"Miry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a miserable horse, lean and lank, which he had picked out for the purpose, and himself and his servant no better mounted; they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and ever when this horse of Katharine's stumbled, he would storm and swear at the poor jaded beast, who could scarce crawl under his burthen, as if he had been the most ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... was dying down. Dawn was breaking and Sim's wild eyes cleared. Here a press of cattle, dazed with fright, and the red and miry heather. Queer black things were curled and stretched athwart it. He noticed a dead man beside him, perhaps of his own slaying. It was a shabby fellow, in a jacket that gaped like Sim's. His face was thin and patient, and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... of the sea breaking upon the shoals, rocks and reefs, with which the coast is beset. There is also the Bear's Island and others, separated from Long Island by creeks and marshes overflown at high water.[111] There are also on this sea coast various miry places, like the Vlaeck, and others as well as some sand bays and hard and rocky shores. Long Island stretches into the sea for the most part east by south and east-southeast. None of its land is very high, for you must be nearly opposite Sandy Hook before you can see it. There is a hill or ridge ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... further side of the causeway, and in the confusion the commander fell into the deep dyke at the side. Agonized at the sight, the French rallied, while Marmont and Louis Bonaparte rescued their beloved chief from capture or from a miry death, and he retired to Ronco, soon followed by the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... for herself that they could not have broken out of that pasture, and that the river bank was impassable, because of high, thick bushes and miry mud in the open spaces. She had a fight with Blue over these latter places and demonstrated beyond doubt that they were miry, by getting him in to the knees in spite of his violent objections. They left deep tracks behind ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... refuse of pride or stoutness, or because we scorn you as men. No, we pity you, and pray to God for you; and could, if you were converted, with joy receive you to fellowship with us: Did you never read in Daniel, That iron is not mixed with miry clay? (2:43). No more can the saints with you, in the worship of God, and fellowship of the gospel, When those you read of in the fourth of Ezra, attempted to join in temple work with the children of the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... he sold the saddle—said he wasn't going to risk HIS life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe—always HAD despised to ride on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the other scale—that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Hence, before his volumes are put within the reach ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... than once, after the first tumbler of toddy and before the second, betaken himself to his prayers for his poor Alec Forbes, and entreated God Almighty to do for him what he could not do, though he would die for him—to rescue him from the fearful pit and the miry clay of moral pollution—if he had heard this, he would have said that it was a sad pity, but such prayers could not be answered, seeing he that prayed was himself in the gall of bitterness and the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... over that neck somewhat east, making but slow way because the ground was so broken and rocky; and in another hour's space Sure-foot led down-hill due east to where the stony neck sank into another desolate miry heath still falling toward the east, but whose further side was walled by a rampart of crags cleft at their tops into marvellous-shapes, coal-black, ungrassed and unmossed. Thitherward the hound led straight, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... what its quality formerly was, and still is? Follow me, and you shall see. They are those concerning whom Daniel thus prophesied: 'A kingdom shall arise after those four in which iron shall be mixed with miry clay: they shall mingle themselves together by the seed of man: but they shall not cohere one with the other, as iron is not mixed with clay, Dan. ii. 41-43:'" and he said, "By the seed of man, whereby iron shall be mixed with clay, and still ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Colonial Treasury came out to the line of the street. But Captain Whalley, who had now no ship and no home, remembered in passing that on that very site when he first came out from England there had stood a fishing village, a few mat huts erected on piles between a muddy tidal creek and a miry pathway that went writhing into a tangled wilderness ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... dog-cart and rattled away into the darkness, while somewhat to my surprise Robert the Devil, or Devilish Bob, as those who had the care of him called the bay horse, played no antics on the outward journey, which was safely accomplished. So leaving him at the venerable "Swan," I hurried through the miry streets toward the church. They were thronged with pale-faced men and women who had sweated out their vigor in the glare of red furnace, dye-shop, and humming mill, but there was no lack of enthusiasm. I do not ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... slipped from its insecure support into the miry mud, and Frank, instead of landing on the hummock for which he had aimed, lost his direction, and soused flat on his side with a loud "spa-lash," in the water and mud three ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... even to the beginning of the present civil war, and perhaps to this very moment,—there lingered in Richmond a memorial of those days, most peculiar and most instructive. Before the days of Secession, when the Northern traveller in Virginia, after traversing for weary leagues its miry ways, its desolate fields, and its flowery forests, rode at last into its metropolis,—now slowly expanded into a city of twenty-eight thousand inhabitants,—he was sure to be guided erelong to visit its stately Capitol, modelled by Jefferson, when French minister, from the Maison Carre. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... view, as one appraises the pattern of an unrolled carpet, every action of Jurgen's life: and she seemed, too, to wonder, without reproach or trouble, how men could be so foolish, and of their own accord become so miry. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the soft, miry road. The one wheel seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the clay, and the others showed a ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... her person, and of purity in her mind and manners, did she know what miry wallowers the generality of men of our class are in themselves, and constantly trough and sty with, but would detest the thoughts of associating with such filthy sensualists, whose favourite taste carries them to mingle with the dregs of ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... interrogating the presences that haunt the place. For a man who does this, his memory is not like a land where he loves to linger upon the sunlit ridges of happy recollection, but a land where in reflection he threads in backward thought the dark vale, the miry road, the craggy rift up which he painfully climbed; the optimism that hurries with averted glance past the shadow is as false as the pessimism that hurries timidly across the bright and flowery meadow. The more we realise the immutability of our lot, the more grateful we become ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the field of battle, the retreating monkeys, O king, one and all quickly rallied. Then mighty and great and fearful was the uproar that arose there in consequence of the warriors of Rama and Ravana rushing against each other. And in that battle which raged terribly the field soon became miry with blood. And Dhumraksha afflicted the monkey-host with volleys of winged shafts. Then that vanquisher of foes, Hanuman, the son of Pavana, quickly seized that advancing leader of the Rakshasa. And the encounter that took place ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... it became necessary to transport guns from Philadelphia. A prize, taken from the enemy, put some fit and excellent pieces at the disposal of the Navy Department. To avoid the danger of capture by the enemy's cruisers, these were carted over the miry roads of New Jersey. Twenty heavy cannon were thus conveyed by the strength of horses. Carriages of the most approved model were constructed, and every thing done to bring her into prompt action, as an ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like, into miry wilds whence there ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... herd of those creatures, basking along the miry edge of the river, helped his illustration. "Mr Marston, you have not been for the last month on the staff of the commander-in-chief of the allied armies, or you would not look so incredulous. Sir, man's senses may be as suitable for his purposes, as those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... had fallen; and the water stood about in what it is easier to call large puddles than anything so poetic as small pools. A motor car sent by friends had halted beside the platform; I got into it with a not unusual vagueness about where I was going; and it wound its way up miry paths to a more rolling stretch of country with patches of cactus here and there. And then with a curious abruptness I became conscious that the whole huge desert had vanished, and I was in a new land. The dark red plains ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... further slope by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp—a chaos of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... yet more strongly. The night had been rainy, and just where the young gentleman stood a small quantity of mud interrupted the Queen's passage. As she hesitated to pass on, the gallant, throwing his cloak from his shoulders, laid it on the miry spot, so as to ensure her stepping over it dry-shod. Elizabeth looked at the young man, who accompanied this act of devoted courtesy with a profound reverence, and a blush that overspread his whole countenance. The Queen was confused, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... with scalps, scalps of men with trunks, trunks of men with thighs, thighs of men with knees, knees of men with calves, calves of men with feet, feet of men with toes, toes of men with nails,[2] so that [3]heads of men over shields[3] would be as numerous [4]with me[4] as bits of ice [5]on the miry stamping-ground[5] [6]between two dry fields[6] that a king's horses would course on. Every limb of the Ulstermen [7]would I send flying through the air[7] before and behind me this day [8]like the flitting of bees on a day of fine weather,[8] ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... cluck to the horses, while several passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily over the miry road. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... word was uttered as they followed their guide. Mrs Franklin lifted up her heart in silent praise for their preservation, and in prayer for present direction. Backward and forward swayed the lantern, just revealing snatches of hedge and miry path. At last the deep barking of a dog told that they were not far off from a dwelling: the next minute Mr Tankardew exclaimed, "Here we are;" and the light showed them that they were come to a little gate ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... waggons. This decided my adopting the least of the two evils, although I fully expected we should have a battle. After penetrating for I should think upwards of two miles, sometimes up to our knees in miry clay, and often stopped by impassable barriers of wild vines and other prehensile plants, which annoyed us greatly, and made me regret a thousand times that I had courted such dangers and inconveniences, the sound of two rifle-shots threw the whole ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... advancing, were within seventy miles of London. Though midwinter was approaching, the weather was fine; the way was pleasant; and the turf of Salisbury Plain seemed luxuriously smooth to men who had been toiling through the miry ruts of the Devonshire and Somersetshire highways. The route of the army lay close by Stonehenge; and regiment after regiment halted to examine that mysterious ruin, celebrated all over the Continent as the greatest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that very instant, too, there sprang from Lord Farquhart's window a figure strangely resembling Lord Farquhart himself, decked out in Lord Farquhart's riding clothes, that had been cast aside after the miry ride from London town, and tucked away in one corner of Lord Farquhart's room were the dark riding coat and breeches of the youth who had slumbered before the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... look back on the long way that Thou hast brought us, on the long days in which we have been served not according to our deserts but our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from which our feet have been plucked out. For our sins forgiven or prevented, for our shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, O God. Help us yet again and ever. So order events, so strengthen our ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... privately, to my tent; and desired him to relate some of the particulars of his journey to the French commandant, and of his reception there; also, to give me an account of the ways and distance. He told me, that the nearest and levelest way was now impassable, by reason of many large miry savannas; that we must be obliged to go by Venango, and should not get to the near fort in less than five or six nights sleep, good travelling. When he went to the fort, he said he was received in a very stern manner by the late commander, who asked him ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... than most," snarled Kemp, "but mostly lies! And why does he forget the miry lanes By Brainford with thick woods on either side, And the deep holes, where I could find no ease But skipped up to my waist?" A crackling laugh Broke from his lips which, if he had not worn The cap and bells, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Pocasset Neck, was Philip once driven with a band of his followers. The English did not dare to pursue him, fearing to venture into these dark and frightful recesses, where they might perish in fens and miry pits or be shot down by lurking foes. They therefore invested the entrance to the Neck, and began to build a fort with the thought of starving out the foe; but Philip and his warriors wafted themselves on a raft ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... but, as the men who defended it raised loud cries for help, they reached the ears of Hernando Pizarro, who, with a small body of horse, had effected a landing some way farther down the shore. A broad tract of miry ground, overflowed at high water, lay between him and the party thus rudely assailed by the natives. The tide was out, and the bottom was soft and dangerous. With little regard to the danger, however, the bold cavalier spurred his horse into the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... feats this single week Wad mak a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart out ow'r a dike, My horses in a miry, O! I wear my stockings white an' blue, My love's sae fierce an' fiery, O! I drill the land that I should pleugh, An' pleugh the drills entirely, O! O, love, love, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... men in the van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod and gain the honour? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenants, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, bemired,—before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step-over them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... part of the mill-pond where their boat lay was tramped into a quagmire. The boys were wont to fish there at high water, and so many feet treading on the spot reduced it to a very soft condition. It was over this miry marsh that they proposed to build a wharf. The evening was soon there, and the boys, too, upon their rogues' errand. They surveyed the pile of stones, and found it ample for their purpose, though it appeared to be a formidable piece of ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... and recognizing its clear-sightedness, Cesar tumbled from the heights of hope into the miry marshes of doubt and uncertainty. In such horrible commercial straits a man, unless his soul is tempered like that of Pillerault, becomes the plaything of events; he follows the ideas of others, or his own, as a traveller pursues a will-o'-the-wisp. He ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... when the clouds were miles deep in front of the sun, when the rain was falling thick on the yellow leaves, and all the paths were miry, the two children sat by the kitchen fire. Sarah was cooking their mid-day meal, which had come from her own pocket. She was the only servant either of them had known in the house, and she would not leave it until some one should take charge of them. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... The pitiless wind sweeping through the land from the bleak northern steppes brought cold and desolation in its train. The poor children were drenched to the skin. They clung to each other and painfully made their way across the miry fields to the highway, the ancient road ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... the Egyptians also with the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. The former made the soil miry, and the mire was heated to the boiling point by the latter, so that the hoofs of the horses dropped from their feet, and they could not budge from the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... fallen during the night, and the plowed land over which the French must cross was so wet and miry that their heavily armed horsemen sank deep at every step. The English bowmen, on the other hand, being on foot, could move with ease. Henry ordered every archer to drive a stake, sharpened at both ends, into the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... him and all his Indians, and, having cut his body into pieces, left it for the wild beasts to eat. Upon another occasion Father Mendoza fell into an ambuscade, from which he might have escaped had not his horse sunk in a miry stream. Long he defended himself with an Indian shield, but at length was stretched upon the ground and left for dead. During the night he revived, and dragged himself up to some rocks; but the Indians in the morning, following up his trail, came on him praying in a loud voice. They ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... miry mess Piggy long struggled about, Unable to rise; but at last he got out, And crept to a field where fine cabbages grew: "I'm hungry," said he, "I'll indulge in a few." When, just as his snout had a nice plant uptorn, ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... his poetic moments, as in the picture of Cupid self-disarmed before the industrious serenity of the Muses. A single lovely image, like Sterne's figure of the recording angel, reconciles us to many a miry page. But in Jacques le Fataliste, Diderot never raises his eye for an instant to the blue aether, his ear catches no harmony of awe, of hope, nor even of a noble despair. With a kind of clumsy jubilancy he holds us fast in the ways ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... comrade and I find ourselves nearing the once famous city of Samarcand, and getting forward much more easily now that the plain is fairly reached at last. But what we gain in comfort we lose in picturesqueness. For several miles our course lies through the wet, miry level of the rice fields, and we leave them only to emerge upon a wide waste of bare gravel, amid which the once formidable current of the "gold-giving Zer-Affshan" has shrunk to a single narrow channel, the only fine feature of the landscape being ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... countenances. "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Listen, they are singing; it is the fortieth Psalm: "He took me from the fearful pit and from the miry clay." What pathos they throw into the words, what joy overspreads their faces! They know themselves to be monuments of free ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is, The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er mair ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the sultry arc of day The burning wheels have urged their way; And eve along the western skies Sheds her intermingling dyes. Down the deep, the miry lane, Creaking comes the empty wain, And driver on the shaft-horse sits, Whistling now and then by fits: And oft, with his accustom'd call, Urging on the sluggish Ball. The barn is still, the master's gone, And thresher ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... ditches, and almost rendered completely dark by lofty hedges on each side of them, the trees of which meet at top, and thus form an arch: hence they are rough and uneven in summer, besides being intolerably hot, and deep and miry in winter. To add to these inconveniences, the bed of a rivulet flowing along them frequently constitutes the only passage. Even when the traveller, after toiling along these dreadful pathways, comes near a town or village, he generally ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... what I had done on that day long ago. I had half slid on a miry descent; it was still there; a little lower I had knocked off the top of a thistle; the thistles had not been discouraged, but were still growing. I recalled it because I had wondered why one knocks off the tops of thistles; and then I had thought of Tarquin; and ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... natural it was to get out! And how unnatural it seemed for a sober man to be plodding wearily along through miry roads, encountering the rude buffets of the wind and pelting of the rain, when there was a clean floor covered with crisp white sand, a well swept hearth, a blazing fire, a table decorated with white cloth, bright pewter flagons, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;[1] The short'ning winter-day is near a close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose: The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes— This night his weekly moil is at an end,— Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn[2] in ease and rest to ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... des fins. Think of how he tempers our afflictions to us, of how tenderly he mixes in bright joys with the grey web of trouble and care that we call our life. Think of how he gives, who takes away. Out of the bottom of the miry clay I write this; and I look forward confidently; I have faith after all; I believe, I hope, I will not have it reft from me; there is something good behind it all, bitter and terrible as it seems. The infinite majesty (as it will be always in regard to us the bubbles of an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon the long road to Whisper Cove. But the rough road, and the sweep of the wind, and the steep ascents, and the dripping limbs, and the forsaken places lying hid in the dark, and the mud and torrents, and the knee-deep, miry puddles seemed not to be perceived by him as he stumbled after me. He was praying aloud—importunately, as it is written. He would save the soul of Elizabeth, that man; the faith, the determination were within him. 'Twas fair pitiful the way he besought the Lord. And he made haste; ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... oozing between the pavements, splashing carriage panels, horses' breasts, the clothing of the passers-by, soiling windows, thresholds, shop-fronts, until one would think that all Paris was about to plunge in and disappear beneath that depressing expanse of miry earth in which all things are jumbled together and lose their identity. And it is a pitiable thing to see how that filth invades the spotless precincts of new houses, the copings of the quays, the colonnades of stone balconies. There is some one, however, whom this spectacle ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgelling. It was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with a freight through miry lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnised and rueful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Moscow it was necessary to cross the camp, or rather the several camps, of the army; and we wended our way over cold and miry ground, through fields where all was devastation and ruin. This camp presented a most singular aspect; and I experienced feelings of bitter melancholy as I saw our soldiers compelled to bivouac at the gates of a large and beautiful city ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... meet them. Our generals had, however, all the day before them to choose their ground, and to make their dispositions. It would have been difficult to succeed worse, both with the one and the other. A brook, by no means of a miry kind, ran parallel to our army; and in front of it a spring, which formed a long and large quagmire, nearly separated the two lines of Marshal Tallard. It was a strange situation for a general to take up, who is master of a vast plain; and it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... one into another, as into basins, and there are immense bulks of ever-flowing rivers under the earth, both of hot and cold water, and a great quantity of fire, and mighty rivers of fire, and many of liquid mire, some purer, and some more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of them. But ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... barked and Spot ne'er whined But quickly caught the thief behind; He dragged him down in the mire and dirt, And tore his coat and tore his shirt, Then held him fast on the miry ground; The robber uttered not a sound, While his hands and feet the farmer bound, And tumbled him ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... Gentle Lavinia, let me kiss thy lips; Or make some sign how I may do thee ease: Shall thy good uncle, and thy brother Lucius, And thou, and I, sit round about some fountain, Looking all downwards, to behold our cheeks How they are stain'd, like meadows yet not dry, With miry slime left on them by a flood? And in the fountain shall we gaze so long, Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness, And made a brine-pit with our bitter tears? Or shall we cut away our hands like thine? Or shall we ...
— The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... stand on the river bank without shelter in a heavy storm of rain. There was no sign of abatement; therefore Nagendra, thinking it necessary to seek for shelter, set out to walk to the village, which was at some distance from the river, through miry paths. Presently the rain ceased, the wind abated slightly, but the sky was still thickly covered with clouds; therefore both wind and rain might be expected at night. Nagendra ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... greatness, take your stand some winter's morning just before nine o'clock, where you can overlook a circle of some two or three miles' radius, the center being the Old Red School-house. You will see little figures picking their way along the miry roads, or ploughing through the deep drifts, cutting across the fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus and his cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in a thick ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... uttered this petition than she thought she heard a voice, and these were its words: "Say, 'O Lord, pluck me out of the fiery brands, and take my feet out of the miry pit, and make me stand on the everlasting rock; and, O Lord, save my soul.'" Tidy had heard a great many of her people tell about dreams and visions and voices, but she had never before had any such experiences. But this came to her with a reality she could not doubt or resist. ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... Marshes of St. Gond." General von Buelow's army was stretched in an arc around the marshes, which, it will be remembered, have been described as a pocket of clay, low-lying lands mainly reclaimed, but which become miry during heavy rains. It was General von Buelow's misfortune, that, on the very night that his flank was exposed, there should come a torrential downpour. These same marshes had figured more than once before in France's military ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... buzzing drone. For, what great, black horse is this which, despite Carnaby's flailing whip and cruel, rowelling spur, is slowly, surely creeping up with the laboring gray? Who is this, a wild, bare-headed figure, grim and bloody, stained with mud, rent and torn, upon whose miry coat yet hangs a ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... wicket-gate, they fall into a 'miry slough.' Who does not know the miry slough too? When a man begins for the first time to think seriously about himself, the first thing that rises before him is a consciousness of his miserable past life. Amendment seems to be desperate. He thinks it is too ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... spirit from the Lord troubled him.' The divine influence which came on the towering head of the son of Kish, through the anointing oil that Samuel poured upon his raven hair, left him, and he stood God-forsaken because he stood God-forsaking. And so David looks back from the 'horrible pit and miry clay' into which he had fallen, where, stained with blood and lust, he lies, to that sad gigantic figure, remembered so well and loved by him so truly—the great king who sinned away his soul, and bled out his life on the heights of Gilboa. He sees in that blasted pine-tree, towering ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... resistance, Richard, purple with wrath, advanced to seize the boy. But Desmond, nimbly evading his clutch, slipped his foot within his brother's, and with a dexterous movement tripped him up, so that he fell sprawling, with many an oath, on the miry road. Before he could regain his feet, Desmond had vaulted the hedge and set off at a run towards home. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... people is not losing, but gaining in their sympathies and help. This trying year—trying to so many, therefore trying to us—brings a jubilee thanksgiving to us, in that we are not sinking deeper into the horrible pit and miry clay of debt, but are little by little being pulled out of the slough. We know not how long the pull may be, but if those who love the Lord Jesus Christ will pull all together we shall not fail, and we need not be discouraged. Our feet will get upon a rock and our goings ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... comes, Raleigh removes his hat and stands close to Queen as she approaches with her court. She hesitates to pass miry spot. Raleigh takes coat from shoulder and lays it on the ground. Queen looks at ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng
... dungeon in the prison, the only access to which was from above. Prisoners were let down into it with ropes, and left there to die of hunger. The bottom of it was wet and miry, and the prophet, when let down into its gloomy depths, sank into the deep mire. Here he would soon have died of hunger and misery; but the king, feeling some misgivings in regard to what he had done, lest it ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... its own interests better than it has those of God? I doubt it. The deputation of Rome was Red in 1848. It was Rome that chose Mazzini. It is Rome that still regrets him in the low haunts of the Regola, on that miry bank of the Tiber, where secret societies swarm at this moment, like gnats on the shores of ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... end of the new line and found a crowd of men distributing piles of gravel and spiking down the rails which ran back, gleaming in the sunset, lurid, straight and level, across the expanse of grass, until they were lost in the shadowy mass of a bluff. Near the men stood a few jaded teams and miry wagons; farther on a row of freight-cars occupied a side-track, a little smoke rising from the stacks on the roofs of one or two. Their doors were open, and on passing, Hardie noticed the dirty blue blankets and the litter of wet clothing in the rude bunks. As ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... wide; Or like a heel-piece, to support A cripple with one foot too short; Or like a bridge, that joins a marish To moorlands of a different parish. So have I seen ill-coupled hounds Drag different ways in miry grounds. So geographers, in Afric maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns. But, though you miss your third essay, You need not throw your pen away. Lay now aside all thoughts of fame, To spring more ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... mind-shattering craving. In many and unpredictable ways did the drug ravish their bodies. They were outcasts from the port of outcasts, driven out of Porno into the wilderness, where they tracked out their miry ways searching ever for the isuan weed until some animal ended their enslavement, or the drug itself finally killed them in convulsions. They were ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... appears equally often as a hound, setter, terrier, shepherd dog, Newfoundland and retriever. In Lancashire it is called the "Trash" or "Striker"; Trash, because the sound of its tread is thought to resemble a person walking along a miry, sloppy road, with heavy shoes; Striker, because it is said to utter a curious screech which may be taken as a warning of the approaching death of some relative or friend. When followed the phantom retreats, glaring at its pursuer, and either sinks into the ground with a harrowing shriek, or disappears ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... hoped for a longer interview. "Stop as you come back, won't you?" she asked. "I'm goin' to pick you some of the handsomest poppies I ever raised. I got the seed from my sister-in-law's cousin, she that was 'Miry Gregg, and they do beat everything. They wilt so that it ain't no use to pick 'em now, unless you was calc'latin' to come home by the other road. There's nobody sick about here, is there?" to which ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... paddles, the river-bends as graceful as ever, but with fewer rapids. At every turn we came upon luxuriant hay meadows, with generally heavy woods opposite them, the river showing the same easy and accessible shore, whilst now and then giant hoof-prints, a broken marge, and miry grass showed where a moose had recently sprawled up the bank. Nothing, indeed, could surpass the rich colour-tone of this delightful stream—an exquisite opaqueness even under the clouds; but, interfused with ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... who wore bearskins in the burning tropics And marched bareheaded through the snows of Russia, Who trotted casually from Spain to Austria? Us who, to free our travel-weary legs, Like carrots from the slough of miry roads, Often with both hands had to lug them out? Us, who, not having jujubes for our coughs, Took day-long foot-baths in the freezing Danube? Who just had leisure when some officer Came riding up, and gayly cried "To arms! The enemy is on us! Drive him back!" ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... walked rapidly westward through the miry streets, he was revolving the situation rapidly in his mind, and at last he reached a conclusion which he muttered ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... population of loungers and plunderers, a solitary outpost of civilisation in a region of barbarians. Though the buildings covered but a small part of the space over which they now extend; though the arrival of a brig in the port was a rare event; though the Exchange was the middle of a miry street, in which stood a market cross much resembling a broken milestone; though the sittings of the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall; though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Pierre," exclaimed Amelie, sparkling at the reminiscence; "I recollect how I wept and wrung my hands, tired out, hungry, and forlorn, with my dress in tatters, and one shoe left in a miry place! I recollect, moreover, that my protectors were in almost as bad a plight as myself, yet they chivalrously carried the little maiden by turns, or together made a queen's chair for me with their locked hands, until we all broke down together and sat crying at the foot of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... now best known as the savage puma of more southern zones. But a hundred years ago it abounded throughout the Western wilderness, making its deeper dens in the caverns of mountain rocks, its lair in the impenetrable thickets of bramble and brakes of cane, or close to miry swamps and watery everglades; and no other region was so loved by it as the vast game park of the Indians, where reined a semi-tropical splendour and luxuriance of vegetation and where, protected from time immemorial by the Indian hunters themselves, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... this Adonais cared little. In vain they showed him the craggy path which traversed the hill of Fame; in vain they set him in the foul and miry roads which led to the temple of Mammon. He bowed before their solemn wisdom, but there was a lurking mischief in his glance as he pointed to his slender limbs, and feigned a shudder of disgust at the very ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the nunnery is now used by the inhabitants as a kind of general cow-house, and the bottom is consequently too miry for examination. Some of the stones which covered the later abbesses have inscriptions, which might yet be read, if the chapel were cleansed. The roof of this, as of all the other buildings, is totally destroyed, not only because timber ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... groves of cottonwood timber. At the distance of six miles, we reached on the north a hunting camp of Minnetarees consisting of thirty lodges, and built in the usual form of earth and timber. Two miles and a quarter farther, comes in on the same side Miry creek, a small stream about ten yards wide, which, rising in some lakes near the Mouse river, passes through beautiful level fertile plains without timber in a direction nearly southwest; the banks near its entrance being steep, and rugged on both sides of the Missouri. Three miles above ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... stream is driving, To the skies 'tis quickly sped, Now the wounded monster diving, Roaring seeks his miry bed. Fridthjof's giant strength then casteth Lances at the goblins bold, One in Ice-bear's bosom fasteneth, ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... a hopefulness of belief in human nature that he shrinks from no man, however clothed and cloaked in evil, however miry with stumblings and fallings. I am a man, he might say with the noblest utterance of antiquity, and I deem nothing alien that is human. His investigations of evil are profoundly consistent with an indomitable optimism. Any one can say ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... river west, and Embarras and Raccoon through it. An equal proportion of timber and prairie, some excellent, other parts inferior,—and some bad, miry swamps, called "purgatories." ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... the descent of Snowhill, we passed by the miry pens of Smithfield; we travel through the street of St. John, and presently reach the ancient gateway, in Cistercian Square, where lies the old Hospital of Grey Friars. I passed through the gate, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... up and swathed about the throat against the northwest wind; and we carried but one inside passenger, though he snored enough for six. You could hear him above the chink of the swingle-bars and the drumming of our horses' hoofs on the miry road. What this inside fare was like I had no means of telling; for when the corporal and I overtook the coach at Torpoint Ferry he was already seated, and being served through the door with hot kidney pasty and hot brandy-and-water. He had travelled down from London—so I learned from the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stoppin' for," do you say, 'Miry? 'Cause that's all. You needn't make sech a fuss, child'en. It's done, this story is, I tell ye. Leastways I don't know any more on it. I told you all about them two horses, and which had a good time and which didn't, and what ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... become miry and foul because it has not been properly cared for; but my text says the unclean shall not walk on this one. Room on either side to throw away your sins. Indeed, if you want to carry them along, you are not on the right road. That bridge will break, those overhanging rocks will fall, the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... of my purpose yestereve, I made it my hard duty to carry the evil tidings to the old baron, and humbly to remind him of his promise to take care for Herdegen's ransom. It was raining heavily, and a wet west wind whistled along the miry streets. It was weariful to wade through them, and when at last I reached the Im Hoff house Master Ulsenius called to me down the stairs: "Silence, Mistress Margery; there is worse weather in here ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... large with my revenge, but I was not happy. While I was fathoming the miry depths of life, I only recognized the more keenly at all times the happiness of reciprocal affection; it was a shadow that I followed through all that befell me in my extravagance, and in my wildest moments. It was my misfortune ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... was excessively rainy; and, though the enemy gave us some alarms during the night, I can testify that no proper watch was kept, owing to the inclemency of the weather, as my post was not visited either by rounds or corporal. From Coatitlan, we continued our march by a deep miry road, through four or five other towns, all abandoned, and arrived in two days at Aculman or Oculman, in the territory of Tezcuco, where we received the pleasing intelligence that a reinforcement had arrived to us from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... was not long before the Countess succeeded in bringing the two men together. The way had indeed been paved. If Lassalle's idealism had survived the experience of the Hatzfeldt law-suits, if he had yet to learn that the Fighter cannot pick his steps as cleanly and logically as the Thinker, those miry law-suits, waged unscrupulously on both sides, had prepared him to learn the lesson readily and to apply it unflinchingly. Without Force behind one, victory must be sought more circuitously. But to a man who represents ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... about half-past nine when she reached the wet and miry street. A fine rain drove into her face, and she had rather more than a mile to walk without an escort, but that was a matter which caused her no concern. She was a self-reliant young woman, and accustomed to going about unattended, while she was also quite aware that the scene ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... David waited. He did not try to force matters. Whenever God was ready—that was David's time. In one of his great psalms, he wrote: "I waited patiently for the Lord, and he heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes. His body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of this ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the Lane "received the name of Chancellor's Lane in the time of Edward I. The way was so foul and miry that John le Breton, Custos of London, and the Bishop of Chichester, kept bars with staples across it to prevent carts from passing. The roadway was repaired in the reign of Edward III., and acquired its present name under his ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... sullen, so heavy. It was narrow, and at points curiously black in tone. There was none of the freshness, the rushing, tumultuous flow of a mountain torrent about it here. Its banks were marshy with a wide spread of oozy soil, and miry reeds grew in abundance. The trail cut well away from the bed of the creek, mounting the higher land where the soil, in curious contrast, was sandy, and the surface deep in a silvery dust. To an observer the curiosity of the contrast must have been striking, but ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and is an American citizen, they had cheerfully marched through heavy mire. So much had they given to so small a demand on their natural sentiment, he could not doubt they would with equal alacrity, and with the same firm step, march over a field miry with the blood of comrade and of foe, where opposing causes make ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... made the first find, two discouraged little porkers, hopelessly mired and grunting feebly when disturbed. They had no trouble in catching these, but holding their wet, miry little bodies was a different matter. They were slippery as eels. Chicken Little and Katy, who each had one, ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... appearance from the rest, it is dangerous to cross. My father pointed out a dim outline on the horizon, and told me it was Swaylone's Island. Men sometimes go there, but none ever return. In the evening of the same day we found Broodviol standing in a deep, miry pit in the forest, surrounded on all sides by trees three hundred feet high. He was a big gnarled, rugged, wrinkled, sturdy old man. His age at that time was a hundred and twenty of our years, or nearly six hundred of yours. His body was trilateral: he had three legs, three ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... into little cliffs here and there, pierced with the holes of the sand-martin. It exhaled no fogs, and was never dull even on a November day, when the clay-lands five miles away breathed a vapour which lay blue and heavy on the furrows, and the miry paths, retaining in their sullenness for weeks the impress of every footmark, almost pulled the boots off the feet as you walked along them. At Marston, on the contrary, the rain disappeared in an hour; and the landscape always seemed in the ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... met the shock. Charnock struck him with his shoulder and forced him backwards by the weight of the bag. The mud slipped under his feet; he staggered and clawed at the bank, but his fingers found no hold. They plowed through the miry gravel, and falling face downwards, he rolled down ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... impressive preliminaries that should have intimidated any golf ball, far but not straight. After his shot he lectured instructively upon its faults. When he had done they knew why he had sliced into the miry fen on the right. Then with an expert eye he studied his brother's stance and swing. The ball of Wilbur went low and straight and far, but the shot was prefaced, apparently, by no nice adjustment of the feet or by any preliminary ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... course of an hour Kent returned with the information that he had found the boat about half a mile up, but that Leslie was not in it. Both started, and, after stumbling over bushes loaded with water, and sinking into the miry shore, and wading in the river by turns, they came upon it, pulled high up on the bank. It was becoming lighter every moment, and as Kent knew that as soon as possible their trail would be followed, he was unwilling to brook the ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... fig-tree, exchanging the strong waters of the north for the gold which is the price thereof, I have, I thank Heaven, no disguises to keep with any man, and wear my own name of Thomas Trumbull, without any chance that the same may be polluted. Whereas, thou, who art to journey in miry ways, and amongst a strange people, mayst do well to have two names, as thou hast two shirts, the one to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... incapable of showing sympathy, I went out to look at the town under a borrowed umbrella. It was certainly not much to look at, especially under circumstances of such acute depression. I walked or waded through a number of miry little streets where all manner of refuse was in a saturated or deliquescent state—cabbage-stumps and dead rats floating in the gutters, potato-peelings and bean-pods sticking to the mediaeval ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... journeying by their side, Enter'd, though by a different track, beneath. Into a lake, the Stygian nam'd, expands The dismal stream, when it hath reach'd the foot Of the grey wither'd cliffs. Intent I stood To gaze, and in the marish sunk, descried A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks Betok'ning rage. They with their hands alone Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet, Cutting each other piecemeal ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... is well," said Henry. "Had the boy grown up verily like my father, thou and he might have fallen out; or if not—why, you knights and nobles ride in miry bloody ways, and 'tis a wonder if even the best of you does not bring his harness home befouled and besmirched—not as shining bright as he took it out. Well, what didst thou with the poor lad? Cut him in fragments? You mince your best loved ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been acquainted, for even so long, with its spiritual necessities and responsibilities; yet here, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was the eminence ordinarily conceded to a spiritual teacher, to one of those men who come upon the earth to lift their fellow-men above its miry ways. He is up in a garret, writing for bread he cannot get, and dunned for a milkscore he cannot pay." That Christianity might have been worse employed than in paying the milkman's score is true enough, for then the milkman would have come by his own; but that Christianity, ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... years in a loathsome dungeon more befitting a condemned malefactor than a prisoner of war. It was in the donjon keep of the castle, lighted only by an aperture in the roof, and was therefore exposed to the rain and all inclemencies of the sky, while rats, toads, and other vermin housed in the miry floor. Here this distinguished personage, Francis with the Iron Arm, whom all Frenchmen, Catholic or Huguenot, admired far his genius, bravery, and purity of character, passed five years of close confinement. The government was most anxious to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of sound, the name Maer-field has been, naturally enough, interpreted to mean Mary-field. The apparently obvious form "Miry-field,"—as, according to Leland, it appears on an old inscription,—in spite of the marshy nature of the site, is probably a mere coincidence. Nor is Thomas Fuller's "Merry-field, for the pleasant situation thereof," better worth attention. The generally accepted theory at ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... prints of a horse's feet on the somewhat miry road, she 'wondered whether it was a gentleman's horse,' and finally concluded it was, for the impressions were too small to have been made by a 'great clumsy cart-horse'; and then she 'wondered who the rider could be,' and whether we should ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... shaggy hair, and, as the natives express it, "eyes as big as saucers." The first name is given to it form the peculiar noise made by its feet when passing along, resembling that of a heavy shoe in a miry road. The second appellation is in allusion to the sound of its voice when heard by those parties who are unable to see the appearance itself. According to the statements of parties who have seen the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... Elder Brother's dinner to-day. Among other discourses one Mr. Oudant, secretary to the late Princesse of Orange, did discourse of the convenience as to keeping the highways from being deep, by their horses, in Holland (and Flanders where the ground is as miry as ours is), going in their carts and, waggons as ours in coaches, wishing the same here as an expedient to make the ways better, and I think there is something in it, where there is breadth enough. Thence to my office, sent for to meet Mr. Leigh again; from Sir ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... militiaman. But home was not the place for him to rest in, and after bidding a hasty adieu to his father, he crossed the country northward on foot and reached Liverpool, in the hope of finding work there. Failing in that, he set out for Manchester and reached it at dusk, very weary and very miry in consequence of the road being in such a wretched state of mud and ruts. He relates that, not knowing a person in the town, he went up to an apple-stall ostensibly to buy a pennyworth of apples, but really to ask the stall-keeper if he knew of any person ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... shanties and along the miry, uneven ways, men stand in groups, their conversation all of the luck of "the toffs." But around the Office of the Gold League the crowd is greatest, and the cheers of the members are echoed by the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... than the lower order of females in Scotland. Upon a brisk sprightly chamber-maid entering my room one day at an inn in Glasgow, I heard a sound which resembled the pattering of some web-footed bird, when in the act of climbing up the miry side of a pond. I looked down upon the feet of this bonny lassie, and found that their only covering was procured from the mud of the high street—adieu! to the tender eulogies of the pastoral reed! I have never thought of a shepherdess ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... influence which came on the towering head of the son of Kish, through the anointing oil that Samuel poured upon his raven hair, left him, and he stood God-forsaken because he stood God-forsaking. And so David looks back from the 'horrible pit and miry clay' into which he had fallen, where, stained with blood and lust, he lies, to that sad gigantic figure, remembered so well and loved by him so truly—the great king who sinned away his soul, and bled out his life on the heights ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sunk into some mossy or miry place," said Michael, to a man near him, into whose face he could not look, "a cruel, cruel death to one like her! The earth on which my child walked has closed over her, and we ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... three demi-gods who walked with feet of clay, With cruel crosses on their backs, along a miry way; Who climbed and climbed the bitter steep to which men turn ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... o'clock at night the river was crossed, and the march was resumed. The weather was still wild, the roads miry and heavy, and through the winter night the motley party plunged along. The Rochester men had, most of them, gone home, and those who remained were the London deserters, gentlemen who had compromised themselves too deeply to hope for pardon, or fanatics, who believed they were fighting the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... into consideration that Newport is the metropolitan town in this colony, and that all the courts of judicature within this colony are held there; and also, that it is the chief market town in the government; and that it hath very miry streets, especially that leading from the ferry, or landing place, up to the colony house, so that the members of the courts are very much discommoded therewith, and is a great hindrance to the transporting of provisions, &c., in and out of the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... club boys, hunting the ponds for caddises, newts, and water-beetles, peering into the furze-bushes for second broods, or watching the sand-martins in the gravel-pits, and trudging home at night in the midst of an escort of enthusiasts, all of them with pockets as full and miry as his own, to deposit the treasures of the day in the club-room. Once more the rector, though physically perhaps less ardent than of yore, was the life of the party, and a certain awe and strangeness which had ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... notice one source of light which makes these matters clearer to our eyes than if we saw them through the miry shades of a monastery in Spain or Italy. In those lands of Southern laziness, the nuns were astoundingly passive, enduring the life of the seraglio and even worse.[93] Our French women, on the contrary, gifted with a personality at ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... finding in the feminine costume-fashions of that period a dire impediment to out-door enterprise of the sort, in a region of no roads, or bad roads, of rivers perpetually in flood, turning the lanes into water-courses for three-fourths of the year, of miry fields and marshy heaths, she procured for herself a suit of boy's clothes, donning blouse and gaiters now and then without compunction for these rough ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Both good and evil in mysterious love, And she was silenced. What a sacred power Hath hallow'd Friendship o'er the nameless ills That throng our pilgrimage. Its sympathy, Doth undergird the drooping, and uphold The foot that falters in its miry path. It grows more precious, as the hair grows grey. Time's alchymy that rendereth so much dross Back for our gay entrustments, shows more pure The perfect essence of its sanctity, Gold unalloyed. How doth the cordial grasp, Of hands that twined ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... carrying the goods over the river themselves. With this determination they set earnestly to work, and succeeded in removing the greater portion of the goods; when they made another attempt, happily with better success than previously; and brought the dray from its miry adherence to a position on the bank. It was then reladen with the goods; while the men, barely recovered from the chagrin caused by the misadventure, performed their work with a sullen moroseness, enlivening their gloom by ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... horses and were in the act of mounting, when they saw us charging down upon them. In a moment they sprang upon their ponies and dashed away. Had it not been for the creek, which lay between us and them, we would have got them before they could have mounted their horses; but as it was rather miry, we were unexpectedly delayed. The Indians fired some shots at us while we were crossing, but as soon as we got over we went for them in hot pursuit. A few of the redskins, not having time to mount, had started on foot toward the brush. One ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Walter), introduced by Sir W. Scott in Kenilworth. The tradition of Sir Walter laying down his cloak on a miry spot for the queen to step on, and the queen commanding him to wear the "muddy cloak till her pleasure should be further known," is mentioned ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... consent to meet; for in the last week he had eaten "hog and hominy," and sipped corn-meal coffee, in lofty colloquy with Sidney Johnston and his "big generals"; had talked confidentially with Polk, so lately his own bishop; had ridden through the miry streets of Corinth with all the New Orleans commanders of division or brigade—Gibson, Trudeau, Ruggles, Brodnax; out on the parapets, between the guns, had chatted with Hilary and his loved lieutenants; down among the tents and mess-fires had given his pale hand, with Spartan injunctions and ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... before into the miry mead, And keep the path that doth to Farnsfield lead; I'll into Southwell and buy all the knacks, That shall fit both ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering windmill. The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields. A brisk little woman passed us by. She was seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nobles to death in a way that one would weep to see; namely, by first passing thongs through their legs, and then tying them to the hoofs of savage bulls; then hounds set on them and dragged them into miry swamps. This deed took the edge off the valour of the Sclavs, and they obeyed the authority of the king in ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... passers-by, walking at random, so to speak, with nothing in his pockets, and to all appearance an equally empty head. Do you ask to what Parisian tribe this manner of man belongs? He is a collector, a millionaire, one of the most impassioned souls upon earth; he and his like are capable of treading the miry ways that lead to the police-court if so they may gain possession of a cup, a picture, or some such rare unpublished piece as Elie Magus once picked up ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac |
