"Mess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mess of politics at bottom, depend on't!" continued my father, still talking to himself. "Ah, you don't know what politics are, my little Gretchen!—so much the ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... Cherokee had this Christmas mess already bought and paid for; and he was all flattered up with self-esteem over his idea; and we had in a way flew the flume with that fizzy wine I speak of; so I never ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... all shearers in Riverina are paid at a certain rate, usually that of ONE pound per hundred sheep shorn. They agree, on the other hand, to pay for all supplies consumed by them at certain prices fixed before the shearing agreement is signed. Hence, it is entirely their own affair whether their mess bills are extravagant or economical. They can have anything within the rather wide range of the station store. PATES DE FOIE GRAS, ortolans, roast ostrich, novels, top-boots, double-barrelled guns, IF THEY LIKE TO PAY FOR THEM—with one exception. No ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... counted, at one time, no less than two hundred bottles of chemicals, all shrewdly marked POISON, so that no one but himself would dare to touch them. Before long the lad took up so much room in his mother's cellar with his 'mess,' as she called it, that she told him to take it out, 'bag ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... away that mess! The Ellenboroughs are directly opposite, watching everything you do. Eat that omelet, or anything respectable, unless you want ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... senior non-commissioned officers a sergeants' mess is provided, containing dining-room, reading-room and billiard-room, with kitchen premises and liquor store, which also has a jug department for the sergeants' families. The single non-commissioned officers have all their meals in this mess, and the married ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... sworn that M'Connachie shall not interfere with this address to-day; but there is no telling. I might have done things worth while if it had not been for M'Connachie, and my first piece of advice to you at any rate shall be sound: don't copy me. A good subject for a rectorial address would be the mess the Rector himself has made of life. I merely cast this forth as a suggestion, and leave the working of it out to my successor. I do not think it has been ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... I don't like it twice—do you hear! This is all your fault, Tempenny. You have got me into a pretty mess upon my word. My wife won't believe me, and I shall never hear ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... our own, Or introduc'd from foreign land; but ne'er To such a strange recorder I beheld, In evolution moving, horse nor foot, Nor ship, that tack'd by sign from land or star. With the ten demons on our way we went; Ah fearful company! but in the church With saints, with gluttons at the tavern's mess. Still earnest on the pitch I gaz'd, to mark All things whate'er the chasm contain'd, and those Who burn'd within. As dolphins, that, in sign To mariners, heave high their arched backs, That thence forewarn'd they may advise to save Their threaten'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... nor was there any attempt upon the part of Obergatz' native soldiers, or the warriors of the chief to detain them, for they too doubtless were more than willing that the whites should bring them in one more mess of meat before ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he was well enough, but that on arriving at Charing Cross the trunk containing his clothes was missing. He ended by saying: "And I have to preside over a dinner to-morrow! At all events I cannot do it in a flannel shirt!... I am in a pretty mess!" ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the Navy as follows: "Lieutenant Paige is so ill as to be unable to go to sea with the ship. At the urgent request of Acting-Lieutenant Pierce I have granted him, also, permission to go on shore; one inducement for my granting his request was his being at variance with every officer in his mess." "Captains' Letters," vol. 29, No. 1, in the Naval Archives at Washington. Neither officers nor men had shaken together.] In other words, the Chesapeake possessed good material, but ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... get him into the wagon, as it was already overcrowded. He had a shotgun, which he had brought from England, and which had been a great blessing to him and his family, for he was a good shot, and often had a mess of sage-hens or rabbits for his family. I took the gun from his cart, put a bundle on the end of it, placed it on his shoulder, and started him out with his little boy, twelve years old. His wife and two daughters, older than the boy, took the cart ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... for—oh no, this is a pair of shoes for Debby—oh Debby, Debby, how dare you!" Audrey's face and voice and manner changed in a flash from sweet graciousness to hot anger. "Just look at the mess you have made, and your heel is on the brim of my best hat. Oh, how clumsy ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... mess Eames will make of it if he marries that girl!" Such was Cradell's reflection as he betook himself to his own room. But of his own part in the night's transactions he was rather proud than otherwise, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... to himself would by degrees be expended in this manner. And then, the squire's lawyers had to take up the matter; and they did so greatly to the detriment of poor Mr Yates Umbleby, who was found to have made a mess of the affairs entrusted to him. Mr Umbleby's accounts were incorrect; his mind was anything but clear, and he confessed, when put to it by the very sharp gentleman that came down from London, that he was ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... perplexity to me to this day to determine by what mysterious process they managed to stow away one-half of what they devoured. I have repeatedly watched one of these overgrown animals seat himself before a wooden trencher, some three-quarters of a yard broad, and clear from it, as if by magic, a mess piled up to the greatest capacity of the vessel, and consisting of rice, garnished at the top with a couple of pounds or so of curried meat or fish; after which, glaring around him in a hungry and dissatisfied manner, calculated to raise ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... be auld Widow Martin, That ca's hersel' thretty and twa! And thrawn-gabbit Madge, wha for certain Was jilted by Hab o' the Shaw. And Elspy, the sewster, sae genty— A pattern of havens and sense— Will straik on her mittens sae dainty, And crack wi' Mess ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... be all right then! He'll follow me like a lamb. He doesn't want to mess around with such. But she's ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... present a sort of barricade, encircling an area about eighty yards in diameter. The cloth tents, such as are used in the army, were pitched inside the enclosure. The animals were all hobbled and turned out to feed in the meadow. The company was divided into four messes of seven men each. Each mess had its cook. They ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... to encourage her, brought swift tears that rolled down and streaked the powder and rouge on her cheeks. She had made a mess of it all; she knew that just as well as Luck knew it. He gave her shoulder a reassuring pat as she went by, and that finished Rosemary. She retreated into the gloomy, one-windowed bedroom with its litter of half-unpacked suitcases and an overflowing ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... oil? Well, that is the look which comes over Mrs. Jimmie's face when the odour of whiskey assails her aristocratic nostrils. Nevertheless she valiantly sits the whole evening through with her long glass in her hand. The ice melts and the whole mess grows warm and nauseous, but she hangs on, sipping at it with an air of determined enjoyment painful to see. If she did as she would like, she would either hold her nose and gulp it all down at once or else she would fling glass and all ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... had raised himself on his good arm. He was looking sleepily at his other arm, at the mess of blood on his uniform, at a small red pool on the ground, at his sabre lying a foot away on the path. Then he laid himself down gently again to think it all out, as far as a thundering headache ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... descended the hot iron pan with its content of stew. "Ah! Kame is mad—clean daft." With a wild laugh she seized the pot full of boiling rice and began to pour it into the drain. When he tried to stop her, he received the mess full in his bosom—"Mad? Not at all. This Kame never felt in better spirits. When grass grows in Samoncho[u] we enter Nirvana. Ha! Ha! Ha! To hasten the happy time!" With a kick she knocked over the furnace. In an instant the tatami ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Enoch would not have made such a mess of it last summer, and got so utterly into disgrace, if they could only have kept this rule in mind. But, from mere thoughtlessness, they were making people wish they were at the North Pole all the time, and it ended in their wishing that they were ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... life during the two years she was out of the reader's sight. Rhoda had been very good to her; had set her up in a lodging-house, at her earnest request. She misconducted it, and failed: threw it up in disgust, and begged Rhoda to put her in the public line. Rhoda complied. Mary made a mess of the public-house. Then Rhoda showed her she was not fit to govern anything, and drove her into service again; and in that condition, having no more cares than a child, and plenty of work to do, and many a present from Rhoda, she ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... intricate details of my task, time passed rapidly. The watch changed, and I joined my officers in the tiny, arched dining salon. It was during the meal that I noticed for the first time a sort of tenseness; every member of the mess was unusually quiet. And though I would not, have admitted it then, I was not without a good deal of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... "I'm so glad," she said in a relieved tone. "I suppose I seem fussy, but now and then the problem of help gets to be a regular nightmare. Once or twice lately I've been afraid I was making a terrible mess of things, and might, after all, have to accept one of the offers I've had for the ranch. I should hate dreadfully to leave here, but if ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... young gent would go out and spread 40 cents around among the tradesmen for a mess of water-lilies and a ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... these miles to New York to pull her out of the mess she had got into with that man who's ruined yer home, and ye out in the cold without a cent—and ye forgave her for that—and now that she's locked up with only herself to suffer, ye turn yer back on her and leave her to fight it ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... started boldly forth to follow directions, but it was not until she had been ejected from the X-ray Room, the Mess Hall, and the Officers' Quarters, that she succeeded in reaching her destination. By that time her courage was at its lowest ebb. On either side of the long wards were cots, on which lay men in various stages ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... beach, and covered her completely over with branches of palm and other broad-leaved trees, so as to save her from being yet more destroyed by the heat of the sun. We then set to work and built ourselves two huts for sleeping in, and a shed which served us as a mess-room, open on every side. Mr Henley and I intended to occupy one of the huts and the crew the other. We had found a pure, abundant stream of water, so that we were in no way ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mess. Heber and Pond, or even Mr. John Cheney, were the first who published accounts of Horse-racing, will find himself much mistaken, for there lived others above a hundred years before them, who not only published accounts ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... think you can do better? Well, I don't mind; you shall plan the reprisal and then get us out of the mess. Done!" ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... to some infernal mischief. You have made a mess of it. You never picked up the duchess, and you're trying to palm this tale off on me ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... stall and you get meat for money, into the shoe store and you get shoes for money, but go into the saloon and the bargain is all on one side. It's bar-gain on one side and bar-loss on the other; ill-gotten gains on one side, mis-spent wages on the other, a mess of pottage on one side and the birthright of some mother's boy ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... "Then you wouldn't mess around in Cape Cod Bay. You'd set a course as far from other craft and harbours as you could. If they went south they'd be among boats right along, and they'd know that we'd work the wires and that folks would be on ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... would look grander still, so he got some clinkers and with great trouble managed to push them right out to the middle, he was just putting in the last one when he toppled and fell splash-bash right into the water. He was in an awful mess when he got out! And his Mother, who came home just at that minute, was very angry with him. Poor Little Dumpty was very sad and ashamed ...
— Humpty Dumpty's Little Son • Helen Reid Cross
... his praiseworthy efforts to do business. Old Crocky, too, was there, mounted on a subdued wretch of the horse-species, tenanted, according to the Pythagorean doctrine, by the evil spirit of some defunct croupier, and ready to "return on the nick" as usual. In this "mess tossed up of Hockley-Hole and White's," in addition to our foregoing inventory, were dukes ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... orphan, examine the books in the Surrogate's office until you find her father's will; if her papa is still alive and kicking, persuade her to take his bank-book into the back kitchen and there count the shekels. Never let your heart get into the mess, for that complicates matters. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... Chapel, the Riding Hall, the Administration Building and some of the Officers' Quarters will be removed. Most of the old important buildings, however, will not be disturbed, and the Chapel will be placed as it were "intact" on another site. The plan leaves untouched the Cadet Barracks, the Cadet Mess, the Memorial Hall, the Library and the Officers' Mess. The tower of the new Post Headquarters will rise high and massive several stories above the other structures and present in enduring symbol the republic standing four square and firm throughout ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... o' the guards," he said. "Fine mornin', miss, but a leetle bright for the fish—though I ain't denyin' that a small dark fly'd raise 'em; no'm. If I was sot on ketchin' a mess o' fish, I guess a hare's-ear would do the business; yes'm. I jest passed Mr. Langham down to the forks, and I seed he was a-chuckin' a hare's-ear; an' he riz 'em, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... sitting-room empty, he said to himself: "Of course, every one's out at the hay. Well, I ought to be looking after my hay too, but the little round-heads have made such a mess of these two bits of grandeur, that they'd be sure to get into a scrape if the old people were to see what they've been after; I must stay and repair the mischief that has ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... out of the mess. It's either that or else take big risks of being captured just back of the Boche lines. Of the two, our chances are better ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... its lighter side. The young folks especially found fun in seeing a guileless fellow step into the skimming hole concealed by cane stalks. The sport was complete when the bewildered fellow struggled to free himself from the sticky mess. But the woman was quick to help him out of his plight by providing a change of raiment and soap and water and clean towels, "yonder in the kitchen-house." She knew what ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Elmer always said, fell likewise. Pearl said afterward she knew that had gone because it started playing there on the floor at a great rate. And the next thing she knew she was in the parlor herself; and such a mess! She didn't know as she ever wanted to lay eyes on it again after ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... on poorer and less regular food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself. In fact, he never went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his own food. Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks, a trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer, and then a full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... "You must be in a deuce of a mess after the tornado. Just help yourself to a set of my dry things. The shirts are in the bottom drawer, the trousers are in the box under the bed, and then come over here to the sing-song. My leg is dickey or ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... "He's mistaken if Miss Fanny wan't tellin' 'em a stretcher this time," for which declaration Lucy rewarded him with a smart box on the ear, saying, "Is you no better manners than to 'cuse white folks of lyin'? Miss Fanny never'd got as well as she is if she's picked up a mess of lies ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... poisoned."]—who still fetches and carries Helen. Presently he will be found drowned. Claude comes to Bay House twice a day to see if I need any service. He is invaluable. There was a military lecture last night at the Officers' Mess Prospect; as the lecturer honored me with a special urgent invitation, and said he wanted to lecture to me particularly, I naturally took Helen and her mother into ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... so) that one of the daughters of this Protestant hero was being bred up with no religion at all, as yet, and ready to be made Lutheran or Roman, according as the husband might be whom her parents should find for her? This talk, very idle and abusive much of it was, went on at a hundred mess-tables in the army; there was scarce an ensign that did not hear it, or join in it, and everybody knew, or affected to know, that the Commander-in-Chief himself had relations with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick ('twas by ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... "and I carried out my contract, too. I've only been back in China a couple of weeks. But we must not stay here yarning; this is much too dangerous a place to be swapping experiences in. These will keep until later, when we are out of this mess." ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... more zealous in the cause from hearing that there were 'lots of big game on the hills.' I invited two or three of these American missionaries to join my mess, and off we went to look for the murderers. As this is a chapter on shooting, I will as briefly as possible state what we did in the official way. In the first place we anchored at the head of the Gulf of Ayas, near a large town where resided the chief authority of the neighbourhood in which ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... becomes me,— O, pardon that I name them!—your high self, The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscur'd With a swain's wearing; and me, poor lowly maid, Most goddess-like prank'd up. But that our feasts In every mess have folly, and the feeders Digest it with a custom, I should blush To see you so attir'd; swoon, I think, To show myself ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... MESS. Neighbours of Cadmus and Amphion's halls, No life of mortal, howsoe'er it stand, Shall once have praise or censure from my mouth; Since human happiness and human woe Come even as fickle Fortune ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... have anything more to do with me. No doubt he would disinherit me as he did his own daughter; and Percy would be his heir. Ah, it is all very well talking, Fay," and here Erle looked at her rather gloomily. "I have never learned to work, and I should make a pretty mess of my life; it would be poor Mrs. Trafford's experience over again." And he shook his head when Fay suggested that Hugh should let him have one of his farms. He knew nothing about farming; a little Latin and Greek, a smattering of French and German, were his chief acquirements. "I should ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... no worse. Have this mess cleared away and I'll fix up with you later at the hotel; and get my suit-case over to my room, ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... bad and mean enough, but the conception of a single poem in my brain, till it found birth on paper, was, I swore, bigger and finer than all this world-mess at its best. Also there was in me somewhat the thwarted, sinister hatred ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... to make a foundation; the street was a series of pitfalls filled with mud and filth, including miniature ponds of manure-coloured water. The surface appeared impassable; the projecting water-spouts from the low roofs stuck out like the gnarled boughs of trees. Here was a pretty mess!—all because Georgi's wife was in town. It was impossible for anything larger than a perambulator to turn, and as the springs yielded to the uneven ground, the van bumped against the walls of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... a sister of Juliet Sparling, you can't expect much, can you? What a mercy it has all come out so soon! The mess would have been infinitely greater if the engagement had gone on a ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... away in corners so that they shall not be drafted away to the outer defences. Everywhere a contemptible spirit is being displayed, because a feeling prevails that there are no responsible chiefs in whom absolute trust can be placed. A pleasant mess in all truth. It is now everyone for himself and nobody looking ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... roaring lads of the Brandywine," the training on board the ship in which Tucker first served was well calculated to develop all that was dashing and daring in the young gentlemen of her steerage mess. ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... and I'll clear up the mess," her mother said, when Debby sprang up and straightened herself with a long sigh. "I'm sure your father ought to give you something for keeping out of your bed so late, when he is sleeping as innocent as the baby ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... mind if she was going to keep up this sort of thing Jone and me would change carriages when we stopped at the next station, for comparisons are very different from poetry, and if you try to mix them with scenery you make a mess that is not fit for a Christian. But I thought first I would give her ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... guarnas of small size, one male, the other female. Only one was caught. After taking off the skin, we judged it weighed a pound and a half. With some flour and lard, (the only things we had except salt water,) it made us a fine little mess. We thought it a rare dish, though a small one for eleven half starved persons. At the same time a small vessel hove in sight; we made a signal to her with the blanket tied to a pole and placed it on the highest tree—some took off their white clothes and waved them in the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... unless it is patience," answered Randy, with a broad smile. "To catch fish you must be patient. Now when I caught my mess of fourteen two other boys were up to the Hole. But just because the fish did not bite right away they moved away, further up the river. But by doing that they got only about half ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Ruth, tugging at her refractory curls, "only you'll have to wait till I do my hair properly, and take this mess ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... down"], and feed themselves from the stores of the passengers. While they remain hidden, they open jars of food and liquor, which causes not a little annoyance to their owners. After coming out of their place of concealment, they accommodate themselves one day with one mess, and next with another, and thus exist throughout the voyage. One day a passenger of high rank gave a blow to one of these persons. The aggrieved one was so overwhelmed with sadness and grief from what had happened to him, that he appeared inconsolable. One of our fathers, talking to him in order ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... "I've been digging all morning. Oh! it's chicken pie here today." Her voice held all the glee of a gormandizing child. "I don't think these individual chicken pies they serve here can be beaten in New York," she went on. "You know the usual mess—potatoes and onions, and a little bit of chicken mixed up with a sauce they insult with the name gravy. These are the real article—just the chicken meat with a delicious gravy covering it, baked in the most flaky crust you can imagine. What do you say ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... spirit of frivolity. My circumstances bully me. And I succumb to irrationality, as rational persons invariably end by doing. But, oh, dear me! oh, Osiris, Termagaunt, and Zeus! to think there are at least a dozen other ne'er-do-wells alive who would prefer to make a mess of living as a grand-duke rather than as a scribbler in Grub Street! Well, well! the jest is not of my contriving, and the one concession a sane man will never yield the universe is ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... fine mess. But there's the Foundlings'[6] for that sort of thing. Whoever likes may drop one there; they'll take 'em all. Give 'em as many as you like, they ask no questions, and even pay—if the mother goes in as a ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... precipitous declivities in our way. Our luggage was carried in huge trunks, made of untanned bullocks' hides, fastened with thongs of the same material, each mule carrying two slung on either side of his back. In some our clothes were packed, in others our mattresses and bedding, and in others our mess utensils and provisions; for as there were no inns, it was necessary to take everything which would be required. We rode ahead, our peons or muleteers following the beasts of burden. Before the introduction ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... are in the most damnable mess that politics have ever been in in my time. Gladstone and Dizzy seem to cap one another in folly and in pretence, and I do not know which has made the greatest ass of himself. Blessed are they that hold their tongue and wait to be wise ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Patty, stoutly. "This kind of stuff can be picked up in a jiffy, and then the room is all in order. This is temporary, you see. By untidiness, I mean dirt and dust, and bureau drawers in a mess, ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... campaign, though he never saw an enemy, and his parliamentary attendance, though he never made a speech, were of far more use to him than years of retirement and study would have been. If the time that he spent on parade and at mess in Hampshire, or on the Treasury bench and at Brookes's during the storms which overthrew Lord North and Lord Shelburne, had been passed in the Bodleian Library, he might have avoided some inaccuracies; he might have enriched his notes with a greater number ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the father, or those who have authority over her. If his proposal be accepted, he is admitted into the tent, and lives with the family, generally a year, bringing in the produce of his hunting for the general mess. He then separates to a tent of his own, and adds to the number of wives, according to his success and character as a hunter. The Indians have been greatly corrupted in their simple and barbarous manners, by their intercourse ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... home-made butter to eat wid 'em. An 'us had de butter, 'cause us kep' two good cows. Ma had her chickens an' tukkeys an' us raised plenty of hogs, so we nebber wuz widout meat. Our reg'lar Sunday breakfas' wuz fish what pa cotch out of de crick. I used to git tired out of fish den, but a mess of fresh crick fish would sho' be ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... beer, three messes each for dinner, and one for supper. That beside these thirteen poor, a hundred other poor, of modest behaviour and the most indigent that can be found, shall be received daily at dinner-time, and shall have each a loaf of coarser bread, one mess, and a proper allowance of beer, with leave to carry away with them whatever remains of their meat and drink after dinner." They were to dine in a hall appointed for the purpose, and called Hundred Mennes Hall, from this circumstance. The establishment also contained ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... were slipping through the water at a good honest six-knot pace. With this most welcome freshening of the wind the necessity to keep the canvas continuously wet came to an end; and the men, glad of the relief, were called down on deck to clean up the mess made by the lavish ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... said the Jew, 'we have our regular contractors; a nice mess we should be in, if we had to buy every sack of barley ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Lord Henry added, "to salve the nervous wreckage that our unspeakable Western civilisation produces with every generation; if it's doing good to render the disastrous mess which we have made of human life possible for a few years longer, by bringing relief to the principal victims of it; then, indeed, I am a desirable member of society. But I question the whole thing. I question ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... her—teach her more than she will ever learn at the great mess table of knowledge where the genius must take his treacle and the blacksmith his ambrosia! O, aunt, you will ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... rather dreaded the prospect of "poking about" the house under the eyes of its tenants. The butler stiffened respectfully at the sight of the boys' uniforms. It appeared presently that he had been a mess-sergeant in days gone by, and now regarded himself as the personal property of ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... among the fish-girls; they are either quarrelling or playing some practical joke, but so roughly that two barrels packed with herrings are upset, and the contents scattered on the floor and into the salt tubs, making a sad mess. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... witches' craft repel me! I shall recover, dost thou tell me, Through this insane, chaotic play? From an old hag shall I demand assistance? And will her foul mess take away Full thirty years from my existence? Woe's me, canst thou naught better find! Another baffled hope must be lamented: Has Nature, then, and has a noble mind Not any potent ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... something like food," Stephen said as he sat down to it. "It is ten years since such a mess as this has passed my lips. I do not wonder that chap fell ill when he got back to prison if this is the sort of way they fed ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... fact that you have no ill-feelings against the enemy, and may not even fear him, you destroy him as best you can. On the evening before our first battle we were sitting about the mess table—most of us officers of the line. None of us had ever killed a man. I said: 'Friends, when I meet the first Russian officer tomorrow my impulse will be to shake his hand.' My comrades agreed with me. But on the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Mr. Rollin; "play a part, by all means; never be sincere in anything you do. I never tried it but once, and I've made a desperate mess of it. Can't you understand that what I said was only in the purest sort of self-defence? You weigh my words so nicely. Well, you are considerate enough, God knows, of those dirty brats and ignorant louts—coddling that girl, Rebecca, who is a good-hearted creature enough, but ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... The veneer of roughness puzzled her. That he was naturally of refined temperament she knew quite well, not alone by perception but by the plain evidence of his earlier dealings with her. Then why this affectation of coarseness, this borrowed aroma of the steward's mess and the forecastle? ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Equipment of the cabin emerged: a crock of rice and fish, a corked jug, a bundle of crude chop-sticks bound with frayed twine, a dark mess of boiled sea-weed ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... But my promise weighed on me, and Duty poked me in the side. I wus determined to do the errent jest as I would wish a errent done for me, from borryin' a drawin' of tea to tacklin' the nation, and tryin' to get a little mess of truth and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... and had already, in his imagination, received the distinguished heads of his party at Portray Castle. But he would give all this up,—love, income, beauty, and castle,—without a doubt, rather than find himself in the mess of having married a wife who had stolen a necklace, and who would not make restitution. He might marry her, and insist on giving it up afterwards; but he foresaw terrible difficulties in the way of such an arrangement. Lady Eustace was self-willed, and had already told him that she did not intend ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... on a Summer morning, I being then but newly come home from the Farmers' College, in the ancient town of Cambridge, that our whole household was gathered together in our parlour. Mother sat by the head of the great table, ladling out a savoury mess of porridge, not rashly, as the custom of some is, but carefully, like a prudent housewife, guarding her own. And by her side sat MOLLY and BETTY, her daughters, and next to them the maids, and they that pertained to the work of the house. First ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... The mess room is a big hut. The girls wait on themselves and the food is excellent. They receive in rations the same as the soldiers on lines of communication—four-fifths of a fighting man's ration and whatever is ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... knife when we stumbled, and we were forced to grope round in that unspeakable mess for many minutes before we ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... watched with fascinated eyes the strange and striking picture limned against the black hills and the sweeping stretch of darkening prairie. Everything was animation; the bullwhackers unhitching and disposing of their teams, the herders staking out the cattle, and—not the least interesting—the mess cooks preparing the evening meal at the crackling camp-fires, with the huge, canvas-covered wagons encircling them like ghostly sentinels; the ponies and oxen blinking stupidly as the flames stampeded the shadows in ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... took him and making him drunken, questioned him of his work. Quoth the kitchener, "Every day I cook five dishes for dinner and the like for supper; and yesterday they sought of me a sixth dish,[FN237] yellow rice,[FN238] and a seventh, a mess of cooked pomegranate seed." Ali asked, "And what is the order of thy service?" and the slave answered, "First I serve up Zaynab's tray, next Dalilah's; then I feed the slaves and give the dogs their sufficiency ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... board a man-of-war, and I know my place and rank better. Captains of king's ships, if you please, sir,—but masters of merchantmen. I know the difference between a collier and a seventy-four, I think. But I'll dine with your mess, sir, with much pleasure, if I don't go ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... what we might come across up here," Harry replied. "Shall we light a fuse and give one of these persuaders a toss over into that mess?" ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... introduced the book to him, should write a preface. That preface discussed the Public School system in the light of contemporary events. The system, Seccombe wrote, "has fairly helped, you may say, to get us out of the mess of August 1914. Yes, but it contributed heavily to get us into it." The preface encouraged and helped a journalist to use the book as the text for a general article. Within a month it had received twenty-four columns of reviews and was in ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... York pie-foundries and stew-specialists on North Sea trawlers," said Percival severely, "but I never realised how monotonous feeding could be till I got into a Mess ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... money or lose it, never sell your divine heritage, your good name, for a mess of pottage. Whatever you do, be larger than your vocation; never let it be said of you that you succeeded in your vocation, but ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the trapdoor; then they sliced lemons—all that they could find; they found a pot of cold tea, and this they dumped into the mess with the laudanum; and upon all this, bottle after bottle of the whisky was poured into the pails until they were ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... humbler duties. By mid-1944 over 38,000 black sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. These jobs remained in the Negro's eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship in the naval establishment. Under pressure to provide more (p. 073) stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... countenance, with an air of more sense than the Count d'Artois, the genius of the family. They already tell as many bon-mots of the latter as of Henri Quatre and Louis Quatorze. He is very fat, and the most like his grandfather of all the children. You may imagine this royal mess did not occupy us long: thence to the Chapel, where a first row in the balconies was kept for us. Madame du Barri arrived over against us below, without rouge, without powder, and indeed sans avoir fait sa toilette; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... The bodies of small children are buried when the Khir Chatai ceremony has not been performed. This takes place when a child is about two years old: he is invited to the house of some member of the same section on the Diwali day and given to eat some Khir or a mess of new rice with milk and sugar, and thus apparently is held to become a proper member of the caste, as boys do in other castes on having their ears pierced. When a corpse is to be burnt a heap of cowdung cakes is made, on which it is laid, while others are spread over ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... he crooned, "he has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage! Don't touch that paper, Crewe, or ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... the Chancellor brought no unmixed good to physical science. It was natural enough that the man who, in his better moments, took 'all knowledge for his patrimony,' but, in his worse, sold that birthright for the mess of pottage of Court favor and professional success, for pomp and show, should be led to attach an undue value to the practical advantages which he foresaw, as Roger Bacon and, indeed, Seneca had foreseen, long before ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... got sense enough, Geoff?" said Frances, gently. "I'm three years older than you, and I've only just begun to have an allowance for my clothes, and I should have got into a dreadful mess if it hadn't been for Elsa ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... Certain selected fishes, neither rich nor bony, were cut in pieces into a great kettle; then some of the blood, and handfuls of maize and vegetables, were added. The whole art lies in the proper proportions of the mixture, which the uninitiated never understand. Of this delicious mess Herr Timar himself consumed an incredible quantity. Where good wine flows and fish-soup is brewed, be sure there will be gypsies to be found. Almost before they thought of it, a brown band of musicians appeared, who, as soon as ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... fire, Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confess, too, when I dine, The pulse is Thine, And all those other bits, that be There placed by Thee; The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water-cress, Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent; And my content Makes those, and my beloved beet, To be more sweet. 'Tis Thou that crown'st my glittering hearth With guiltless mirth; And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink, Spiced to the brink. Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... week before I recover from that dinner," Presbury went on sourly. "What a dinner! What a villainous mess! These vulgar, showy rich! That champagne! He said it cost him six dollars a bottle, and no doubt it did. I doubt if it ever saw France. The dealers rarely waste genuine wine on such cattle. The wine-cellars of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Mulgrave wrote to him: "I send you Woronzow [Vorontzoff] and Ward, faute de mieux. I was rejoiced to find you were gone out in your carriage when I called at your home after church. As Bathurst, Canning, and the gout have left you, I hope you will be able to return to the mess to-morrow." This does not imply that Pitt was living the life of an invalid, or was kept to so strict a diet as during his sojourn at Bath three ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... with that baby-work!' I interrupted, dragging the pillow away, and turning the holes towards the mattress, for she was removing its contents by handfuls. 'Lie down and shut your eyes: you're wandering. There's a mess! The down ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Jase said tonelessly. "I did think some of ketchin' a mess of fish before I went to sproutin' p'tatoes, but Marthy she don't take no ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... something of the way the mind is conceived, and to understand its workings. And many of us have in our impatient, hasty investigation, self-analytically taken our mental machines all to pieces and are trying effortfully to put them together again. Some of us have made a pretty bad mess of it, for we tore out the screws and pulled apart the adjustments so hastily and carelessly that we cannot now find how they fit. And millions of other machines are working wrong because the engineers do not know how to keep them in order, put them in repair, or even what levers operate ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... suffer from mortification and an unwillingness to look their bad habits in the face. They have not learned that humiliation can be wholesome, sound, and healthy, and so they keep themselves in a mess of a fog because they will not face the shame necessary to get out of it. They would rather be ill and suffering, and believe themselves to have strong characters than to look the weakness of their characters in the face, own up to them like men, and ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Board, and marched down the glen, with the minister at its head, to condemn the school. When the dominie, who had heard of their design, saw the Board approaching, he sent one of his scholars, who enjoyed making a mess of himself, wading across the burn to bring over the stilts which were lying on the other side. The Board were thus unable to send across a spokesman, and after they had harangued the dominie, who was in the best of tempers, ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... squatter-life. We are a notable people for our attachment to the frying-pan, and there is no doubt that it is a shifty utensil: it can be slung at the saddle-bow or carried in a valise, it will bear the jolting of a corduroy road, and furnish a camp-mess in the minimum of time out of material that was perhaps but a moment before sniffing or pecking at its rim. A very little blaze sets the piece of cold fat swimming, and the black cavity soon glows and splutters with extemporaneous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... hit for the North country again, Pied-Bot. But we're foolin' him. I've sort of planned on something like this happening, and right now we're hittin' for the tail-end of Cragg's Ridge where there's a mess of rock that the devil himself can hardly get into. We've got to do it, boy. We can't leave the girl—just now. We ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the boys to cracking nuts and picking them out, and when the time came, she added butter and a dash of vinegar to her boiling candy, watched with great interest by Cesar, whose French repertoire did not include any such strange mess as this. ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... because you happened to be in front of me, and there isn't room to pass, don't give you the right to laugh. Some day you'll be eating your share of dust, and will I laugh! I bet that the domes are all a mess." ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... and give it he," said the other, with a merry glance at Waymark. "But he mustn't make a mess on ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen, the day before, that they were just ready to pick. How I had lined the ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine, —seven feet high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in the growing, the blowing, the podding! ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... woman," he emphasised, his eyes on hers. "I know—and you know—what that means. You have not yet bartered away your magical influence for a mess of pottage. Because of one Indian woman—supreme for me; and now ... because of another, they all have a special claim on my heart. If India has not gone too far down the wrong road, it is by the true Swadeshi ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... 'you do make such a mess.' She brushed tobacco ashes from his coat. Mother, without looking up, went on talking to him about the bills-washing, school-books, boots, blouses, oil, and peat. And as she did so a puzzled expression was visible in his eyes akin to the expression in Jane Anne's. Both enjoyed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... place enclosed between high walls adjoining the convict barracks, called the Lumber Yard. This is where the prisoners mess. It is roofed on two sides, and contains tables and benches. Six hundred men can mess here perhaps, but as seven hundred are always driven into it, it follows that the weakest men are compelled to sit on the ground. A more disorderly sight than this yard ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Frank; I'm always willing to be guided by you. Mighty seldom you make a bad mess of it, while I often do. Yes, let's drop down, and if the field turns out to ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... kindness of Providence in thus supplying them so abundantly with wholesome food. The service being over, all the cooks, with many assistants, making up the greater part of the inhabitants, were busy in dressing the turtle, some making soup, others stews—indeed, of every mess there was far more than the men, albeit large eaters ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... a ladder, and fortunately it was long enough. Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow were out when I arrived, possibly on the hunt for cheap photo frames and Japanese fans. I did not want to make a mess. I removed the house neatly into a dust-pan, and wiped the street clear of every trace of it. I had just put back the ladder when Mrs. Sparrow returned with a piece of pink cotton-wool in her mouth. That was her idea of a colour scheme: apple-blossom pink and Reckitt's ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... one evening in our camp at New Orleans, the men were seated in their usual manner on the open ground grouped around their mess kits containing their rations; a young lady with her escort was passing through the camp and observing the men eating supper, remarked to her companion that ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... was composed of a few stones in the corner of the tent, with a lamp of oil and moss in the centre; and over it was suspended a small stone vessel of an oblong shape, and larger at the top than the bottom, containing a mess of sea-horse flesh, with a quantity of thick gravy. The dinner was just ready; so all of us sitting round in a circle, with the dish in the centre, we set to. I had become in no ways particular, or I might not have relished my meal, for there was rather more blood and ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... wonder; the people saw the Cabinet, the President, and the military in complacent security. These watchmen did nothing to give an early sign of alarm, so the people, confiding in them, went about its daily occupation. But it will rise as one man and in terrible wrath. Vous le verrez mess. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of Luffe to an end. The garrison, indeed, had lived in fear of this peril ever since the siege began. But inasmuch as no attempt to mine had been made during the first month, the fear had grown dim. It was revived during the fifth week. The officers were at mess at nine o'clock in the evening, when a havildar of Sikhs burst into the courtyard with the news that the sound of a pick could be heard from the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... it. Here it is. I'll read it to you. You don't know—I haven't told you—there's quite a story about it. He's a rascal! Three weeks ago he began to tease me. 'You've got yourself into a mess, like a fool, for the sake of three thousand, but I'm going to collar a hundred and fifty thousand. I am going to marry a widow and buy a house in Petersburg.' And he told me he was courting Madame Hohlakov. She hadn't much brains in her youth, and now at forty she has lost what she had. 'But ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "Major M—-, with whom I dined yesterday, said that he had frequently met David Hume at their military mess in Scotland, and in other parties. That he was very polite and pleasant, though thoughtful in company, generally reclining his head upon his hand, as if in study; from which he would suddenly recover," &c. [Note by the Editor, John Mitford of Benhall.] We merely add that ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... pleasure than they do now in slave time. They had parties and dances and they would bow 'round. They had fiddles and danced by them. Folks danced them days. They don't dance now, just mess around. My brother could scrape the fiddle and dance on, all at the same time. Folks would give big suppers and ask people out. They would feed nice times with one another. Folks ain't got no love in their hearts ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... that hain't a mess! Guess I've come off without that there list, after all. Thought those little imps wasn't going to get it in, and when they did"—here he pulled out a long strip of paper that appeared to have writing upon it and from which he began reading the names of the ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum |
