"Broken-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could, for a mule. Fortunately the people at the fort were so anxious to get rid of him that they were willing to make some sacrifice to effect the object, and he succeeded in getting a tolerable mule in exchange for the broken-down steed. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Christ thundering with His empty hand among them; the voices moving up and down, round and round in endless unended cadences, become strange instruments (all sense of register and vocal cords departing), unearthly harps and bugles and double basses, rasping often and groaning like a broken-down organ, above which warbles the hautboy quaver of the sopranos. And the huge things on the ceiling, with their prodigious thighs and toes and arms and jowls crouch and cower and scowl, and hang uneasily on arches, and strain themselves wearily ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... shirt were yellow and tattered; his hair hung long and lank; and his skin had a sallow, unwholesome tint. The diamond ring upon his finger was altogether out of keeping with his threadbare coat, buttoned up to the chin, as if there were no waistcoat beneath it. From head to foot he looked a broken-down, seedy fellow, yet still preserving some lingering traces of the gentleman. This was ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... not to live, according to any true definition of living. Therefore complain I not of modern degeneracy, when, even from the open window of the small unlovely farmhouse, tenanted by the hard-handed man of bovine flavors and the flat-patterned woman of broken-down countenance, issue the same familiar sounds. For who knows that Almira, but for these keys, which throb away her wild impulses in harmless discords would not have been floating, dead, in the brown stream which slides through the meadows by her father's door,—or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ere long, the accident which has happened to M. de Monsoreau; we had together, by the old copse, a discussion on broken-down walls and horses that go home alone. In the heat of the argument, he fell on a bed of poppies and dandelions so hard ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... sure," laughed the youthful gentleman. "See his long, yellow hair behind; he looks like a Chinaman. Some broken-down Mandarin. Pity he's no crown to his old hat; if he had, he might pass it round, and make eight pennies of ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... desired, and we soon found ourselves in a small room, in which there was some broken-down furniture. There was one window, which was closed, and being made entirely of wood all light was shut out except that which the ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... fortnight's travel, however, the face of the country changed. The timber gradually diminished, until they could scarcely find fuel sufficient for culinary purposes. The game grew more and more scanty, and finally none was to be seen but a few miserable broken-down buffalo bulls, not worth killing. The snow lay fifteen inches deep, and made the travelling grievously painful and toilsome. At length they came to an immense plain, where no vestige of timber was to be seen, not a single quadruped to enliven the desolate landscape. Here, then, their hearts failed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and "floats" and brass bands. Marcus Schouler was in his element during the whole time of the celebration. He was one of the marshals of the parade, and was to be seen at every hour of the day, wearing a borrowed high hat and cotton gloves, and galloping a broken-down cab-horse over the cobbles. He carried a baton covered with yellow and white calico, with which he made furious passes and gestures. His voice was soon reduced to a whisper by continued shouting, and he raged ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... His clerk, a consumptive and broken-down relative, was at that moment lying nerveless on a rude bunk within the ranch, bemoaning the fate that had impelled him to seek Arizona in search of health. He was indeed of little "'count," as the paymaster well knew. After a moment's painful thought ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... the remnant of fashion that still lingered in his wardrobe—scarfs from the Burlington Arcade, scent from Bond Street, cracked patent-leather shoes and mended silk stockings—and it will be understood how May built something that did duty for an ideal out of this broken-down swell. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... cities of England more than one-third of all the deaths among children under ten years of age arose from small-pox. Two-thirds of all the applicants for relief at the Hospital for the Indigent Blind had lost their sight by small-pox. The number of hopeless deafened ears, crippled joints, and broken-down constitutions from the same cause cannot be accurately computed, but was certainly very large. Vaccination is all that now stands between us and all these horrors of ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... ruin must therefore be less than two centuries old, yet the completeness of destruction is such that over most of its area no standing wall is seen, and the outlines of the houses and groups are indicated mainly by low ridges and masses of broken-down masonry, partly covered by the drifting sands. The group of rooms that forms the south east side of the pueblo is an exception to the general rule. Here fragmentary walls of rough masonry stand to a height, in some cases, of 8 feet above the debris. The ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... heavy burden from his heart; and he again took courage and hope. But soon after, on the 15th August, he writes again to the faithful Koerner about his kinsfolk in Swabia: "From the War we have not suffered so much; but all the more from the condition of my Father, who, broken-down under an obstinate and painful disease, is slowly wending towards death. How sad this fact ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... though taken prisoner some time before all was over, with Gaspard Berthier, who now lay broken-down in the prison hospital at ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... compare the discussions in the United States Senate in regard to the League of Nations with the consideration of a broken-down car in a roadside garage the contrast is shocking. The rural mechanic thinks scientifically; his only aim is to avail himself of his knowledge of the nature and workings of the car, with a view to making it run once more. The Senator, on the other hand, appears too often ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... spoke a word or two. The two grand horses stretched out their necks, and they sped away southward. For a while they rode over the road by which they had come. It was yet early twilight and they saw many marks of their passage, a broken-down wagon, a dead horse, an exploded caisson, and now and then something from which they quickly turned ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was not them. But they are responsible for my having for a long time thought very highly of you, Miss Riis. If you will excuse my saying so, I had never before seen fashionable young ladies trying to do anything useful—never. I am only a little broken-down tradesman travelling for a firm—a worthless sort of chap in many ways, and one that very likely deserves what he has got—but anyway I wanted you to be spared. Indeed thought it was my duty—absolutely my duty. But now when I see you sitting there before ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... always have great influence upon our minds. Nothing will give a traveller a poorer and meaner opinion of a town and its inhabitants than dilapidated buildings surrounded by rubbish and broken-down fences. When a traveller passes a house of this character, he instinctively says to himself, "Some shiftless and poverty-stricken family lives here;" but when he passes a well-kept house with pleasant surroundings, ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... observed the heavy broken-down expression on Philip's ashen face, and her heart ached for him; but after that first glance, which told her so much, she avoided all appearance of noticing or watching. Only a shadow brooded over her sweet, calm face, and once or ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... patience, the virtue of which has been well sustained by goodly potions of Paul and Brown's perfect "London Dock," Fuddle, with grave deportment, receives from the hands of the clerical-looking clerk-a broken-down gentleman of great legal ability-the charge he is about to make the jury. "Gentlemen," he says, "I might, without any detriment to perfect impunity, place the very highest encomiums on the capabilities displayed in the seriousness you have given to this all-important case, in which the state ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... seeing vanward. He has no actual life save in power of imagination. He has to learn this fact, the great lesson of all men. Furthermore there may be a future closed to him if he has thrown too extreme a task of repairing on that bare machine of his. The sight of a broken-down plough is mournful, but the one thing to do with it is to remove ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... construction of huts or shelters, and in the freshness of straw, grain, dung or the entrails of slaughtered animals. Abandoned clothing, equipments or harness will give a clue to the arms and regiments composing a retreating force. Dead horses lying about, broken weapons, discarded knapsacks, abandoned and broken-down wagons, etc., are indications of the fatigue and demoralization of the command. Bloody bandages lying about, and many fresh graves, are evidences that the enemy is heavily burdened with ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... beautiful as Italy or Ireland, and it isn't as tidy as England. If you keep away from the big manufacturing towns and their outskirts you may go by motor or railway through shire after shire in England and never see anything unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at-elbows, or ill-cared-for; no broken-down fences or stone walls; no heaps of rubbish or felled trees by the wayside; no unpainted ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... chopping wood, I was boring into the questions of the recitation room. I would occasionally take a little turn with the boys on the playground at noon, but not often. I was fond of it, but felt that I could not spare the time. This was a sad mistake, confirmed by a life of broken-down health. But, like many others, it was not discovered till the mischief was done. A determined effort to crowd four years' work into two, under discouraging circumstances, resulted in impaired health; which continued labor beyond my strength kept impaired ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... of diamonds." The transaction here referred to—though, strangely enough, it is looked on as one that had a political interest—was, in fact, a scheme of a broken-down gambler to swindle a jeweller out of a diamond necklace of great value. The Court jeweller had collected a large number of unusually fine diamonds, which he had made into a necklace, in the hope that the Queen would buy ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... resolved to take his dinner in the gorgeous cafe of The Lorne. While he was waiting for the proper moment to descend thither, he could not get the shoe question out of his mind. Surely, the boot-boy could not have been so idiotic as to have left that ancient, broken-down pair at Littimer's threshold! And yet it was possible. Crombie felt another flush of humility upon his cheeks. Then he wandered off into reverie upon the multifarious errands of all the pairs of boots and shoes that had gone forth from the great apartment ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... 1777, Edouard was placed in a school in the rue de l'Homme Arme. His mother never saw him again. She went out once more to place her husband's power of attorney with a lawyer in the rue de Paon. On her return she felt so weak and broken-down that she was obliged to go to bed and remain there for several days. On January 29th the unfortunate lady had risen, and was sitting near the window which overlooked the deserted rue des Menetriers, where clouds of snow were drifting before the wind. Who can guess the sad ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with here and there a white patch of foam, and while the organ-harp overhead is sounding its magnificent symphony. It is but wood and iron and hemp and canvas that is doing all this, with some thirty poor, broken-down, dissipated wretches, who, being fit for nothing else, of course are fit for the fo'castle of a Liverpool Liner. Yet it is, for all that, something which haunts the memory long,—which comes back years after in inland vales and quiet farm-houses like brown-moss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... grotesque, sitting silent during the whole of the meal, but perfectly happy, at the head of the table. But there was no claimant on his purse or his interest who was too strange for his sympathy—raw freshmen, bores of every kind, broken-down tradesmen, old women, distressed foreigners, converted Jews, all the odd and helpless wanderers from beaten ways, were to be heard of at Marriott's rooms; and all, more or less, had a share of his time and thoughts, and perhaps counsel. He was sensible of worry as he grew older; but he never ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Hooven's place, two or three grimy frame buildings, infested with a swarm of dogs. A hog or two wandered aimlessly about. Under a shed by the barn, a broken-down seeder lay rusting to its ruin. But overhead, a mammoth live-oak, the largest tree in all the country-side, towered superb and magnificent. Grey bunches of mistletoe and festoons of trailing moss hung from its bark. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a broken-down clergyman of the Established Church, and had lost caste for disgraceful irregularities. But he professed to hate the Catholics, and such a virtue secured him friends. Among these was the Rev. Dr. Tonge, a man very weak, very credulous, and full of fears respecting the intrigues ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the station of his arrival, but hired a two-horse country coach. The driver was a young fellow in a nankeen regulation coat, belted below the waist, sitting sidewise on the box. He was the more willing to carry on a conversation because the broken-down, lame, emaciated, foaming shaft-horse could then walk, which these horses ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... It is from your half-and-half sort of people that you get pomposity and vulgarity, the difference between the two being very much what one sees every day in England between the old, out-at-elbows, broken-down county family, and the overbearing, purse-proud people who come and 'take the place'. I really think that Nyleptha's greatest charm is her sweet simplicity, and her kindly genuine interest even in little things. She is the simplest woman ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... knows you. A bloke was a-tellin' me they had a broken-down toff round at The Chequers, and some on 'em says you ain't no more broken down 'n the Lord Mayor. Allus got enough for a 'eavy booze. Anyway, you talks like a toff. I used to git round to the bar, but it don't run to it now. Two kids; ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... pillowed her head on his shoulder, and, letting the horse walk, strove to rub her hands. Fortunately, Moti did not stumble. Perhaps the weight of a double burthen suggested the need of care, but, whatever the explanation of the animal's excellent behavior, they reached the broken-down carriage without accident. The driver had gone off with his pair of ponies, but Abdullah, ruefully making the best of a perplexing situation, searched under the box seat for the porous earthenware jar of water which is often carried there in the East. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... would have found it pitiful to hear poor Francis Trent, with his broken-down, cringing, crafty look, thus sueing for a sovereign. For he had the air of a ruined gentleman, not of an ordinary beggar, and the signs of refinement in his face and bearing made his state of abasement and destitution more apparent. But Oliver was not touched by any such sentimental considerations. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... cast upon the waters—"'dough' put out at usance," as Joseph Jefferson used to phrase it—shall return after many days has been I dare say discovered by most persons who have perpetrated acts of kindness, conscious or unconscious. There was a poor, broken-down English actor with a passion for Chaucer, whom I was wont to encounter in the Library of Congress. His voice was quite gone. Now and again I had him join me in a square meal. Once in a while I paid his room rent. I was loath to leave him when the break came in 1861, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... be obtained; and for this purpose, the inducements of high wages are held out to workmen generally, and their competition for employment enables the manufacturer to secure the most skilful. It is just the same with a broken-down constitution, or a lawsuit: the former shall be placed under the care of a lung-doctor, a liver-doctor, a heart-doctor, a dropsy-doctor, or whatever other doctor is supposed best able to understand the case; each of these doctors shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... he had any specially new ones," remarked the young bareback rider. "Has he been befriending some more poor broken-down circus men, like ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... you're a broken-down critter, Who is all of a trimmle and twitter, With your palate unpleasantly bitter, As if you'd just bitten a pill - When your legs are as thin as dividers, And you're plagued with unruly insiders, And your spine is all creepy with spiders, And you're highly gamboge in the gill - When ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Bootle's, and White's were the chief clubs of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and decayed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the unwary there. In Selwyn's Letters we find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coventry, Queensberry, all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... guard, to plod our way shamefacedly through the mud. Our ponies, with their quick, peculiar gait, soon caught up the heavily-laden waggons, and we supplied ourselves with mealies, flour, fowls, etc., that had been thrown overboard or left behind on a broken-down waggon. Such is the fortune of war, and the things were better in our hands than in those of ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... and fro at every touch; in the spiders, beetles, and other self-invited specimens of the insect tribe, which had long found a congenial home in these dismal quarters. And there—worn, haggard, hungry, suffering, helpless—in the midst of all this desolation, sat the broken-down, shattered stroller, coughing every now and then as though the spasm ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... female teacher in England, who is not working for another or others besides herself,—that a very large proportion are urged on of necessity in their work by the dependence on them of whole families, in many cases of their own aged parents,—that many hundreds are keeping broken-down relatives, fathers, and brothers, out of the workhouse, and that many are widows supporting their own children. A few examples, taken at random from the lists of governesses applying to the Institution in Sackville Street, London, would ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... the driver and a vettura dog on top of the baggage, at the very sight of which, beggars spring from the ground as if by magic, and the customhouse officers assume airs of state. No, no, NO! What is meant by a vettura is a broken-down carriage, seats inside for four English or six Italians, a seat outside along with the driver for one American or three Italians, and places to hold on to, for two or three more, Italians. The harness of the horses ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fain mend; and we all need to be reminded that it is cruel kindness to conceal unpleasant truths, and that the Gospel is no more to be blamed for the destruction which it declares than is the signalman with his red flag responsible for the broken-down viaduct to which the train is rushing that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... peg-taps, white marbles (called "alley-taws" in the Vale), screws, birds' eggs, whip-cord, jews-harps, and other miscellaneous boys' wealth. Poor Jacob Doodle-calf, in floods of tears, had pressed upon him with spluttering earnestness his lame pet hedgehog (he had always some poor broken-down beast or bird by him); but this Tom had been obliged to refuse, by the Squire's order. He had given them all a great tea under the big elm in their playground, for which Madam Brown had supplied ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... sullen silence for a time. Mary Louise got a good look at her now and saw that her freckled face might be pretty if it were not so thin and drawn. The hands lying on her lap were red and calloused with housework and the child's whole appearance indicated neglect, from the broken-down shoes to the soiled and tattered dress. She seemed to be reflecting, for after a while she gave a short, bitter laugh at the recollection of her late exhibition of ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... course, the answer to his questions; no one better. But he was a broken-down preacher, old before his time; and knowing the answer was not at all the same as having the answer. So he had been brought home from Hillcrest, mind-weary and much cast down. Nor did he regain any of his old buoyancy of spirit until the day ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... over one of the bridges that span the unclean London ditch called the Regent's Canal. I had walked all the way from Piccadilly Circus to Gloucester Crescent, haunted by the memory of a man I had once known. He was the broken-down, drunken, studio-drudge of a great artist, a splendid Bohemian, who had died some years before. Why did the thought of the palette-scraper, the errand-goer, the drunken creature with the cultivated voice and the ingratiating, gentlemanly manners, possess ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of a bed. To any one interested in the misery of the city, the array presented on such an occasion is very striking. One sees every variety of character, runaway boys, truant apprentices, drunken mechanics, and broken-down mankind generally. Among these are men who have seen better days. They are decayed gentlemen who appear regularly in Wall street, and eke out the day by such petty business as they may get hold of; and are lucky if they can make enough to carry them ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... des Pipots. Every room was full to overflowing with a miserable wreckage of humanity thrown hither by the tide of anarchy and of bloodshed. But at the top of the house we found an attic. It was empty save for a couple of chairs, a table and a broken-down bedstead on which were a ragged mattress ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Deane had brought about by his indiscretion, Franklin arrived at Paris; but he wisely left Deane to disentangle the affairs of the supposed mercantile house, until this unfortunate agent was recalled by Congress,—a broken-down man, who soon after died in England, poor and dishonored. Deane had also embarrassed Franklin, and still more the military authorities at home, by the indiscriminate letters of commendation he gave to impecunious and incapable German ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... howl of pain rewarded her. His hold loosened. Like a flash she was off. She ran. It seemed to her that her feet did not touch the earth. Over brush, through bushes, crashing against trees, on and on. She heard him following her, but the broken-down engine that was his heart refused to do the work. She ran on, though her fear was as great as before. Fear of what might have happened—to her, Tessie Golden, that nobody could even talk fresh to. She gave a sob of fury and fatigue. She was stumbling now. It was growing dark. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad at poor old Jack's broken-down condition and rejoicing that he had by chance found him there and had been able ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... saucers emblazoned with the arms of the nations of the earth. These whirligigs of amateur crime are constantly surrounded by eager-eyed men and women, who try their luck for the amusement of the moment, or by broken-down, seedy gamblers, hazarding their last coin for a turn of fortune. Now and then, too, some sweet-faced girl, her arm in her father's, wins a louis with a franc, her childish laughter ringing ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to the mind of the sensitive visitor, whose conscience has been made tender by much talk of brotherhood and equality, that she has no right to say these things; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to cope with actual conditions than those of her broken-down family. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... pp. 313-16. After quoting three mythic descriptions found among the Karens, the Algonquins, and the Aztecs, Mr. Tylor remarks, "On the suggestion of this group of solar conceptions and that of Maui's death, we may perhaps explain as derived from a broken-down fancy of solar-myth, that famous episode of Greek legend, where the good ship Argo passed between the Symplegades, those two huge cliffs that opened and closed again with ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Another idea, which she refrained from expressing, for she did not believe Nofre capable of understanding her, helped the young girl to make up her mind. She threw off her languor, and rose from her armchair with a vivacity quite unexpected after the broken-down attitude she had preserved during ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... that they are so trained to mechanical obedience that at the word of command: "Fire!—All the line!— Fire!" and so on, their guns will rise of themselves and the habitual movements will be performed. But "Fire!" now does not mean shooting into the sand for amusement, it means firing on their broken-down, exploited fathers and brothers whom they see there in the crowd, with women and children shouting and waving their arms. Here they are—one with his scanty beard and patched coat and plaited shoes of reed, just like the father left at home in Kazan or ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... the day with its profitless labours, And tired of the night with its lack of repose, I am sick of myself, my surroundings, and neighbours, Especially Aryan Brothers and crows; O land of illusory hope for the needy, O centre of soldiering, thirst, and shikar, When a broken-down exile begins to get seedy, What a beast ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... at the pessimists. In vain would they all tell him that there were men in that crowd from which he had been chosen who had stood there a month—yes, many months—and not been chosen yet. "Yes," he would say, "but what sort of men? Broken-down tramps and good-for-nothings, fellows who have spent all their money drinking, and want to get more for it. Do you want me to believe that with these arms"—and he would clench his fists and hold them up in the air, so that you might ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Saturday he found Columbus Park less populous than it had been on his last visit a month before, for many of its habitues had sought warmer climes. The weather was seasonably cold, and Mr. Neal felt really sorry for some of the old, broken-down men and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sir," yelled the man in desperation—a fresh hand who had come on duty to relieve Atkins at six bells. "The steam steering gear has broken-down, sir, and ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Broek, mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans with a heavy sigh. "They are all half afraid of the place; they ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... is a broken-down form of the old English thoet, from which we also get "that," and is used to point out some particular person, thing, or class: as, "The headmaster of the school gave the boys permission." When "the" is used before the name of a particular ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... otherwise) the establishment over which he had hitherto presided, and in which he had set so much store by silence and good behaviour. Grief drove him to drink, and when nothing was left, even for that purpose, he retired—ill, helpless, and starving—into a broken-down, cheerless hovel. But certain of his former pupils—the same clever, witty lads whom he had once been wont to accuse of impertinence and evil conduct generally—heard of his pitiable plight, and collected for him what money they could, even to the point of selling their own necessaries. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... period; and all that portion of British Columbia which lies in their basin may be looked upon as similar to the bench of gravel which is assaulted by the hydraulic miner. And just as the miner makes the broken-down gold-bearing stuff run through his constructed sluices, Nature sends all her gold in a torrent into the natural sluice which is known as ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... broken-down giant men crowded eagerly to hear him talk. Never, perhaps, since the great Sam had held his court had such a talker been heard. And although there was no Boswell near to make these conversations live again, the poet's nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, gathered some of his sayings together into ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... her pale cheek; she looked fair and delicate and gracious; but her helpless ignorance of the world's ways and usages attracted the world-hardened man more than her face. He had not spent a rou life in a great city for nothing; he had lived enough with gentlemen, broken-down and lost, it is true, but well-bred, to be able to ape their manners; and the devil's instinct that such people possess warned him of Hitty Hyde's weakest points. So, too, he contrived to make that first errand lead to another, and still another,—to make the solitary woman depend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... permission to have a copy of it, half size, made for himself, to place on his writing desk. This journey aroused Madame Hanska's suspicions again, but he assured her he was not dissipating, but was traveling to rejuvenate his broken-down brain, since, working night and day as he did, a man ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... his long silence and sign it. It is the author's theory that it is the inner camarilla, working for a speedy restoration of the monarchy, that is responsible for the certainly uncharacteristic reticence of Amerongen. Mr. TALBOT also interviewed HINDENBERG, whom he found a "broken-down, inconsequential, garrulous example of senility" LUDENDORFF, who was very stiff and proud and rude; and the fiancee of the man who sank the Lusitania. His general idea of Germany is summed up in the remark of Mr. MANDELBAUM, of New York: ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... though surrounded by guards and other appurtenances of Royalty, is only inhabited by decayed servants of the Court, impoverished and broken-down scions of the Aristocracy, &c. to whom the royal generosity proffers a subsistence within its walls. I suppose about two-thirds of it are thus occupied, while the residue is thrown open at certain hours to the public. I spent two hours in wandering through this ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... take that seriously, Mrs. Wells. These crystal visions are common enough—the books are full of them. It's a phenomenon of self-hypnotism. You are in a broken-down nervous condition after months of excessive strain—that's all, and these hallucinations result, just as colored shapes and patterns appear when you shut your eyes tight and press ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... midst. Upon receiving a bound assurance safeguarding the limits of our temples, the persons and possessions of our chiefs, and the undepreciated condition of the first wives and virgin daughters of such as be of mandarin rank or literary degree, the inadequate keys of our broken-down defences will be laid at ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... in charge of the various trading stations that were scattered along the coast, from the Gaboon River, past the mouth of the mighty Congo, to the Portuguese city of St. Paul de Loanda. A mixture of all sorts, especially bad sorts: broken-down clerks, men who could not succeed anywhere else, sailors, youths, and some whose characters would not have borne any investigation; and we very nearly all drank hard, and those who didn't drink hard took more ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... in the streets of London a Cab Horse, weary or careless or stupid, trips and falls and lies stretched out in the midst of the traffic there is no question of debating how he came to stumble before we try to get him on his legs again. The Cab Horse is a very real illustration of poor broken-down humanity; he usually falls down because of overwork and underfeeding. If you put him on his feet without altering his conditions, it would only be to give him another dose of agony; but first of all you'll have to pick him up again. It may have been through overwork or underfeeding, or it may ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... canon animals one is likely to see is the wild sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs that never fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices, acquainted with all the springs and passes and broken-down jumpable places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy grace and confidence of strength, his great horns held high above his shoulders, wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber of him ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... and cross and out of sorts I felt, and she said I needed change and less care, so Hannah is to help me with the children, and I'm to see to things about the house more, and now and then have a little fun, just to keep me from getting to be a fidgety, broken-down old woman before my time. It's only an experiment, John, and I want to try it for your sake as much as for mine, because I've neglected you shamefully lately, and I'm going to make home what it used to be, if I can. You don't object, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... both Fox and myself that your—your 'Jenkins' was just what was wanted," he said; "of course, that was a study of a kind of broken-down painter. But it ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... well as a cute little yellow-haired divil, always laughing, always in mischief, and me chasin' after him—a big slob of a boy. I used to carry him up an' down the tenement stairs. I learned him to skate—and now here he is drinkin' himself puffy, whilst I am an old broken-down hack at forty-five." He looked up at her with a sheen of tears in his eyes. "Darlin', 'tis a shame to be ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... theirs had been cut off, surrounded, and massacred more than once in the history of Sioux warfare, but then the Indians were massed, not scattered helter-skelter all over the continent as was the case the end of this eventful summer. Well did Major Warren understand that with such broken-down horses and weakened men he could now effect little or nothing against the Indians after whom he had been sent, even could he overtake them, and his instructions were literally obeyed. It was high time for him to restore his men to their comrades. He was making the best of his way to the rendezvous, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... strange sounds proceeding from them as we passed near. Others lay in the middle of the harbour ready for sea, but waiting for their crews to be collected by the press-gangs on shore, and to be made up with captured smugglers, liberated gaol-birds, and broken-down persons from every grade of society. Altogether, what with transports, merchantmen, lighters, and other craft, it was no easy matter to beat out without getting athwart hawse of those at anchor, ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... beautiful, cheerful old man. Never more would his blue eyes gaze in proud tenderness on his darling brilliant boy. But a few months ago and he had seemed the very type of ruddy old age. How tenderly he had watched over his poor broken-down old wife, supporting her as she walked, cutting up her food as she ate, and filling her eyes with the love-light, despite all her pain and weakness. And now this poor, deaf, shrivelled little mother, had to totter ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Theobald Gustav, the aforesaid D. A. bolted back to his ranch without as much as saying good-by to me. For Duncan Argyll McKail isn't an Irishman, as you might in time gather from that name of his. He's a Scotch-Canadian, and he's nothing but a broken-down civil engineer who's taken up farming in the Northwest. But I could see right away that he was a gentleman (I hate that word, but where'll you get another one to take its place?) and had known nice ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... at Dresden, and hurrying on the arrangements for the transport of stores, Napoleon journeyed to the banks of the Niemen. On all sides were to be seen signs of the passage of a mighty host, broken-down carts, dead horses, wrecked villages, and dense columns of troops that stripped Prussia wellnigh bare. Yet, despite these immense preparations, no hint of discouragement came from the Czar's headquarters. On arriving at the Niemen, Napoleon issued to the Grand Army a proclamation which ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... population as can offer the price of a bed. To any one interested in the misery of the city, the array presented on such an occasion is very striking. One sees every variety of character, runaway boys, truant apprentices, drunken mechanics and broken-down mankind generally. Among these are men who have seen better days. They are decayed gentlemen who appear regularly in Wall street, and eke out the day by such petty business as they may get hold of, and are lucky if they can make enough to carry them through the night. In all lodging ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... him with respectful astonishment when, on the outbreak of a fire, he orders out his soldiers, and is himself the first to clamber to the top of the burning roof, distributing his commands in the midst of danger as if his life was worth no more than the life of any broken-down, invalided old soldier; the school children rejoice at the sight of him, for he is always sure to be in his place on the occasion of any public examination, to distribute sixpences and shillings to those ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... had been far enough in the rear to escape this general stampede, but they, too, saw the dark object trying to skirt the newly broken-down embankment, and they slid quickly down the wet weedy bank to get away from this ghostlike creature that ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to his sheds. "I guess my foreman was right," he told his wife, that evening, with a little satisfaction. "As soon as one man shows enterprise enough to found an industry in a broken-down neighbourhood, somebody else is sure to follow. I kind of like the look of it: it'll help make our place seem sort of more busy and prosperous when it comes to getting a loan from the bank—and I got to get one mighty soon, too. I did think some that if things ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... distributing all Sunday. Then in the evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying the people where he is might be 'advantageously employed on relief-work,' and suggesting that he put 'em to work on some broken-down old reservoir he's discovered, so as to have a good water-supply when the Rains break. 'Thinks he can cauk the dam in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches—aren't they clear and good? I knew he was pukka, but I didn't know he ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... old, at the dancers That swing to the strains of the band, And the ladies all give me the Lancers, No waltzes — I quite understand. For matrons intent upon matching Their daughters with infinite push, Would scarce think him worthy the catching, The broken-down man from ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... gape wide-eyed. Instead of the scene you expected, there looms before your eyes plunder of all sorts tossed about helter-skelter: sections of broken bookcases, old tables, musty books, broken-down chairs. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... exclaimed. "You came to my rooms a week or so ago, a terrified, broken-down man. If ever there was guilt in a man's face, it was in yours. You sent for Laverick. He pitied you and helped you away. At Liverpool they would not let you embark—these men. They have brought you back here. ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... priori, and that sprung from the teaching of Rousseau. A conviction of the advantages of legislative change, for example, he considers to owe its origin much less to active and original intelligence, than to "the remote effect of words and notions derived from broken-down political theories." There are two great fountains of political theory in our country according to the author: Rousseau is one, and Bentham is the other. Current thought and speech Is infested by the floating fragments of these two ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... from the left bastion of the town, which completely out-flanked them, and from which the matchlock-men kept pouring in a cool and most destructive fire upon this dense mass with the utmost impunity; while a wide, broken-down doorway in the centre exposed them to a fire from another bastion in their front, if ever they shewed their nose for an instant to see how matters were going on, or to return their fire. Poor fellows! you may guess their situation was anything but pleasant. The consequences soon began to ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... When a man is once liberally educated, he will generally remain a man, not shrink to a manikin, nor dwindle to a brute. But if he is not properly educated, if he has merely been crammed and stuffed through college, if he has merely a broken-down memory from trying to hold crammed facts enough to pass the examination, he will continue to shrink and shrivel and dwindle, often below his original proportions, for he will lose both his confidence and self-respect, as his crammed facts, which never became a part of himself, evaporate from ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... thin hands before a little fire of dry sticks. It was Sunday; but there was no Sunday meal on the table, nor preparations for any visible in the low, narrow room, the whole furniture of which consisted of but a rickety table and a few broken-down chairs. The astonishment of Mr. Drury and his friend rose when John Clare appeared on the threshold of his humble dwelling. A man of short stature, with keen, eager eyes, high forehead, long hair, falling down in wild and almost grotesque fashion over his ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... habitually kind to animals, and besides I do not think it is ladylike to go shooting things with a gun. Twice, however, I have been in collision with them. On one occasion a big leopard had attacked a dog, who, with her family, was occupying a broken-down hut next to mine. The dog was a half-bred boarhound, and a savage brute on her own account. I, being roused by the uproar, rushed out into the feeble moonlight, thinking she was having one of her habitual turns-up with other dogs, and I saw a whirling mass of animal matter within a yard ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... quickly after the receipt of the news as horses could convey her, Ida had been sheltered and protected by her love. No sooner was Brian laid at rest in his grave in Wimperfield churchyard than Aunt Betsy carried off the hopeless, broken-down widow to the Homestead, where Ida resumed all her old duties; so that there were times when it seemed as if all the years of her married life were but a dream from which she had awakened, a dream which had subdued and saddened ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... on the outlook for a cast-off wheel, that I might appropriate the spokes. Hence it was, that, after luncheon I took my rifle, and started out across the bottom, where, within a few rods of the river, and about a half a mile off the road which turned close along the bluff, I came upon an old broken-down wagon, almost hidden in the grass. Taking the measure of the spokes, I found to my great joy, that they were just the right size and length. Looking around, I saw the train moving on, at a good pace, almost three-quarters of a mile away. I was delayed some time in getting the ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... it were not desirable to attempt the others. His answer was yes, were they not so well armed and so close to each other. "But," said he, "it is my orders that the boats repair on board their own ships, as my wounded men are dying, and I am suffering the devil's own torments." "So much for a broken-down expedition," thinks I to myself. "If the bull had not been taken by the horns, something might ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... in conclusion, 'don't you see the confounded absurdity of ever wasting a thought on a broken-down, bandy-legged, beggarly dragoon? Just look at him, with an old taffeta whigmaleerie tied to his back, like Paddy from Cork, with his coat buttoned behind! Isn't he a pretty figure, now, to go a-courting? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... beautifully woven with various colors, is quite showy at a distance. Among the Mexicans there is no working class (the Indians being practically serfs, and doing all the hard work); and every rich man looks like a grandee, and every poor scamp like a broken-down gentleman. I have often seen a man with a fine figure and courteous manners, dressed in broadcloth and velvet, with a noble horse completely covered with trappings, without a real in his pockets, and absolutely suffering for something ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... be done was done for him; but the little, active feet were never to walk again, and the spine was so injured that he could not even sit upright. When all that could be done had been done and failed, the boy was sent back to his broken-down ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... in that conjecture," says Miss Penelope, "because he went abroad almost immediately. I saw him shortly before he left the country, and he was then quite a broken-down man. He must have taken his ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... has happened to us, that the blossoms now so vigorous and blooming, may all drop off on the second or third day; and the naked plant, after making a sprawling and almost successful attempt to reach the ceiling for a week or so, shall become suddenly sapless and withered, the emblem of a broken-down and emaciated sot—and, what is more, ruined from the self-same cause, an overdose of stimulating fluid. It may happen, on the other hand, that the plant shall have suffered no trick of the gardener's trade, and shall bloom fairly to the end of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... slept in his shop-window at night without taking his clothes off. He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long but scanty black locks covered by a smoking-cap, and a luxuriant black moustache. He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the air of a broken-down operatic villain. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... his other self—his sweeter and more hopeful self. He told her all that had passed. She stood up beside him, she held his head against her breast and let him sob away there the weight of grief and shame that almost choked him. Then she spoke bravely to the broken-down, weary man: ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and forks. A highly-coloured portrait of her late Majesty Queen Victoria confronted a long-legged horse desperately winning a race in which he had apparently no competitors. There was a wall-paper of imitation marble and a broken-down book-case with some torn paper editions languishing upon it. Beyond the open window there was a purple haze and a yellow mist—also a bell rang and carts rattled over the cobbles. The waiter shut out these sights and sounds, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... mercy of God I survived this awful seizure; and when I rose, a weak, broken-down man, and surveyed my ghastly features in a glass, I thought of my mother, and asked myself how I had obeyed the instructions I had received from her lips, and to what advantage I had turned the lessons she had taught me. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... surroundings; spending her days in a dirty, bare studio, with only rough, dissipated men for her companions—though to do them justice they treated her with respect and kindness. Somehow she picked up a desultory education among them. One broken-down old scene-painter taught her to read and write, and another, a French artist, taught her the rudiments of French, and also to play on the violin. 'They all treated me as a plaything,' she once said to me, 'and poor as they were, they would bring me toys and sweets. I think, nay, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... small ground-floor room that was only lighted from the staircase. The furniture could not have been simpler—a rickety chair, a poor bed, and a broken-down table. At the end of the room there was a fireplace with a lighted fire; but the fire was painted, and by the fire was a painted saucepan that was boiling cheerfully and sending out a cloud of smoke that ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... be with him rather than Mr. Dutton, remembering likewise that but for him the boy would have died in some workhouse, unknown and unclaimed, or among the wretches who had caused his death. So Nuttie had the comfort of Mr. Dutton's going down with her, as well as Mark, and poor broken-down nurse, but not a word referring to the confession of that happy evening had passed between them during the mournful fortnight which ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... care was to say, at the head of his apology, "When I take account of the war I have carried on with the Sorbonne for a space of twenty years or thereabouts, I cannot sufficiently marvel how so small and broken-down a creature as I am had strength to maintain it. When I was seen being harried on all sides, how often have I been the talk on street and at banquets, whilst people said, 'It is all over with him; he is caught, he cannot escape; even if the king would, he could not save him.' . . . I wish to justify ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... round knob, of wood, perhaps, resting on the rail. It did not move in the least; but as another broken-down buzz like a still fainter echo of the first dismal sound proceeded from it I concluded it must be the head of the ship-keeper. The stalwart constable jeered ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Broken-down and out of the world. He couldn't advise to any purpose. I fancy Argenter has been holding ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon as I see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like most other broken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit pages, and insist upon your accepting them as full of the old spirit and vigor. That trouble, perhaps, still awaits you, after I shall have reached a further stage of decay. Seriously, my mind has, for the present, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... unnecessary. But the honest pride that the present owner had in the well-tilled acres extended to the buildings upon it, and neatness and thrift were everywhere present. No hingeless gates propped with sticks met the eye; no broken-down doors were to be seen on his barns; a master hand ruled the land, and his ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... landing was a fellow-lodger who permanently occupied the two top rooms of the house. Paul Harley had taken the trouble to investigate the man's past, for "Captain Dan," the name by which he was known in the saloons and worse resorts which he frequented, was palpably a broken-down gentleman; a piece of flotsam caught in the yellow stream. Opium had been his downfall. How he lived I never knew, but Harley believed he had some small but settled income, sufficient to enable him to kill himself in comfort with the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... She had written his youthful romance; she had described the picturesque fervour of his wooing, the pomp of his wedding; of all those heroes he had been the best beloved, the most splendid. And she met him,—a broken-down old drunkard, in the dusty gloom of an old maniac's wooden "palace," in the fashionable quarter of a city which ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... midst of the discussion, a stockman named Pat Kelly, who was incidentally the Democratic boss of Michigan, rose in his seat. "Can any gentleman inform me," he inquired, "why the business of this meeting should be held up by the talk of a broken-down ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... her (and perhaps rightly) as quite equal to the Tarrong doctor in any emergency. She knew them all, for she had lived nearly all her life at Kuryong. When the family moved there from the back country a tutor was needed for the boys, and an old broken-down gentleman accepted the billet at low pay, on condition that he was allowed to bring his little daughter with him. When he died, the daughter still stayed on, and was made governess to the new generation of young folk. She was a queer, self-contained ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... schoolgirl, or a puppet doll, to which the world can tie strings to make me dance to its silly music? Rash! What rashness is there in asking my friend and his father and mother here? My dear Don Teodoro, you will be telling me before long that I should take some broken-down old lady for ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... been sent back and the carcasses of the two animals dragged aside—they would provide excellent meat if the task of sun drying the flesh was not unduly delayed—the march was resumed, until on gaining the summit of a low hill the wings of the broken-down seaplane were visible as they rose obliquely above the scanty scrub at a distance of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... galloping with the stiff, short-legged jumps of the broken-down cow pony, stopped short as the boy riding him pulled sharply on the reins, and after looking hard at something which lay in a bare spot in the grass, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... hawk, breaking its wing. That was the first in the collection. He was a lovely pet. When you gave him a piece of meat he said 'Cree,' and clawed chunks out of you, but most of the time he sat in the corner with his chin on his chest, like a broken-down lawyer. We didn't get the affection we needed out of him. Well, then Wind-River found a bull-snake asleep and lugged him home, hanging over his shoulder. We sewed a flannel collar on the snake and picketed him out until he got used to the place. And around and around and around squirmed ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... him. He wandered from one country to another, but bad luck met him at every turn. The last I seen him was some two years before; then him and his wife and two or three babies was goin' over the country in an old, broken-down wagon. The wheels was held together with wire and ropes, and the canvas top was in rags and tatters; the horses was the poorest, skinniest creatures you ever see, and him and his wife looked off the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... into a broken-down patio littered with alfalfa straw and debris, all clear in the sunlight. Upon a bench, back toward her, sat a man looking out through the rents in the broken wall. He had not heard her. The place was not quite so filthy and stifling as the passages Madeline ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Follenvie dined at the end of the table. The man, wheezing like a broken-down locomotive, was too short-winded to talk when he was eating. But the wife was not silent a moment; she told how the Prussians had impressed her on their arrival, what they did, what they said; execrating them in the first place because they cost her money, and in the second because ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... line. It's a fact, sir! I swear it! They carried them off, repainted them, put their letters on them, and that's all about it. The N. line sends its agents everywhere, they hunt and hunt. And then—can you imagine it?—the Company happen to come upon a broken-down carriage of the Z. line. They repair it at their depot, and all at once, bless my soul! see their own mark on the wheels What do you say to that? Eh? If I did it they would send me to Siberia, but the railway companies simply snap their ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov |
