"Wetness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my gravity," thought she, contemplating the water, "I would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!" ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... wet. I never feel sure, after wiping the blades of my skates, that they are perfectly dry, since they always seem more or less damp to my hand. What is the reason of this? Helmholtz explains the phenomenon by saying that the feeling we call by the name of wetness is a compound sensation consisting of one of temperature and one of touch proper. These sensations occurring together so frequently, blend into one, and so we infer, according to the general instinctive ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... of all it is to see the long threads that are flung horizontally through the air, from a low branch of a tree to the near-by hedge. They hang, elastic and perfect, sagged a little by a run of fog-drops almost invisible except where the wetness catches the light. Some were stretched at least six feet across space, with no supporting strands to hold them from above—and no branches from which the filament could be dropped. How is it done? Does our intrepid weaver hurl himself madly six feet into the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... the early falling twilight was murky and brown. The dull yellow glare of the street-lamps was faintly reflected in the muddy wetness of pavements and streets. He was carrying a great armful of books and papers under his dripping mackintosh and umbrella. As he walked homeward as fast as his inconvenient load allowed, he became acutely conscious of a depression of spirits which had been growing upon him all day. It ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... only just painted and bore a notice "Wet Paint." It was, of course, incumbent upon William to test personally the wetness of the paint. His trousers bore testimony to the testing to their last day, in spite of many applications of turpentine. Jumble also tested it, and had in fact to be disconnected with the front gate by means of a pair of scissors. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... steady patter began to sound the savage voice of torrents falling over cliffs, rapids rising and surging in deep gorges. The wetness and the cold sapped Molly's vitality. She shivered, her flesh seemed sodden, her hands and wrists began to puff and she saw their flesh was purple in the fading light. She rode with hands on the saddle horn, her head bowed, water streaming from the rim of her Stetson, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... was partially exposed to the rain. When it and the water from a broken gutter, striking a balustrade beside him, splashed him with fine spray, he made no effort to move. Why should he care? He was only a worthless old nigger. A little wetness more or less would make no difference. A carelessness for all things earthly and pertaining to his own worn-out old body grew upon him. Then he suddenly ceased to think of himself. The sound of the rain in his ears seemed to be boring into his brain. Steady, inexorable, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... been at all a remarkable one so far as the talk was concerned. The drenching rain, the tendency of the fire to smoke, the general wetness and condensed depravity of the atmosphere had affected the spirits of the little party. They were not gay, and they broke up early. It was not nine o'clock when all had gone, and Mrs. Goddard and little ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... urging of these their masters; six young men absorbed and busy at the tallying; six crews panoplied in leather guiding the monsters to their lairs. Here, too, the sun-warmed air arose sluggish with the aroma of pitch, of lumber, of tar from the ships' cordage, of the wetness of unpainted wood. Aloft in the rigging, clear against the sky, were sailors in contrast of peaceful, leisurely industry to those who toiled and hurried below. The masts swayed gently, describing an arc against the heavens. The sailors swung ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... But you're right about the wetness. There's a shed in the field yonder. A harrow and a plough live there; they're sure to be at home on a day like this. Let's go and ask ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... packman at Bristo-Port),* that ordered my lot in my dancing days, so that fear of my head and throat, dread of bloody rope and swift bullet, and trenchant swords and pain of boots and thumkins, cauld and hunger, wetness and weariness, stopped the lightness of my head, and the wantonness ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sometimes, thirstiest of all, the workmen from more distant oil-fields, a dangerous crew. Millings at that time had not yielded to the generally increasing "dryness" of the West. It was "wet," notwithstanding its choking alkali dust; and the deep pool of its wetness lay in Hudson's bar, The Aura. It was named for a woman who had ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... "I've kep' my face turned straight ahead ever since we climbed inter this bank o' wetness. If we don't get twisted any, we'll go straight ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... it stamped on him. It was not rain, as he knew it: it was a cascade, a vehement and malignant assault by all the wetness in heaven. It whipped, it stung, it thrashed; he was drenched in a moment as though by a trick. He could see nothing, but groped blind and frightened under it, feeling along the wall with one hand, still carrying the bronze image by the head with the other. Once he dropped it, and would have ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... a button on the bulb in his hand; Bart gasped, feeling cold wetness on his head. His own ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... eye or ear, we do not necessarily mean that it is directly and completely presented; it may only be indicated. We may have before the eyes simply a sign of some fact, but perceive the fact which is the meaning of the sign. We look out of the window and "see it is wet to-day", though wetness is something to be felt rather than seen; {422} having previously observed how wet ground looks, we now respond promptly to the visual appearance by knowing the indicated state of affairs. In the same way, we say that we "hear the street car", though a street car, we must admit, is not essentially ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... mean?" said Dorothy, as Evesham swung himself over the half-door, and his lantern showed them in their various phases of wetness. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... dried suddenly, from a condition of extreme wetness, it will be divided into large masses, or clods, separated by wide cracks. A subsequent wetting of the clods, which is not sufficient to expand it to its former condition, will not entirely obliterate the cracks, and the next drying will be followed by new fissures within the clods ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... Galilean field, which the Lord employed as a type with which to print his lesson, portions might be seen where, owing perhaps to peculiar wetness and sourness in the soil, the wheat had wholly disappeared, and the darnel grew alone; in other parts, probably where the soil was warm and dry, the good seed had gained the mastery, and the false scarcely showed its head; and in a third quarter the good and bad might ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... and he is not hampered by any such thing as natural law, which is merely our name for that which we are accustomed to see. Whenever it rains we are accustomed to see the ground wet, and we conclude that there is a necessary connection of cause and effect between the rain and the wetness of the ground. Nothing of the kind, say the Mutakallimun, or the Mu'tazila, the oldest sect of the school. It rains because God willed that it should rain, and the ground is wet because God wills it shall be wet. If God willed that the ground should be dry ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... closed in hunger, whimpering in slight indisposition, laughing at bright objects in motion, the peculiar grunting sounds which at a later period are joined with abdominal pressure and with lively arm-movements, as the announcement of completed digestion and of wetness (retained for the first of these states even into the seventeenth month), are manifold acoustic expressions of vitality, and are to be looked upon as the first forerunners of future oral communication, in contrast with the loud-sounding ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... on the cuirass, and many seizing this or that weapon, with cavalry in squadrons giving the attack. Among the multitude of figures, there was an old man, who wore upon his head an ivy wreath for shade. Seated on the ground, in act to draw his hose up, he was hampered by the wetness of his legs; and while he heard the clamour of the soldiers, the cries, the rumbling of the drums, he pulled with all his might; all the muscles and sinews of his body were seen in strain; and what was more, the contortion of his mouth showed what agony of haste he suffered, and how his whole ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... long and fixedly on the place, the sight of which interested him so much that he had forgotten, in the eagerness of youthful curiosity, the wetness of his dress. His eye glanced, and his colour mounted to his cheek like that of a daring man who meditates an honourable action, as he replied, "It is a strong castle, and strongly guarded; but there is ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... holding the canoe against the current; and I seemed to smell the sharp tang of the balsams, to hear the roar of the rapids below. Then came the sudden hooking of the big trout, habitant oaths from Armand, bouleversement, wetness, darkness, confusion; a half-strangled feeling, a brief glimpse of green things and sunlight, and then strangulation, or what seemed like it; strangulation, the sense of being picked up and hurled by a terrific force whither? a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... instinctive furtiveness out of the lane and quickly into the woodland on the farther side. They were soaked almost immediately. Fallen leaves clung to their shoes. Drooping branches smeared them with wetness. Lockley went barely out of sight of the highway and then trudged doggedly in the direction the Wild Life Control trailer-truck had taken. He handed Jill the ribbon of bronze that had been the ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the boys continued to climb down into the opening they had discovered. Soon they reached a narrow passageway, where going was a little easier. Then they came to a spot where there was considerable wetness, showing that they had reached the level of the water in ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... canoe had an outrigger and was very small, so that it moved fast through the usually still lagoon, propelled by the broad-bladed paddle. In the bottom of it might be an inch of water, for occasionally I shipped a tiny wave, but wetness was no bother in this delicious climate; a pareu was easily removed if vexatious and a cocoanut-shell ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... touch, that I had a power of association. I felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the opening of a window or its closing, the slam of a door. After repeatedly smelling rain and feeling the discomfort of wetness, I acted like those about me: I ran to shut the window. But that was not thought in any sense. It was the same kind of association that makes animals take shelter from the rain. From the same instinct of aping others, I folded the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... of the face [? "The paleness of the face," MS.] and the wetness of the lip with blood, are the never-failing signs of a Vampire. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of these foul feeders are singular, and some ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... at the window, looking out blankly into the leaden wetness. It was just after five, and the rain poured. A curious depression settled quickly upon her, which was hardly fully accounted for as "missing Hugo already."... Why? Who upon earth had less cause for depression than she? No girl ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a flight that no ship going out to sea can be better worth watching. The dullest thing perhaps in the London streets is that people take their rain there without knowing anything of the cloud that drops it. It is merely rain, and means wetness. The shower-cloud there has limits of time, but no limits of form, and no history whatever. It has not come from the clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not shoulder anon the hill to the north. The rain, for this ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... Osborne had not been to church in the morning; the squire had, and he was now trying hard to read one of Blair's sermons. They had dined early; they always did on Sundays; and either that, or the sermon, or the hopeless wetness of the day, made the afternoon seem interminably long to the squire. He had certain unwritten rules for the regulation of his conduct on Sundays. Cold meat, sermon-reading, no smoking till after evening prayers, as little thought as ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bearing its foliage in a great canopy. From this giant form the species vary to slender, graceful, climbing vines. Wild grapes are as varied in climatic adaptations as in structure of vine and grow luxuriantly in every condition of heat or cold, wetness or dryness, capable of supporting fruit-culture in America. So many of the kinds have horticultural possibilities that it seems certain that some grape can be domesticated in all of the agricultural regions of the country, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... of the north in as much as to a certain extent it refused to mingle with the drier and slightly warmer air into which it travelled. It was different from them in as much as it fairly dripped and oozed with a very palpable wetness. Just how it displaced the air in its path, is something which I cannot with certainty say. Was it formed as a low layer somewhere over the lake and slowly pushed along by a gentle, imperceptible, fan-shaped current of air? ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... hand under her chin and lifted up her face to him. Her dark blue eyes, in their wetness of tears, dilated as if she was startled in her very soul. They looked at him through their tears in terror and a little horror. His light blue eyes were keen, small-pupilled and unnatural in their vision. Her lips parted, as she ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... you cannot close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more restless every moment. He thinks.... That splash of waters! Those frigid wavelets and cascades! How delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in their bubbling wetness; he is parched with heat, and at this hour of the night, he reflects, there will not be a soul abroad in the square. So he hearkens to the seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that familiar fountain; he remembers its moistened ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... made snow houses; elders stamped their feet and clucked, "Fine day!" New York was far off and ridiculously unimportant. Carl and Ruth reached an open sloping field, where the snow that partly covered a large rock was melting at its lacy, crystaled edges, staining the black rock to a shiny wetness that was infinitely cheerful in its tiny reflection of the blue sky at the zenith. On a tree whose bleak bark the sun had warmed, vagrant sparrows in hand-me-down feathers discussed rumors of the establishment of a bread-crumb line and the better day that was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... been those of scraping, rubbing, and washing, but they are obviously calculated for trees only on a small scale. How far the use of powdery matters, such as lime, chalk, and others, which are capable of readily absorbing and taking up the wetness that may hang about the branches, and other parts of the trees, by being well dusted over them, may be beneficial, is not known, but they would seem to promise success by the taking away the nourishment and support of the moss, when employed ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... loves the softness of fur or the coolness of marble. One of the profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the only ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... really never ceases shrinking. Only last summer taught me the uselessness of an extra pair of trousers. It rains in the woods; streams are to be waded; the wetness of leaves is greater than the wetness of many rivers. Logically, naturally, inevitably, such conditions point to change of garments when camp is made. We always change our clothes when we get wet in the city. So for years I carried those extra nether garments—and continued in ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... of wetness is composed of that of cold and easy movement over surface. Hence, when we touch without warning a cold smooth piece of metal, we think that we are touching something wet. But the converse is true for we believe ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... walked down to the foamy lip of the tide, which was just waking up from its faint recession. A cold glimmer, which seemed to come from nothing but its wetness, was all the sea had to say ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the way we dry the clo'es: Hang them on the bushes about; Through and through the soft wind blows, Draws and drives the wetness out! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... his tall father out into the fresh morning. Everything was dripping and soggy, but the sun was going to shine, and dry the world off. Together they trudged through the wetness, into the village. Other gold seekers were trooping down to the river, and the villagers, yawning and weary-eyed after the dance, were watching them, and collecting ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... they come in contact with suitable surfaces, whence the name "radicans." The habit of the shrub, from its dense and flattened foliage, fine colour, and persistent nature, together with its dwarfness and rooting faculty, all go to render it one of the finest rock shrubs for winter effect. The wetness of our climate only seems to make it all the brighter, and it is also without that undesirable habit of ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... bench outside. As I was sauntering through the doorway, my head bending broodingly over the sketch-book, I caught sight out of the corner of my eye of a little white match-stand fixed up on the wall. Mechanically I put out my left hand to take a light for my pipe. A queer, cold wetness in my fingers and a little splash woke me to the sense of some odd mistake, and in another instant I realized with horror that I had dipped my fingers into holy water and splashed it over that neat, demure, spotless, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... roadside to allow the passage of an ambulance or a transport waggon. There is no smoking, for they are too close to the enemy, and there is the thought of six days and six nights of watchfulness and wetness ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... want to see you," he whispered at last, and his hand closing on her drew her out of the dark hall. She liked the wetness of the flags under her stockinged feet, the fall of the rain ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over. Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate Round rim ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... woman was speaking, her face aglow with tenderness, and her eyes wet with a mother's gratitude, Desire could not help half wishing she had deserved the words, even though that wish implied her being really in love with this woman's son. It was not without emotion, and eyes to which a responsive wetness had sprung that she exclaimed, with ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which nobody minded, all having come defended with rubbers and waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn color. Everything shone and dripped; the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... have to open the front door without making too much noise, for the other doors were well guarded by underlings, and I would have to run down the front drive under the eyes of many windows. Once beyond the gate I would be safe, for the wetness of the day would secure me from dangerous encounters. Walking in the rain would be pleasant than staying in the dull schoolroom, where life remained unchanged for a quarter of an hour at a time; and I remembered that there was a little wood near our house in which ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... shavings, and these shavings served to start the green pine boughs which had formed their beds; and once a pretty good glow was obtained, with plenty of embers, the wetness of the branches brought under cover mattered very little, especially as the guide ranged them close to the fire to dry, ready against they were required; and had contrived that the blinding smoke should sweep right out at ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... feet square and five feet high. Here we all crawled in, wet and cold, but with hearts grateful to God for our wonderful preservation. As we were packed very close to each other, the natural warmth of our bodies soon relieved us considerably from the sensation of wetness and cold, and we passed the night as comfortably as ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... was sure she had found the road again she ran plump into the barn again, from a different side this time. A window frame minus a window told that the barn was empty and with a grunt of utter disgust at the wetness of the world in general, Sahwah climbed in and stood on a dry floor. She made up her mind to stay there until the sound of the engine would tell her that the Glow-worm had come for her. As the time went by and no familiar throbbing rose on the air, she began to have cold chills when ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... his face with a swift, tight clasping of his hands. Something rose chokingly in his throat. Into his eyes a slow, scalding wetness crept like a film. He set his teeth in one ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... sea level, there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and was mossy {5} to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hill sides, there were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no difference to his wetness," she said, "but that does not matter. His feet will get ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... will remark 't Jathrop's the last straw on top o' my hump, 'n' this mornin' when I throwed out the dish-water 'n' hit him by accident jus' comin' in, my patience clean gin out. I didn't feel no manner o' sympathy over his soapy wetness, 'n' I spoke my mind right then 'n' there. 'Jathrop Lathrop,' I says to him, all forgettin' how big he'd got 'n' only rememberin' what a bother he's always been, 'Jathrop Lathrop, you let that soakin' be a lesson to you 'n' march right ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... matter to dry Freddie's feet and legs in front of the warm furnaces in the boiler room, but his shoes and stockings did not get rid of their wetness so soon. And, as Mr. Bobbsey did not want to wait, he sent one of the attendants out to buy new shoes and stockings for his son. With these on, and carrying the damp ones in a bundle, Freddie was soon ready ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... wetting the dry materials, but it also is a powerful stimulant and welcome addition to the manure. But the greatest vigilance should be observed to guard against overmoistening the manure; far better fail on the side of dryness than on that of wetness. ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... the best use to which the green fields of Holland can be put, is the raising of grass to feed cattle; for the wetness of the land, which makes it somewhat unsuitable to be ploughed, causes grass to grow upon it very luxuriantly. Accordingly, as you ride through the country along the great railway lines, you see, every where, herds of cattle and ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... where it was urgently invited, and found that its host or hostess, or both, had actually forgotten its name! Did not know how to introduce it to any fellow guest, or whether it loved sun or shade, loam, peat, clay, leaf-mould or sand, wetness or dryness; and yet should have found all that out in the proper blue-book (horticultural dictionary) before inviting the poor mortified guest ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... as I have sometimes seen in the Carpathians; cool and clear, but with that sweet dewy wetness in the lower air which washes the over-night cobwebs from the brain, and is both meat and drink to one who breathes it. On the left the road was overhung by the bordering forest, and where the branches drooped lowest we brushed the fragrance from the wild-grape bloom in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... been through, I should think you'd have learned the value of money. Anyway, it's too beautiful for me. And anyway, I couldn't take it—not to-night, anyway. And anyway—" Her voice had acquired a huskiness in this speech that now left her incoherent, and the light revealed a wetness in her eyes. She dabbed at them with a handkerchief. "Of course you can take it to-night," he said in masterful tones, "after ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Warmth, wetness, and a knowledge of great weakness—these, joined with a singular lassitude, oppression of the lungs and stifling of the breath, were Allan Stern's sensations ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... again like a vague pain arose And put the sense of wetness in the air. Suddenly did the Emperor suppose He saw this room and all in it from far. He saw the couch, the boy and his own frame Cast down against the couch, and he became A clearer presence to himself, and said These words unuttered, save ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... credit and respect. Rarely in the experience of a lifetime have I encountered a day so absolutely bally in nearly every shape and form, but there was one thing that saved it, and that was its merry old wetness! Toodle-oo, laddie!" ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... and whether we consider the durability of the road, or the degree to which its traffic is interfered with by its wet condition, we may be confident that every dollar spent in well-directed under-draining will be invested to the very best advantage. The varying conditions of wetness, and the different sources of surplus water, must be regarded in deciding precisely how much of this work is needed, and how it should be done. Details cannot be fully considered here; but as a general rule it may be said, that where the subsoil generally is of an impervious ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... tell me! You're right! After this night I wouldn't take your word as to the wetness of water. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... had my gravity,' thought she, contemplating the water, 'I would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!' ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... the rocks in the darkness was awkward work. The boat would have bumped dangerously if allowed to ride in with the waves that drove into the cove. I found a flat rock for my feet, which were in a bad way owing to cold, wetness, and lack of exercise in the boat, and during the next few hours I laboured to keep the 'James Caird' clear of the beach. Occasionally I had to rush into the seething water. Then, as a wave receded, I let the boat out on the alpine rope so as to avoid a sudden jerk. The heavy painter had ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... with the utmost care and diligence, although my teeth were chattering, and all my bones beginning to ache with the chilliness and the wetness. Before very long the moon appeared, over the edge of the mountain, and among the trees at the top of it; and then I espied rough steps, and rocky, made as if with a sledge-hammer, narrow, steep, and far asunder, scooped ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... month, from early August to mid-September—it is a glory of whiteness, the tallest sprays on a level with my eyes, the shortest shoulder high, except when rain weighs down the heavy heads and they lean across the paths barring my passage with their fragrant wetness. ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... I was not frightened, I was only very excited; for, now that I stood in the shaft, the reek of the tobacco was very strong. I could see hardly anything—only the light from the burrow-mouth, lighting up the sides of the burrow for a yard or two, and a sort of gleam, a sort of shining wetness, upon the floor of the shaft and on its outer wall. I heard the wash of the sea, or thought I heard it, and that was the only noise, except a steady drip, drip, splash where water dripped from the roof into a pool on the floor. For a moment I stood still, not certain which way ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... not be entirely run out when the lease expired. The closes were extremely small and of the most irregular shape; the straggling fences occupied a large portion of the land; the crookedness of the ditches, by keeping the water stagnant, added to, rather than relieved, the wetness of the soil. Farms were much scattered, and to enable the occupiers to get at their land, lanes wound backwards and forwards from field to field, covering a large ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler |
