"Muddy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in their own security gave way to confusion as the river, spreading behind the ice-jams into broad lakes and bursting in torrents through its barriers, continued to rise. Treacherous in its broad and yellow quiet, lifting its muddy head in the stillness of the night, moving unheard over broad sandy bottoms, backing noiselessly into forgotten channels, stealing through heavy alfalfa pastures, eating a channel down a slender furrow—then, with the soil melting ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... pettifogging way. They think they can take the kingdom of Heaven, not by storm, but by petty compliances, like servile servants who have to deal with a capricious, exacting master. Poor souls, they know no better. They measure the universe by the reflection in their muddy mill-pond. Nasty pious people is what I always call them; nasty pious people: little narrow souls, trying hard to be Christians after their lights, and only attaining, after all, to a sort of second-hand ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... with all our burthens of dishonour Into the cleansing sands o' the thirsty grave. The fiery pomps, brave exhalations, And all the glistering shows o' the seeming world, Which the sight aches at, we unwinking see Through the smoked glass of Death; Death, wherewith's fined The muddy wine of life; that earth doth purge Of her plethora of man; Death, that doth flush The cumbered gutters of humanity; Nothing, of nothing king, with front uncrowned, Whose hand holds crownets; playmate ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... silently back again, and stepped into the muddy, dreamlike, misty streets, wet through and quite ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... from the sea, yet the taste of the herb is always [134] found to be salt. If eaten in its fresh state, as a salad, it is the most effectual of all the antiscorbutic plants, the leaves being admirable also to cure swollen and spongy gums. It grows along the muddy banks of the Avon, likewise in Wales, and is found in Cumberland, more commonly near the coast; and again on the mountains of Scotland. It may be readily cultivated in ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... something was his keen smell. Sheep! He was amazed to smell sheep. There must be a flock not far away. Then from where he glided along under the trees he saw down to open places in the willow brake and noticed sheep tracks in the dark, muddy bank of the brook. Next he heard faint tinkle of bells, and at length, when he could see farther into the open enlargement of the canyon, his surprised gaze fell upon an immense gray, woolly patch that blotted out acres and acres ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... detrimental effect upon the mind: it is well known that flesh-eating makes the body strong and lusty, (and it is for that reason recommended to pugilists who are in a course of training,) but the mind becomes weak and inactive; for it must needs happen, where a muddy and clogged body is shackled down by heavy and unnatural nourishment, that all the vigour and brilliancy of the understanding must be confused and made dull, and that, wanting clearness for nobler things, it must ramble after little and unworthy objects. The passions ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... dashing currents swell, O'er crags and rocks their furious course impel, Impetuous plunging plough the mounds of earth, And tear the fostering flanks that gave them birth; Mad with the strength they gain, they thicken deep Their muddy waves and slow and sullen creep, O'erspread whole regions in their lawless pride, Then stagnate long, then shrink and curb their tide; Anon more tranquil grown, with steadier sway, Thro broader banks ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... eyes, but his courage found strength anew. He pushed on, with a small company, in order to send back relief for those unequal to a sally. It was the perishing to the rescue. A bird shot, was welcome as manna from heaven, and a muddy water-hole the sweetest of discoveries. The dew was eagerly licked from shrubs and reeds while the sun lingered a-bed. Lips grew black, tongues swollen, eyes wild, and the hopeless cry was: 'Water, or ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... instant on the crest of a billow. She started to point it out to Jean, but simultaneously the rain-squall struck her, drenching, stinging, cutting off for a moment her view of the sea. From under the grey curtain of the driving rain combers of muddy green raced in, spouting high in wind-torn fury against the rocks and rolling swiftly toward her to fling themselves roaring at her. . . . Again in a lull she caught a glimpse of the boat tossing skyward . . . dropping from sight ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... shining now, and the arroyo was nothing more than a placid, though muddy stream. Its gleaming sides, however, spoke lucidly to Bev's intelligence, and he set the pony at a smarter pace in the ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... led her home, followed by a party of very sober young gentlemen, for the cow was in a sad state, having strained her shoulder jumping, so that she limped, her eyes looked wild, and her glossy coat was wet and muddy. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... yourself and you develop and strengthen the artistic conscience. Cling to that and it shall be your mentor in times of doubt: you need no other. There are writers who would scorn to write a muddy line, and would hate themselves for a year and a day should they dilute their honest thought with the platitudes of the fear-ridden. Be yourself and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before. And above all, in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... usually the result of change in diet and drinking water. The habit of having a daily movement of the bowels is of great importance to a boy's health. The retention of these waste products within the body for a longer period tends to produce poisonous impurities of the blood, a muddy-looking skin, headaches, piles, and many other evils. Eat plenty of fruit, prunes, and graham bread. Drink plenty of water. Take ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... getting light loads to market over heavy roads is quick to appreciate the very material advantage and economy of having highways over which one horse can pull as much as two under the old sandy, rough, and muddy conditions. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... inhabitants numbered about six thousand. Of the space built over about one-third was occupied by the buildings of the court, much of the outlying modern Weimar being then under water. The streets were narrow, muddy lanes, the houses plain and poor. And yet the sluggish little place, so unprepossessing in all material ways, was already beginning to assert that claim to glory which has since been conceded to it by all the world. Princely patronage of art and letters was by no means unknown ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... however, we came upon a strange spectacle,—a row of men with their backs to the trench-line, walking with extreme slowness and seriousness, in the most strict alignment, both as regards their front and the distances between them, across a piece of muddy pasture. The sun was just about to set, but the light was good and we could see in this row of intent backs that there was a subaltern in the middle and about eight or nine men on each side of him. In solemn silence they went on their way. I was just ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... know that she had been cheated. She would see other women—less gifted than herself, probably—and would see the market they had made of their charms; would see them rich and honoured and happy, and would stand aside in the muddy streets to be splashed by the dirt from their carriage-wheels. And then she would consider the price for which she had bartered her youth and her beauty, and would hate the man who had cheated her. No, Diana, I am not such a villain as the world may think me. I am down in the dirt myself, and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... briefly the passage of the murderer through his own room. "Tell the police to have the main line stations watched without a moment's delay. The man's game would be to get to one or other of them across country. There'll be no marks on him—he fired from a distance—but his boots are muddy. About five foot ten I should think—a weedy kind of fellow. Go and wake Tonson, and be back as quick as you possibly can. And listen!—on your way to the stables call the gardener. Send him for the farm men, and tell them to search the garden, and the woods by the river. They'll find me there. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man, very splashed and muddy, and obviously just in from the gulches, stopped, in going by Keith's, and looked ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... affected, may present a mottled appearance. There seems to be no constitutional disturbances, no radical change in the skin, no pain—in fact, no disturbance worthy of note. The eye is not affected; but in a negro the sclerotic generally appears muddy. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... in the room behind, and thin Dinah Shadd's hand dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... enough; but the cold was disagreeable, and we were obliged to wear our overcoats all day. We could watch the road from the front of the wagon, and saw a number of freighters go by, usually with empty wagons, as it soon became too muddy for those with loads. We saw one fourteen-ox team with four wagons, and another man with twelve oxen and three wagons. There were also a number of mule teams, and we noticed one of twelve mules and five wagons, and several of ten mules and three or four wagons. With these the ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... misfortune and stay and pull me out of this quagmire." Looking out he saw a cow stuck fast in the mud at the edge of the pool, but he had no pity for it and harshly refused to go to its help, for fear lest he should make his clothes muddy. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... the general rule, though it presented nothing especially worthy of record. But the Rio Grande is the great road of the Valley, to such an extent, indeed, that there are no land roads to speak of. We passed between low, muddy banks, frequently of uncertain disposition, as though wondering how much longer they could possibly resist the wash of the current. The stream itself is shallow, uncharted, unbeaconed; its navigation requires constant attention, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... sure enough; and there they have altered their posture overnight (for Traun too has been awake); they lie now opposite our RIGHT flank; 'on a scarped height, at the foot of which, through swamps and quagmires, runs a muddy stream.' Unattackable on this side: their right flank and foot are safe enough. Creep round and see their left:—Nothing but copses, swampy intricacies! We may shoulder arms again, and go back to Konopischt: no fight here! [OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 63, 64; Orlich, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... clear and beautiful, and the moon shines musingly down. But instead of the sweet smell of green herbs and dewy rye as at her last beaming upon these fields, there is now the stench of gunpowder and a muddy stew of crushed crops ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind was moving. Now a bark is feminine beyond all other daughters of the sea, and this tall, hesitating creature, with her white and gilt figurehead, looked just like a bewildered woman half lifting her skirts to cross a muddy street under the jeers of bad little boys. That was very much her situation. She knew she was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Virgin, had caught the roar of it, and was, therefore, asking her way. This is a small part of what she heard from ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... nothing in the injunction given for his superstition to lay hold of. His patriotic susceptibilities are roused. If he is to be cleansed by bathing, are not the crystal streams of his own city, the glory of Damascus, better than the turbid and muddy Jordan that belongs to Israel? So he flounced away, and would have sacrificed his hope of cure to his passion if his servants had not brought him to common-sense by their cool remonstrance. He would have done any great thing which he had been set to do; he had already done ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... on a sand-bank, in the Rio del Rey for example. Moreover, as you will have little else to attend to, save mosquitoes and mangrove flies, when in such a situation, you may as well pursue the study. At the ebb gradually the foliage of the lower branches of the mangroves grows wet and muddy, until there is a great black band about three feet deep above the surface of the water in all directions; gradually a network of gray-white roots rises up, and below this again, gradually, a slope of smooth and lead-grey slime. The effect is ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... dresses and affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the corners;—a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick repulsion, the wave ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... distant in all but Sir Robert Darcy, who could not even hate a Templar, a creature to the ordinary Hospitalier far more detestable than a Saracen. On then, up ground beginning to rise, below which the little muddy stream called the Flete stagnated along its way, meandering to the Thames. Thatched hovels and wooden booths left so narrow a passage that the horsemen were forced to move in single file, and did not gain a clearer space even when the stone houses of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are, We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour. And I when ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... a warm winter's morning. Snow had fallen the day before, but it was rapidly disappearing. The foot sank in the melting mass at every step. The crossings were muddy, and it required some skill to pick ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... left, rushed into the circle. The circle broke and Olva saw lying his length on the ground, half-stunned, clothed only in a torn shirt of bright blue, a stout heavy figure—once obviously, from the clothes flung to one side, a policeman, now with his large red face in a muddy puddle, his fat naked legs bent beneath him, his fingers clutching dirt, nothing very human at all. Town cads of the worst! Some brute now was raising his foot and ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... seen, for Hecuba, that had been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having a read motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father murdered, was yet so little moved, that his revenge all this while had seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness! and while he meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered the instance of some murderer, who seeing a murder on the stage, was by the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... reflection will explain why along the rising coast of the western side of South America, no extensive formations with recent or tertiary remains can anywhere be found, though the supply of sediment must for ages have been great, from the enormous degradation of the coast-rocks and from muddy streams entering the sea. The explanation, no doubt, is, that the littoral and sub-littoral deposits are continually worn away, as soon as they are brought up by the slow and gradual rising of the land within the grinding ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... released Henry, fell on his knees at Marie's feet, clasped both arms around her, and, sobbing convulsively, pressed kiss after kiss on the little maid's wet and muddy gown. ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... afternoon we reached Lake Mary, a long, ugly, muddy pond in a valley between pine-slopes. Dead and ghastly trees stood in the water, and the shores were cattle-tracked. Probably to the ranchers this mud-hole was a pleasing picture, but to me, who loved the beauty of the desert before its ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... Mr. Ratsch and his sympathy with me, the latter suddenly redoubled his severity with me; he was continually following me about, as though I were capable of any crime, and must be sharply looked after. 'You mind what I say,' he shouted, bursting without knocking into my room, in muddy boots and with his cap on his head; 'I won't put up with such goings on! I won't stand your stuck-up airs! You're not going to impose on me. ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... already wore an air of more careful husbandry, and the very circumstance of a wide and costly road (though not a very smooth one), which in theory might be supposed to injure picturesque effect, was beautiful to us, who, since we had entered the muddy mouth of the Mississippi, had never seen any thing except a steam-boat and the levee professing to have so noble an object as public accommodation. Through the whole of the vast region we had passed, excepting at New Orleans itself, every trace of the art ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... white water where the ford had been, and darted onward. Now Banneker began to hold against the current, scanning the shores until, with a quick wrench, he brought the stern around and ran it up on a muddy ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and two or three times a week, as the girls trudged along the muddy roads, with Fraulein lagging in the rear, the jingle of bells would come to their ears, and Rosalind's two white long-tailed ponies would come dashing past, drawing the little open carriage in which their mistress sat, half-hidden among a pile of baskets and parcels. She ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... walers, the sais grabbed at the back seat and jumped for his life, and they shot out of the compound, down the line of useless cannon and out into the street, taking the corner as the honor of the regiment required. Then the two big side-lamps sent their shafts of light straight down the metaled, muddy road, and the horse settled down between them to do his equine "demdest"; there was a touch on ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... 54 degrees. At nine o'clock on the morning of the 13th land was seen by a man named Willis. At first it was taken for an iceberg, but on their drawing nearer the appearance changed, and soundings being found, with a muddy bottom, at one hundred and seventy-five fathoms, there was no doubt that it was really land, and the name of the discoverer was given to it. Passing between Willis Island and another islet, called Bird Island, land was ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... two chums needed no second order. They simply pitched themselves down, and no one ever slept better on a spring mattress than Ken did in the muddy ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... in it. Finally they reached a spot which seemed particularly well suited for a hiding place, and decided to remain there until dark before attempting to proceed further. All the rest of the day they lay in the moist, muddy ditch-bottom. Bob had torn a map from the back of an old railway guide he had seen in the house in which he had slept, and it was to prove of inestimable value to him. To strike north, edging west, and reach one of the larger Belgian towns was the first plan. What they should do once they had ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... elements of Calcutta and Bombay had yielded to the stronger magnetism of beauty and art. Like his father, he hated politics; and Westernised India is nothing if not political. It was a true instinct that warned him to keep clear of that muddy stream, and render his mite of service to India in the exercise of his individual gift. That would be in accord with one of his mother's wise and tender sayings: (his memory was jewelled with them) "Look always first at your own gifts. They are sign-posts, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... horrible intimacy and a yet more horrible ignorance on the most private secrets of her inner life. Not one throb of her young cylinders will be sacred, yet never will he understand her as she would like to be understood. He will mess her with his muddy boots; he will scratch her paint; he will drop tobacco-ash all over her cushions—not from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... calabash and said, "You look faint, you are not fit to work; besides you have not got the right twist of the hand yet, my lad. Pour for me, George." Robinson stirred and began to dissolve the three remainders, and every now and then with an artful turn of the hand he sent a portion of the muddy liquid out of the vessel. At the end of this washing there remained scarce more than a good handful of clay at the bottom. More water was poured on this. "Now," said Robinson, "we shall know this time, and if you ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... impenetrable forests of pine and evergreen of different varieties. The tundras or marshes are very treacherous, for the traveler marching along on what appears to be a rough strip of solid ground, suddenly may feel the same give way and he is precipitated into a bath of ice cold muddy water. Great areas of these tundras are nothing more than a thickly woven matting of grasses and weeds overgrowing creeks or ponds and many a lonely traveler has been known to disappear in one of these marshes never to be ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... long into the eyes of those who influence him, even though they are his dearest, for they are pressed too close against him. There is no time; no perspective. We feel only that our bodies are crushed together, closely entwined by our common destiny, and tossed on the muddy torrent of multitudinous existence. Clerambault felt that he had not seen his son in any real sense until after his death; and the brief hour in which he and Rosine had recognised each other was one in which the bonds of a baleful ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... beggars who thrust their deformed limbs into his very face. It is but natural to fear contagion of some sort from contact with such creatures, and yet the crowd is so dense that it is impossible to entirely avoid them. Underfoot the streets are wet, muddy, tortuous, and slippery, so that one comes from them with a feeling that a hot bath is an immediate necessity. Why some deadly pestilence does not at once break out and sweep away the people is a mystery. We know that the Ghetto at Rome, which forms the most filthy part ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... week, under the idea that it is good and wholesome because it is hot, will take the trouble to look at the agreeable deposit in the bottom of the "slop-basin," they will find that independent of all the muddy, fishy, oily, gaseous, animal and vegetable stuff, introduced into their stomachs under the guise of that most poisonous of all herbs, tea, they are in the habit of swallowing mud, earth, stones, sand, and gravel, in quantities sufficient to establish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... lanterns gave a glimpse of the scene which rendered it more impressive than if viewed under the glare of midday. Some daring ones ventured out to the first abutment despite the danger, and we saw the glare of their lanterns on the rushing, muddy water and the immense blocks of ice. Some of the latter would impinge against the stone abutment with a prodigious grinding crash, spin around several times, and then mount up from the water, crowded by others behind, as though it was about to climb over the massive ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... palace," she said, "because, when you look right down into it, the water seems muddy. But sometimes, when it is still, you can see the Upside-Down Country where the King of the Eels lives. There the trees all grow with their heads down and the sky is 'way, 'way below the trees. You see the sky might as well ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... about the year 1917, Victoria coffees were held in even less favor by American traders than were Rios. As a rule the bean was large and punky, of a dark brown or dingy color, and its flavor was described as muddy. Then, the coffee growers began to introduce modern machinery for handling the crops, with the result that the character of the produce has been much improved, and the demand for it has been steadily growing. Many roasters ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the creeping body and the fascinatingly swinging bag indoors. But his one effort to enter the house,—with muddy paws,—by way of an open window, had been rebuked by the Lawgivers. He had been led to understand that really well-bred little dogs come in by way of the door; and then ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... colored by the soil through which they flow, religions often change their characteristics according to the nations who practice them. The Raskol is Byzantine Christianity issuing from the Russian lower classes. In the thick and muddy waters of Muscovite sectarianism we can distinguish foreign admixtures, sometimes Protestant, sometimes Jewish, or even Mohammedan, more frequently Gnostic or pagan. The Raskol, nevertheless, remains wholly different, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... of a district of the same name, formerly included in Kashna, is built partly on a hill, and partly in a narrow valley, through which runs a muddy stream, that is dry in summer; this stream, the source of which is only a day's journey distant, divides in one part the states of Kotong Kora and Guari, and falls into the Kodonia in Nyffee. The district of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... duly noticed. It is essential to the purity of the reds, that the madder should be freed from both these colours; and it was probably due to insufficient aqueous washing of the root, that the old lakes were dull and muddy, mere brick-reds of ochrous hues. For many years, however, lakes have been prepared perfectly transparent, and literally as beautiful and pure in colour as the rose; qualities in which they are unrivalled by the lakes and carmine of cochineal. They have justly been considered ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... brown coat, of some rich-looking stuff, whose long pile was stuck together in many places with spots and dabs of paint, so that he looked like our long-haired Bedlington terrier Fido, towards the end of the week in muddy weather. This was now discarded; so far at least, as to be hung up in his brother's study, to be at hand when he did any thing for him there, and replaced by a more civilized garment of tweed, of which he actually showed himself a little careful: while, if his necktie was ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... method of construction seems to have been somewhat as follows: A suitable situation, not far from the shore, where the water was not very deep, having been fixed upon, these prehistoric builders drove into the muddy bottom of the lake a number of piles or long stakes, arranged generally pretty close together, and in some sort of regular order. These piles were formed generally from stems of trees, with the bark on, but occasionally from split wood. The ends were sharpened to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... walked not more than a quarter of a mile more when they came upon a stretch of road which was very muddy, with a piece of lowland bordering it. It was too dark to see clearly, but in the last remnant of daylight the boys could just distinguish a small, peculiar looking structure in the ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... for plowing, for drawing our sugar to market, for pressing our hemp mill, for turning our water wheels and sugar rollers, for pulling the huge logs of hardwood out of the thick forest. When the roads are too muddy for wheeled carts, we make a mud sleigh with runners; and the water buffalo with his thick hoofs pulls our loads of rice bags through ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... wear and tear, it was not an occasional fall in the mire, or an accidental rent or two during a game at "Hunt the Hare," but it was constant wilful destruction, which Nurse had to repair as best she might. No entreaties would induce Amelia to "take care" of anything. She walked obstinately on the muddy side of the road when Nurse pointed out the clean parts, kicking up the dirt with her feet; if she climbed a wall she never tried to free her dress if it had caught; on she rushed, and half a skirt might be left behind for any care she had in the matter. "They must be mended," or ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and dwell on it in thy spirit a little. What a difference between "no profit under the sun" and "never thirst"!—a difference entirely due simply to coming to Him—Jesus. Not a coming once and then departing from Him once more to try again the muddy, stagnant pools of this world: no, but to pitch our tents by the palm-trees and the springing wells of Christ's presence, and so to drink and drink and drink again of Him, the Rock that follows His people. But is this possible? ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... doctor. He was a tall man, dressed in a black gown and square cap, and was originally a common soldier in the Prussian service. In 1782 he exhibited in London his solar microscope, and created immense excitement by showing the infusoria of muddy water, etc. Dr. Katerfelto used to say that he was the greatest philosopher since the time of Sir ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... between it and her mind was merely empty river, wallowing and lapping and sucking and subsiding, as if around submerged piers, or wave was relieving wave from the weight of floating things like rafts, or logs, or buoys, or bodies. Into this wide waste of muddy ripples every sound in the school-room swam, and also sights and colors, till between her eye-lash and that filmy distant margin nothing existed but a freshet, alive yet with nothing, eddying around with purposeless power, and still ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... deeper and soon the well began filling with muddy water. "There, now I've got it!" ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... it's a fine thing to have to make nice new shoes," said Willie; "but I don't think I should like to mend them when they are soppy and muddy and out ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... once there was a terrific bang, as though a forty-pounder had been fired to welcome our arrival; and he of the smiles and bows was hurled headlong against the muddy wheel of our conveyance by the slamming-to of the large door. My wife's bonnet blew off and tugged hard at its moorings; the light in the porch was extinguished; while the wind seemed to give a shriek of triumph at the jokes he was playing upon us. Here we were, then, in total darkness and exposed ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... denunciations of Tarleton's dragoons on their arrival at the swampy and imperious thicket, and what they would do if they could only see a bush or a cane move, he felt perfectly safe as long as he could remain motionless in his muddy retreat. But when his fears had somewhat subsided in his place of concealment, still more alarming apprehensions of danger presented themselves, on his espying a venomous moccasin of the largest size, moving slowly along in the water and ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... cowardly, skulking jackals. But the average accidents which occur when such numbers of buffaloes are together—the prospect of old ones, weak and weary, being separated from their companions—of numbers getting mired upon the banks of some muddy river, or drowned in crossing it—of cows heavy with calf falling behind, or with calves already on the hoof, loitering for the purpose of suckling them—the prospect of these chances, combined with the still more enticing hope that the buffaloes ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... you think?" remarked the captain. He seemed to feel that he had a royal chamber. But, then, he was the kind of man who might sleep in a muddy field under a wagon and regard the shelter of the wagon body as a luxury. "Leave your knapsack here," he continued, "and we'll see what is doing along ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... that we determined to push on to the Jordan. It was a hot, long ride, over a shadeless and barren plain; and when we came to the river papa declared himself very much disappointed. But I was not. Narrow and muddy as the stream was, it was also powerful in its rapid flood; no one could venture to bathe in it. The river was much swollen and had been yet more so; the tracks of wild animals which the floods had disturbed were everywhere to be ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... did not conduce to their amiability, and many and caustic were the remarks and jokes made upon the driver. He wore out two whips upon his team, until the labour and excessive heat sent the perspiration rolling in rivulets down his face, leaving muddy tracks in the thick coating of dust there. The jockey assisted with his loaded instrument of trade, some of the passengers thrashed with sticks, and all swore under their breath, while a passing bullock-driver used his whip with such deadly effect, that the sweat which poured off the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... wedded with great ceremony to the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III. of England, who is said to have received with her as a dowry the sum of two hundred thousand golden florins, and at the same time five cities on the Piedmont frontier. London was a muddy, unpaved city at this time, primitive in the extreme; the houses were still covered with thatched roofs, beds were still made upon bundles of straw cast upon the floors, and wine was so scarce that it was generally sold for medicinal purposes. It has been pointed ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... shadows of the friendly bank. Now and then he hurried through some opening in the trees of the shore, where, for a minute, he was exposed to any gaze that might chance to be given; then, when the water was shallow, he struck the muddy bottom, and patiently worked himself on again. Being engaged in rowing, his face was turned toward the stern, and thus had a full sweep of the river which he had passed over, the only point from which he had reason to ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... sea bottom and the overlying water, vibrating under the impulse of an earthquake shock, move past each other, the inevitable result is the formation of muddy water; the very fine silt of the bottom is shaken up into the fluid, which afterward descends as a sheet to its original position. It is a well-known fact that such muddying of water, in which species accustomed to other conditions dwell, inevitably leads to their death by covering ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... hymn-book under his arm whenever he walked the street, and most exemplary in his attendance at sermon and lecture. For the rest, a singularly unobtrusive personage, twenty-seven years of age, low of stature, meagre, mean-visaged, muddy-complexioned, and altogether a man of no account—quite insignificant in the eyes of all who looked upon him. If there were one opinion, in which the few who had taken the trouble to think of the puny, somewhat shambling stranger from Burgundy at all, coincided, it was that he was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... story is often told of how Donnelly got Rhodes of Yale ruled off in '89. Rhodes had hit Channing of Princeton in the eye, so that Donnelly was laying for him, and when Rhodes came through the line, Donnelly grabbed up two handsful of mud—it was a very muddy field—and rubbed them in his face and hollered, "Mr. Umpire," so that when Rhodes, in a burst of righteous indignation, hit him, the Umpire saw it and promptly ruled ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... caves." For a long period this pit was considered bottomless, because, when stones were thrown into it, they reverberated and reverberated along the sides, till lost to the ear, but seemed to find no resting place. It has since been sounded, and found to be one hundred and forty feet deep, with a soft muddy bottom, which returns no noise when a stone strikes upon it. In 1838, the adventurous Stephen threw a ladder across the chasm, and passed over. There is now a narrow bridge of two planks, with a little railing on each side; but as it is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the green wool as it whirled round and round was neither the green of the grass nor yet the green of the rushes, but a sorry muddy green that befitted a sullen city under a ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... post, March 22, 1776, describes him as one 'who does not get drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... dark and muddy, and the contrary of odoriferous. But the entrance and departure of vessels, the lading, unlading, and the management of ships and boats, offer constantly something new to an eye accustomed only ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... would have been a day of unalloyed joy, brought him only a present misery and a dread for the future. The question of school for the afternoon was only mentioned to be dismissed. They were too dirty and muddy to venture into the presence of the master. Consequently the obvious course was to wait until four o'clock when joining the other children they ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... slowly through the meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of its French neighbours on the watershed, and was called by some such epithet as hangs to all the waters in that gap of Belfort, that plain of ponds and marshes: for they are called 'the Sluggish', 'the Muddy', or 'the Laggard'. Even the name of the Saone, far off, meant once ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... flattering and gorgeous policemen got into the circle and pressed back the overplus of Samaritans. An old lady in a black shawl spoke loudly of camphor; a newsboy slipped one of his papers beneath Raggles's elbow, where it lay on the muddy pavement. A brisk young man with a notebook was asking ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... ears of the afflicted mother had not deceived her. The next instant Harry Woodburn entered the room, and, with a gloomy, abstracted air, proceeded to divest himself of his wet coat and muddy boots, without uttering a word, or bestowing any thing more than a casual glance towards the bed, to which he supposed his mother had just retired, as was usual with her, about this hour, and not suspecting that she was more indisposed than when he left her. But as ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... wine had been served to the young revelers, and, under its influence, each one was revealing a little more of his real self. They had all laid aside their muddy riding boots and heavy riding coats, and were lounging in picturesque undress. Lord Farquhart, who was easily the leader of the four, had thrown aside the cynical veneer that had for some time marred the dark, Oriental beauty of his face, and was humming a love song. Lindley's comely ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... that campaign were not in the fighting. That was the easiest part of it. The difficulties were in getting food and medicine to the front. There was but a single road, a muddy and terrible road, and with five or six wagons going over it the sixth wagon would be on the axle tree, and in taking up some artillery I had fourteen horses on one battery that was usually drawn by four, and even with that number it went out of sight, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... by looking into them in early summer, and unless the land is too parched and dry, the chances are that you will see quantities of little black fishes, almost entirely composed of a long tail joined to a large head, playing jovially in the muddy waters, and looking as if they had dropped there from the skies. These are young frogs—tadpoles, as we call them—and they are beginning their apprenticeship of life. Enclosed in each side of those ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... she was very short in stature, she had to get three and a half extra inches of height out of her heels; and to make that sort of heel so that it can even be hobbled upon is not easy or cheap. Once Theresa, fretting about her red-ended nose and muddy skin, had gone to a specialist. "Let me see your foot," said he; and when he saw the heel, he exclaimed: "Cut that tight, high-heeled thing out or you'll never get a decent skin, and your eyes will trouble you by the time you are ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... the blighted flowers of humanity, whose ancestral tree derived its nourishment from the soil of Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as the muddy stream of Gipsyism has been winding its way for ages through various parts of the world; and, I am sorry to say, this little dark stream has been casting forth an unpleasant odour and a horrible stench in our midst, which has so long been ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... being hanged in all innocence, and the certainty of a public and merited disgrace, no gentleman of spirit could long hesitate. After three gulps of that hot, snuffy, and muddy beverage, that passes on the streets of London for a decoction of the coffee berry, Gideon's mind was made up. He would do without the police. He must face the other side of the dilemma, and be Robert ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... road was filled with birds, who flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue. Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil, sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, but the freshening evening breeze brought its damp breath across ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... rights again; but the delay, brief as it was, was fatal to his hopes of seeing Lionel Dale. The meet had taken place, the hunt was in full progress, far away, and Mr. Andrew Larkspur had nothing for it but to sit forlornly for awhile upon the muddy pony, indulging in meditations of no pleasant character, and then ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... happened that at a time when families were gathering cheerily each about a single fireside, Mr. Mitchelbourne was riding alone through the muddy and desolate lanes of Suffolk. The winter was not seasonable; men were not tempted out of doors. There was neither briskness nor sunlight in the air, and there was no snow upon the ground. It was a December of dripping branches, and mists and steady pouring rains, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... along them by exercising the utmost care and vigilance. This intricate and difficult navigation continued for nearly three hours, at the end of which time they suddenly emerged from the maze of islets and found themselves in a stream of thick, muddy water, averaging about a quarter of a mile in width, with low banks fringed by mangrove trees, beyond which it was occasionally possible to catch glimpses of more lofty vegetation. The water here was so deep that, except when close to the bank ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... deep trail, worn by animals, through the high grass; and in this I crept along on my hands and knees. It was very wet and muddy. My boots were full of cold water. After ten minutes I came to a little point running out into the pond, and one young birch growing on it. Under this I crawled, and rising up on my knees looked over the top of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... that some other person had taken them; but after looking carefully around he perceived both birds at a short distance, and this led him to institute a search which soon resulted in finding that the eggs must have been removed by the parent birds to the face of a muddy bank at least forty yards distant from the original nest. A few decayed leaves had been placed under them, but nothing else in the way of lining. A third egg had been added in the interim. There can hardly be any doubt of the truth of the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... northward from the pole, chopping the muddy waves of the river. Around the floating camolotes, islands of weeds, were little swirls. The poplars and willows of the banks grew more distant, as Maid of the Isles cut eastward under all sail. As he tramped fore and aft, Buenos Aires ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... the landing, whistled shrilly, snorted defiantly, buried her nose in the muddy bank in front of the store, and ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant into its opaque surface, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the earth with hay-bands twisted backwards and forwards and round the plant, and lace it down with tarred string, so as to keep the earth and plant from being washed out. The following make good plants:—White Water Lily (Nymphaea Alba) in deep water with muddy bottom; Yellow Water Lily (Nuphar Lutea); and Nuphar Advena, having yellow and red flowers; Hottonia Palustris, bearing flesh-coloured flowers, and Alismas, or Water Plantain, with white, and purple ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... blithely this afternoon, her cloak and hood muffling well both face and figure, her clogs on her feet, since the river bank would be muddy and treacherous at this time of year, and a long, open basket on her arm, thinking of nothing but the delights of escaping from the weary monotony of pastry making and herb shredding, and from the overpowering odour of that mysterious herring pie. Cherry liked well enough to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... she had seen Katya one day in just such a wreath. If, at such times, any one of her family came into the room, she would shun them and look shy. One day she ran out in the rain to meet Katya, and made her frock muddy; her father saw her, and called her a slut and a peasant-wench. She grew hot all over, and there was something of terror and rapture in her heart Katya often sang some half-brutal soldier's song. Elena learnt this song from her.... Anna Vassilyevna overheard her singing ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... afterward the Audubon Society friends employed a man to protect from the raids of tourists and feather hunters a {191} large colony of Brown Pelicans that used for nesting purposes a small, muddy, mangrove-covered island in Indian River on the Atlantic Coast. Soon murmurings began to be heard. "Pelicans eat fish and should not be protected," declared one Floridan. "We need Pelican quills to sell to the feather dealers," chimed in another with a keen eye to the main chance. There was talk ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... were found loose about the canoe, two of the fowls being missing; while there was a large rent in the bottom of the hen-coop, raised about two feet from the surface of the water. The Indians went in search of the reptile, which, being found sunning itself on a log at the mouth of a muddy rivulet, was ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... not more than a score of trees outside the building sites allotted to professors; unsightly plank walks connected the buildings, and in every direction were meandering paths, which in dry weather were dusty and in wet weather muddy." ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... could, from time to time they picked up shreds of handkerchiefs, or fragments of their dresses, that the girls had scattered by the way. Before the next day ended, they were still more clearly on the track. They reached a soft, muddy piece of ground, and found all the footprints of the party; they were now able to tell the number of the Indians. The close of the next day brought them still nearer to the objects of their search. Night had set in; they were still wandering on, when, ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... specially the Spitzberg, the Muhlberg, the Judenberg,—it rises nowhere to 150 feet; perhaps the general height of it may be about 100. On each side of it, especially on the north, the Country is of most intricate character: bushy, scraggy, with brooklets or muddy oozings wandering about, especially with a thing called the HUNERFLIESS (Hen-Floss), which springs in the eastern woods, and has inconceivable difficulty to get into Oder,—if it get at all! This was a sore Floss to Friedrich to-morrow. Hen-Floss struggles, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... say a word, he was so ashamed. He just crept up the Lone Little Path to his home, dragging his tail, all wet and muddy, behind him, and ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess
... it was quite different from the trim little town of Jack's boyhood. The blight of poverty and thriftlessness had fallen upon it. There were piles of refuse in the streets, still half frozen; there were muddy stoops and shabby hall-doors, and broken area-palings, and now and then a window patched up with paper or rags. For though there may be much high theorizing and preaching on the two or three exceptional ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... muddy current of thought began to run clear. He began to understand what lay before him; and the question ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... and the wildest rumors were afloat. One was that Wilmington had been burned, and in Raleigh and Fayetteville the wildest excitement prevailed. In the latter place scores of white women and children fled to the swamps, coming out two days afterwards muddy, chilled, and half-starved. Slaves were imprisoned wholesale. In Wilmington four men were shot without trial and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of the town. In Macon, Ga., a report was circulated that an armed band of Negroes was only five miles away, and within an hour the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... big drops that chased each other down the pane. She was tired of trying to look abroad through the wet glass and the mist. When she did get a glimpse of the outer world there was nothing to see, and that was the worst of it. There was nothing but muddy roads, pools of water and little patches of green grass. It was ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... months old. One of the best of their stories is of a certain lover whose gallant grace was not unworthy a courtier of Queen Elizabeth. One evening this swain, after securing at the post-office his treasured mail budget, was escorting his lady-love home through the muddy, ill-lighted streets of little Christchurch. A light of some sort was needed at an especially miry crossing. The devoted squire did not spread out his cloak, as did Sir Walter Raleigh. He had no cloak to spread. But he deftly made a torch of his unread English letters, and, bending ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves |
