"Damp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the inn was only a step away. They went into the damp, dark entrance, up the crooked stairs, and down the corridor ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... love affairs. Before the doors of our barn stretched a wide plain gradually sloping away in the distance; a little river gleamed here and there in the winding hollows; low growing woods could be seen further on the horizon. Night was coming on and we were left alone. As night fell a fine damp mist descended upon the earth, and, growing thicker and thicker, passed into a dense fog. The moon rose up into the sky; the fog was soaked through and through and, as it were, shimmering with golden light. Everything was strangely ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep; And one is of an old, half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That glass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep; And, Wordsworth, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the strange leaps made by civilization is from Southampton to Cape Town, and one of its strangest ironies is in its ignoring all the six thousand miles of coast line that lies between. Nowadays, in winter time, the English, flying from the damp cold of London, go to Cape Town as unconcernedly as to the Riviera. They travel in great seagoing hotels, on which they play cricket, and dress for dinner. Of the damp, fever-driven coast line past which, in splendid ease, they are travelling, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... sleek and warm, fresh from her evening milk, steals away from her corner by the hearth and picks her way carefully among daffodils and lilies, afraid lest the dew make her coat damp and ragged before her lover joins her. She sniffs at the young lavender and calls. Her call is answered by the black tom-cat which appears, broad-backed like a marten, on the neighbour's fence; but the gardener's tortoise-shell ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... end her hair was every night put into curl-papers, with much tight twisting and sharp jerking, and Ida slept upon an irregular layer of small paper parcels, which made pillows a mockery. With all this, however, a damp day, or a good romp, would sometimes undo the night's work, to the great disgust of Nurse. In her last place, the young lady's hair had curled with a damp brush, as Ida well knew, and Nurse made so much of ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Wickford Junction, shortly before five o'clock in the morning, when the usual handful of passengers alight from the Boston express. The sun has not yet climbed to the top of the seaward hills of Rhode Island, the station and environment rest in a damp semi-gloom, everything shut in, silent—as though Nature herself had paused for a brief time before bursting ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... was the speech which Herod made to them; but still this speech aftrighted many of the people, as being unexpected by them; and because it seemed incredible, it did not encourage them, but put a damp upon them, for they were afraid that he would pull down the whole edifice, and not be able to bring his intentions to perfection for its rebuilding; and this danger appeared to them to be very great, and the vastness of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... are soaking in kerosene now, and I imagine it is little good that will do them. All her linen is damp and smelly, and much of it is mildewed. As for the blankets ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... the Captain, beaming his brightest, and letting his cigar go out in the damp breeze for the sake of making his little ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... the most persistent soarers. They apparently never flapped except when it was absolutely necessary, while the eagles and hawks usually soared only when they were at leisure. Two methods of soaring were employed. When the weather was cold and damp and the wind strong the buzzards would be seen soaring back and forth along the hills or at the edge of a clump of trees. They were evidently taking advantage of the current of air flowing upward over these obstructions. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... station at ten o'clock in the morning. There was no frost, but snow was falling in big wet flakes and an unpleasant damp wind was blowing. ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... standing up to his fetlocks in mire, and sneezing vociferously—or a good-humoured peasant, who directed us on our road, and informed us with a grin, that this sort of "fine rain" often lasted for a fortnight. Sometimes we passed little villages built in damp holes, where trees, cottages, women scampering backwards and forwards peevishly on domestic errands, big boys with empty sacks over their heads and shoulders, gossiping gloomily against barn walls, and ill-conditioned ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... practically live on that principle, and are tempted to regard thoughts of God as in place only among medicine bottles, or when the shadows of the grave begin to fall cold and damp on our path. 'Young men will be young men,' 'We must sow our wild oats,' 'You can't put old heads on young shoulders'—and such like sayings, often practically mean that vice and godlessness belong ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... smoothly down a bank and into a shallow swollen pool, and the water swished in at the lower end and floated our books out quietly. So we had to stop, and fish them up; and then, huddled close at the upper end we sat, somewhat damp, but happy. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Mark is dry for those who want it dry, but it is wet enough to drown any misguided soul who loves the damp. I loved it,—but, with the raven, nevermore. Connie, there is one thing even more fatal to a minister's son than bottles of beer. That thing is politics. If I had taken my beer straight I might have escaped. But I tried to dilute it with politics, and behold the result. My father walking the floor ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... of the people is goats' milk and unsifted rye, which they bake into cakes in the autumn, and these cakes last them the whole year—the grain, if left unbaked, being apt to grow mouldy and spoil in so damp an atmosphere. Besides, fuel is so scarce that it is necessary to exercise the greatest economy in its use, every stick burnt in the village having to be brought from a distance of some twelve miles, on the backs of donkeys, by the steep ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... we stumbled along to it in anything but a happy frame of mind. Everybody was cursing. Despite our discomfort, however, the humour of the situation under such circumstances cannot fail to strike one; I could not help chuckling. Eventually we got down the mine. It was horribly damp and dirty down there, but the atmosphere was much clearer; there was no smell of gas. That was a relief. And we felt much safer here! No heavies could reach us at such a depth as this. But it was all darkness. We remained in this subterranean sanctuary for three hours, standing ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... tears awhile May chide thy joy an' damp thy smile; But soon ilk grief shall wear awa', And I 'll be forgotten ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... raised the window-sash, and the cool, damp sea-air feeling good, he leaned out to enjoy it. It was a cloudy night, with a touch of coming snow in the air; but for all that a night to enjoy, only for the racket ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... on parade; and then more subtle problems arise. Some of those were discussed one day by four junior officers, who sat upon a damp and slippery bank by a muddy roadside during a "fall-out" in a route-march. The four ("reading from left to right," as they say in high journalistic society) were Second Lieutenant Little, Second Lieutenant Waddell, Second Lieutenant Cockerell, and Lieutenant Struthers, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... wife. In that duel Prince Rudolf received a severe wound, and, recovering therefrom, was adroitly smuggled off by the Ruritanian ambassador, who had found him a pretty handful. The nobleman was not wounded in the duel; but the morning being raw and damp on the occasion of the meeting, he contracted a severe chill, and, failing to throw it off, he died some six months after the departure of Prince Rudolf, without having found leisure to adjust his relations with his wife—who, after another two months, bore an heir to the title and ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... suffered comparatively little—both were accustomed to a damp climate. But of the English troops, nearly eight thousand died in the two months that the blockade lasted. Had James maintained his position, the whole of the army of Schomberg must have perished; but, most unfortunately for his ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... letters were fewer, and his help was practical. A pleasing instance of this was his presence at Holwood in April 1798, when Pitt was draining the hillside near his house, so as to preserve it from damp and provide water for the farm and garden below. Young drew up the scheme, went down more than once to superintend the boring and trenching, and then added these words: "I beg you will permit me to give such attention merely and solely as a mark of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... will have time to read to me! Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. All these volumes! They are quite damp. You have ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... genius, to send their money out of France by the ordinary financial channels would excite comment, and perhaps hasten the crisis that all good patriots would fain avoid. He talked thus collectedly and fairly while the Baron Giraud could but wipe his forehead with a damp handkerchief and gasp ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Crescent Villas after some difficulty. The houses were large, but they lay half imbedded among the chaos of brick and rising mortar around them. New terraces, new streets, new squares led away into hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side. The roads were sticky with damp clay, which clogged the wheels of the cab and buried the fetlocks of the horse. The desolations—that awful aspect of incompleteness and discomfort which pervades a new and unfinished neighborhood—had set its dismal seal upon ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... with which they now purchase active and productive stock, for dead stock. In transacting their domestic business, they would be obliged to employ a costly, instead of a cheap instrument of commerce; and the expense of purchasing this costly instrument might damp somewhat the vivacity and ardour of their excessive enterprise in the improvement of land. It might not, however, be necessary to remit any part of the American revenue in gold and silver. It might be remitted in ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... New York through a taxicab window without much interest. A large damp grey dirty place, very crowded, where he would not like to live, he thought. He managed himself and his baggage with ease and dispatch; his indifferent, dignified manner and his reckless use of money were ideally ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... day or two still the doctor could not say what was wrong with Fixie, but at last he decided that it was only a sort of feverish attack brought on by his having somehow or other caught cold, for there had been some damp and rainy weather, even though spring was ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... no more. Overcome with fatigue, exposure and increasing pulmonary weakness, of which I had had painful premonitions, I fainted at the table, and fell to the floor of the damp and ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... once again. Freddie had on a clean dry suit, Dinah had changed her damp apron for a fresh one, and Mr. Bobbsey was sipping his cup of iced tea, which was not spilled ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... and there by lines of weather-beaten trees, or by more solid dots of black which the eye of the inhabitant knew to be peat stacks. Beyond the mosses were level lines of greyish white, where the looping rivers passed into the sea—lines more luminous than the sky at this particular moment of a damp March afternoon, because of some otherwise invisible radiance, which, miles away, seemed to be shining upon the water, slipping down to it from behind ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... faced with brick; even the staircases were of brick. What stone was used is clunch, from Tottenhoe in Bedfordshire, which, according to Lord Grimthorpe, is admirably suited for interior work, but absolutely worthless for exterior, as it decays very soon, and if it gets damp is ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... she was smoothing back his gray locks from his damp forehead, he smiled, and murmured, "God bless you, my child. This is ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic—for the principle it lives by and keeps alive—for man's vast future—thanks to all. Peace does not appear so distant as ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... whether this affects one acutely or not. If you have a full stomach you do not mind so much, and even shrug your shoulders should the man next to you be hit; but at four or five in the morning, when everything is pale and damp, and you are stomach-sick, it is nerve-shaking to see a man brutally struck and gasping under the blow. I have seen this happen three times; once it was truly horrible, for I was so splashed ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... because the weather, being damp and misty, prevented even what was near from being seen, the enemy, availing themselves of their knowledge of the country, came by an oblique road upon the Caesar's rear, and attacked two legions while they were piling ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... are easily raised from cuttings of their stems, nor yet to effect any change in the characters of the plants thus treated, but because some of the more delicate kinds, and especially the smaller ones, are apt to rot at the base during the damp, foggy weather of our winters; and, to prevent this, it is found a good and safe plan to graft them on to stocks formed of more robust kinds, or even on to plants of other genera, such as Cereus or Echinocactus. By this means, the delicate ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... the old family residence of Stankhouse, or "Tigh Dige," at Gairloch, which stood in a low, marshy, damp situation, surrounded by the moat from which it derived its name, and built the present house on an elevated plateau, surrounded by magnificent woods and towering hills, with a southern front elevation - altogether one of the most beautiful and best sheltered situations in the ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... was ghastly pale, the eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, the lips tremulous and moist, and the ends of the hair of his fair moustache, stuck together with saliva and stained with beer, hung untidily round his mouth in damp clusters. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... rained dismally. Maida had been running the shop for three weeks but this was her first experience with stormy weather. Because she, herself, had never been allowed to set her foot outdoors when the weather was damp, she expected that she would see no children that day. But long before the bell rang they crowded in wet streaming groups into the shop. And at nine the lines disappearing into the big school doorways seemed as long ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... aye, very fine truly, so they yawn and go to Vauxhall, and then it's too hot, and then it's too cold, and here's a wind and there's a damp." ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... gentle dirge through the sighing leaves. The sun will kiss the dew from the rose, Its crimson petals again unclose, And the violet ope the soft blue ray Of its modest eye to the gaze of day; But when will the dews and shades that lie So cold and damp on thy shrouded eye, Be chased from the folded lids, my child, And thy glance break ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... got it this morning standing out in the damp and chill, watching you out of sight. Watching people out of sight is unlucky, anyway," said his mother. "I might as well say it, if you won't. And I don't expect to be able to get up tomorrow, which ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... this difference in part, and probably with some reason, to the Discovery having her fire-place between decks; the heat and smoke of which, he conceived, might help to mitigate the bad effects of the damp night air. But I am rather inclined to believe, that we escaped the flux by the precautions that were taken to prevent our catching it from others. For if some kinds of fluxes be, as I apprehend there is no doubt they are, contagious, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the most part it stood as solid as the stones between which it was laid. Shoulder-high to O'Reilly there appeared to be a section of the curbing less smoothly fitted than the rest, and through an interstice in this he detected what seemed to be a damp wooden beam. At this point he brought ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... vision has fled like a sparkle of light, And dark is the dream that possesses him now; The morn of his doom has succeeded the night, And the damp dews of death gather fast on his brow. He hears in the distance a faint muffled drum, And the low sullen boom of the death-tolling bell; The block is prepared, and the headsman is come, And the victim, bareheaded, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Among these rude attempts at decoration we may still discover traces of a portrait of himself in casque and armour, and a sun-dial roughly scratched on the stone opposite the slit in the rock. And there, too, half effaced by the damp, are fragments of inscriptions, which tell the same piteous tale of regret for vanished days and weary longings for the end ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... "you have been absent so long that I was about to send Reuben in search of you. The boxes are undone, and we need your help; Moppet—why, what ails the child?" and Miss Euphemia Wolcott paused in dismay us she surveyed Miss Moppet's still damp habit and ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... ailing at this time, the mother would have accompanied her son. The possibility of damp sheets weighed heavy on her mind; and landladies who filch from the tea-caddy, with landladies' girls, pert and familiar, preparing insidious gruel and seductive cups of coffee, were the lions which her imagination conjured ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Tony replied with an air of reluctance. "Well, I will see about it. Ef I can crawl troo de sentries, and bring some for you and de oders, I will. It will help keep you awake and keep out de damp." ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Uruvela is known as the wrestling or struggle for truth. The story, as he tells it in the Pitakas, gives no dates, but is impressive in its intensity and insistent iteration[318]. Fire, he thought to himself, cannot be produced from damp wood by friction, but it can from dry wood. Even so must the body be purged of its humours to make it a fit receptacle for illumination and knowledge. So he began a series of terrible fasts and sat "with set teeth and tongue pressed against the palate" until in this spiritual ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... mishap. He had found a rocky bar without being aware of it, and the water while swift was shallow enough so that by slipping his feet from the stirrups and holding them up, he was able to ford the stream without even getting them damp. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... tippler does his rum, as an antidote against a damp atmosphere. Another, to prevent the accumulation of water or bile in his stomach; and a third, as a security against the ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... Peterhead. It is true that there was not much in it save a wife, who was said to give Sandy the rough side of her tongue, and occasionally something rougher still. Affection is a capricious emotion, however, and will cling to the most unlikely objects; so the big Scotchman's eyes were damp with something else beside the sea spray as he realized that he might never look upon cottage ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dogs and the guns—no keeper now; you hurry away, and gain the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome hand—it is fastened with a padlock (the only new looking thing), and is stained with thick, green damp; you climb it, and bury yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether you will creep beneath the long boughs ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... and any instructions in the art of navigation will be gratefully received; for I never saw the ocean before, and labor under a firm conviction, that, once in, I never shall come out again till I am brought, like Mr. Mantilini, a 'damp, moist, unpleasant body.'" ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Slates in hundreds had fallen off the roof and been left unreplaced; a large staircase window, blown in by a storm, was still boarded up, waiting to be mended "some time," though more than a year had elapsed since the accident had taken place; the walls in the great drawing-room were mouldy with damp, for it had been deserted for many a day, because its owner could not afford the two big fires necessary to keep it aired. Pixie sniffed with delight when she entered the gloomy apartment, for the room represented the family glory to her childish imagination, so that the smell ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... difficult to manage, and generally manifesting a strong dislike to rearing their own offspring. In other respects they are quite hardy little dogs, and—one great advantage—they seldom have distemper. Cold and damp they particularly dislike, especially when puppies, and the greatest care should be taken to keep them thoroughly dry and warm. When very young indeed they can stand, and are the better for, an extraordinary amount ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the whole country prevented his seeing any distance, by which he was much vexed. The rain, driven by the wind, fell slanting against his field-glasses, and he had to dry them over and over again, to his very great annoyance. The atmosphere was so cold and damp that he ordered his cloak, and wrapped himself in it, saying that as it was impossible to remain there, he must return to headquarters, which he did, and throwing himself on the bed slept a short while. On awaking he said, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... savin's—and get a pair o' boots, too; you can git a sweet pair for 2s. 11d. at Rackstraw's afore the sale closes,' and with that I shoves the suvrin into 'er hand instead o' the scrubbin' brush, and what does she do? Why, busts out a-cryin', and sits on the damp stones, and sobs, and sulks, and stares at the suvrin in her hand as if I'd told her of a funeral instead of a ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... that of colonel with us—and was placed as adjutant on the general's staff. Hoche was all ardour and anxiety; Carnot cheered him on by expressing his belief that it would be "a most brilliant operation;" and certainly Tone was not the man to damp such expectations, or allow them to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... clay-colored face, dull eyes, and long withered hands. With crossed ankles and sunken head, he sat as though all his life had passed out of him, with the beads slipping slowly through his thin, yellow fingers. Behind him lay the narrow cell, clay-floored and damp, comfortless, profitless and sordid. Beyond it there lay amid the trees the wattle-and-daub hut of a laborer, the door open, and the single room exposed to the view. The man ruddy and yellow-haired, stood leaning upon the spade wherewith he had been at work upon the garden ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all the skill of a worker in tarsia, or wood-mosaic, and carried these with him to King Matthias Corvinus, of Hungary. Part of his journey was performed by sea. On arriving and unpacking his chests, he found that the sea-damp had unglued the fragile wood-mosaic, and all his work was spoiled. This determined him to practise the more permanent art of sculpture. See Perkins, vol. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... an able and sympathetic guide and adviser at all times, and nothing pleased Netta better than a visit to Grubb's Court, for there she saw the blessed fruit of diamond and gold digging illustrated in the person of her own reformed father and happy mother, who had removed from their former damp rooms on the ground floor to the more salubrious apartments among the chimney pots, which had been erected on the site of the "cabin" after "the fire." Directly below them, in somewhat more pretentious apartments, shone another rescued ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... worth solving in the world, save the riddle of Ruth's heart. The staid brownstone houses of the New York streets displayed few crocuses and fewer larks, yet over them to-day was the bloom of romance. Carl walked down to the automobile district past Central Park, sniffing wistfully at the damp grass, pale green amid old gray; marveling how a bare patch of brown earth, without a single blade of grass, could smell so stirringly of coming spring. A girl on Broadway was selling wild violets, white ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... light a fire—we were so cold and wet, and, besides, we had a few potatoes, carried from a garden we passed the night before, which we thought we could roast. Hunger and discomfort were making us bold. Our matches would not light the damp wood, and we could find no other. We chewed a few oats, and were very down-hearted. It looked as if lack of food would defeat ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... drunk life's disappointments to the dregs, but it was not in his heart to damp the ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... The magistrate wished first to ascertain if the ground bore any footprints, which could be attributed to other than goblins' feet. It was impossible to find the least trace, whether old or new. Moreover, the earth, still damp from the rain of the day before, would ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... born, and spent the first fifteen years of his life, on a rocky Connecticut farm not far from Cos Cob. His father was an ignorant, violent man, a bungling farmer and a brutal husband. The farmhouse, dilapidated and damp, stood in a hollow beside a marshy pond. Oliver had worked hard while he lived at home, although he was never clean or warm in winter and had wretched food all the year round. His spare, dry figure, his prominent larynx, and the peculiar red of his face and hands ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Snow on the ground, in the country, has always a cheerful look to me. I could have wished to see it on the day of my arrival at home; but there had been a thaw for the last week—mud and water were all about me—a drizzling rain was falling—a raw, damp wind was blowing—a fog was rising, as the evening stole on—and the ancient leafless elms in the park avenue groaned and creaked above my head drearily, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the summer the population sleeps and dines upon the roofs, which thus constitute to all intents a third storey. The remainder of the day, so far as family life is concerned, is spent in the serdab, a cellar sunk somewhat below the level of the courtyard, damp from frequent wettings, with its half windows covered with hurdles thatched with camel thorn and kept dripping with water. Occasionally the serdabs are provided ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... tips of the birches a rosy colour; of last embraces, so closely entwined, and of the unerring heart's mournful whispers: "No, this will not be repeated, this will not be repeated!" And the lips were then cold and dry, while the damp mist of the morning lay upon ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... me to a tiny sod-covered hovel, compared with which the Irish cabins were palaces. It had one window of odd fragments of glass. The floor was of pebbles from the beach; the earth walls were damp and chilly. There were half a dozen rude wooden bunks built in tiers around the single room, and a group of some six neglected children, frightened by our arrival, were huddled together in one corner. A very sick man was coughing his soul out in the darkness of a lower ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... or usual; and the dismemberment had been effected with such care that there was not a single scratch on any of the separated surfaces. Of adipocere (the peculiar waxy or soapy substance that is commonly found in bodies that have slowly decayed in damp situations) there was not a trace; and the only remnant of the soft structures was a faint indication, like a spot of dried glue, of the tendon on the tip of ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... went out into the damp of the morning, Into the smudge that the witch spread over woodland and meadow, Into the fleecy gray pall brooding on hillside and valley. Laughing and scoffing, he strode into that hideous vapor; Just as he ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... through nearly half a year. During this time his treatment improved; his cell was kept clean; he had no cause to complain of his food; he was allowed to walk for an hour daily in the corridor, which, though cold and damp, in some degree satisfied his need of exercise. He was always guarded by two sentinels, to whom he was forbidden to speak. He learned in some way, however, that several of his co-accused were his fellow-prisoners: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... editions of the papers. There seemed to be no need for the raising of hoarse and threatening voices in the soundless capital. Men and youths of all ages traversed the avenues and streets with sheafs of fresh, damp newspapers over their ragged arms, but it was the populace who crowded after and importuned them, not they the people; and no sooner did a paper-seller appear than he was stripped of his wares and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... gathering clouds and the air was damp before Ruth missed the bright warmth on the piazza, and began to walk back and forth by way of keeping warm. A gravelled path led to the gate and on either side was a row of lilac bushes, the bare stalks tipped with green. A white picket fence surrounded the yard, except at the back, where the ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... and with infinite gentleness smoothed away the little damp curls from her brow. There was a wistfulness now in his caress, and in his kiss there was the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... down to the old blacking-factory by Hungerford Stairs, a ramshackle building almost hanging over the river, damp and overrun with rats. His place was in a recess of the counting-room on the first floor, and as he covered the bottles with the oil-paper tops and tied them on with string he could look from time to time through ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... came the order for every soul aboard to put on a life-belt, and our friends from Scotland hastened aft to obtain the equipment, scurrying and bustling about the damp cabin for the ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... think a yacht a likely place for the conversion of a croon into a pound, and the utter silence of mother and aunt did not seem to her satisfactory; but she feared either to damp the youthful enthusiasm for the lost father, or to foster curiosity that might lead to some painful discovery, so she took refuge in an ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... voices, mixed with blasphemies and oaths, were re-echoed as if from the vaults of the dead. Every sense was outraged by the accumulation of horrors that combined to disgust and horrify. Hunger, nakedness, thirst, heat, damp, and cold, all combined to swell the catalogue of their miseries and their woes. We can easily picture the sufferings of Cervantes, whose captivity was as severe as it was possible even for his Algerian master to make it. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... cast frequently seen towards the north of Albania, and a set of the best teeth, (this is very general,) showed that he might have once been more prosperous in love than he proved to be in war. I thought of a relic, and took up a skull, the best I could find, but it was full of red earth, and seemed damp and unpleasant; so I put it down again. I next discovered a beautiful tooth; this would have surpassed the former in elegance and convenience, but I fancied it not either, and came away, trusting to my mind for a remembrance of the spot. From hence I made a sketch of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Nautilus veered to the east. To be more accurate, I should have said to the northeast. Sometimes on the surface of the waves, sometimes beneath them, the ship wandered for days amid these mists so feared by navigators. These are caused chiefly by melting ice, which keeps the air extremely damp. How many ships have perished in these waterways as they tried to get directions from the hazy lights on the coast! How many casualties have been caused by these opaque mists! How many collisions have occurred with these reefs, where the breaking surf is covered by the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... organization of the various counties, history for some time loses sight of those Frisons, the maritime people of the north, who took little part in the civil wars of two centuries. But still there was no portion of Europe which at that time offered a finer picture of social improvement than these damp and unhealthy coasts. The name of Frisons extended from the Weser to the westward of the Zuyder Zee, but not quite to the Rhine; and it became usual to consider no longer as Frisons the subjects of the counts of Holland, whom we may now begin to distinguish ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... reception-room, which was cold and felt damp. In the parlour beyond I could see the innumerable things of beauty—furniture, pictures, books, so very, very much of everything—with which the room was filled. I saw it now, as I had often seen it before, with a peculiar sense of weariness. How all these things, though ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... with us threw a momentary brightness over the scene, but after their departure every thing looked more gloomy and disheartening than before. The fort itself was a deep, dark, damp, gloomy-looking place, inclosed in high walls, where the sunlight rarely penetrated. If we ascended to the parapet, we saw nothing but uncouth State flags, representing palmettos, pelicans, and other strange devices. No echo seemed to come back from the loyal North to encourage ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... inestimable blessing to have friends like this, who will not leave our side when the crowd ebbs, but draw closer as the shadows darken over our path, and the prison damp wraps its chill mantle about us! To be loved like that is earth's deepest bliss! These heroic souls risked all the peril that might accrue to themselves from this identification with their master; they did not hesitate ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... beech woods, rather damp, and appears in July and August. The caps are often dark purple, often tinged with red, and sometimes the caps contains shades of green. I found the plants plentifully in Woodland Park, near Newtonville, Ohio, in July, 1907. We ate them on several occasions and found them ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... of all the little boys and little girls she had clothed and fed, of the old people she had relieved, of the tears she had shed over tales of woe and misery, how she had carried every week a little basket covered with a white napkin to widow Robson, how often she had gone into the damp and dismal cottage of the dying miner, and how happy she always made his wife and their ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... It was a damp malarious looking spot, though I dare say in the old days when the land was drained, it had been healthy enough. Just below the cabins lay the largest of the four pools which gave the plantation its name. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... overcast, the ground was covered with snow, the weather was damp, and very cold for the last of March. As evening drew on, and the leaden sky lowered, and the chill damp penetrated the comfortable carriage in which they traveled, Mr. Willcoxen redoubled his attentions ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... they put their damp hearts to the fire; the spirit itself bubbleth and smoketh when the rabble ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the ground was damp, and so, At least, I have been told, The shepherd caught the lumbago, ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... was robbed of its transparency by accumulated dirt. There was neither stove nor fire-place of any kind. The walls, if they had ever been whitened, had long since lost their original hue, and exhibited instead every variety of damp discoloration. Neither chair nor table were there—an old stool and a box were the only seats. In the corner farthest from the light, and where the ceiling sloped down to the floor, was the only thing that could ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... to D'Arnot. "To lie abed because of a pin prick! Why, when Bolgani, the king gorilla, tore me almost to pieces, while I was still but a little boy, did I have a nice soft bed to lie on? No, only the damp, rotting vegetation of the jungle. Hidden beneath some friendly bush I lay for days and weeks with only Kala to nurse me—poor, faithful Kala, who kept the insects from my wounds and warned off ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... yesterday's excitement. Number three was out on the tree. I could hear number two still crying and squawking in the garden, and from the position and labors of the male I concluded that number one was in the next lot. It was a dismal, damp morning, every grass-blade loaded with water, and a heavy fog driving in from the sea. I hoped number three would know enough to stay at home, but his fate was upon him, and no rain was ever wet enough to overcome destiny. At about eight o'clock he stretched his ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... three-legged turntables, each of which bore an angle-iron supporting a twisted length of lead pipe, stood a bucket of water beneath one, and explained that in a few minutes he would be ready to begin. Donning a linen blouse, he attacked the mass of damp clay powerfully, throwing great pieces onto the skeleton lead-pipe, which he explained had been bent to the exact angle of ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... he received an order from the pope to preach the crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land. Incredible were the pains which he took in executing this commission, and in reconciling the Christian princes, who were at variance. The death of St. Lewis, in 1270, {421} struck a damp upon the spirits of the Christians in the East, though the prince of Wales, soon after Edward I., king of England, sailed from Sicily, in March, 1271, to their assistance, took Jaffa and Nazareth, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the narrow trench, the one in which the left side keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English communication trenches are narrow—so narrow, indeed, that a man with a pack often gets held, and sticks there until his ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... eaten. We could not well account for this decay in our bread, especially as it was packed in good casks, and stowed in a dry part of the hold. We judged it was owing to the ice we so frequently took in when to the southward, which made the hold damp and cold, and to the great heat which succeeded when to the north. Be it this, or any other cause, the loss was the same to us; it put us to a scanty allowance of this article; and we had bad ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... stopping to speak, he ran up to his own chambers. When he got into his sitting-room, there stood De Fleuri, who simply waved his hand towards the old sofa. On it lay an elderly man, with his eyes half open, and a look almost of idiocy upon his pale, puffed face, which was damp and shining. His breathing was laboured, but there was no further sign of suffering. He lay perfectly still. Falconer saw at once that he was under the influence of some narcotic, probably opium; and the same moment the all but conviction darted ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... all-feeding earth; 40 This vaporous horizon, whose dim round Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea, Repelling invasion from the sacred towers, Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate, A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall. 45 The boundless universe Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul That owns no master; while the loathliest ward Of this wide prison, England, is a nest Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,— ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... herbage. Climatic differences cannot account for the treeless condition of the country W. of this point, and the true explanation lies probably in the fact that in winter, when the seeds of the coastal forests ripen and are released, the prevalent winds W. of Kodiak are damp and blow from the S. and S.W., while the spread of the seeds requires dry winds blowing from the N. and N.W. Such favourable ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he will perhaps find that there is scarcely a plant which is not spotted. If the thunder shower which we have imagined be followed by a long period of drought, the plague may be stayed and the potatoes saved; but if the damp weather continue, the number of spotted leaves among the potatoes increases day by day, until the spotted leaves are the majority; and then the haulm dies, gets slimy, and emits a characteristic odor; and it will be found that the tubers beneath the soil are but half developed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... damp, and there is little of it," rejoined Tom; "but as it comes only from the shore, so it never goes far on the water, It is hard to learn the true signs of the weather, Captain Barnstable, and none get to know them well, but such as study little else or feel but little else. There is only One who ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to descend and wander through those close and narrow streets where the waste-water of old Roman aqueducts makes green and damp the foundation stories of gloomy houses, and where the carefully-nurtured traveler sees sights of smoked interiors, dirt and rubbish in the streets, that terrify him; but let him remember that in the worst of these kennels ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from Wyoming in his company, fighting Germans in Flanders. A man used to a downy couch and an easy chair by the fire and steam-heated rooms, who had ten thousand a year in Toronto, when you found him in a chill, damp cellar of a peasant's cottage in range of the enemy's shells was getting something more than novel, if not more picturesque, than dog-mushing and prospecting on the Yukon; for we are quite used to ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Australia, as used on maps and plans, signifies a depression holding moisture after rain. It is also given to damp or swampy spots round the base of granite rocks. Wells sunk on soaks yield water for some time after rain. All soaks are ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... as fast as the horse would go. There was no pursuit, and after a mile or so, as he left the firs and entered the ash woods, he slackened somewhat. It was, indeed, necessary, for here the hoofs of preceding horsemen had poached the turf (always damp under ash) into mud. It was less dark, for the boughs of the ashes ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... had set now, and with the gathering dusk a damp mist descended on Montmartre. From the wall opposite, where the men sat playing cards, came occasional volleys of blasphemous oaths. Bibot was feeling much more like himself. He had half forgotten the incident of the six carriers, which had ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... value of the particular products in which they dealt. In those days men had to do without tea, or coffee, or chocolate, or tobacco, or quinine, or coca, or vanilla, and sugar was very rare. But there were the pepper and the ginger of Malabar, cardamoms in the damp district of Tellicherry; cinnamon and pearls in Ceylon. Beyond the Bay of Bengal, near the equator, there was opium, the only conqueror of pain then known; there were frankincense and indigo; camphor in Borneo; nutmeg and mace in Amboyna; and in two small islands, only a few miles square, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the upper classes, no doubt;" added Peter Bligh; "he'll see that we don't sleep in damp sheets! Aye, 'tis the devil ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... glided on. A fresh cool spring breeze with a scent of land fanned Lane's hot brow. It bore tidings from home. Almost he thought he smelled the blossoms in the orchard, and the damp newly plowed earth, and the smoke from the wood fire his mother used to bake over. A hundred clamoring thoughts strove for dominance over his mind—to enter and flash by and fade. His sight, however, except for the blur that returned again and again, held fast to the entrancing and thrilling ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... explained Peachy. "When it's blazingly hot we do lessons here early in the mornings, and it's ripping. No, we don't use them at this time of the year, because the marble is cold to sit upon, and the garden is damp really, although it looks so jolly. You should see it in a sirocco wind! You wouldn't want to have classes outside then, you bet! It's luck you're in the Transition form. If you'd been one of Miss Rodger's ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Pierrette's mother, died in 1819. The child of old Auffray and his young wife was small, delicate, and weakly; the damp climate of the Marais did not agree with her. But her husband's family persuaded her, in order to keep her with them, that in no other quarter of the world could she find a more healthy region. She was so petted and tenderly cared for that her death, when it came, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... My clothes were still damp, but the sunshine was fast drying them. Near by was a bootblack's chair, and dropping into this, I had him polish my shoes ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... cook most anything in an oven like that if you know how. It's simple enough too. All you have to do is to scoop out a hole in the sand and line it with rocks to hold in the heat. Then build your fire and let it burn for a couple of hours to get a good bed of coals. Cover them with a thin layer of damp kelp and put in the potatoes. Another layer of sea-weed, then the roasting-ears. After that come the fish, wrapped in paper. Then the mussels, clams or anything else you want. When you get them all in, cover the whole thing with a lot of heavy kelp and batten it down with a big piece of ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... over the whole series, in the middle of the ceiling, is an allegorical figure of Jerusalem Delivered.[12] An angel on either side unlooses the fetters of an innocent placid maiden crowned with thorns. These frescoes, notwithstanding their situation in a cold, damp garden-house, remained, when I saw them last, in January, 1878, in sound condition: thus once more we find Overbeck, equally with Cornelius, to have been solidly grounded ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... through a narrow and damp passage, built on either side with rough stones, and so low that she could not have entered it in any other posture. When she had proceeded about two or three yards, the passage opened into a concavity or apartment, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of less note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep Sea, the broad Bay, and the rapid River, but also up the narrow, muddy Bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp they had been, and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the Great Republic—for the principle it lives by, and keeps alive—for Man's vast future ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Fate could not choose a more malicious hour! What greater curse could envious Fortune give, Than just to die, when I began to live? Vain men! how vanishing a bliss we crave, Now warm in love, now withering in the grave! Never, oh never more to see the sun! Still dark, in a damp vault, and still alone! This fate is common; but I lose my breath; Near bliss, and yet not bless'd before my death. Farewell; but take me dying in your arms, 800 'Tis all I can enjoy of all your charms: This hand I cannot but in death resign; Ah! ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... prowling near, and, raising himself on his elbow, looked keenly about. The appearance of the fire puzzled him. It looked as if fresh wood had been laid upon it, but, as no one was in sight he concluded that his own wood had been damp, and, therefore, had ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Everybody praised him; but what he enjoyed more than all else was the sight of Inez brought on deck by her mother, and set down by his side. He walked round her, smelled her clothes, seeming to fear they were still damp, then licked her hands and face, wagging his tail, giving short, joyful barks, and trying, as well as he knew how, to show her his delight at having had it in his power to save her life as a return for ...
— The Lost Kitty • Harriette Newell Woods Baker (AKA Aunt Hattie)
... "when two men enjoy destroying the harmless life which the good God has set upon the prairie, they never tire of one another's society. Men who would disdain to black a pair of boots would not hesitate to crawl about in the mud and damp reeds of a swamp at daybreak to slaughter a few innocent ducks. There is a bond amongst sportsmen which is stronger than all the vows made at any altar. Hervey's delight in destroying life is almost inhuman. I trust he ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... dance, and public revelry, And sports and games (too grateful in themselves, Yet in themselves less grateful, I believe, Than as they were a badge glossy and fresh 285 Of manliness and freedom) all conspired To lure my mind from firm habitual quest Of feeding pleasures, to depress the zeal And damp those yearnings which had once been mine— A wild, unworldly-minded youth, given up 290 To his own eager thoughts. It would demand Some skill, and longer time than may be spared, To paint these vanities, and how they wrought In haunts where ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... each single star Comes out, till there they are All shining brightly: how the dews fall damp! While close at hand the glow-worm lights her lamp Or twinkles ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... A kind of weight hangs heavy at my heart; My flagging soul flies under her own pitch, Like fowl in air too damp, and lugs along, As if she were a body in a body, And not a mounting substance made of fire. My senses, too, are dull and stupified, Their edge rebated:—sure some ill approaches, And some kind sprite knocks softly at my soul, To tell me, fate's ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... again upon before I proceed to that expence. After dinner by coach I carried my wife and Jane to Westminster, leaving her at Mr. Hunt's, and I to Westminster Hall, and there visited Mrs. Lane, and by appointment went out and met her at the Trumpet, Mrs. Hare's, but the room being damp we went to the Bell tavern, and there I had her company, but could not do as I used to do (yet nothing but what was honest)..... So I to talk about her having Hawley, she told me flatly no, she could not love him. I took occasion to enquire of Howlett's daughter, with whom I have ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... by the purest loyalty to Spain. How did the Spanish Government fulfil, on its part, the decree spontaneously issued in 1868? By prosecuting and banishing the reformists, and employing a system of terror to damp the courage of the Filipinos. Vain, ridiculous fallacy!—for it ought to have known better after three centuries of rule of that country of intelligence, birthplace of Rizal, Luna, Rosario and other living examples of Philippine energy. The Filipinos, lovers of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... pointed to the damp soil where no vegetation grew: it was directly in front and close to the water, being that portion which was frequently swept by the creek ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... pocket-book must contain a calendar-diary, and as little printed matter, and as much space for notes, as possible. No pocket-book is perfect without some sort of patent pencil, of which the writing-metal, when used on a damp surface, will serve as well as do pen and ink on ordinary paper. Such a pocket-book with such a pencil the Baron has long had in use, the product of JOHN WALKER & Co., of Farringdon House. It should be called The Walker Pocket-book, or Pedestrian's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... forever, water lilies damp and cool, And the mystic lotus shining through its white waves beautiful, In those dusk and sunless valleys, where no steps of mortals tread, Bind the white brows of the living, whom we blindly call ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... seventy-nine people were about evenly divided between the sexes, and yet for all this herd of humanity there was only one water-closet, the door of which stood open, on the landing, and the poisonous stench filled all the rooms; the floor about it was damp and filthy. How any woman or girl could work in this shop, and retain her self-respect, I do not understand. I estimated that at least twenty boys and girls of this company were under fifteen; one little boy sitting on the floor hard at work was almost ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... and found his legs sticking up, while his head and shoulders were three or four feet deep in damp wood and moss. We managed to haul him out, covered from head to foot with wet moss; his blue suit turned into one of green, fitted for the woodland region in which he was so anxious to roam. Undaunted, however, he made his way onwards, now climbing over a somewhat firm ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... into the mass of cinders and rubbish, and brought up a black mass of half-burnt parchment, entwined with vegetable refuse, from which he speedily disengaged an oval frame of gold, containing a miniature, still protected by its glass, but half covered with mildew from the damp. He was in ecstasies at the prize. Even the white cat-skins paled before it. In all probability some of the men would have taken it from, him "to try and find the owner," but for the presence and interference ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... your breathing as with the mildewy atmosphere of a vault. The dingy ranks of brick are broken by very narrow alleys; and here and there, peeping under archways, you may espy little paved court-yards, with great pumps scattering continual damp in the midst of them, and enclosed with just such dusky walls and dirty windows as you have already noticed. You are amazed at the silence that prevails in these retreats, so near the living world, and yet so entirely secluded from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... dreaming, Dreaming often of us all, (When the damp earth is his pillow, And the snow and cold sleet fall), Of the dear, familiar faces, Of the cozy, curtained room, Of the flitting of the shadows In ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... damp and discouraging for both parties. Duke began to tremble even before he was lifted into the water, and after his first immersion he was revealed to be a dog weighing about one-fourth of what an observer ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... never taken to the timber or fields when the ground is damp or the weather is cold and unfavorable. When from these causes they cannot work to advantage, they continue their studies in the class room, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... took, I ran until I sank exhausted, the roar of the waters no longer sounding in my ears. The sight of the place was now hateful to me. I resolved not to visit it again, or see the other falls—indeed, I was very ill, from the night's exposure to damp, and the sufferings of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... closed, and she hoped that he slept. As she watched him her own eyes slowly filled with tears; for she did not believe he would ever gain sufficient strength to bear removal from that house of sorrow. The air of the ward was hot, damp, and lifeless. Sickening odors rising from the streets of the filthy city drifted in through its open windows. The whole atmosphere of the place was depressing, and suggestive of suffering that could only ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... these colossal cities, an estate which is constantly increasing as it passes down from one generation to another; nowhere does it find a better workshop for the exercise of its industry. Here it has plenty of room: a quiet resting-place, sheltered from damp and from excess of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... at the cupola, where Delacroix has painted, in a wood of bluish myrtles, heroes and sages of antiquity. That gentleman was there, with the same wretched and pitiful air. His coat was damp and he was warming himself. He was talking with old colleagues and saying, while rubbing his hands: 'The proof that the Republic is the best of governments is that in 1871 it could kill in a week sixty thousand insurgents without becoming unpopular. After such a repression any other regime ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... church by himself into the chancel. He went straight up to the east end and made a minute examination apparently of the wall; after that, he came slowly down again, looking carefully into every corner and cranny from the whitewashed ceiling down to the damp and uneven stone paving at his feet; Vera thought him a very odd person, and wondered what he was ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... an' been sprinklin', Kin' o' techy all day long. I ain't wet enough fu' toddy, I 's too damp to raise a song, An' de case have set me t'inkin', Dat dey 's folk des lak de rain, Dat goes drizzlin' w'en dey's talkin', An' won't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... prisoner. But as he again strained his eyes, he became at last aware of the existence of a dark form upon the floor of the cell; and as by degrees his sight became more able to penetrate the obscurity within, he began plainly to perceive the form of the miserable woman, crouched on her knees upon the damp slimy pavement of the wretched hole. She was already dressed in the sackcloth robe of the penitents condemned to the stake, and her poor grey hairs were without covering. So motionless was her form that for a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... a case of intermittent fever, or FEVER AND AGUE, a distressing malady, but little known in New England in modern times, although by no means a stranger to the early settlers. It was fastened upon me with a rough and tenacious grasp, by the damp, foggy, chilly atmosphere in which I had constantly lived for the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... seemed almost interminable, but young Kerry suffered it in stoical silence until the car stopped and he was lifted and carried down stone steps into some damp, earthy-smelling place. Some distance was traversed, and then many flights of stairs were mounted, some ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... out of hearing. So with these authors; if I take up one of their books, however brilliant and even true the statements may be, I am sorry that the writer has laid hands upon a thing I admire and value. He seems like a damp-handed auctioneer, bawling in public, and pointing out the beauties of a ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the haggard are dripping heavily with damp, and the hens and geese, bewildered with the noise and gloom, are cackling with uneasy dread. All one's senses are disturbed. As I walk backwards and forwards, a few yards above and below the door, the little stream I do not see seems to roar ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... turned a sneering glance upon the unhappy commodore while McGuffey sat down on the damp rail of the derelict and laughed until the tears ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... had no doubt of it. "I want him to. Make up the fire for me, Daniel, please." She folded away the ironing cloth and gathered up the little damp cuffs and collars she had not ironed. A faint smile curved her steady lips, for nothing gave her more happiness than serving those who had a claim on her, and Zebedee's claim was his lack of womankind to care for him and her own ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... spare her!" he cried, his face damp with sweat—for he knew now that he would not go. "You want to be rid of me! You would ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the nearest window, threw up the sash, and while she stood with the damp chill wind blowing full upon her the pastor heard a moan, such as comes from meek, dumb creatures, wrung by the throes ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... boards, a stooped individual with wood-soled shoes and a shovel was working a mass of clay over which at intervals he sprinkled water, and at intervals halted to make pliable lumps of a uniform size which he added to a pile wrapped in damp cloths. There were a number of modeling stands with twisted wires grotesquely resembling a child's line drawing of a human being; while a stand with some modeling tools on its edge bore an upright figure shapeless in its swathing ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 3rd, we attended a Church Parade, taken by the Bishop of London, of which many of us have bitter recollections, as owing to a mistake in Divisional Orders, we were rigged out in full marching order. Further, as it was a damp and windy day, few of us could hear a word of the address, and all wanted to get as much sleep as possible in view of the great adventure before us. The same night, which turned out to be miserably wet, we left Locre, to take ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... scrubbing, of rushing water, as if Bethlehem had been surprised by a conflagration. And the wailing of sick children torn from their warm beds, all the whimpering little bundles carried through the damp park, with a fluttering of bedclothes among the branches, strengthened the impression of a fire. In two hours, thanks to the prodigious activity displayed, the whole house from top to bottom was ready for the impending visit, all the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet |
