"Slough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, coming to a bend where the coombe suddenly widened, and the stream without warning cast its green fringe of alders like a slough and slipped down a beach of flat pebbles to the head waters of a tidal creek, Mr. Molesworth rubbed his eyes with a start. Had the stream been a Naiad she could not have given him the go-by ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nature of trade requires it. It is an old Anglicism, 'Such a man drives a trade;' the allusion is to a carter, that with his voice, his hands, his whip, and his constant attendance, keeps the team always going, helps himself, lifts at the wheel in every slough, doubles his application upon every difficulty, and, in a word, to complete the simile, if he is not always with his horses, either the wagon is set in a hole, or the team stands still, or, which is worst of all, the load is ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... gallant effort to clear the obstacle. But he was too heavily handicapped. He slipped as he rose to the leap. He blundered badly against the top bar of the gate, finally stumbled over and fell on the other side, pitching his rider headlong into a slough of trampled mud. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... mistake, had put himself outside the sympathies of this comfortable circle. Miss Hitchcock was looking into the flowers in front of her, evidently searching for some remark that would lead the dinner out of this uncomfortable slough, when Brome Porter began ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... this the world awoke one morning to learn that silently and unheralded the American soldiers had marched from their quarters in a French village to the "front" and in a slough of mud had entered the trenches, and for the first time in history United States troops launched shells ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... the plan and intention, and really seemed to be inside the mind of the contriver. He would say; "I think the theme is weak here—and you can't make a weak place strong by filling it with details, however good in themselves. That is like trying to mend the Slough of Despond with cartloads of texts. The thing is not to fall in, or, if you fall in, to get out." His three divisions of a subject were "what you say, what you wanted to say, what you ought to have wanted to ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... near to a very miry Slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Dispond. Here they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the Burden that was on his back, began to ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... mild champagne, one after the other, as quickly as I could, but it did not quench my thirst. I was feverish and would have given anything in the world for something to interest me suddenly and have absorbed me and lifted me out of that slough in which my heart and my brain were being engulfed, as if in a quicksand. I did not venture to avow to myself what was making me so dejected, what was torturing me and driving me mad with grief, or to scrutinize ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Beaconsfield to view a house, and had a fly from Slough, a drive of several miles. The house was in the middle of the town, large and convenient, with good garden and paddock; the whole was offered us for $200 yearly; and we should have taken it, had it not been in such a dismantled condition that the agent in whose hands it was placed ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... joy and mighty shouts they bless; The rest allow his choice, and fortune praise, New vigor blushed through those looks of his; It seemed he now resumed his youthful days, Like to a snake whose slough new changed is, That shines like gold against the sunny rays: But Godfrey most approved his fortune high, And wished him honor, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... a bed or the means of satisfying the most natural wants. Her husband, who was brought into the workhouse, begged to have his wife released from this imprisonment, whereupon he received twenty-four hours imprisonment, with bread and water, as the penalty of his insolence. In the workhouse at Slough, near Windsor, a man lay dying in September, 1844. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight; and hastening to the workhouse, was refused admission. She was not permitted to see her husband until the next morning, and then only in the presence of a female ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... with appetites sharpened by traveling in the keen {238} December air. It was a God-send when they found a buffalo-bull mired fast. The famished men quickly despatched him, and by the efforts of twelve of their number dragged the huge carcass out of the slough. ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... can be attached to that bondage of manhood which was thrust upon the soul (or was it voluntarily assumed?)? This part of deity called individual soul certainly cannot be improved by its human conditions; and the question is not—"How soon can I pass through this slough of despond," but, "why was I thrust into it at all? Was it a mere sacred ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... little more than half way to Lectoure, and I was growing each minute more impatient when our road, which had for a little while left the river bank, dropped down to it again, and I saw before us another crossing, half ford half slough. My men tried it gingerly and gave back and tried it again in another place; and finally, just as Mademoiselle and her brother came up to them, floundered through and sprang ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... losing, but gaining in their sympathies and help. This trying year—trying to so many, therefore trying to us—brings a jubilee thanksgiving to us, in that we are not sinking deeper into the horrible pit and miry clay of debt, but are little by little being pulled out of the slough. We know not how long the pull may be, but if those who love the Lord Jesus Christ will pull all together we shall not fail, and we need not be discouraged. Our feet will get upon a rock and our goings be ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... so many years since he had thought of her, and the picture he really had of her was buried in the bitter salt slough of tears in the depths of his recollections, which he was far from being in the mood to stir up. There were things within him, which he avoided from an instinctive feeling of safety in the whole of his new, happy existence; but such a thing as finding his mother again ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... gambling," says the story;—he does not think any gain of that kind could be really his. It is very interesting, very natural, this "conversion," as they well name it; this awakening of a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful truth of things;—to see that Time and its shows all rested on Eternity, and this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell! Oliver's life at St. Ives ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... hope it won't be that long before we have any good news," said Betty, trying to speak lightly. This would never do, she thought. They simply had to find some way out of this terrible slough of despondency before it ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... this assume, under their pessimist delineation, blackest Tartarean aspect, would crown it with the exhibition of the Indian, as one sunken, at the instance of the white, in extremest depths of human sorrow; as plunged, engulphed, and detained in a horrible slough of degradation and misery. Such would, in short, have an era opened up, which should mark, at once, the exaltation of the white to a revolting height of infamy, proclaiming the high carnival of unblushing trickery and chicane; and should signalize ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... 30. Noon. Miserable, utterly miserable. We have camped in the 'Slough of Despond.' The tempest rages with unabated violence. The temperature has gone to 33 deg.; everything in the tent is soaking. People returning from the outside look exactly as though they had been in a heavy shower ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... was who ran along the river bank, Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and ever slipped and sank, And ever cursed his Maker's name, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... social ethics which recognizes the rights and claims of the individual. The condition of woman is that of the basest slave, a slave to the caprice and tyranny of her master. Communism raises her from the slough of slavery, but subjects her to the level of prostitution. An inevitable sequence of polygamy is a decline of literature and science. The natural tendency of each system is to sensualism., The blood is diverted from its normal channels and the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the Queen, amused. "What of that? Thy name is not Cis, is it? 'Tis only the slough that serves thee for the nonce. The good youth will find himself linked to some homely, housewifely Cis in due time, when the Princess Bride is queening it in France or Austria, and will own that the well was wiser ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... August, 1825:—"Taylor has dropt the 'London'. It was indeed a dead weight. It was Job in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Christian ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time fascinating—an alluring ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... junction flashes into sight, and again your choice is made; negligently enough, perhaps, but still with a view to what you consider the greatest good, present or prospective. One line may lead through the Slough of Despond, and the other across the Delectable Mountains, but you don't know whether the section will prove rough or smooth, or whether it ends in a junction or a terminus, till the cloven mists of the Future melt into a manifest Present. We know what ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... not, however, abuse the advantage your quotation has given me, by overwhelming you with the refutation with which the victim Cassio replies to the tempter Iago. I only wish you to know, that there is one person at least sorry to see a youth of talents and expectations sink into the slough in which the inhabitants of this house ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of her life. At length the wily parson succeeded in getting to the stormy heart of this enraged and unhappy father, and portrayed in glowing colors the clearness of Miss Elizabeth's "effectual call" and "blessed hope," and managed to bridge over "that awful slough of Methodism" by descanting gravely upon some of the "mysterious leadings of sovereign grace." "And now, if our dear lamb of the Saviour can be rescued from those deluded people and carefully instructed in 'the doctrines ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... shaken, was jerked out of the saddle, and must have fallen, ignominiously, face downward in her Slough of Despond, but that Lenox,—reaching her in the nick of time—caught and crushed her in ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... guide had made a mistake, and that he was leading him into dangerous country; but he did not wish to show any suspicion of his judgment, and made no remark. Again the horses rose up out of the slough across which they had been wading and enjoyed for a short time some hard ground; but they soon had to leave it, to wade on as before. On every side was heard the loud croaking of frogs; their heads poked up in all the shallower marshes, with the object, it seemed, of observing ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... argument. It will be urged, for instance, that, in confessing that the Science of Morals can never be as exact as that of Mathematics, because we have no terminology for Ethics so exact as for Geometry, she, in effect, yields the whole question, and leaves us in the old slough of doubt where Pyrrho and Pascal delighted to thrust us, and where the Church threatens to keep us, unless we will pay her tolls and pick our way along her turnpike. But though her major and minor premises may not be on the best terms with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the Jews have not fled a hundred leagues from this Slough of Despond. The answer is, because they were born there. Moreover, the taxation is light, and rent is moderate. Add that, when famine has been in the land, or the inundations of the Tiber have spread ruin and devastation ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the impression he was making on Cardigan. Again his faith in the psychology of the mind found its absolute verification. Cardigan, lifted unexpectedly out of the slough of despond by the very man whom he expected to condemn him, became from that moment, in the face of the mental reaction, almost hypersympathetic. When finally he left the room, Kent was inwardly rejoicing. For Cardigan had told him it would be ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life; the fountains of natural fancy and mirth are frozen over; so Baby lisps his dawn paeans in soft Oriental accents, wakening harmonious echoes amongst those impulsive and impressionable children of Nature that masque themselves in the black slough of Bearers and Ayahs; and Baby ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs—but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I did think I might go modestly on, ... [Greek: omoi], let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away (not from you, but from you in your special capacity of being written-to, not spoken-to) when I turned again you had grown ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... said so much as "Thank you." She put the shawl round her mistress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden. She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction to get ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... heart, but a great deal of something sweeter, joy—joy that thrilled and vibrated through every nerve within him. Leaning against the portal, in an absurd delirium of delight—for it takes but a trifle to jerk those lovers from the slimiest depths of the Slough of Despond to the topmost peak of the mountain of ecstasy—he uncovered his head that the night-air might cool its feverish throbbings. But the night-air was as hot as his heart; and, almost suffocated by the sultry closeness, he ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... one as I, A plain rough gunner with one only pip. No doubt 'twas destined for some lofty soul Who in a deck-chair lolls, and marks the map And says, "Push here," while I and all my kind Scrabble and slaughter in the appointed slough. But I, presumptuous, wore it, till the gods Called for my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... special facilities for getting rid of trouble after a decent interval. Whilst a slow nature was imbibing a misfortune little by little, she had swallowed the whole agony of it at a draught and was brightening again. She could slough off a sadness and replace it by a hope as easily as a ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... which is his portion, and where he rules supreme, and for ever to aspire to a realm from which he is shut out. He is convinced that with the help of a woman he may redeem himself—and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough of his own sensuality. He becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the pleasure whose slave he ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... snake, when he casts his skin, leaves the slough behind him, and winds on his way ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... after I jined Colonel Baker's Gang, we wuz comin' frum Fulton to Clipper through de Red River bottoms. De river wuz overflowin' an' as we wuz crossin' a deep, swift slough, Colonel Baker and his horse got tangled up in some grape vines. Colonel Baker yelled, and I turned my mule around and cut all de grape vine loose wid my Bowie knife. Dere ain't nothin' like a mule for swimmin'. Dey can swim circles aroun' any horse. ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... rolls and eggs. He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... entanglement of trees, bushes, and vines, their scent of flowers and song of birds; or the broad sunshine of the savanna, where they waded to the neck in grass; or the deep swamp, where, out of the black and root-encumbered slough, rise the huge buttressed trunks of the Southern cypress, the gray Spanish moss drooping from every bough and twig, wrapping its victims like a drapery of tattered cobwebs, and slowly draining away their life, for even plants devour each other, and ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... slowness of the heart's action. When the effect of the poison has become sufficient to entirely arrest the circulation in any part, the structures soon die. The disorder manifests itself as lameness in one or more limbs; swelling about the ankle which may result in only a small slough or the loss of a toe, but it may circumscribe the limb at any point below the knee or hock by an indented ring below which the tissues become dead. The indentation soon changes to a crack, which extends ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... the gipsies, but a much more showy-looking personage. Jerry was no longer a gentleman of "three outs"—the difficulty would now have been to say what he was "without." Snakelike he had cast his slough, and rejoiced in new and brilliant investiture. His were "speaking garments, speaking pockets too." His linen was of the finest, his hose of the smartest. Gay rings glittered on his fingers; a crystal snuff-box underwent graceful ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he exclaimed again, knowing that if he could only start her to talking she would soon drag herself out of her slough ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... those who were in the dreadful slough from which he had been lifted, soon began stirring in his heart, and he sought, by various methods, to influence and save them. After working for several months, with only partial success, it became evident, that for sure and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... as darkness was beginning to come on, we came to an almost impassable slough in the trail, where a small stream descended into a little flat marsh and morass. This had been used as a camping-place by others, and we decided to camp, because to travel, even in the twilight, was ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... employed her influence to his hurt. And it only made her fault the greater that Julian was himself unconscious of his degradation. She commenced to feel a personal responsibility commanding her to rescue him from his slough, which was increased moreover by a fear that her persuasions might prove ineffectual. For Julian's manner pointed now to an utter absence of feeling so far as ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... hurrying. Besides, a solemn action has to be performed before the emigration. The animal must cast its skin; and the moult is an event that does not fall on the same date for all. The evacuation of the place, therefore, lasts several days. It is effected in small squads, as the slough is flung aside. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... though, both on ye kin hitch on next load," drawled the driver, turning his horses into the slough of mud ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... through a slough and a wilderness, and my inner man needeth refreshment; let us even partake of the savoury pies wherewith the provident care of thy father hath ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... artillery had opened, when I left him again for Morgan's front. I found Morgan where I left him, and the troops advancing. I had understood that he was to lead his division, and asked about it, but, getting no satisfaction, pushed for the front, crossing the slough at the little bridge at the head of the bayou. I found the willows cut off eighteen inches or two feet long, with sharp points above the mud, making it slow and difficult to pass, save at the bridge. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... (California) describes the fall of a meteor in that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric stone falling in an ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... horrible. To struggle therein is hideous; at the same time that one is going through the death agony, one is floundering about. There are shadows enough for hell, and mire enough to render it nothing but a slough, and the dying man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a spectre or ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... however, that, once there, this brother would find a difficulty in getting rid of him. He thought with longing of that clean and healthy life, the escape from the slough into which his feet would always wander while he remained here. The means to escape he now ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... whispers; and from our position at the time, and from the alteration of the sail, which I could dimly make out above me as a blot against the stars, I knew the junk was being headed into the mouth of a small slough which emptied at that point into ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... highest the help is nighest? We may find aid for you yet, and sooner than you are aware of. I am sure I would never have advised you to such a course, but only you had set heart and eye on pretty Mistress Marget, and less would not serve you—and what could I do but advise you to cast your city-slough, and try your ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Potts's; and not only did their two guests think so, but the whole country, far and wide around, entertained precisely the same opinion. It is not, therefore, surprising that two young men like Frank and Vernon should be well pleased with their quarters, or that, having so early gotten into the slough of love, they should daily continue to sink deeper into the mire. The young poet's lame leg, though not a very serious affair, was still sufficient to keep him for several days a close prisoner to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... your case becomes desperate draw on me under the name A.Z., and I will understand. Your financial affairs are in desperate condition but the case is not hopeless. You are young and healthy but you lack a definite plan of life. If someone will throw you a line while you are floundering in this slough you will come out all right. Now what's this thing you are to do ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... too, hoar-frost gathered at night by the light of the moon, and the ill-boding wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf, that was wont to change its appearance of a wild beast into {that of} a man. Nor is there wanting there the thin scaly slough of the Cinyphian water-snake,[37] and the liver of the long-lived stag;[38] to which, besides, she adds the bill and head of a crow that had sustained {an existence of} nine ages. When, with these and a thousand other things without a name, the barbarian {princess} ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... through this Slough of Despond, he was called to Washington by his patent lawyer. Not having enough money to pay the cost of such a journey, he borrowed the price of a return ticket from Sanders and arranged to stay with a friend in Washington, to save a hotel bill that he could ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... her intense love of the country and keen anticipation of the joy to be found at Burnham Beeches, and when the train stopped at Slough the compartment mentioned to her that this was where she ought to alight. Gertie, interposing, said that they were, in reality, going further. On Miss Radford asking, in astonished tones, "Whatever for?" she received information that the desire was to get well away from ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... kinds of human nature. If I hadn't, I'd have more money, I s'pose. Perhaps you've noticed that those who trust a good deal are usually poor. It's all right, Mr. Ellery; you go and take your walk. And I'll walk into that pantry closet. It'll be a good deal like walkin' into the Slough of Despond, but Christian came out on the other side and I guess likely I will, if the supply of soapsuds ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and even in denunciations; and he predicted that the Narodnaya Volya, which had organised the various acts of terrorism culminating in the assassination of the Emperor, would never develop into a powerful revolutionary party. It had sunk into the slough of untruth, and it could only continue to deceive the Government and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... his officers, who shared with the men every hardship and every fatigue; each realised his individual duty to make the very best of a very bad job, and pluckily kept heart till the last moment. Torrents of rain fell, making the night into one vast immensity of slough and pool, but the stumbling, straining left, right, left, right, of the retreating men continued ceaselessly through the weary hours. On Thursday morning, the 26th, to their intense relief, they found themselves at last in ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... people of the armistice were weary and apprehensive—weary of the war, weary of politics, weary of the worn-out framework of existence, and filled with a vague, nameless apprehension of the unknown. They feared that in the chaotic slough into which they had fallen they had not yet touched bottom. None the less, with the exception of fervent Catholics and a number of earnest sectarians, there were few genuine ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... began to come into use in January, 1845, between the railway station at Paddington, a western district of London, and Slough, near Windsor. The government eventually purchased all the lines, and reduced the charge on a despatch of twelve words to sixpence to any part of the United Kingdom. The Telephone followed (1876), and then Wireless ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Then and there I made a covenant with my soul; and no other man's arms shall ever enfold you. Ah, my Rosa Alba! I could dig your grave with my own hands, sooner than see that thief claim you. I am a proud man, and you have dragged me through the slough of humiliation, but to-day, as I bid you good-bye, I realize how one felt, who looking at the bust of him she loved supremely, said with her last breath: 'Voila mon univers, mon espoir, et mes dieux!' How soon we meet again depends solely on your future course. You know the conditions; ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas. When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... themselves, I must now return to the weary chapter of European diplomacy, to trace the tortuous course of popes and princes, duping one another with false hopes; saying what they did not mean, and meaning what they did not say. It is a very Slough of Despond, through which we must plunge desperately as we may; and we can cheer ourselves in this dismal region only by the knowledge that, although we are now approaching the spot where the mire is deepest, the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... simplest, the most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... while he was sitting in the train one day coming home, he overheard two men talking about turtles going up. Must have been two hotel men. Anyway, that gave Sam an idea and he started right in wading through Petersen's slough for turtles. Why, he pulled up barrels of them, and would you believe it, they sold in the city for real money! Sam went crazy—about as crazy as Mary Hagley got over her luck. And then along came rheumatism and knocked Sam flat, just when he was doing so well. Everybody said it was just poor ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... grape-vines,—where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every rugged stem ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... happy. I have brought some solace and light into your days, Eleanor? If I died to-morrow, or was lost from sight, you would look back and say: 'He gave me my dearest hours, my most treasured memories. He brought me from the slough of despond to the sunshine of ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... carried a load of from 800 to 1,000 pounds. These vehicles were admirably adapted to the country, which was in a perfectly natural state, without roads of any kind, except the trail worn by the carts. They could easily pass over a slough that would obstruct any other forms of wheeled carriage, and one man could drive four or five of them, each being hitched behind the other. They were readily constructed on the border, by the unskilled half-breeds, where iron was unobtainable. This trade, with an occasional ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... work was no disgrace, and the wages of work were plentiful. To live without work was the lot of none. What blessing above these blessings was needed to make a people great and happy? And now a stranger visiting them would declare that they are wallowing in a very slough of despond. The only trade open is the trade of war. The axe of the woodsman is at rest; the plow is idle; the artificer has closed his shop. The roar of the foundery is still heard because cannon are needed, and the river of molten iron comes out as an implement of death. The ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... fitting opportunity to explain how such a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the territory of vital phaenomena to the materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now plunged, and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in my judgment, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... askance at Gaunt's worn face, as he trotted along beside him, thinking how pure it was. What had he to do with this foul slough, we were all mired in? What if the Yankees did come, like incarnate devils, to thieve and burn and kill? This man would say "that ye resist not evil." He lived back there, pure and meek, with Jesus, in the old time. He ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... was on the point of starting; he bribed his way on to the box and, seated in glory beside the driver, proclaimed aloud the downfall of the Corsican bandit and passed about the warm liquid joy. They clattered through Uxbridge, Slough, Maidenhead. Sleeping Reading was awakened by the great news. At Didcot one of the ostlers was so much overcome by patriotic emotions and the 1760 brandy that he found it impossible to do up the buckles of the harness. The night began to grow chilly, and Sir ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... of an animal, supposed to be a cow, found two feet below the surface, in digging for the Great Western Railway, near Slough. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... until our souls are strong enough To plunge into the crater of the Scheme — Triumphant in the flash there to redeem Love's handsel and forevermore to slough, Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough And reptile skins of us whereon we set The stigma of scared years — are we to get Where atoms and the ages are ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... in his hearty, cheery voice, which alone had lifted many a poor fellow from the slough of misery, and put new heart and soul in him, since his ministrations began in the hospital,—"Colonel, your aids are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... length, and soaked with rain, I left the slough, and gaining the highroad, pressed towards the city to meet the cavalcade. A rushing of people, and a confused cry, told me of its approach. "There he is!" Yes, there! in that open cart, surrounded by mounted police, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... years, thirty-one great frescoes for little more than my sustenance. Yea; and for my belly's sake I might have accepted the life of a cowled monk, had not Chigi in the nick of time drawn me from that slough with the announcement that Peruzzi had completed the building of his villa, and that it was ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... as really bear flowers at all. For most races and nations during the most of their life are not progressive but simply stagnant, sometimes just managing to preserve their standard customs, sometimes slipping back to the slough. That is why history has nothing to say about them. The history of the world consists mostly in the memory of those ages, quite few in number, in which some part of the world has risen above itself and burst into flower ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... camp were in a deplorable condition. They were merely tracks trodden down by our feet and carts, heavily rutted, uneven, and either a slough of mud and water, or a desert of dust, according to the weather. We persistently urged the German authorities to improve these roads, but they turned a deaf ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... is of the genus bufo, he is by no means a buffo genius. He may be styled the solemn organist of the swamp; slough music being his specialty. Like other out-door performers on wind instruments, he is chiefly heard in pleasant weather, and during the summer his organ is without stops. Being a Democrat, he appreciates the dignity of labor, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... the pamphlet which caused Shelley's expulsion from Oxford; and Stockdale hoped to be regarded as a friend of the family by telling Sir T. all about it, and thus preventing a young aristocrat of such high birth and pretensions from falling into the slough of the blackguard Free-thinkers. No doubt he was influenced to do this good turn to the family by the fact that the bill for the last romance was unpaid, and he knew that if Sir Timothy would not, and Shelley, being a minor, could not, liquidate it, he would, between the two unreliable stools, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... 1844.—The Commissioners of Police having issued orders that several officers of the detective force shall be stationed at Paddington to watch the movements of suspicious persons, going by the down train, and give notice by the electric telegraph to the Slough station of the number of such suspected persons, and dress, their names (if known), also the carriages ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... world. One shows the shining, swelling St. Lawrence River and the dead hour of night, and those slowly moving boats of hushed heroes creeping across the waters to where the mighty Quebec hills gloomed hugely out. The other is of that quiet church-yard in England, at Stoke Pogis, near Slough, where pilgrims from many parts of the world still wander through the pleasant Buckinghamshire fields to stand ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... with great crevasses, which we could only succeed in clearing by the help of our planks. I noticed in this part several small mounds of ice in such a liquefying condition that the slightest touch would suffice to break it and convert the mound into a round slough. The ice upon which we were travelling was without consistency, was but a foot in thickness, and—what was more—was riddled with holes.... I could only compare the appearance of the sea, at this stage, to an immense morass; and indeed the muddy water which issued from ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... troubles to that? One vision of unseen things, rushing in, made small all the things that are seen. The poor old cripple, deformed and diseased, whose days must have been long a burden to her, was going even now to drop the slough of her mortality and to take on her the robes of light and the life that is all glory. What if my own life were barren for a while; then comes the end! What if I must be alone in my journey; I may do the Master's work all the way. And this is His work; to set the captive free; light ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Holmes over his paper, watching the languid breath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, the face outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before. He fancied the slough of disappointment into which God had crushed the soul of this man: would he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first step in his stairway, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood to the depth of impotent poverty? He could not tell if the quiet on Holmes's face were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... thoughts. He has lived in the Bible till its words have become his own. He has lived among its visions and voices of heaven till all sense of possible unreality has died away. He tells his tale with such a perfect naturalness that allegories become living things, that the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle are as real to us as places we see every day, that we know Mr. Legality and Mr. Worldly Wiseman as if we had met them in the street. It is in this amazing reality of impersonation that Bunyan's imaginative ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... carpentry, his greenhouse—"Is not our greenhouse a cabinet of perfumes?"—his clergymen, his ladies, and his tasks, he is not only constantly amusing himself, but carrying on a secret battle, with all the terrors of Hell. He is, indeed, a pilgrim who struggles out of one slough of despond only to fall waist-deep into another. This strange creature who passed so much of his time writing such things as Verses written at Bath on Finding the Heel of a Shoe, Ode to Apollo on an Ink-glass almost dried in the Sun, Lines sent with Two ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... and the duke lost more. His mind was jaded. He floundered—he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of this action and recognized that his country could not emerge from the slough of revolution without American assistance, he was depressed at the condition of affairs, and in view of his physical feebleness felt himself unequal to the task of guiding the country through impending difficulties. He therefore on May 6, 1916, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... your moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late and drunk is; The bleezin', curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... and all causes have since that day worked together for its fulfilment. We too must be purified by fire and sword; and may we not hope that our beloved country may emerge from the slaughter, the ruin, and the conflagration, more prosperous, more powerful than ever before, and casting off the slough of impurity that has for long years been hardening upon her, renovated and redeemed by the struggle, sweep majestically on to a purer and nobler destiny than even our past has given promise of, and attain a loftier position than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... may be compelled to grovel, to wallow in the mire of sensual indulgence, but it always rebels and enters its protest. It can never forget that it bears the image of its Maker, even when dragged through the slough of sensualism. The still small voice which bids man look up is never quite hushed. If the victim of the lower nature could only forget that he was born to look upward, if he could only erase the image of his Maker, if he ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... sight, dead in the body, in daily act, but living yet in spirit, and influencing the commonplace facts to which they have yielded the field, permeating the everyday routine with the ennobling power of lofty desires, and keeping the wayworn traveller from sinking into the slough of materialism or the quicksands of utter weariness. The man who in his youth dreamed of elevating his kind by a noble employment of the gifts of genius, may find that genius apparently useless, a hindrance even to prosperity, but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... see if some one was coming. There had been much rain, for on the prairie there was always too much rain or else too little. It was either drought or flood. Dark swarms of wild ducks were in all the ponds; V-shaped flocks of geese and brants screamed overhead, and down in the slough ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... well, and knew that since Graham's impetuous outbreak he had been wavering sadly, and since Plume's parting visit had been plunged in a mental slough of doubt and distress. Once before his stubborn Scotch nature had had to strike its colors and surrender to his own subaltern, and now the same struggle was on again, for what Plume said, and said in presence of grim old ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... immediately beyond the ranch itself. The plains were broad. Here and there the flatness broke in a long, low line of cottonwoods marking the winding course of a slough or trace of subsoil water. Mesquite lay in dark patches; sagebrush; the green of pasture-land periodically overflowed by the irrigation water. Nearer at home were occasional great white oaks, or haystacks bigger than a house, and shaped ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... and stone-flinging phase of free-thinking, knowing nothing of the deep yearnings any more than of the supreme wretchlessness of the human soul, which it kept imprisoned within the narrow limits of earth and time. At the outcome from the bloody slough of the French Revolution and from the chaos it caused in men's souls, it was the infidelity of Voltaire which remained at the bottom of the scepticism and moral disorder of the France of our day. The demon which torments her is even more Voltairian ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... there were the masses—hewers of wood and drawers of water—standing to the skilled artizan of the thirteenth century almost precisely in the same relation as the bricklayer's labourer does to the mason in our own time. The sediment of the town population in the Middle Ages was a dense slough of stagnant misery, squalor, famine, loathsome disease, and dull despair, such as the worst slums of London, Paris, or Liverpool know nothing of. When we hear of the mortality among the townsmen during ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... the cozeners: for so soon as I came beyond Eton, they threw me off, from behind one of them, in a slough of mire; and set spurs and away, like three German devils, ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... not judge a man's whole intellectual character, and declare him to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers about matters of business. Apparently Shakspere helped that Elizabethan Mr. Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of despond, in which the ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering,— pursued by the distraint of one of the friendly family of Quiney— Adrian Quiney. They were neighbours and made a common dunghill ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... slough on the place which was full of beaver and beaver dams. How I tried to get one of them, always without success! They were very crafty, very alert, and at the slightest indication of danger dived under water to the doors of their houses, long before one was in gunshot of them. Full many a weary ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... Observe that Barrus, vilest of ill weeds! Plain beacons these for heedless youth, whose taste Might lead them else a fair estate to waste:" If lawless love were what he bade me shun, "Avoid Scetanius' slough," his words would run: "Wise men," he'd add, "the reasons will explain Why you should follow this, from that refrain: For me, if I can train you in the ways Trod by the worthy folks of earlier days, And, while you need direction, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... of their troubles was not helping the Days out of their particular Slough of Despond. So many difficulties seemed reaching out to clutch at Janice and Daddy! The girl thought it was like walking through a briar-patch. Every step ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... greatest modern astronomer, died at Slough in England. Herschel was born in 1738 at Hanover. He was a musician of rare skill and a self-taught mathematician of great ability. In 1757, he deserted the band of Hanoverian Guards in which he played the oboe, although a ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... disappointment and exasperation. But this is not the aspect of the scene which grips and moves us. Our attention is centred on Thaddeus's struggle to take his wife's misdeed upon himself; and his failure cannot be described as a peripety, seeing that it sinks him only one degree lower in the slough of despair. Like the scene in Mrs. Dane's Defence, this is practically a piece of judicial drama—a hard-fought cross-examination. But as there is no reversal of fortune for the character in whom we are chiefly interested, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Captain strictly forbade it on board his lugger; but he, also continuing to get no fish, called out, 'Swear away, lads, and see what that'll do.' Perhaps he only meant as Menage's French Bishop did; who going one day to Court, his carriage stuck fast in a slough. The Coachman swore; the Bishop, putting his head out of the window, bid him not do that; the Coachman declared that unless he did, his horses would never get the carriage out of the mud. 'Well then, says the Bishop, ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... proportion, and after first neglecting and then over-praising him, finally proposes to give poor old Severn his due as a master by proxy. Imagine Sir William Herschel's pleasure when his beloved sister Caroline begins to receive her full deserts. And Tschaikowsky will slough his morbidness and improvise a Slavic Hallelujah Chorus when his unseen patroness comes into her own. It is true that the world has already given her memory two fingers and a perfunctory "thank ye." This was for putting her purse at Tschaikowsky's disposal, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... depression in 1861, and expressed it strongly in a long letter when Atlanta had fallen and he had won his commission as major-general in the regular army. "I confess I owe you all I now enjoy of fame," he said, "for I had allowed myself in 1861 to sink into a perfect 'slough of despond.'" Halleck's friendship and encouragement had put him in the way of recovering from this. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 791.] But now his faith in human nature was rudely shocked by finding, apparently, this friendly ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... used on the estate could not very well carry it, and a sledge was substituted. Several times, during the journey through the forest, the sledge had to be halted while the underwood was cut away to permit of its passing; and once a slough had to be filled up with branches hewn from fir trees, and bundles of fern. These delays made it evening before the shore of the creek ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... coarse feeler, and an egotist. The second was a Parisienne, externally refined—at heart, corrupt—without a creed, without a principle, without an affection: having penetrated the outward crust of decorum in this character, you found a slough beneath. She had a wonderful passion for presents; and, in this point, the third teacher—a person otherwise characterless and insignificant—closely resembled her. This last-named had also one other distinctive ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... master, boarding-house master and tutor in England. These know well what the difficulties are; these know that a short cut to any subject is often a long way round: that a short cut to religion leads too often either to a slough of doubt or else to a pharisaical hilltop, from which there is no path to the great mountains where the Holy ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... away with the cozoners: for so soone as I came beyond Eaton, they threw me off, from behinde one of them, in a slough of myre; and set spurres, and away; like ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, I vow—— God sends country lawyers, an' other wise fellers, To start the world's team w'en it gits in a slough; Fer John P. Robinson he Sez the world'll go right, ef ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... with bodies bronzed and bare, High-swoln and hard, outlive that lack of care - Forced on some farm, the unexerted strength, Though loth to action, is compell'd at length, When warm'd by health, as serpents in the spring, Aside their slough of indolence they fling. Yet, ere they go, a greater evil comes - See! crowded beds in those contiguous rooms; Beds but ill parted, by a paltry screen Of paper'd lath, or curtain dropt between; Daughters and ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... no longing was ever more firmly planted in the human heart, than that of discovering some short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the power of avoiding which is "a consummation devoutly to be wished." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... the fields, Furious from thirst and by the drought dismayed. Me list not then beneath the open heaven To snatch soft slumber, nor on forest-ridge Lie stretched along the grass, when, slipped his slough, To glittering youth transformed he winds his spires, And eggs or younglings leaving in his lair, Towers sunward, lightening with three-forked tongue. Of sickness, too, the causes and the signs I'll teach thee. Loathly scab assails the sheep, When chilly showers have ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... facts. We have heard of a little child who so simply trusted Christ for salvation that she could give no account of any 'law work.' And as one of the old examiners, who thought there could be no genuine conversion without a period of deep conviction, asked her, "But, my dear, how about the Slough of Despond?" she dropped a courtesy and said, "Please, sir, I ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... and wonderfully little—the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, the Valley of the Shadow of Death—they all fall into place. Ah! the modern Pilgrim's Progress would read strangely and significantly with woman as the pilgrim! But the end—that ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... as old as the first man who threw away his shield in battle, and yet, when it was over, gathered with the victors to share the spoils, as old as cowardice and lust in the human and animal world; only to cease from being when, perhaps, an enlarged and expanded humanity shall have cast the last slough of ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... accounted for by the fact that Davoust had found a marsh without a bridge, and completely encumbered with wagons. He had dragged them out of the slough in sight of the enemy, and so near them that their fires lighted his labors, and the sound of their drums mingled with that of his own voice. For the marshal and his generals could not yet resolve on abandoning to the enemy so many trophies; nor did they make up their minds to it until after fruitless ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... human beings sink to the depths in which John B. Gough found himself at the age of twenty-five years. By sheer force of will he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of exceptional usefulness ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... kicked in disgrace from his noble and well-disciplined mind. He resolved, that, let it cost what it might in the shape of loss of time and trial of temper, he would leave no stone unturned, and spare no pains, to deliver his friend of yesterday from the slough into which he was plunging. How he might best work for this end occupied his thoughts as he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... therefore, who depends upon the opinion of others, is compelled to assume the appearance of being comfortably circumstanced in order to inspire confidence. Character is the life-blood of Englishmen, but character alone will seldom extricate a man from the slough of Poverty. In our highly artificial state of society, something more powerful than character alone is required to place a man in the road to fortune — call it as you please, tact ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... a poet. mall, a mallet. sew'er (so'er), one who sews. slough (sluf), a snake's skin. sew'er (su'er), a drain. slough, a miry place. court'e sy, civility. wear, a dam in a river. courte'sy, a slight bow. wear, waste. slav'er, a slave ship. min'ute (min'it), sixty seconds. slav'er, spittle. mi nute', ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... back for many miles from the heart of an ugly city to the cabbage gardens that gave the maker of the seal his opportunity to call the city "urbs in horto." Somewhere between the two—that is to say, forninst th' gas-house and beyant Healey's slough and not far from the polis station—lives Martin Dooley, doctor ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... long, stout cane, plunged into the slough. He was more anxious than he was willing to say, but at the same time he was hopeful. As the swamp was due, at least in large part, to the great rains, it must have firm ground somewhere, and he had noticed also in the thickening twilight that the bushes ahead seemed much larger ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... telegraphy and posthumous photography. Meantime an unctuous orthoepist applied a homeopathic restorative to the retina of an objurgatory spaniel (named Daniel) and tried to perfect the construction of a behemoth which had got mired in pygmean slough, while listening to the elegiac soughing ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... imagine a population active, resistant, passing individual and social lives of the most contented and healthy sort. Would such men and women, liberated from our endless, unceasing struggle against mass prejudice and inertia, be deprived in any way of the stimulating zest of life? Would they sink into a slough of complacency ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... pouring rain, for the next few days, washing the walls of snow down the unmetaled streets, a very slough of despond to all beasts of burden. Once more the sight of green grass relieved the eye, weary of the one monotonous hue it had rested on for weeks, and still it rained as if determined not to stop till it had fulfilled its mission, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... wheat, was the first crop which the Partridge brothers put in. The total yield was seven bushels, obtained from around the edges of a slough! ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... obedience. He was necessarily a man of quick perception, always fertile in expedients in times of emergency, and something of an engineer; for to know how properly to cross a raging stream or a marshy slough with an outfit of fifty or sixty wagons required more than ordinary intelligence. Then in the case of a stampede, great clear-headedness and coolness were needed ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre's slough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his heel; but the tear that trembles in the corner of his eye ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... call it—of being arrant asses," retorted the doctor, "and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable—though, of course, it's only an opinion—that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you?—Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a war! Let not the mad anger of such a people be aroused. And, gentlemen, if war comes it must be long and terrible. You will see both parties rise in their majesty at both ends of the line. They will slough off every other consideration and devote themselves, with terrible energy, to the work of death. Oh ye! who bring such a calamity as this upon this once happy country! Pause, gentlemen, before you do it, and think of the fearful accountability that awaits ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... never get into any proper relation to Jimville unless you could slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as a lizard does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... city he found it situated in a slough. It was generally supposed that the ground upon which the city was built was a natural swamp, and when Palmer, among others, advocated the idea of raising the streets they were ridiculed. But subsequent tests proved that beneath the surface ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... not be immediately choked up by the ooze of the morass and the luxuriant parasitical growth of the forest—who dare hope for that? At present, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to hope! It is the great Slough of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... of knocking some over, when the rest soon jumped off. However, F—- and myself declared we would go right into the quadrangle of the Castle, so we went into the middle of the road and formed a line. Soon a rocket (the signal that the Queen was at Slough) was let off, and then some Life Guards came galloping along, and one of them ran almost over me, and actually trod on F—-'s toe, which put him into dreadful pain for some time. Then came the Queen's carriage, and I thought college would have tumbled down with the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... try to be "careful and not captious," as you suggest, but more than all, I shall try not to run myself or my cause into the slough of political schemes or schemers. And I pray you, be prudent and conscientious, and do not surrender one iota of true principle or of our philosophy of reform to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Straits, and Mare Island, thirty square miles; the area of Suisun Bay, to the confluence of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, is sixty-three square miles. The total bay area is therefore four hundred and eighty square miles; and there are hundreds of miles of slough, river, and creek. A yachtsman, starting from Alviso, at the southern end of the bay, may sail in one general direction one hundred and fifty-four miles to Sacramento, before turning. All of this, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... we emerged from the slough, and about daylight on the third morning were rumbled over the pave ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... a child of five years old, whose rambles led him into a hundred awkward situations. Twice was the Dominie chased by a cross-grained cow, once he fell into the brook crossing at the stepping-stones, and another time was bogged up to the middle in the slough of Lochend, in attempting to gather a water-lily for the young Laird. It was the opinion of the village matrons who relieved Sampson on the latter occasion, 'that the Laird might as weel trust the care o' his bairn to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... our feet, and the drip, drip of water was incessant. "We are under the river-bed," said Moore, "in a kind of natural Thames Tunnel." We made what speed we might through this combination of the Valley of the Shadow with the Slough of Despond, and soon were on firmer ground again beneath Moore's own territory. Probably no other white men had ever crawled through the hidden passage and gained the further penetralia of the cave, which now again began to narrow. Finally we reached four tall pillars, of about ten feet in ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... all I saw was from a curtained auto as we swayed and bumped over broken roads, with an occasional interlude when Jeremy and I got out to lend our shoulders and help the Arab driver heave the car out of a slough. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... To educate men into self-government—that is the purpose of the government of God; and some of the men of the eighteenth century did not learn that lesson. As the century rolled on, the human mind arose out of the slough in which Le Sage found it, into manifold and beautiful activity, increasing hatred of shams and lies, increasing hunger after truth and usefulness. With mistakes and confusions innumerable they worked: but still they worked; ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... orators perambulate the country to preach a boycott of British officials, the Mahars should have sent in petitions imploring the Governor not to abandon them or surrender the power which has alone done something to raise them out of the slough of despond? Mr. Gandhi, however, who would be a great social reformer had he not preferred to plunge into a dangerous political agitation, is not himself blind to such an awful blot as "untouchability" has made on Hindu civilisation, and some of his followers, prompted ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of this species of Snipe was found situated in a slight depression at the base of a small hillock near the border of a prairie slough near Evanston, Illinois, and was made of grass stems and blades. The color of the eggs in this instance was a deep grayish white, three of which were marked with spots of dark brown, and the fourth egg with spots and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... which, left to themselves, never received from without any spiritual and religious instruction, could never rise from the slough of sensuality and superstition; they sank deep in idolatry, and ultimately adopted creeds and practices abominable and repugnant alike to the excellence of reason and the dignity of man. On the other hand, all the nations that totally or partly succeeded in extricating themselves from ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... of Herefordshire, Isle of Wight, City of Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Luton, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, North East Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire, North Somerset, Nottingham, Peterborough, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Reading, Redcar and Cleveland, Rutland, Slough, South Gloucestershire, Southampton, Southend-on-Sea, Stockton-on-Tees, Stoke-on-Trent, Swindon, Telford and Wrekin, Thurrock, Torbay, Warrington, West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead, Wokingham, York Northern Ireland: 26 district council areas district council areas: ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency. |
