"Dilapidated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came on a little slab house nestling under the side of a hill. At the back were the stockyards and the killing-pen, where a contrivance for raising dead cattle—called a gallows—waved its arms to the sky. In front of the house there was rather a nice little garden. At the back were a lot of dilapidated sheds, leaning in all directions. A mob of sheep was penned in a yard outside one of the sheds; and in the garden an old woman, white-haired and wrinkled, with a very short dress showing a lot of dirty stocking and ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... bathroom—it struck him as excessively grim. The secret of the grimness did not lie, he thought, in any one particular feature—in the tall, gaunt geyser, for example (though there was always something in the look of a geyser when it was old and dilapidated, as was the case with this one, that repelled him), or in the dark drying-cupboard, or in the narrow, slit-like window; but in the room as a whole, in its atmosphere and general appearance. He could not diagnose it; he could not associate it with anything else he had ever ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... morning came along two policemen on their way to the beats they owned. The park was deserted save for one dilapidated figure that sprawled, asleep, on a bench. They ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... and procured passports into Baja California for himself and Allesandro. From the consulate he went to a local stock-yard and purchased a miserable, flea-bitten, dejected saddle mule, together with a dilapidated old stock saddle with a crupper, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... during the revolts, and the slaughter in Cebu, the exploring party, now reduced to 100 souls all told, was deemed insufficient to conveniently manage three vessels. It was resolved therefore to burn the most dilapidated one—the Concepcion. At a general council, Juan Caraballo was chosen Commander-in-Chief of the expedition, with Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa as Captain of the Victoria. The royal instructions were read, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... almost lost amid the expanses of street and intervening medleys of broken or half-finished partition-walls. At other points evidence of more life and movement was to be seen, and here the houses stood crowded together and displayed dilapidated, rain-blurred signboards whereon boots of cakes or pairs of blue breeches inscribed "Arshavski, Tailor," and so forth, were depicted. Over a shop containing hats and caps was written "Vassili Thedorov, Foreigner"; while, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... round; He turned his back upon Carena hoar, And skimmed above the Cyrenaean ground; Passing the sandy desert of the Moor, In Albajada, reached the Nubian's bound; Left Battus' tomb behind him on the plain, And Ammon's, now dilapidated, fane. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... thin, aristocratic face, with grey moustache and pointed beard, and the homely anxious visage of a small tradesman. But in bulk it looked an ugly, seedy crowd, with unwashed bodies and unclean souls. I noticed an Italian or two, and a villainous Englishman with a face like that of a dilapidated horse. A glance at the table plastered with silver and gold showed me that they were playing with ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... it. He leaped off the platform of the car almost before it had stopped, and looked for a place of shelter. He was surprised to see several large buildings in front of him, but even through the mist of rain he noted that they were dilapidated and forsaken. He was in the midst of ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... but, as their belongings were scattered about in the usual untidiness, Ivan argued return. Throwing off his hat, then, he filled and lighted a pipe, seated himself at the battered piano—sole remaining relic of old Petrov Lihnoff, and now too dilapidated for sale—and yielded himself for an hour to that most dangerous luxury of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... glimpses of green fields. The road underfoot was wet and heavy—part ice, part snow, part water, and any one I met greeted me, by way of salutation, with 'A fine thowe' (thaw). My way lay among rather bleak bills, and past bleak ponds and dilapidated castles and monasteries, to the Highland-looking village of Kirkoswald. It has little claim to notice, save that Burns came there to study surveying in the summer of 1777, and there also, in the kirkyard, the original of Tam o' Shanter sleeps his ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... company which was constructing aeroplanes for the market, into which in past times he had put a little money. He hired a small flat in Brooklyn, on the top floor, so that he had a glimpse of the harbor from his sitting-room windows. He spent the last of his ready money in buying out the dilapidated furniture of his predecessor; and then with the assistance of the janitor's wife, who gave him his breakfast and did what she called "redding up the place," he began to live on the slim salary that his ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... Ed declared he must just take his horse and drive him out to the farm and have a visit with Angus and a drink of Aunt Kirsty's butter-milk. So, early in the evening, they drove through the town down towards the Pine Road. Willow Lane still stood there. The old houses were more dilapidated than ever, and there were more now than there used to be. Doctor Blair's horse and buggy stood before one of them. Willow Lane was on low, swampy ground, and was the abode of fevers and ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... dilapidated earl imported as a parti, was of opinion that the Austrian count had merely applied for the viatique; and being granted by the management a sum large enough to pay his fare and his food, had ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... my nest here, forty years ago, I felt myself an old man, and the building was even then a dilapidated old rookery, and since then we—the house and I—have lapsed physically with the decline of the neighborhood about us, until now our only claims to gentility are perhaps our ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... and in the ascendancy of all that was stagnant, little, and corrupt. If political disorganisation, the decay of public spirit, and the absence of a national idea, are the signs of impending downfall, Germany was ripe for foreign conquest. The obsolete and dilapidated fabric of the Empire had for a century past been sustained only by the European tradition of the Balance of Power, or by the absence of serious attack from without. Austria once overpowered, the Empire was ready to fall to pieces by itself: ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Guilsborough had an extremely narrow escape. Being warned on no account to practise flying in the house or garden, lest his grandchildren should see him and want to do the same, he retired to the seclusion of an old, disused and dilapidated coach house. Here, in the upper storey, he practised by the hour together. He climbed on to a stool which he had taken there for the purpose, and when he fancied he had acquired the right amount of concentration, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... neighbours. It contains a few large houses, some ruins of others, and a weather-beaten cross, where once stood a church; a mound shows the site of an ancient monastery, and a mud fort by the river is so dilapidated, that cows were grazing ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... In the autumn of 1831, his health became so lamentably broken, that his medical advisers recommended a residence in Italy, and entire cessation from mental occupation, as the only means of invigorating a constitution so seriously dilapidated. But the counsel came too late; the patient proceeded to Naples, and afterwards to Rome, but experiencing no benefit from the change, he was rapidly conveyed homewards in the following summer, in obedience to his express wish, that he might have the satisfaction of closing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... hats (the better of which would not have greatly disfigured an old clothesman, whilst the worse would have been of service to a professional scarecrow), Lord Kenyon took jealous care. The inferior wig was always worn with the better hat, and the more dilapidated hat with the superior wig; and it was noticed that when he appeared in court with the shabbier wig he never removed his chapeau; whereas, on the days when he sat in his more decent wig, he pushed his old cocked hat ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the alley sounded a chant, drawing nearer and nearer, until there shambled into view a decrepit horse drawing a dilapidated huckster's cart. Perched on the seat was a Greek who turned his dusky face up toward the two women leaning over the porch railings. "Rhubarb, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Carhaix, in silence, opened a door. They advanced into an immense storeroom, containing colossal broken statues of saints, scaly and dilapidated apostles, Saint Matthew legless and armless, Saint Luke escorted by a fragmentary ox, Saint Mark lacking a shoulder and part of his beard, Saint Peter holding up an arm from which the hand holding the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of skins, and woollen nightcaps. Stuffed under their belts and through their packs they carry newspapers, broken staves for firewood, parcels from home, and sandbags loaded with mysterious comforts. A dilapidated parrot and a few goats are all that is required to complete the picture of Robinson Crusoe ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... been meditating had been nipped in the bud. Their rifle fire also slackened perceptibly, although it continued until daybreak much heavier than their usual night firing. On comparing notes, we found that two, if not three, machine-guns, had disclosed themselves in the dilapidated length of F12 between our barricade and the "shell-holed" tree—a portion of the trench which we had hitherto regarded as entirely abandoned—and that there were more of them in the same trench between the tree and the small nullah; the exact positions ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... few trees were growing. Some were cherry trees, and one was a birch, with long, slender branches which swayed in the wind, and with every breeze its leaves touched the dilapidated moss-covered straw thatch of the roof; when the stronger gusts of wind bent its boughs to the wall, and pressed its twigs and the waves of leaves against the roof, it would seem as if the tree loved the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in Kuching, so I put up at the rather dilapidated government Rest-House, part of which I had to myself, the other half being occupied by two government officers. The club in Kuching seems a most popular institution with all the officials, and "gin pahits" (or "bitters") the popular drink of this part of the world; ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... way of a towel! And even this she had done more to please the children than because she saw any need for it. This evening she made no pretence of anything after taking off the children's outer clothes—Duke's nankin suit, now sadly soiled and dilapidated, and the old red flannel skirt and little shawl which had replaced Pamela's white frock. The frock was still in existence; but by Mick's orders Diana had trimmed it up gaudily for the child ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... there was used an amusing picture showing Mark Twain on his trip around the world. It was a trick photograph made from a picture of Mark Twain taken in a steamer-chair, cut out and combined with a dilapidated negro-cart drawn by a horse and an ox. In it Clemens appears to be sitting luxuriously in the end of the disreputable cart. His companions are two negroes. To the creator of this ingenious effect Mark ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Government publications seems to be absolutely complete. There seems to be in all of them suppressions or omissions which only the future historian will be able to report—perhaps after many years. They reveal, however, the dilapidated state of the Concert of Europe in July, 1914, and the flurry in the European Chancelleries which the ultimatum sent by Austria-Hungary to Servia produced. They also testify to the existence of a new and influential ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Scott, General-in-Chief at Washington, to use all means in defense of Union property. Next morning Slemmer and his fifty faithful men were landed on Santa Rosa Island, just one mile across the bay, where the dilapidated old Fort Pickens stood forlorn. Two days later the Commodore surrendered the Navy Yard, the Stars and Stripes were lowered, and everything ashore fell into the enemy's hands. There was no flagstaff at ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... kept in a locked cupboard in the sisters' building. My outfit consisted of a comparatively whole pair of trousers—not those immortalised in Mr. Rawlence's sketch—a strong, short-sleeved shirt of hard, grey woollen stuff, a dilapidated waistcoat, a belt, my little book of bush flowers and trees, and my one-pound note. Oh, and an ancient grey felt hat with a large hole in the crown of it. That was all; but I dare say notable careers have been started upon less; in ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... stopping for an hour or two during the hottest part of the day, and putting up late at night at a dilapidated inn in a half-deserted village. The landlord, a bent, feeble, old man, had gone to bed, but he set about preparing some supper, while, since there was no ostler, we fed and ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... north assembled at, ii. 250; wretched condition of the troops at, ii. 250, 251; Sullivan informed of his being superseded by General Gates at—efforts of Schuyler and Gates to reorganize the army of the north at—dilapidated condition of the fort at, ii. 251; Washington unfavorable to the abandonment of—letters of Washington to Schuyler and Gates, in relation to the abandonment of, ii. 252; possession taken of, by General Carleton, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... a short distance, and then turned to the southward and took to a side road leading through a patch of high brushwood. Crossing a tiny mountain torrent, they came in sight of a dilapidated house, one end of which was all but wrecked. To the surprise of both Jack and his guide, smoke was issuing from behind ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... cropping the land and that it must be fed and cared for accordingly. There is absolutely no use in setting an apple orchard, expecting it to take care of itself, "just growing," like Topsy, as numerous dilapidated and broken down orchards bear ample testimony. If orchards are to be cropped this must be judiciously done with the trees primarily ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... of the evening's performance developed. On a return trip to the dry-goods store Jack drew Alex to a halt with an exclamation, and pointed across the street. Burke, the real estate man, was walking slowly along with a shrivelled-up little old gentleman in dilapidated hat, faded ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... house?" he asked, pointing in the direction of the gloomy old mansion whose dilapidated gables were barely visible over the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the stone bridge, and standing upon its parapet, you may look east to Centreville, about four miles distant, beautifully situated on a high ridge of land, but a very old, dilapidated place when you get to it. Going west from the bridge, you see upon your right hand a swell of land, and another at your left hand, south of the turnpike. A brook trickles by the roadside. Leaving the turnpike, and ascending the ridge on the north side, you see that towards Sudley ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... this town witnessed battles between the Chinese and the troops of Jenghiz Khan but afterwards it was forgotten. At present there remains only a half-ruined tower, from which in the early days the heavy rocks were hurled down upon the heads of the enemy, and the dilapidated gate of Kublai, the grandson of Jenghiz Khan. Against the greenish sky drenched with the rays of the moon stood out the jagged line of the mountains and the black silhouette of the tower with its loopholes, ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... corridor they came upon a large room that, although mildewed and dilapidated and wholly bereft of furniture, was intact as far as the walls and ceiling were concerned. But what especially caught their eyes was a huge stone fireplace, and at once they decided to end their explorations for the ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... water, and that it is the first point on entering the Yangtze-kiang at which a port could be established. It is twelve miles up the Whang-poo. Junks whirled past with curious tattered brown sails, resembling dilapidated verandah blinds, merchantmen were there flying the flags of the nations of the world, all churning up the yellow stream as they hurried to catch the flood-tide at the bar. Then came the din of disembarkation. Enthusiastic hotel-runners, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... most part old and dilapidated, looking in nearly as ruined a condition as the fragments of antiquity which date so many centuries before them. Nevertheless, some of the streets and dwellings seem to indicate that a spirit ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... up the other dilapidated-looking easy-chair to the log fire and commenced to fill his ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... abrupt and broken country presents delightful changes at every turn. I saw but few signs of diligent cultivation. The negro race is here, as everywhere else, an idle and thriftless one; and the purlieus of the town where they are congregated are dilapidated and squalid. The statue of Josephine in the Savannah is a very fine specimen of sculpture. It represents her in her customary dress, and she appears, indeed, a charming woman. This is her native island. The United States consul ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... made with all kinds of instruments found suitable to the locality. Only a few of the stations were on solid ground, nearly all the shore being overflowed. Frequently the members of the party were compelled to mount their instruments on the chimney tops of dilapidated houses. In other places boats were run under overhanging trees on the shore, in which signal flags were hoisted, and the angles measured below with sextants. It was very satisfactory, however, that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Nevertheless, serious problems persist. Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world commodity prices. Russia's manufacturing base is dilapidated and must be replaced or modernized if the country is to achieve broad-based economic growth. The banking system, while growing at a high rate and increasing consumer lending, is still small relative to the banking sectors of Russia's ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... far as transportation and mess arrangements were concerned. The first time I call to mind seeing either of them, after the battle, they were mounted on two enormous horses, grown white from age, each equipped with dilapidated saddles and bridles. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... spread that a carriage was coming along the road from Tver. All the villagers came to the doors of their dilapidated wooden huts. Even the kabaks were emptied for a time. As the vehicle approached it became apparent that the horses were going at a great pace; not only was the loose horse galloping, but also the pair in the shafts. The ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... some six or seven miles, and always keeping within sound of the dull plash of the river, the landlord of the 'Jolly Tar' drew up suddenly by a dilapidated wooden paling, behind which there was a low- roofed habitation of some kind or other, which was visible only by reason of one faint glimmer of light, flickering athwart a scrap of dingy red curtain. The dull, plashing sound of the river was louder here; and, mingling with that ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... perceptible. A faint light shone from the window. It stood unfenced by any kind of hedge or railing a few feet away from the road in a little hollow beneath some rising ground. As far as they could discern in the darkness when they drew near, the house was a mean, dilapidated hovel. A guttering candle stood on the inner sill of the small window and afforded a vague view into a mean interior. Doyne held up the lamp so that its rays fell full on the door. As he did so, an exclamation broke from his lips and he hurried forward, followed by the others. A man's body ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... fort, beyond which appeared an avenue of trees on a gentle slope, then a collection of flat-roofed whitewashed houses, then the palace of the Portuguese governor, with pink walls, and a considerably dilapidated cathedral, below which a stone pier, with buttresses of a sugar-loaf form, runs out ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... off his shoulders. He wore a dismally battered cocked hat which was a size too large for him, and came down to his ears over his closely cropped hair. His shirt was dirty and ragged, and his breeches and shoes were of the most dilapidated character, the latter showing, through the gaping orifices in ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... farewell, Smedley and the other two lads took their way along the banks of the river, in the direction of some dilapidated sheds, where they had arranged to meet and enjoy, according to their own fashion, their hard-won supper. The stranger lounged away across the bridge at some little distance from the sheds, while Jack, anxious to get ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... verifying his suspicions, for on returning into the adjoining room, Madame Paul had not taken her son with her. He was still sitting on the muddy floor of the shop, playing with his dilapidated horse. Chupin called him. "Come here, my little fellow," ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... impetuous spring Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow Hath struck him, but unable to proceed Plunges on either side; so saw I plunge The Minotaur; whereat the sage exclaim'd: "Run to the passage! while he storms, 't is well That thou descend." Thus down our road we took Through those dilapidated crags, that oft Mov'd underneath my feet, to weight like theirs Unus'd. I pond'ring went, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... all the weaker or better men within their influence. The numbers on the island in 1845, were nearly 2,000; of whom one-fourth were colonial or doubly-convicted prisoners. For these rapid additions no preparation was made: the buildings in the island, adapted for prison purposes, were dilapidated and insufficient. In the sleeping wards, the hammocks were placed in contact: the men were shut up after dusk, from eighty to a hundred together, in charge of a convict wardsman, until the morning. The place of promiscuous association was called ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... appeared the least dilapidated of these wrecks, came gallantly up to Madame de Rouville, kissed her hand, and sat down by her. The other bowed and placed himself not far from his model, at a distance represented by two chairs. Adelaide came behind the ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... his head. Thus libertines seem to have something over their heads which says: "Go on, but remember, I hang not by a thread." Those masked carriages that are seen during Carnival are the faithful images of their life. A dilapidated open wagon, flaming torches lighting up painted faces; some laugh, some sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... favorites by refusing to work under them. Several terrible disasters in the winter of 1870 and '71 called public attention again to the subject, and Captain John Faunce was appointed by the department to inspect the coast and the stations. He reported the houses as generally in a filthy, dilapidated condition, and often so far gone as to be worthless; the apparatus rusty, and many of the most necessary articles wanting; in some stations nothing which could be carried away was left; the keepers were utterly unfit for their position, and the crews which they employed worse. Yet, notwithstanding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the ivy-covered wall of a high dilapidated terrace which overlooked the lake. My eyes wandered over the bright expanse of water and the luminous immensity of the sky; they were so well blended in the azure line of the horizon that it would have ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... had been on a short journey to the Augustine convent, which stands on the plain in the direction of Saragossa, carrying with me an Arabian book, which a learned monk was desirous of seeing. Night overtook me ere I could return. I speedily lost my way, and wandered about until I came near a dilapidated edifice with which I was acquainted; I was about to proceed in the direction of the town, when I heard voices within the ruined walls; I listened, and recognised the language of the abhorred Gitanos; I was about ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... principal thoroughfares, which were paved with granite or wood. The older houses are of brick, overlaid with white or tinted plaster, and ornamented with figures or foliage in terra-cotta; but owing to the great changes of temperature in Rumania, the plaster soon cracks and peels off, giving a dilapidated appearance to many streets. The chief modern buildings, such as the Athenaeum, with its Ionic facade and Byzantine dome, are principally on the quays and boulevards, and are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... brick-and-stone structures, built for the future metropolis rather than for the present camp. A section of an electric railway that was thirty-two miles long ran through the street, and the handsomely equipped cars on it clipped past mud-encrusted mule teams from distant hill farms, prairie schooners, and dilapidated carryalls. The scene was tremendously, occidentally irregular, setting forth that merciless clutch of the future upon the past that makes the present mere transition. The town was hard pushed to catch up with its own vast possibilities. A small place, set suddenly forward ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... not awaken for eight hours. When they emerged, somewhat shamefacedly, they found the family assembled on the verandah, drinking their afternoon chocolate, and impatient with curiosity. There were no girls to criticise the dilapidated garments—which the kind hostess had mended while the boys slept; but there were two youths of fourteen and fifteen and two young men who were lying in hammocks and ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... channel we arrived at a rough jetty where we disembarked, whence we were led by Hassan not to the village which I now saw upon our left, but to a pleasant-looking, though dilapidated house that stood a hundred yards from the shore. Something about the appearance of this house impressed me with the idea that it was never built by slavers; the whole look of the place with its verandah and garden suggested taste ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... nails, and shooting out little comments upon the weather. Presently feet were heard upon the stairs, the moneylender hurried out, there was a sound of whispering, and he returned with a large, fat, greasy-looking man, clad in a much worn frock-coat, and a very dilapidated top hat. ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cow," which he had so ardently longed for, now grazed soulfully in a temporary enclosure out on the mesa. Two young and sprightly black pigs prospected the confines of their littered hermitage. Four gaunt hens and a more or less dilapidated rooster stalked about the yard, no longer afraid of the watchful Chance, who had previously introduced himself to the rooster without the formality of Sundown's presence as mediator. Sundown was proud of his chickens. The cow, however, had been, at first, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... one hand from his pocket and scratched the back of his head, tilting his hat as far forward as it had previously been to the rear, and just then the dilapidated side of his right boot attracted his attention. He turned the foot on one side, and squinted at the sole; then he raised the foot to his left knee, caught the ankle in a very dirty hand, and regarded the sole-leather critically, as though calculating ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... and Charleston Railroad crosses the Tennessee river at this point. The town is a dilapidated old concern, as ugly as Huntsville ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... brow of the dilapidated ramparts is one of the most impressive that the place affords. Looking to the south-west over the former city, the eye wanders upon the interminable ocean, its blue rolling waves occupying three-fourths of the scene, and beyond them, on the verge of the horizon, a dense bank of fog ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... last hope, and he had only to look about for another home for his family. There was small choice of houses in the little farming town. In fact there was but one house,—a shabby, dilapidated building, a mile from the church and store. This, Mr. Nelson, having no choice, engaged for a ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... midst of his orange-trees, his verses, and the breezes of an aromatic coast, he had three children, the eldest of whom was a daughter named Cornelia, and the youngest the author of the Jerusalem Delivered. the other child died young. The house distinguished by the poet's birth was restored from a dilapidated condition by order of Joseph Bonaparte when King of Naples, and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... dingy little man, and might never have had a mother, but could have been born of that dusty workroom, to which he had been a faithful son all his life. It was a murky interior shut in from the day, a litter of petty tools and nameless rubbish on a ruinous bench, a disorder of dilapidated boots, that mean gas jet, a smell of leather; and there old Pascoe's hammer defiantly and rapidly attacked its circumstances, driving home at times, and all unseen, more than those rivets. If he ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... back stood the chapel for services, stretched out the vast cemetery. Some of the cracked, dilapidated tombs dated back to 1600; others marked the addition in 1788 to the original God's-acre. All was hushed; it was difficult to imagine a phantom where neglect seemed to rule. It was not in this olden part that descendants of the departed flocked on All Saints' ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... came dilapidated butterflies and shells and fossils and stuffed lizards and crocodiles and elephants' tusks, and I do not know what else, so that by the time one came out, after passing through the confusion that reigned everywhere, one's brain was so worn and jumpy that one ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... amorists, and that one bar of the voluptuous sentimentality of Gounod or Bizet would appear as a licentious stain on the score of Don Giovanni. Even the more abstract parts of the Don Juan play are dilapidated past use: for instance, Don Juan's supernatural antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent into lakes of burning brimstone, there to be tormented by devils with horns and tails. Of that antagonist, and of that conception of repentance, how much is left that could be used in a ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... I reached my house and had filled my pipe and sat myself down in the dilapidated cane chair on the veranda, that natural reaction set in which so often follows rejoicing at the escape from a great danger. It was true that no one believed I had cheated them over that thrice-accursed gold mine, but ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... time climbing the long hill leading to the haunted house, and it was just three o'clock when they came in sight of the dilapidated structure, almost hidden in the tangle of ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... ventre across his room, from one pile of books to the other. The house in which these singular gym- nastics took place, and which is now the headquarters of the gendarmerie, is one of the most picturesque at Bourges. Dilapidated and discolored, it has a charm- ing Renaissance front. A high wall separates it from the street, and on this wall, which is divided by a large open gateway, are perched two overhanging turrets. The open gateway admits you to the court, beyond which the melancholy ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decaying mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... luck!' The trees showered kindly wishes, and hearty compliments danced from lip to lip. A spirit of irrepressible jollity laughed in the land. Drays, waggons, buggies, cabs, vehicles of all kinds, were pressed into the service of the adventurers. Four diggers went roaring by in a dilapidated landau that had seen vice-regal service in Hobart Town, driven by a fifth blackguard dressed in an old livery, and they brandished champagne bottles, and scattered the liquid gold like emperors—lucky pioneers from Buninyong. A ragged, bare-footed, hatless urchin, a stowaway fresh ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... sources of wealth to be found in Jamaica, an intelligent eye-witness says: "Such are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, and daily sinking ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... unexpectedly easy to carry out, and not ruinously extravagant, either; for our friend the American consul knew the principal director in a tram company, and a dilapidated and discarded car was sent to us in a few days. There were certain moments—once when we saw that it had not been painted for twenty years, once when the freight bill was handed us, and again when we contracted for the removal of our gift from ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... days, we found ourselves, a party of six (including young JERRYMAN, who said that, though he saw no difference between Lucerne and Bayswater, except that Bayswater was a "howling site bigger," he would come, "if only for the lark of seeing the dilapidated old boy" (his way of referring to his invalid Q.C. Uncle) "shovelled about the Bernese Oberland like a seedy Guy Faux,") crossing the silver streak on that valued, steady-going, and excellently well-found Channel friend, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... contrast against the green forest. On the river bank was Navy Hall, a log retreat for seamen, and on Mississaga (Black Snake) Point a stone lighthouse flashed its red signal of hope to belated mariners. Nearer the lake shore, in isolated dignity across a mile of common, stood Fort George, a dilapidated structure with wooden palisades and bastions. Half-acre lots in the village were given gratis by the Government to anyone who would build, and eight acres outside for inclosures, besides a large "commonty" for the use of the people. A quite pretentious ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... along moodily, my chin on my chest and much too absorbed in reflection to have any nice appreciation of what was happening about me, I was crossing in front of a dilapidated block of houses, dating back nearly to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I had a vague consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping by me—a thing like a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing could be, and the next instant there was a thud and a bump, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... startling and wonderful as to suggest the idea that some genii or magician had descended upon the city and with a touch of his magic wand converted a very ordinary looking street, containing many mean, dilapidated looking dwellings, into a veritable avenue of palaces, and for ever sweeping away blots and eyesores which had existed almost from time immemorial. This transformation more or less applies to Clive ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... the spacious and somewhat dilapidated mansion which called him master; and entering a sitting room, appropriated to his daughter's use, he found her there, in company with her beautiful French governess. He kissed his child, and saluted her young ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... went to Venice to pick up Berovieri goblets and other things, Leslie stayed at the Hotel Europa and Peter in the Palazzo Amadeo. The Palazzo Amadeo is a dilapidated palace looking onto the Rio delle Beccarie; it is let in flats to the poor; and in the sea-story suite of the great, bare, dingy, gilded rooms lived Hilary and Peggy Margerison, and three disreputable ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... boat or its occupants. But the long-sighted old sagamore was right. The party of adventurers, their craft considerably the worse for the journey, steering with a pair of oars in place of a rudder, reached the landing-place and battered, weary and dilapidated, came up to the fort. They were surprised and disappointed to see no one about except a few curious ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... had continued on Helen's trail he would have followed her to an Indian ranch not far away. A tattered tepee or two snuggled against a dilapidated cabin. The owner of the ranch was struggling with tuberculosis. His wife was trying to run the place and to bring up several children, whose condition had aroused the mother instinct in Helen. Though she had found her first efforts regarded with suspicion, Helen had persisted, until she had won ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... high, with the little graveyard on one side, and a grass terrace in front, from which one has the most lovely view down the valley, and over the green slopes to the woods—Borny and Villers-Cotterets on one side, Chezy the other. It is very worn and dilapidated inside, and is never open except on the day of St. Quentin,[7] when the cure of La Ferte-Milon comes over and has a service. The school-house is a nice modern little house, built by W. some years ago. It looks as if it had dropped down by mistake into ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... under-gardener, though he did odd jobs about the gardens. To be short, it was Tommy Collins a hydrocephalous youth generally supposed to be half-baked, or, as we put it in Cornwall, 'not exactly'; and on his immense head, crowning a livery suit which patently did not belong to him, Tommy Collins wore a dilapidated ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... market economy and achieve strong economic growth. Russian GDP has contracted an estimated 43% since 1991, including a 5% drop in 1998, despite the country's wealth of natural resources, its well-educated population, and its diverse—although increasingly dilapidated—industrial base. By the end of 1997, Russia had achieved some progress. Inflation had been brought under control, the ruble was stabilized, and an ambitious privatization program had transferred thousands of enterprises to private ownership. Some important ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... which give it an air of recluseness, and romantic retirement, without being so close as to prevent the due circulation of air. It is surrounded by a wall, but which, from long neglect, originating perhaps in its inutility, has become dilapidated, and interests only as an ancient ruin. In the former ages, when France was subdivided into dutchies and minor kingdoms, and when her neighbours were more powerful, such walls were a necessary defence to the town: a change in manners and government has now rendered them useless, and ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... a somewhat dilapidated town, but that was not always the case, for it is mentioned in my dear old friend Froude's History of England that the then Earl of Desmond called on the ambassador of Charles V. at his lodgings in Dingle. The old ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... were, were curious, dilapidated edifices. They stood on platforms supported by posts, placed apparently without any attempt at regularity. Many of the posts were twisted and crooked, and looked as if they were tumbling down. The houses were very low, the roofs being in the shape of boats turned ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... that usually characterizes ancestral dwellings in that locality. The edifice could still boast of imposing grandeur, especially if classed among "fine ruins." Within and without were harmoniously dilapidated, and a large portion of the interior was uninhabitable. The limited resources of the count precluded even an ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... store!" burst out Sam, pointing across the way. He had discovered a general trading store, the dilapidated ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... first base, and sat down between neighbors of uncommon parts. Next to Helen was a large red man of Hibernian extraction, with a long upper lip tamed but little by civilization or by razor; on his head he wore a dilapidated cloth cap; he was, to appearances, driver for an ice ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... horses a moment's rest, my eye was caught by its deserted and dilapidated appearance. It had evidently been uninhabited for years. The fence had gone to decay, the gate lay rotting on the ground, and a forlorn sleigh, looking strangely out of place in contrast with the summer-flowers that had over-grown it, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... dairy. But the crowning absurdity of the place is the office of the colonial secretary, which stands nearly opposite. I am told that inside it is tolerably comfortable, being the remains of an old Dutch building: outside, it can only be compared to a dilapidated barn on a bankrupt farm, and when it was first pointed out to me I had great difficulty, remembering similar buildings in other colonies, in believing it was a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... and giving to them that cracked-porcelain appearance common to the old masters. One thus prepared was bought at his studio for one hundred dollars, consigned to a priest in the country, in due time discovered, and the rumor of a great master in an exceedingly dirty and somewhat dilapidated state, but believed to be intact beneath the varnishes and grime of centuries, brought to the ears of a Russian, who after a delicate and wearisome negotiation obtained it for eight hundred dollars, and perhaps paid half ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Lihou, on the south side of Cook Island, in Endeavour Strait; but the ships in company being able to supply us the delay was avoided. Since our last visit, the book at the Post Office, on Booby Island, had been destroyed by some mischievous visitors, and the box was in a very dilapidated state. We repaired the latter, and left a new book with a ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... Matterson occupied was a much dilapidated one of a story and a half, containing three rooms and a loft. Some of the windows were broken out and the chimney was ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... in this park," said Joseph, as they passed what seemed to be merely a grove, with a rather dilapidated fence. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... an "abandoned farm" on which the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked, as frequently happens, you are all right. Even if the buildings are somewhat dilapidated, you can fix them up for a few dollars. But in buying small plots of ground, larger farms have to be broken up. If you buy from the resident owner, he may sell you five acres off his larger tract, and keep his house to live in. Certain ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... he had not stirred or opened his eyes; once or twice the dilapidated chambermaid, who performed a slatternly duty in that part of the building, opened the door and peeped in, but her entrance had not served to arouse him, and she knew better than to venture ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... service of the Prefect for ten years," he remarked, "and I have learned that he wastes very little time upon unimportant things." He leaned out and spoke to the chauffeur, and in a moment the car halted before a dingy little shop, on the lower floor of an old and dilapidated-looking house. "Here is the place of ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... him up another flight of steps to the open door of the house, through a hallway covered with a ragged carpet, where a dilapidated walnut hat-rack stood, up the stairs, threading a dark passage that led into a low-ceiled, stifling room at the very back. A stout, slatternly person in a wrapper rose as they entered, but the mother ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the fifth floor of the dilapidated house, so gloomy and ill-smelling, with its atmosphere poisoned by stagnant water in the defective sinks and sewers, she hesitatingly entered the dingy room occupied ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue |
