"Decrepit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obedience to his commands four lily-white horses were yoked. The prince leaped into the chariot, and proceeded towards a garden at a little distance from the palace, attended by a great retinue. On his way he saw a decrepit old man, with broken teeth, grey locks, and a form bending towards the ground, his trembling steps supported by a staff (a Deva had taken this form).... The prince enquired what strange figure it was that he saw; and he was informed that it was an old man. He then asked if the man was ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... would have been astonished if they could have seen into his mind at that time, and he knew of many more men who would have laughed if they had the same privilege of sight. He made no attempt to conceal from himself that the whole thing was romantic, romantic despite the little tinkling dog, the decrepit diligence, the palavering natives, the super-idiotic dragoman. It was fine, It was from another age and even the actors could not deface the purity of the picture. However it was true that upon the brigantine the previous night he had unaccountably wetted all his available ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... her every now and then to stop. The old crone, however, seemed too deaf to hear; and it was not till they had reached the skirts of the forest that she turned round, when, to Little Red Riding Hood's surprise, she perceived a young and beautiful being in place of the decrepit creature she thought she was following. "Little Red Riding Hood," said the fairy, for such she was, "your goodness of heart has saved you from a great danger. Had you not helped the poor old water-cress woman, she would not have sent word to the green huntsman, who is generally invisible to mortal ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... determined that, although he was unable to eat the buckwheat himself, he would endeavor to prevent the robin from doing so. So intent was he upon this resolve, that he forgot to bark at an old negro, who drove up presently in an ancient gig, the harness of which was tied on a decrepit mule with pieces of rope. The negro had left some corn to be ground, and as he took his sack of meal from the miller, he let fall a few lamentations on the general forlorn state of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... subject to infirmity from age. When God looked down upon a finished creation he saw that it was good, yea, very good. Can this be said of our bodies now? Let the blind, the deaf, the lame, the countless sufferers on beds of affliction, the child-bearing mother, the decrepit consumptive, the rheumatic invalid, let these say whether our bodies are very good now. And how about our spirits? I use the term spirit here in the sense of its being the basis of human perception and thought. Are our spirits or minds very ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... pusillanimous children, the effeminate lisp of the sonnetteer is exchanged for a cry, wild, and solemn, and piercing as that which proclaimed "Sleep no more" to the bloody house of Cawdor. "Italy seems not to feel her sufferings," exclaims her impassioned poet; "decrepit, sluggish, and languid, will she sleep forever? Will there be none to awake her? Oh that I had my hands ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Spenser says he is an old man, decrepit and half blind. He was waited on by a boy named Anamnestes. [Greek, eumnestis, "good memory," anamnestis, "research."—Faery Queen, ii. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the Senna, which cuts the town in half ere it empties itself into the Bay. Overhead the huge ruined castle of San Niccolo looms distinct against the rose-flushed evening sky, crouching like some decrepit old giant above the little city which he so oppressed in the bad old days when Sanseverini and Colonna carried on a perpetual selfish strife that allowed their humble neighbours no repose. Beautiful as is Majori, it is no lovelier than many another spot ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... it. For example, a recent author ascribes to the Feejees the belief that there will be a resurrection of the body just as it was at the time of death. The only datum on which he founds this astounding assertion is that they often seem to prefer to die in the full vigor of manhood rather than in decrepit old age! 11 Thirdly, we know that the observation and statements of the Spanish monks and historians, in regard to the religion of the pagans of South America, were of the most imperfect and reckless character. They perpetrated gross frauds, such as planting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the ceilings and have a decrepit, old-world air, and the odds and ends of furniture—all characteristic of the dwelling of a poor literary man of refined taste—are in keeping with the surroundings. In the dining-room there are half-a-dozen chairs of various patterns, a sideboard or ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... approached for the two friends. They were to take their examinations for graduation. Upon the days when M. Violette—they now called him at the office "Father Violette," he had grown so aged and decrepit—was not too much "consoled" in the cafe in the Rue du Four, and when he was less silent and gloomy than usual, he would say to his ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... created mergers here. He started consolidated companies here that in time fought their way into the appreciated valuations of the stock market. He became Canada's greatest adventurer in creating a sort of "wealth" from the merging of small, sometimes decrepit, concerns under a new name and new issues of stock; just as Mackenzie was our greatest adventurer in creating wealth from borrowed money. Beaverbrook worked mainly with small groups to whom he left the task of ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... replied the venerable man; 'and I wonder not at the question you propose. Not my religion, lady, but an enfeebled and decrepit frame chains me to this solitude. I have now outlasted a century, and my powers are wasted and gone. I can do little more than sit and ponder the truths of this life-giving book, and anticipate the renewed activity of that immortal being which it promises. The Christian converts, who ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... a word as 'teapoy'; it is NOT 'teapot' and it means a three-legged table. 'Dullness' was consistently spelled 'dulness' and is left thus. 'Decrepit' was consistently spelled 'decrepid' and is left thus. 'Dote, dotes,' etc. was consistently spelled 'doat, doats,' etc. and is left thus. 'License' is spelled once thus and once 'licence.' The word 'speciality' appears only once, and that is the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... indeed, did any one feel inclined. He was as isolated from his fellow-creatures as was his tenement, and was only to be seen in the chamber of disease and death. What his establishment consisted of no one knew. When he first settled in the neighbourhood, an old decrepit woman occasionally answered the knocks given at the door by those who required the doctor's services; but she had been buried some time, and, ever since, all calls at the door had been answered by Mynheer ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was humble enough. A poor little house, that looked as if its more aspiring neighbours would certainly swallow it up and deny its right to be at all; so low and decrepit it was, among better built if not handsome edifices. Street and surroundings were dingy and mean; however, when they went in they found a decent little room under the sloping roof and with a bit of blue sky visible from its ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... the summer of 1898, with which it was intended Commodore Watson should pay a hostile visit to the coast of Spain. But for the signing of the peace protocol, that visit under its gallant and distinguished commander would have proved one that the decrepit monarchy would remember to the end ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... is a great hardship, and I have often thought that I should not like to go into a workhouse because I never could have a bit of tobacco. This man's hair was as white as snow, much too white for his age, for he was more decrepit and worn out than, perhaps, he was old. He had come home to his parish, and, being unable to gain his living, they had sent him to the workhouse. I can't understand why a place should be called a workhouse where they do nothing at all. Well, Charley, as ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... to take offence at the innocent remark and relapsed into gloomy silence. Disdaining to speak, Juliet curled up on the decrepit sofa with a book and the chocolates, and presently ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... our bow to the Superintendent and walked to the place where our carriage was waiting for us. On our way, an exceedingly decrepit old man moved slowly towards us, with a perfectly blank look on his face, but still appearing as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... organs of the Philippine governmental system. To the modern eye the islands would have seemed, as they did to the French scientist Le Gentil, priest-ridden. Yet it was only through the Friars that Spain retained her hold at all. [73] A corrupt civil service and a futile and decrepit commercial system were through their efforts rendered relatively harmless, because circumscribed in their effects. The continuous fatherly interest of the clergy more than counterbalanced the burden of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... understand what we want. Fox hinted as much. Now Fox is modern and up to date and sympathetic. If I can't have Fox, I won't have Sir Owen. Why, he's older than Dad! He's decrepit. Can't we ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... out in that famous bark, That brought our sires intrepid, Capacious as another ark For furniture decrepit; For, as that saved of bird and beast A pair for propagation, 30 So has the seed of these increased ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... their age with himself and his partner; and said, "These wives, who now seem like young virgins, were in the world infirm old women; and their husbands, who now seem in the spring of youth, were in the world decrepit old men; and all of them were restored by the Lord to this prime of their age, because they mutually loved each other, and from religious motives shunned adulteries as enormous sins:" and he added, "No one knows the blessed delights of conjugial love, unless he rejects the horrid delights ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... ill-served and even betrayed by his colleagues, and committed, behind his back, to a most hazardous policy. He had been too soft-hearted to insist on making a clean sweep of the old official class in forming his Cabinet; he had thought to replace the decrepit absolutism by a young and liberal empire; and here was the personal power reappearing at the first crisis. The idea of having given the signal for war was abhorrent to him; he felt violently tempted to resign and retire. Yet, on reflection, to tender his resignation at ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... retreating soul forced back upon the ashes of his brain, and taxing the flesh to one supreme exertion. But he lives again in a far off time when "John" is dead, and there is no one left who saw. And he lives in a sense as of decrepit age, seeking a "foot-hold through a blank profound;" grasping at facts which snap beneath his touch; in strange lands, and among ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the boy saw immediately that something was going on here which turned upside down the most regular order. On the edge of the stork-nest sat two gray owls, an old, gray-streaked cat, and a dozen old, decrepit rats with protruding teeth and watery eyes. They were not exactly the sort of animals one usually ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... shack leaks all the time. The other day the owner came around in his automobile. I was speechless. It made me mad to think of that hound, riding in his car which we had paid for. Oh, the miserable people who live in these two houses: old, decrepit women who earn their living by washing clothes for others. It would make your blood boil to see them. And then to see that fat dog in his auto, accepting money from them and not ever giving them a whole roof in return. When I saw him I wanted to say so much. I could only choke. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... whole. Rousseau is constantly vaunting not only the morality but the happiness of rural life. Mirabeau the elder says that gayety is disappearing, perhaps because the people are too rich, and argues that France is not decrepit but vigorous.[Footnote: La Bruyere, Caracteres, ii. 61 (de l'homme). Voltaire, passim, xxxi. 481, Dict. philos. (Population). Mirabeau, L'ami des hommes, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... ones hung over the moss-covered rims, and flaked ones thrust a bright medley of blossom between the chinks of the marble; while from the mouth of the lion, whence formerly the water-jets had spurted, a huge crimson clove now shot out so vigorously that the decrepit beast seemed to be spouting blood. Near by, the principal piece of ornamental water, a lake, on whose surface swans had glided, had now become a thicket of lilacs, beneath whose shade stocks and verbenas and day-lilies screened ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... his message from the king of Damascus to Elisha. No doubt he had been often contrasting his own vigour with the decrepit, nominal king, and many a time had thought of the anointing, and had nursed ambitious hopes, which gradually turned ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was attracted to a knot of natives and sailors clustered about an organ, in front of the decrepit building which I knew for the Sailors' Home, roaring out the chorus of "Rock of Ages" as though it were a chantey. There could be no mistaking the figure seated at the wheezy little organ—the ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... about the Crambrys, for he passed their so-called habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was only a month before that he had found them all sitting outside their broken-down fence, surrounded by decrepit chairs, sofas, tables, bedsteads, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he said, taxation would be equal, and money would not be wrung from the hard-working miners to support governors and other officials in luxury. While Mr. Charley was shouting with all his might, and trying to infuse a little of his own warmth into his hearers, a little, decrepit old man, with long, gray hair and shabby clothes, edged towards us, as though ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Spain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a new moustache. Nations consist of people; the first generation may be decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous. Similar applications of the fallacy are made by those who see in the increasing size of national possessions, a simple increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. These people, indeed, even fall short in subtlety ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... forward through the gate, his eyes fell upon a figure coming up apparently from the sea-shore. It was that of a woman, seemingly well advanced in life, and dressed in the garb of the lower orders: there was nothing particular in her appearance, except that in her gait and figure she was more decrepit than from her countenance might have been expected. The tears were streaming rapidly down her face, however; and though she suddenly paused on perceiving the stranger, she could not command those tears from flowing on, though she turned away her head ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the loose soil close to the shallow foundation of the north-west pillar of the tower, it had sunk so as to endanger the whole structure. "I discovered," says he, "that there were large fractures in the walls, on tracing which I found that the old building was in a most shattered and decrepit condition, though until then it had been scarcely noticed. Upon this I declined giving any recommendation as to the repairs of the roof unless they would come to the resolution to secure the more essential parts, as the fabric appeared to me to be in a very alarming condition. I sent in a written ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... old people are abandoned and left to die of starvation unattended. Be it said to the honor of the trading companies that they do their utmost to prevent this when it is possible, and offer the old and decrepit a haven at the Post, where they are ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... harassing cares are unknown, we are led to expect that disease and suffering should be comparatively rare, and that the functions of nature should not reach the close of their gradual decay till an extreme old age. The decrepit and shriveled forms of many American Indians would seem to indicate that they had long passed the ordinary time of life. But it is difficult or impossible to ascertain their exact age, as the art of counting is generally ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... broad beams of support, a little interior, dimly lighted, showed a knot of sailors gathered, drinking or lounging. Up high beneath a chimney perilously overlooking a rude facade, a quaint shape emerged, one as decrepit and forlorn of life and hope as the decaying houses it overlooked. Silence, poverty, wretchedness, the dregs of life, to this has Honfleur fallen. These old houses, in their slow decay, hiding in their dark bosom the gaunt ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... advance behind him hides his wings, And seems to creep decrepit with his age. Behold him when past by! What then is seen But his proud pinions, swifter ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of a French bank note is said to average two or three years, and does not terminate until the condition is very shaky indeed—crimpled, pierced with pinholes, corner creases torn, soft, tarnished, decrepit while yet young. Some have been half-burned; one has been found half-digested in the stomach of a goat, and one boiled in a waistcoat-pocket by a laundress. No matter; the cashier at the bank will do his best to decipher it; he will indeed take an infinity of ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... true succession from our isle should fail, And crowds profane with impious arms prevail, 290 Not thou, nor those thy factious arts engage, Shall reap that harvest of rebellious rage, With which thou flatterest thy decrepit age. The swelling poison of the several sects, Which, wanting vent, the nation's health infects, Shall burst its bag; and, fighting out their way, The various venoms on each other prey. The presbyter, puff'd up with spiritual pride, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... for the strangers to be abroad; still, had it not been so, no one would have troubled her. Past Gethsemane; past the tombs at the meeting of the Bethany roads; past the sepulchral village of Siloam she went. Occasionally the decrepit little body staggered; once she sat down to get her breath; rising shortly, she struggled on with renewed haste. The great rocks on either hand, if they had had ears, might have heard her mutter to herself; could they have seen, it would have been to observe ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... closet that had been built in with boards behind the chimney. At first glance this held nothing but decrepit brooms, a battered spittoon, and a small pile of greasewood cut to fit the heater in the larger room; but Starr went in and flashed his light around the wall. He found a door at the farther end, and he ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... was gone from his eyes, the vigour from his body, the confidence from his manner; consciousness of failure brooded in their stead. He had not become dissipated. Great opportunities missed; this was the memory that racked him, body and spirit, and left him nerveless and decrepit, inviting death."[1401] He died in Germany ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... experienced, foul-minded old woman whom she calls mother, and whose duty it is to corrupt her mind and sell her to the highest bidder. Why do these unhappy slaves marry anybody, however old and vile, sooner than not marry at all? Because marriage is their only means of escape from these decrepit fiends who hide their selfish ambitions, their jealous hatreds of the young rivals who have supplanted them, under the mask of maternal duty and family affection. Such things are abominable: the voice of nature ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... had penetrated a little more closely he would have been told certain startling stories, with at least a basis of truth in them, even as regards the age of Plato. These slaves were Greeks: no rude Scythians, nor crouching, decrepit Asiatics, like ordinary prisoners of war, the sort of slaves you could buy, but genuine Greeks, speaking their native tongue, if with less of muscular tension and energy, yet probably with pleasanter voice and accent than their essentially highland masters. Physically they throve, under something ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... the pageant opened in July 1914. Once again the rulers were feasting and the workers at toil, but the scene was enlivened by the presence of the leaders of the Second International, a group of decrepit professorial old men, who waddled in in solemn procession carrying tomes full of international learning. They sat in a row between the rulers and the people, deep in study, spectacles on nose. The call to war was the signal for a dramatic appeal from the workers to these leaders, who refused to ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... in her not unusual, though innocent, occupation of darning socks by the abrupt entrance of her son Frank, who flung his cap on the table, kissed his mother on the forehead, and then flung himself on the sofa, which piece of furniture, being old and decrepit, groaned under ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... groups to romp and play under the guardianship of either one of their mothers or grandmothers; while the men forage for food, and watch for enemies. It is not uncommon to see an aged, half-decrepit nkengo lying on a bed of sticks in a tall tree. Here he eats only green leaves and bits of fruit brought him by some kind friend, being far too weak to hunt for food himself, and furthermore, fearing an attack from his mortal ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... our household had invariably heard their familiar call, as at daybreak they would pass over the chateau on their way from the swamps of the Somme to the Marais de St. Gond. The moment was almost a solemn one. It seemed to mark an epoch in the tide of our year. Claude, Benoit, George and a decrepit gardener would abandon all work and prepare boats, guns ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... she was growing weak, a decrepit, bleeding old woman. Her fate was upon her; let ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... was fairly large, with two windows screened but unglazed; a canvas cot stood in one corner, a packing-box table and a decrepit chair in another. Like the kitchen it was surprisingly clean. He returned to his hostess, who showed no ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... miles not a single waving flag did Calhoun see, not a single shout of welcome did he hear. Instead, the inhabitants seemed to be in an agony of fear. They met only decrepit old men and white-faced women and children. Not a single cup of cold water was freely offered them in that twenty miles. If Calhoun could only have seen the welcome given Hobson's men the day after as they came over the same road, the flags that were waved, the shouts ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... and satisfactory. What would you have more of a soldier than to run away and have him cashiered as to any command in your garrison? The first he hath done and the second he must submit to. And I assure you whatsoever he was among you, he is here a kind of decrepit young gentleman ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the by-gone day beholds its successor; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that Tomorrow is born before Yesterday is dead. They exist together in the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may simultaneously touch them both, with one finger of recollection and another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the apparatus of death in requisition. Fearful as this elevated gallows appeared, and unique in its character, it was not more so than the finisher of the law who then generally officiated upon it. No decrepit wretch, no crime-hardened ruffian, no secret and mysterious personage, who was produced occasionally disguised and masked, plied his dreadful trade here. Who, think you, gentle reader—who now, perhaps, recoils from these unpleasant ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... almost heedless, she went even to the very village where she would be most likely to meet one of the masters to whom she had been hired; and having stopped at the Market and bought a pair of live fowls, she went along the street with her sun-bonnet well over her face, and with the bent and decrepit air of an aged, woman. Suddenly on turning a corner, she spied her old master coming towards her. She pulled the string which tied the legs of the chickens; they began to flutter and scream, and as her master passed, she was stooping ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... the private corridor, he met the Queen coming from her room, dressed for going out. She detected at once his painful and decrepit attitude. "What is the matter, dear?" ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... "away! My Catharine alone shall extend me her hand, and give me a welcome to the bridal chamber. Go, we feel to-day as young and strong as in our best and happiest days, and the young queen shall see that it is no decrepit graybeard, tottering with age, who woos her, but a strong man rejuvenated by love. Think not, Kate, that I use my car because of weakness. No, it was only my longing for you which made me wish to be with you ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... is a marked subsidence of her personal emotion, and, in compensation, a rising tide of humanitarian enthusiasm. Gradually satiated with erotic passion, gradually convinced that it is rather a mischief-maker than a reconstructive force in a decrepit society, she is groping, indeed, between her successive liaisons for an elusive felicity, for a larger mission than inspiring Musset's Alexandrines or Chopin's nocturnes. It is somewhat amusing, and at the same ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... much as the Mayflower must have looked steering across Cape Cod Bay on that special occasion we read of in sacred and profane history, hung about with four-poster beds and whatnots. In our neighborhood," the plump girl added, "there is enough decrepit furniture declared to have been brought over on the Mayflower to have made a cargo ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... that dog's eyes, isn't he a fine fellow?" he kept asking. His knowledge of the trees on his estate was historical. He knew their lineage and characteristics from the date of their sapling age, four or five hundred years before. The old and decrepit aristocrats of his forest were tenderly bandaged, their ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... perfectly well that his promotion, if not his job, depended upon his employer getting a tiger. And, as the steamer was due in four days, there was no time to spare. From the director of the Singapore zoo he purchased for considerably above the market price, a decrepit and somewhat moth-eaten tiger of advanced years, which he had transported across the straits to Johore, whence it was conveyed by bullock cart to a spot in the edge of the jungle, a dozen miles outside the town, where it was turned loose in an enclosure ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... students of art; and that he earned much, but wasted everything through negligence and lack of management. Finally, having grown old and useless, and being forced to walk with crutches, without which he could not stand upright, he died, infirm and decrepit, at the age of seventy-eight, and was buried in Ognissanti at Florence in ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... the old chap I had put to flight. The mysterious new paper parcel lay opened on the seat next him, filled with different sorts of victuals, of which he ate as he sat. I immediately wanted to go over and ask pardon for my conduct, but the sight of food repelled me. The decrepit fingers looked like ten claws as they clutched loathsomely at the greasy bread and butter; I felt qualmish, and passed by without addressing him. He did not recognize me; his eyes stared at me, dry as horn, and his face did ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... was destitute of effective vessels for service afloat. When the navigator Flinders was wrecked in the Porpoise in August 1803—his own exploring ship, the Investigator, being by this time unseaworthy—Governor King had no other craft to give him for his return voyage than the decrepit Cumberland, a mere leaky little barge hardly fit for better uses than ferrying a placid lake. The colony was, in short, simply a kraal for yarding British undesirables and housing their keepers; its remoteness was an advantage for the purpose in view; and it never seemed to strike the ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... now: and guess at the stateliness of the building by the magnificence of its ruins.... And certainly that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepit, surely was very beautiful when he was young! An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam; and Athens ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... being surprised to see a window lighted so late. Lord Blandamer must have changed his intention of going by train, for the gates of Cullerne station had been locked for hours, and the boiler of the decrepit branch-line engine was cooling ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... hasn't built his swell hotel yet," he laughed. "And as for us here, why, we 'batch' it. There isn't a thing in skirts around this place, only a Chink cook, a half-breed secretary, and a clerk or two, and a bum sort of decrepit lumber-jack who does my chores. So you see I'm—kind of relieved. Anyway you sleeping on the Myra makes it easy. Now there's a mighty big conceit to me, and it's all for this mill in our country's wilderness. And I just can't let you quit to-morrow ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... imbecile priestcraft of the illiterate monk, there, the dark superstition that still consulted the deities of the North by runes on the elm bark and adjurations of the dead. And in contrast to those pictures of a decrepit monarchy and a fated race, I have to bring forcibly before the reader the vigorous attributes of the coming conquerors,—the stern will and deep guile of the Norman chief—the comparative knowledge of the rising ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the enemy for several days, unknown to them, we determined with a party of 60 men to rise on the Gaol guard, and disarm them, which consisted of 14 old decrepit men and young boys, (whose appointment over us we considered rather an insult, than good economy in the commander:) next we were to proceed to St. John's Gate, about eight rods distant from the gaol and attack and disarm that ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... upon. He soon perceived what she was, and forthwith cast his kamund over her, and in spite of all her entreaties, bound her too fast to escape. In this extremity, she successively assumed the shape of a cat, a wolf, and a decrepit old man: and so perfect were her transformations, that any other person would have been deceived, but Isfendiyar detected her in every variety of appearance; and, vexed by her continual attempts to cheat him, at last took out his ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... minutes, and Fairholme amused himself by glancing over the copies of the day's London newspapers which had recently arrived. Suddenly the door of Brett's bedroom opened, and a decrepit elderly man appeared, a shabby-genteel individual, disfigured by drink and ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... way? Heyday! surely this is Gnatho, the Captain's Parasite; he's bringing along with him the damsel as a present to her. Heavens! How beautiful! No wonder if I make but a sorry figure here to-day with this decrepit Eunuch of mine. She surpasses Thais herself. ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... would be pouring back from the forward country. The people of the city itself had to be helped to escape before the bombardment commenced. They would have to stay there taking care of the children, packing them into lorries, driving ambulances, rendering first aid, taking the wounded and decrepit out of danger and always returning to it again themselves. As the certainty of the risk and service was impressed on them their faces brightened. Risk and service, that was what they most desired; they were girls, but they ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the Pinjarapala is less lugubrious and much more amusing. The Pinjarapala is the Bombay Hospital for decrepit animals, but a similar institution exists in every town where Jainas dwell. Being one of the most ancient, this is also one of the most interesting, of the sects of India. It is much older than Buddhism, which ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... as is sometimes found between a man and his horse or affectionate dog. There was sometimes real unfeigned mutual love. The master had a tender care over his slaves in their sicknesses and in their decrepit age, and sorrowed at their graves. The slaves were inconsolable in their grief at the ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... through which one has to pass by a steep rocky descent till he arrives at a gloomy grove and an unnavigable lake called Avernus, from which such poisonous vapours rise as to kill birds flying over it. Yet over this lake the souls of the dead must pass. To assist them, an old decrepit, long-bearded fellow, the oft-heard of Charon, attends with a ferry-boat to carry them to the other side, at a fare not less ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... saw, climbing the hill a few steps before him, an old, decrepit woman, who hobbled along with great difficulty. As the Emperor approached her he inquired why, infirm as she was, and apparently so fatigued, she should attempt to travel so difficult ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... front, built of brick and stone, with no pretensions to symmetry, seemed to be bending beneath the weight of a worm-eaten roof covered with the curved pantiles in common use in the South of France. The decrepit casements were fitted with the heavy, unwieldy shutters necessary in that climate, and held in place by massive iron cross bars. It would have puzzled you to find a more dilapidated house in Angouleme; nothing but sheer tenacity of mortar kept it together. Try to picture the workshop, lighted ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the narrowest part of the Rue du Four, at the far end of a decrepit, tumble-down building. Claude had to cross two evil-smelling courtyards to reach a third, across which ran a sort of big closed shed, a huge out-house of board and plaster work, which had once served ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... to know anything concerning the position of the enemy, and James Marks, a Rustenburg farmer, determined to go out of the laager and reconnoitre on his own responsibility. Marks was more than sixty-two years old, and was somewhat decrepit, a circumstance which did not prevent him from taking part in almost every one of the Natal battles, however. The old farmer had been absent from his laager less than an hour when he saw a small body of ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... of a Christmas Eve, gray with the portent of coming snow, crept slowly over the old plantation of Brierwood, softening the outlines of a decrepit house still rearing its roof in massive dignity and a tumbledown barn flanked by barren fields. A quiet melancholy hovered about the old house as if it brooded over a host of bygone Yuletides alive with the shouts of merry negroes and the ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... and some years after the horrible night during which Etienne came into the world, the Duc d'Herouville, then seventy-six years old, broken, decrepit, almost dead, was sitting at sunset in an immense arm-chair, before the gothic window of his bedroom, at the place where his wife had so vainly implored, by the sounds of the horn wasted on the air, the help of men and heaven. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... earlier stages of development, through which the more highly developed species had long since passed on the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark Twain and his friend, who, having ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of decadence. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts—they have ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... this street thousands of Spaniards, Hollanders, Venetians, and Jews, and a great many aged, decrepit people were also there. "Pray, sir," said I, "what kind of men are these?" "They have all gain in view," said he. "At the lowest extremity, on one side, you will still see the Pope; also subduers of kingdoms and their soldiers, oppressors, foresters, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... learned, as he himself informs us, just before he had attained his eighty-third year, that the great secret of philosophy was contentment with our lot. Happy would it have been for him if he had discovered it sooner, and before he became decrepit, a beggar, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... townsfolk used to envy them for that which Allah had vouchsafed them. As time went on, their fortune ceased from them and they passed away, till there remained of them but one old woman. When she grew feeble and decrepit, the townsfolk succoured her not with aught, but thrust her forth of the city, saying, "This old woman shall not neighbour with us, for that we do good to her and she requiteth us with evil."[FN366] So she took shelter in a ruined place and strangers used to bestow alms upon her, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... such universal lamentation in the city of London, was for many years a wanderer from God, and was at length converted by means of a tract, given him by the "way-side," by an old and decrepit woman. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... amusement before Tasso, Dante, and even the sages, Once pleasing, are pleasing no more. When I walk on the banks of the Mole, Or recline 'neath our favourite tree, As the needle is true to the pole, So my thoughts still concentre in thee. Old Time moves so slow, he appears, "With age quite decrepit," to crawl; And days seem now lengthen'd to years, Before we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... a mighty heart,' to depend for existence on the decaying strength or the decrepit courage of the Continent? Is she only to borrow the shattered armour which has hung up for ages in the halls of continental royalty, and encumber herself with its broken and rusty panoply for the ridicule ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... told me his name in the cab; he was Egbert Elvesham, the great philosopher, whose name I had known since I was a lad at school. It seemed incredible to me that this man, whose intelligence had so early dominated mine, this great abstraction, should suddenly realise itself as this decrepit, familiar figure. I daresay every young fellow who has suddenly fallen among celebrities has felt something of my disappointment. He told me now of the future that the feeble streams of his life would presently leave dry for me, houses, copyrights, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of the townsfolk, many of whom saw their sons or brothers marching off into exile without their being able to exchange a last word or embrace with them. Some of these poor folk, doddering old men and wrinkled, decrepit women, toiled for miles after us down the high-road, until the rearguard of foot faced round upon them, and drove them away with curses ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were soon set at rest. In the house, certainly, some changes were made; idlers and dependants met with summary dismissal; among them two old women were made to suffer, one blind, another broken down by paralysis; and also a decrepit major of the days of Catherine, who, on account of his really abnormal appetite, was fed on nothing but black bread and lentils. The order went forth not to admit the guests of former days; they were replaced by a distant neighbour, a certain fair-haired, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... a silent, plodding, sorrowful man, though a young one, to his poor home, after seeing laid in the grave his aged, decrepit father. The last rays of the setting sun were glorious, shooting through the folds of their pavilion of scarlet clouds; the last song of the thrush, chanted from the bough nearest to his nest, was gladdening; the abundant though but half-matured crops around breathed of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... not so sure of this. The settling of the handy-man's difficulties had been one of the few extravagances he had permitted himself. His glance now fell on the small occupant of the decrepit baby carriage, and he gave ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... In 1869 Messieurs Elder, Dempster, and Co., of Glasgow, started the B(ritish) and A(frican) to divide the spoils. The junior numbers nineteen keel, including two being built. It could easily 'eat up' the decrepit senior, which is now known as the A(frican) S(tarvation) S(teamers); but this process would produce serious competition. Both lines sail from Liverpool on alternate Saturdays, and make Funchal, with their normal ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... him upon my back, and having carried him over, bade him get down, and for that end stooped, that he might get off with ease; but instead of doing so (which I laugh at every time I think of it), the old man, who to me appeared quite decrepit, threw his legs nimbly about my neck. He sat astride upon my shoulders, and held my throat so tight that I thought he would have strangled me, and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Who or what they all are, and where they all sleep, is a profound mystery. The family tree is usually headed by a decrepit and ruminant old gentleman in a species of yachting-cap. He sits behind the stove—not exactly with one foot in the grave, but with both knees well up against the coffin—and occasionally offers a mumbled observation of which no one takes the slightest notice. Sometimes, too, there ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... of a deer and the intestinal organs were forbidden to vigorous young people. If a man ate neck meat his aim would be bad (360-368). Neck meat was reserved for children and the old. In actuality it would seem that only the children and the almost decrepit ate such meat. One of my informants who is seventy-five, thus certainly qualifying for old age, has never tasted either neck meat or internal organs. To do so apparently would be an admission of loss of vigour which no Washo oldster wishes to make. Menstruating women today ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... clock in the hall chimed seven as she found her way down the lower flight of front stairs. As she came through the curtain-hung halls and down the stairs, not a soul did she meet until she reached the front hall. There a rather decrepit-looking man, with a bleared eye, and dressed in decent black, hobbled out of a parlor to ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... by the name of a parlour, was a dingy, stuffy apartment of the true Dull Street type. The paper was faded and torn, the ceiling was discoloured, the furniture was decrepit, the carpet was threadbare, and the cheap engraving on the wall, with its title, "As Happy as a King," seemed to brood over the scene like some ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... dying and the captured in the sack of Aleppo awoke for a while the stern monitor within him. He protested to the cadhi his innocence of the blood which he had shed. "You see me here," he said, "a poor, lame, decrepit mortal; yet by my arm it has pleased the Almighty to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Touran, and Hindostan. I am not a man of blood; I call God to witness, that never, in all my wars, have I been the aggressor, but that my enemies ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... out his hand? In the society in which they both move there is but one way in which she can be his—the way sanctioned by society, blessed by the church. Society and the church will bless and smile upon any union: the decrepit old man with the blooming child; the drunkard and adulterer with the pure young girl; the avaricious youth with the doting old woman. Marriage purifies, sanctifies, hallows sensuality, greed, any, every base motive. To love as God made you free to love, unfettered, and ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... literally crammed with every sort of old furniture, most of it decrepit, though for many of the articles dealers would have given a good price. But at dealers Mr. Potts drew the line; not one of them had ever set a foot upon that oaken stair. To the attics the place was filled with this furniture ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not invited to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those nights were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve. We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and grew old and decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock-strikes. This was no place for town boys. So at last it was with something very like joy that we received news that the enemy were on our track again. With a new birth of the old warrior ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... times, as he came across certain places and people. It was as if he detected there the process of actual change to a wholly undreamed-of and renewed condition of human body and soul: as if he saw the heavy yet decrepit old Roman architecture about him, rebuilding on an intrinsically better pattern. Could it have been actually on a new musical instrument that Flavian had first heard the novel accents of his verse? And still Marius noticed there, amid all its richness of expression and imagery, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... traps were decrepit old dowagers wagging their feeble heads, wondering, perhaps, how much longer their millions would keep them alive. Sometimes their young heirs were with them, patient and placid. Others were pitifully alone. Several men were on horseback, riding in the agonized fashion of the day. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... in the course of the day to study the lie of the land and explore the garret in question, which was full of strings of onions, apples and pears left there to ripen with a swarm of wasps crawling over them, chests and old trunks. He had even noticed an old bed of sacking, decrepit and now disused, as far as he could see, and a palliasse, all ripped up and jumping ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... my Liedge your selfe must breake, For well you know here comes in Embassie The French Kings daughter, with your selfe to speake: A Maide of grace and compleate maiestie, About surrender vp of Aquitaine: To her decrepit, sicke, and bed-rid Father. Therefore this Article is made in vaine, Or vainly ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... beheld, Sir Priest, the fading footprints of adventurous Castile. Thou hast seen the declining glory of old Spain,—declining as yonder brilliant sun. The sceptre she hath wrested from the heathen is fast dropping from her decrepit and fleshless grasp. The children she hath fostered shall know her no longer. The soil she hath acquired shall be lost to her as irrevocably as she herself hath thrust the Moor ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... dispose of the fact that she had been born a Hewish and had lately visited at Halberton House. In that mild climate people remain alive, or, if you prefer it, asleep, longer than in any other part of England, and the visitors who came flocking to Lapton were, for the most part, in a stage of decrepit or suspended life. They drove through the steep and narrow lanes in all sorts of ancient vehicles, in jingles, victorias, barouches and enormous family drags. Their coachmen, older and more withered than themselves, wore mid-Victorian whiskers, and shiny cockades ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of death, wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valor of ancient martyrs, who contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their decrepit martyrdoms did probably lose not many months of their days, or parted with life when it was scarce worth the living; for (beside that long time past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come) they had no small disadvantage ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and there I had the pleasure of recognizing the constantly recurring fact, that beneficent humanity is of all countries and religions. The Casa di Ricovero is an immense edifice dedicated to the shelter and support of the decrepit and helpless of either sex, who are collected there to the number of five hundred. The more modern quarter was erected from a bequest by Soldini; and eternal provision is also made by his will for ninety of the inmates. The Secretary of the Casa went through ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... instance, which rise in the rear of Cap Haytien. The aspect of the higher hills in the interior might mislead an etymologist to derive the word morne from the French adjective which means gloomy, they are so marked by the ravages of the hurricane and earthquake, so ploughed up into decrepit features by the rains, the pitiless vertical heat, the fires, and the landslides. The soft rock cannot preserve its outlines beneath all these influences; its thin covering of soil is carried off to make the river-silt, and then it crumbles away beneath the weather. Great ruts are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... To see an old, decrepit beggar, is a sign of bad management, and unless you are economical, you will lose much property. Scandalous reports will prove detrimental ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... who are by accident more degraded physically. Mutatis mutandis, there are none more degraded, morally and intellectually, than those whose minds are constantly bent upon marriage at any cost, and with anybody, however decrepit, however silly, and however evil, who can ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... with a simple inscription. The lot was fenced around with a hawthorn hedge, and here and there a rose bush grew luxuriantly. There was room for himself and for the old grandmother who was now terribly decrepit, so that she was unable to take any care of the house, and Patrick Marsh had consented to let his little shanty and come, with good Molly his wife, to look after the lad's comfort, for they had no child, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... passed away, but the little thatched cottage is still there, with the garden full of lavender bushes and sweet-smelling flowers. From the glass door of the corner cupboard the Fozzy-gog and his companion look out upon the world with the same inscrutable expression; and 'Zekiel himself, old and decrepit, but still cheerful, may at this moment be sitting in the cottage porch, watching his little grandchildren play about the cobblestone pathway, or talking over old times with Eli and Hercules Colfox, who, hobbling in for a chat, take a pull at their long ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... were all ambitious. There was Pango Pete, a nigger six foot tall, who couldn't write his name, but he was a seaman from his feet up; and a Dago named Pedro Pasqualai. These two were the kind that will choke you before they ask the time of night. Then there was Sullivan, old man Sullivan, a decrepit old codger who had sailed second mate all his life, and never got a first mate's berth because he couldn't master navigation. And there was Peters, a young fellow filled up with the romance and the glory of the life at sea—rot, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... for adding dignity to the country parish. Too often at present the rural parish is regarded either as a convenient laboratory for the clerical novice, or as an asylum for the decrepit or inefficient. The country parish must be a parish for our ablest and strongest. The ministry of the most Christlike must be to the hill-towns of Galilee ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... Fe, New Mexico, was an undergrown, decrepit, out-at-elbows ancient hidalgo of a town, with not a scintillation of prosperity or grandeur about it, except ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... for her out of an old packing case in those early days before London had taken the life out of him. Then, suddenly, the light upstairs was extinguished, and a few minutes later a short, stout man in a seedy frock coat and decrepit silk hat came down the steps, and ordered ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... consecrated it as home; and after many little feet had worn paths to favorite fruit trees, and over its green hills, and mingled at last with brother man in the race which belongs neither to the swift or strong, the sire became grey-haired and decrepit, and went to his last repose. His aged consort soon followed him. The old homestead thus passed into the hands of a son, to whose wife Mag had applied the epithet "she-devil," as may be remembered. John, the son, had not in his family ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... of exile and confinement. The Roman pontiff purchased his return by some criminal compliances; and afterwards expiated his guilt by a seasonable repentance. Persuasion and violence were employed to extort the reluctant signature of the decrepit bishop of Cordova, whose strength was broken, and whose faculties were perhaps impaired by the weight of a hundred years; and the insolent triumph of the Arians provoked some of the orthodox party to treat with inhuman severity the character, or rather the memory, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... advantage with true buffalo skill, and in a very short time his enemy was in the dust and panting out his life. The fight once over, the herd moved on, leaving the dying buffalo by himself, for, in animal life, the old, sick or decrepit, are ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... all well-disposed Christians. The "long-remembered beggar," who for twenty years had made his regular rounds within the neighbourhood, received rather as an humble friend than as an object of charity, was sent to the neighbouring workhouse. The decrepit dame, who travelled round the parish upon a hand-barrow, circulating from house to house like a bad shilling, which every one is in haste to pass to his neighbour; she, who used to call for her bearers as loud, or louder, than a traveller ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... to know what had occurred. But our travellers heeded them not. At the first corner they separated, and one of them made his way rapidly up into the town, while the other hastened along a dark and narrow lane parallel with the quay, and stopped at last before a tall, decrepit house, whose plaster, black with age, was flaking from its walls. On the door-step sat a girl of eighteen or twenty, a dark shawl about her head, from whose shadow her face peered, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson |
