a bite of lunch. The little Cadges accompanied her, eager to exhibit the noble castle which they had completed on Catnip Creek. When they came to that charming stream, their eyes flew ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... in sultry languor. A warm night breathes upon the town, and in the exhaustion of light and hush of sound, life strikes sharply on the ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... us a rope and plenty of candles. We carried the rope in view of possible difficulties in the shape of rocks inside the cavern, for it should be borne in mind that in gouffres of this character the stream frequently descends by a series of cascades. The weather was very sultry, and the sky towards the west was of a slaty blue. A fierce storm was threatening, but we paid no attention to it—a mistake which others bent on exploring caverns where streams still flow should be warned against. There ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... removed from the houses on the day which precedes the New Year festival. At the beginning of the new year a new fire is lit by the friction of wood in the great straw hut where the village elders lounge away the sultry hours together; and every man takes thence a burning brand with which he rekindles the fire on his domestic hearth.[334] In the Bahr-el-Ghazal province of the Egyptian Sudan the people extinguish their old fires at the Arab ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... sweet month! the groves green liveries wear, If not the first, the fairest of the year: For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours, And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers: When thy short reign is past, the feverish sun The sultry tropic fears, and moves more slowly on. So may thy tender blossoms fear no blight, Nor goats with venom'd teeth thy tendrils bite, 60 As thou shalt guide my wandering feet to find The fragrant greens I seek, my ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and so did we. By and by, the sun came out through the fog and clouds, and began to make it hot for us. The dampness of the earth made this an easy job. The sun got higher and hotter every minute. The way that close, sultry heat did roast us was pitiful. We would have "larded the lean earth as we walked along," except that hard bones and muscles of gaunt men didn't yield any "lard" to speak of. The breakfast hour was not observed, i. e., not with any ceremony. ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... legions of France,—massive columns of infantry, with dense bodies of artillery alternating along the line. They, too, occupied a gently rising ground, the valley between the two armies being crossed half way by a little rivulet; and here, during the sultry heat of the morning, the troops on both sides met and mingled to quench their thirst ere the trumpet again called them ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in August; summer was dying, as a London summer dies, in days of feverish sunlight and breathless languor. Everywhere there was the same torpor, the same wornout, desiccated life in death. It was in the streets with their sultry pallor, in the parks and squares where the dust lay like a grey blight on every green thing. Everywhere the glare accentuated this toneless melancholy. It was the symbol of the decadence following the brilliant efflorescence of the season, the exhaustion after that supreme effort of Society ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair |
