"Dilapidated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... waggon—not an English hay-cart, but a spidery trap, with high wheels, so called—and a dilapidated buggy were placed at their disposal. Two children and the old nurse remained to follow in the coach, and the advance guard started, after an anxious consultation as to whether the wheel of the buggy could be trusted to revolve the twelve ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... had a negro mistress, and compelled his daughters to submit to her presence,—that he would not permit his children to read the Bible,—and that, on one occasion, when his attention was called to the dilapidated condition of a church, he remarked, "It is good enough for him who was born in a manger." According to his custom, he made no reply to these slanders, and, except from a few mild remarks in his letters, one cannot discover that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... this baby?" presently asked Miss Sampson. I peeped in to see a dilapidated youngster on her knees. That sight, if any other was needed, completed my full and splendid estimate of ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... of the boys' journey this path would probably have been indistinguishable to any but scouts. It brought them soon to an old tumbled-down building which had never been more than a mere shack, and was now so utterly dilapidated that living in it would be quite out of the question. Some remnants of a roof remained in a few shreds of curled, rotten shingles, the foundation was intact, and the sides though bulging and full of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to examine it. The castle was not exceptionally large, but it had all the characteristics of its most important fellows. Irregular, dilapidated, and muffled in creepers as a great portion of it was, some part—a comparatively modern wing—was inhabited, for a light or two steadily gleamed from some upper windows; in others a reflection of the moon denoted that unbroken glass yet filled their casements. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... her. And as the ride wore into hours, such was her discomfort and disillusion that she forgot about Glenn Kilbourne. She did not reach the point of regretting her adventure, but she grew mightily unhappy. Now and then she espied dilapidated log cabins and surroundings even more squalid than the ruined forest. What wretched abodes! Could it be possible that people had lived in them? She imagined men had but hardly women and children. Somewhere she had forgotten ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... were poisoned by the air of the room, as Mark Davenport suggested, I cannot say. But when Squire Clamp left the office, it was as still as a tomb. No cricket chirped under the hearth, no fly buzzed on the window-pane, no spiders came forth from the dilapidated, dangling webs. Silence and dust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... peculiarity, it was a charming house to live in. It stood in a garden, whose high walls shut out all view, save of the trees belonging to an old dilapidated, uninhabited lodge, where an illustrious statesman had once dwelt, and which was now creeping to decay and oblivion, like the great man's own memory. The trees waved, and the birds sang therein for the especial benefit of Woodford ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... six hundred men, including militia and dockyard men, under Gen. Sheaffe. Under cover of a heavy fire, which swept the beach, the Americans landed, drove in the British outposts, which stoutly contested every foot of ground, and made a dash for the dilapidated fort, which the fleet meanwhile heavily bombarded. Continual re-enforcements enabled them to fight their way through the scrub oak woods to within two hundred yards of the earthen ramparts, when the defensive fire ceased. General Pike halted his troops, thinking the fort about ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... was very dreary still, however, with its smoke-stained ceiling and paper discolored by dampness and three chairs and dilapidated bureau, whose greasy surface no dusting could clean. Then while she washed herself and arranged her hair before the small mirror, he seemed to examine her arms and shoulders, as if instituting a comparison between herself and someone else. And he ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... such spot as the fancy of the moment may dictate. Paul and Rose both recognized the old man from having continually met him when ascending or descending the staircase, and knew that he rented the back attic, and was called Daddy Tantaine. In an instant the idea flashed across Paul's mind that the dilapidated state of the partition permitted every word spoken in one attic to be overheard in the other, and this did not tend to soothe his ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... landscape which ended in a ruffle of woods toward the north, overtopped by the head of a mountain—was a huge factory that had been added to from time to time, as necessity demanded, until it had become an imposing and not uncomely pile. Below this were two or three dilapidated saw-mills, a grist-mill in daily use, and a fulling-mill—a remnant of the old times when homespun went its pilgrimage to town—to be fulled, colored, and dressed—from all ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... basin with its bounding stream. But it was growing late in the afternoon, and there was another cave whose entrance was in the perpendicular wall above the end of the path by which we had come. This entrance could be reached by a dilapidated ladder; assisted by a forked pole and supplied with candles and matches, my nephew and I achieved the ascent with not much trouble. Here we found what is, no doubt, one of the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... local handbook, "H. Browne, of Amesbury, published 'An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury,' in which he endeavored to show that both of these monuments were antediluvian, and that the latter was formed under the direction of Adam. He ascribes the present dilapidated condition of Stonehenge to the operation of the general deluge; for, he adds, 'to suppose it to be the work of any people since ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... contrast is presented by the headquarters of the Independence party. It is in a dilapidated hall in the western part of the city. The only feature of the furnishings in keeping with the times, is the Bureau of Publicity. This provides the campaign committee with telegraphic and telephonic communication with the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... dilapidated flights of stairs, which I had so often climbed before, and knocked at a small door at the end of the corridor. Mr. Wilde opened the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... the Duck came to a little miserable peasant's hut. This hut was so dilapidated that it did not know on which side it should fall; and that's why it remained standing. The storm whistled round the Duckling in such a way that the poor creature was obliged to sit down, to stand against ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... court with two obelisks of larger dimensions, the one now standing being 92 feet high and 8 square, surrounded by a peristyle, if I may be allowed the expression, of Osiride figures. Passing between two dilapidated propylaea, you enter another smaller area, ornamented in a similar manner, and succeeded by a vestibule, in front of the granite gateways that form the facade of the court before the sanctuary. This last is also of red granite, divided ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... glad to see the sick gentleman able to be out. Since J.M. had had a chance at first-hand observation of the variety of occupation forced upon the mother of seven, he was not surprised that they wore more or less dilapidated wrappers and did not Marcel-wave their hair. Now he noticed the motherly look in their eyes, and the exuberant health of the children laughing and swarming about them. When he returned to the house he sat down on the porch to consider a number of new ideas which were springing up in his mind, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... "The Last Supper" is painted on the dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church in ancient times, I suppose. It is battered and scarred in every direction, and stained and discolored by time, and Napoleon's horses kicked the legs off most the disciples when they (the horses, not the disciples,) were stabled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to give a Latin tail to a Guildhall? Though the word used by moderns, would mayor convey to Cicero the idea of a mayor? Architectus, I believe, is the right word; but I doubt whether veteris jam perantiquae is classic for a dilapidated building—but do not depend on me; consult some ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... deserved. The gardens were now in order, the dilapidated fences were repaired, the weeds no longer encumbered the walks. Nature was just assisted and relieved by Art, without being oppressed by too officious a service from her handmaid. In the house itself some suitable and appropriate repairs and decorations—with such articles of furniture as combined ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a dilapidated house; I am only here to repair myself He contradicted me about trifles Intimacy, once broken, cannot be renewed Jealous without motive, and almost without love The King replied that "too much was too much" The monarch suddenly ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... of Sibley's Confederate forces which had reached this far in the persons of Howard's Arizona Rangers—and most of all the raiding, vicious, deadly, and continual, by Apaches and outlaws—had blasted Tubacca. Now, in the fall of 1866, it was a third of what it had been, with a ragged fringe of dilapidated adobes crumbling back into the soil. Only this heart core was still alive in ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... later, in the course of the round-up, we reached the valley of the Box Springs, where we camped for some days at the dilapidated and abandoned adobe structure that had once been a ranch house ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... monarchy, the church, and the nobility, and brought the proletariat in power for a brief season and lifted the hopes of the people toward a government of equality, was hurrying on from the directorate to the consulate to the empire, and finally returning to the old monarchy somewhat worn and dilapidated, indeed, but sufficient in power to smother the hopes of the people for the time being. Numerous French writers, advocating anarchy, communism, and socialism, set up ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity which were not to be realized as the immediate result of the revolution. Babeuf, Saint-Simon, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... appeared, asked questions and vanished. It seemed to have been all taken out of her hands and it was strange how desolate this made her. For so many years she had had the management of that house, since her fourteenth birthday, indeed. Ugly and dilapidated though the place had been, it had grown, after a time, to belong to her, and she had felt as though it were in some way grateful to her for keeping it, poor thing, together. Now it had suddenly withdrawn itself and was preparing for the next comer. Maggie ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... dark when Tom scrambled down and, with his heart beating rapidly, stole cautiously across the hubbly ground toward the dilapidated brush fence which enclosed the place. The disturbing thought occurred to him that where there were sheep there was likely to be a dog, but ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... of splendour the Irish girl seems to have borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed, have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a "dilapidated farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland," so naturally did she take to her new role. When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her curtsy to the King one ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... of light. It was the moon. Slowly she mounted higher, as if more or less ashamed of the dilapidated appearance of her usually ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... born at Kaimes Castle, a kind of dilapidated baronial residence to which a small farm was then attached, rented by his Father, in the Isle of Bute,—on the 20th July, 1806. Both his parents were Irish by birth, Scotch by extraction; and became, as he himself did, essentially English by ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... succeeding one we travelled along the coast to Siyareh, a small dilapidated fort,[27] standing alone without any other habitation, as if only intended for a traveller's lodge. Near it was an old well, said to be of antique construction, sunk by the former occupants of the land. As we increased our distance westwards, the maritime ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Cyrus Kilfane led the party, and into a kind of lumber-room lighted by a tin oil lamp and filled to overflowing with heterogeneous and unsavory rubbish. Here were garments, male and female, no less than five dilapidated bowler hats, more tea-chests, broken lamps, tattered fragments of cocoanut-matting, steel bed-laths and straw mattresses, ruins of chairs—the whole diffusing ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... passed under the management of a gentleman who to a judicious and energetic personal oversight has added a kindliness and strict honesty in his dealings with the laborers much more desirable than frequent in the island. As a result of this, Golden Spring has become a garden. A great many more dilapidated estates would become gardens under the same ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Joyce thought first she was the cook, for she had no jewellery on at all and no fine clothes, while the two girls, the daughters, were quite smart. They were all ready to laugh and smile, but the two girls were the most friendly; they sat down by Joyce and fingered her skirt and examined her very dilapidated shoes. "I wish they wouldn't, Jim," she said, trying to pull them up under her very short skirt, which was no use at all. At last she took them off because they were so wet, and one of the girls put ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... of Pablo, went up town to the Mexican consulate and procured passports into Baja California for himself and Allesandro. From the consulate he went to a local stock-yard and purchased a miserable, flea-bitten, dejected saddle mule, together with a dilapidated old stock saddle with a crupper, and a well-worn ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... there,—one April day, when the whole landscape was full of color from the budding trees,—and before I could look at the view, I caught sight of some rare vines, already in leaf, about the dilapidated walls of the cabin. Then across the low paling I saw the brilliant colors of tulips and daffodils. There were many rose-bushes; in fact, the whole top of the hill was a flower garden, once well cared for and carefully ordered. It was all the work of an old woman of Scotch-Irish ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... left the train a few minutes after two o'clock and walked up the winding street of a small village to the parsonage. She passed a number of cottages picturesquely dilapidated, a store in which a half-dozen men were smoking, and about thirty lounging negroes. On rising ground was a large house, but the village looked ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... fill the city with crime and suffering. He was a little child, and yet there was none of its peace on his brow, or its light in his eye, as he looked up with a strange, wistful earnestness at the strip of blue sky that looked down with its serene heaven-smile between the frowning and dilapidated pile of buildings which rose on either side of the alley. The sunshine flitted like the soft-caressing fingers of a spirit over his forehead, and the voice of the bells fell upon his spirit with a strange, subduing influence; and the child kept on his way until the alley terminated ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... may be just as proud of our bad looks, as of our good looks. This is the trick of the Cynic. This is the reason why almost every town has its old codger who seems to delight in wearing the shabbiest coat, and driving the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated shanty of anyone in town. These persons take as much pride in their mode of life as the devotee of fashion does in hers. One of these Cynics went to the baths with Alcibiades, the gayest of Athenian youths. When they came out Alcibiades put on the Cynic's rags, leaving his own gay and costly apparel ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... the room seemed lower and more stuffy, it, too, was much the same as she had left it. She brushed aside some silvery cobwebs, raised the window, and sat down on a dilapidated trunk. On the floor at her feet, almost covered with dust, was the old fairy book about the famous kings. She picked it up mechanically. On the first page was the man in the red suit, with the overhanging nose and fat body,—he ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... me on entering the bedroom was the appearance of one of our voyageurs, dressed in a soiled blue capote, dilapidated corduroy trousers, and moccasins; while his deeply sunburnt face, under a mass of long straggling hair, stared at me in astonishment! It will doubtless be supposed that I was much horrified at this apparition. I was, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... overhung on all sides by trees of amazing height and dimensions, which hid it in deep shadow. Fancy might picture a spot so silent and solemn as this, as the abode of genii and fairies, every thing conducing to render it grand, melancholy, and venerable, and the glen wanted only a dilapidated castle, a rock with a cave in it, or something of the kind, to render it the most interesting place in the universe. There was, however, one sight more beautiful than all the rest, and that was the incredible number of butterflies fluttering about like a swarm of bees, and they had no doubt chosen ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... pathetic or humorous subjects. From 1875-78 she studied with Khyn, and later more or less under the direction of her husband. She has painted exclusively small pictures, dealing with simple and natural things, and each picture, as a rule, contains but a single figure. She believes that a dilapidated Skagen hovel may meet every demand of beauty. "Maageplukkerne"—"Gull plucking"—exhibited in 1883, has been called one of the most sympathetic and unaffected pieces of genre painting ever produced by a ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... for three hundred dollars seemed a very substantial bulwark against distress, and the promise of the company's medical work after the new year was even more hopeful. Alves was eager to move from the dilapidated temple to an apartment where Sommers could have a suitable office. But Sommers objected, partly from prudential reasons, partly from fear that unpleasant things might happen to Alves, should they come again where people could talk. And then, to Alves's perplexity, he developed ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... full time to make some inquiries as to where his relative resided. Feeling impressed with the propriety of this step, he made up to a group of idle, equivocal-looking fellows, who, wrapped up in long buttoned dilapidated cloaks, were lounging about the gate; and, plunging boldly into the middle of them, he delivered himself ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... ill-conditioned man, but at first glance scarcely a seedy man. The indications of reduced circumstances in the male of the better class are, I fancy, first visible in the boots and shirt; the boots offensively exhibiting a degree of polish inconsistent with their dilapidated condition, and the shirt showing an extent of ostentatious surface that is invariably fatal to the threadbare waist-coat that it partially covers. He was a pale man, and, I fancied, still ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the sixth volume of his "Surgery," mentions the case of a man who presented himself at Dupuytren's clinic with a tumefied, thickened, and somewhat dilapidated and ulcerated prepuce; this prepuce had worn a couple of golden padlocks for five years, a woman having thus infibulated ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... trust, for his sake as well as our own, that we shall get safely through. Now, Lucy, I think you had better go into the town the first thing and buy some clothes of good homely fashion. What with the water and the bushes your dress is grievously dilapidated, to say the least of it. Dan can go with you and buy a suit for me—those fitted for a young farmer. We shall look like a young farmer and his sister jogging comfortably along to market; we can stop and buy a stock of goods at some ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... were waiting for chance to send them one of those half-intoxicated passengers who refuse to pay more than fifteen sous for their fare, but give their Jehu a gratuity of a louis. All these vehicles belonged to the peculiar category known as "night cabs"—dilapidated conveyances with soiled, ragged linings, and drawn by ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... forcibly—asking me in the tone of one who felt wounded "whether I objected to have a drink with a man like him," that I finally gave way and followed him up a lonely road towards one of those big dilapidated houses which are to be found ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... be said here, but it is worth noting that one live purple emperor has been captured in Ampfield wood, two dead dilapidated ones ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Guarini retired in 1582 to the villa which he had built upon his ancestral estate in the Polesine, that delightful rustic region between Adige and Po. Here he gave himself up to the cares of his family, the nursing of his dilapidated fortune, and the composition of the Pastor Fido. It is not yet the time to speak of that work, upon which Guarini's fame as poet rests; for the drama, though suggested by Tasso's Aminta, was not finally perfected until 1602.[180] Yet we may pause to remark upon the circumstances ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... was indicated where two such arrant jokers were in conflict, a vast throng filled the tavern-yard where the pair were to draw conclusions. At the appointed hour the court functionary dragged upon the scene a most dilapidated simulacrum of man's noblest conquest—blind, spavined, lean as Pharaoh's kind, creeking in every joint—at the same time that his fellow wagerer carried on under his long arm a carpenter's horse—gashed with adze and broadax, bored with the augur, trenched with ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... outhouses and stables, till they hung over and lurched forward, as a slouched hat hangs over the low forehead of some village ruffian; it was the wind that shook and rattled the wooden shutters before the narrow casements, till they hung broken and dilapidated upon their rusty hinges; it was the wind that overthrew the pigeon house, and broke the vane that had been imprudently set up to tell the movements of its mightiness; it, was the wind that made light of any little bit of wooden ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... saw a sword suspended over his head. Thus libertines seem to have something over their heads which says: "Go on, but remember, I hang not by a thread." Those masked carriages that are seen during Carnival are the faithful images of their life. A dilapidated open wagon, flaming torches lighting up painted faces; some laugh, some sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... lurking feeling of impending disaster. Each man was wondering, if, after the slogan, "Over the top with the best of luck," had been sounded, would he still be alive or would he be lying "somewhere in France." In an old dilapidated house, the walls of which were scarred with machine-gun bullets, No. 3 section of the Machine Gun Company had its quarters. The Company's cooks prepared the meals in this billet. On the fifth evening of the bombardment a German eight-inch shell registered ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... most elaborate ornament, but the delicately carved stone-work has been hacked away and the thin pillars replaced by crude, uncarved chunks of stone. There is Norman arcading outside the north transept as well as just above the floor in the north aisle. St Taurin is a somewhat dilapidated and cob-webby church, but it is certainly one of ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... him they were both terribly shocked at the change which a few days had wrought in him. He did not appear like the same person as the one who left them two short weeks before. He was, in fact, only the dilapidated wreck of his former self. His manhood, his self-respect, his ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... at the time directed, extremely well "fixed," and I often dealt with him afterwards. When I paid him, he always thrust his hand into his breaches pocket, which I presume, as being the keep, was fortified more strongly than the dilapidated outworks, and drew from thence rather more dollars, half-dollars, levies, and fips, than his dirty little hand could well hold. My curiosity was excited, and though I felt an involuntary disgust towards the young Jew, I repeatedly conversed ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... was sitting in his dilapidated office chair thinking over all this, when he heard his brother physician's step on the stairs. Harry came in, dusty and worn, from a long ride in the country on an all-night case. His tired face lit up when he saw ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... the Duck came to a little miserable peasant's hut. This hut was so dilapidated that it did not itself know on which side it should fall; and that's why it remained standing. The storm whistled round the Duckling in such a way that the poor creature was obliged to sit down, to stand against it; and the wind ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... establishing a most honourable contrast between his own and former reigns. His career exhibits no superfluous expenditure. Its economy was most rigid. No sovereign was ever more scrupulous with the public money. He never had any public or private predilection; no dilapidated Minister for a favourite: no courtesan intrigue. For gaming he had no fondness; and, if his abilities were not splendid, he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... an obscure part of the county of Huntingdon, a large manor house and a cottage for shepherds the only buildings, with the exception of a dilapidated church used as a barn. The air was healthy, and the whole estate lay ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... and picture galleries all the morning, until they were drooping with fatigue; waggled back in a dilapidated cab, clamouring for their lunch and my tidings; departed again in the afternoon to finish what they had ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the immense sources of wealth to be found in Jamaica, an intelligent eye-witness says: "Such are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... give a Latin tail to a Guildhall? Though the words are used by moderns, would major convey to Cicero the idea of a mayor? Architectus, I believe, is the right word; but I doubt whether veteris jam perantiquae is classic for a dilapidated building—but do not depend on me; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... old house! You counted upon an old house and turned up your nose at it in advance. Ah! yes, old houses; don't you wish you may get them! A dilapidated, tumble-down cottage! Why, don't you know that a dilapidated, tumble-down cottage is simply charming, a thing of beauty? The wall is of beautiful, warm and strong colour, with moth holes, birds' nests, old nails ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... bed, and remained in a contemplative attitude. The tempest raged without; it soon burst forth in violent gusts of wind and rain, which shook all the windows of the dilapidated mansion. Notwithstanding his audacious wickedness, Polidori was superstitious; dark presentiments agitated him; he felt an indefinable uneasiness; the howlings of the storm, which alone disturbed the mournful ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... metropolis rather than for the present camp. A section of an electric railway that was thirty-two miles long ran through the street, and the handsomely equipped cars on it clipped past mud-encrusted mule teams from distant hill farms, prairie schooners, and dilapidated carryalls. The scene was tremendously, occidentally irregular, setting forth that merciless clutch of the future upon the past that makes the present mere transition. The town was hard pushed to catch up with its own vast ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... worked, would produce a great number of valuable curiosities. Just by the temple of Apollo were the ruins of a bath, composed of great blocks of marble, which have been taken away for the purposes of modern building. In all probability, many other noble monuments of this city have been dilapidated by the same barbarous oeconomy. There are some subterranean vaults, through which the water was conducted to this bath, still extant in the garden of the count de Gubernatis. Of the aqueduct that conveyed water to the town, I can say very little, but that it was scooped through a mountain: ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... blousard pays his money, and the amusement continues until after midnight. But it is not amusing. There are several pieces on the bill, but' the chief one, a drama in five acts, is a poor thing, played by mediocre actors in the most dismal manner possible. The scenery is worn and dilapidated and wretched; the play turns on the sufferings of the poor; there are two or three murders, a suicide, a death from starvation, and such a glut of horrors that the whole entertertainment is dismal and depressing to the last degree. Yet the theatre is usually ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... windows as had been closed were reglazed, and the south window of the transept was rebuilt in stone. The choir, after the repairs, was opened for service in 1833. The nave to the west of the rood-screen was more or less in a dilapidated condition, protected by the releaded roof, but not used. The presbytery had been fitted up in Georgian style as a chancel, the organ stood in the north arm of the transept, and high pews filled the choir westward as far as the rood-screen. This was the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... this, and without compunction, seized his advantage. With a grim smile he threw the reins over the pony's head, swung himself out of the saddle, and stepped toward her. As he came on he removed his dilapidated hat with a gesture that made her forget it was dilapidated,—a mocking, insolent gesture though it was. In spite of her embarrassment she let none of his features escape her quickening interest. She saw that he was tall, erect, alert; handsome in some strange and half-repellent way, with his ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... jeanne of French brandy sent to him by his creole friend in New Orleans. He had been gone from Vincennes several months when the batteau arrived, having been recalled to Detroit by the British authorities; and he never returned. Meantime the little post with its quaint cabins and its dilapidated block-house, called Fort Sackville, lay sunning drowsily by the river in a blissful state of helplessness from the military point of view. There was no garrison; the two or three pieces of artillery, abandoned and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... creaking of a distant door Or echo of his footfall on the floor, Thinking it may be one whom he awaits And hath for many days awaited, Coming to lead him through the mouldering gates Out somewhere, from his home dilapidated. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... committed in the palace of Catherine of Medicis. The Tuileries were no longer the abode of kings, it is true, but they were a national palace, and the nation could not allow one of its palaces to become dilapidated. Bonaparte sent for citizen Lecomte, the architect, and ordered him to clean the Tuileries. The word might be taken in both senses —moral ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... events, not that the events themselves were the inevitable consequences of folly or misconduct. To such men as these the large sum offered by the lieutenant of the press-gang for the accommodation of the Mariners' Arms was simply and immediately irresistible. The best room in the dilapidated house was put at the service of the commanding officer of the impress service, and all other arrangements made at his desire, irrespective of all the former unprofitable sources of custom and of business. If the relatives both of Hobbs and of Simpson had not been so well known ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all. It is a great town of pavilions, built without order, here and there, according to the fancy of succeeding Lights of the Universe, or their favourites. The only row of domes which looked particularly regular or stately, were the kitchens. As you examined the buildings they had a ruinous dilapidated look: they are not furnished, it is said, with particular splendour,—not a bit more elegantly than Miss Jones's seminary for young ladies, which we may be sure is much more comfortable than the extensive establishment of His Highness ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... citizens, most of whom had not even smelt a drink in two years, found themselves billeted into padded cells and confronted by rows of strait-jackets. Moreover, the Home had lain unused for many months: it was dusty, dilapidated, and of a moldy savor. Some of the unwilling visitors, finding that the grounds included a strip of sandy beach, took their ordeal with reasonable philosophy. "Since we are to be slaves," they said, "at least let's have some serf bathing." And donning (with ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... Shiloh, at the time of the Crusaders, was considered to occupy the site of Mizpeh, the highest mountain near Jerusalem, where the national assemblies were held at the time of the Judges. The present mosque is dilapidated, but the substructure, which dates from the Frank period, is beautifully jointed. The apse is raised. The reputed tomb of Samuel is on the western side of the church. It is still called Nebi Samwil, venerated alike ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... that the author must be some Nuncaton resident, and began to look about them for the author. Some portions of the Scenes of Clerical Life had already been discovered to have a very strong local coloring, and now there was much curiosity as to the personality of the writer. A dilapidated gentleman of the neighborhood, who had run through with a fortune at Cambridge, was selected for the honor. While the Scenes were being published, an Isle of Man newspaper attributed the authorship to this man, whose name was Liggins, but he at once repudiated it. On the appearance ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... not always have the desired effect, and more than once Clemence was annoyed by an unmistakable glance of admiration and a remark to the effect that after she left, things would resume their former dilapidated appearance. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... a most dilapidated condition, and it—also the country about—looks as though it had been the scene of a fierce bombardment. And bombarded we certainly have been—by a terrific hailstorm that made us feel for a time that our very lives were in danger. The day had been excessively warm, with ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... in the chancery of his cousin's arm as ever any property was in the court of that name, and, to speak truth, it seemed quite possible that, when it emerged from its retreat, it would, like the property, be much dilapidated and extensively bled. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... and investor confidence over Russia's prospects in its second decade of transition. Yet serious problems persist. Oil, natural gas, metals, and timber account for more than 80% of exports, leaving the country vulnerable to swings in world prices. Russia's industrial base is increasingly dilapidated and must be replaced or modernized if the country is to maintain vigorous economic growth. Other problems include a weak banking system, a poor business climate that discourages both domestic and foreign investors, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the way!—the old houses jutting out at the turns in the road; the glimpse of the river beyond the little meadow where Captain Rice was killed; the spring under the ledge over which the snap-dragon grew; the dilapidated ranks of fence smothered in vines and fireweeds; the cottages, with flower-pots in front; the stores, with low verandas ornamented with boxes and barrels; the academy in its green on the hill; the old bridge ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was left pots of money by a Dutch uncle (who was so far from filling his proverbial role that he hardly talked at all) she spent it and her enthusiasm, indeed her existence, in restoring two variously dilapidated mansions—Graythorpes, her husband's home, and Doller Place, left her by an appreciative aunt. When not thus employed she would be reading a paper on Homes (given here in extenso), or comparing those of other persons with her own. I don't want you to get the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... then and went out, a bit unsteady, seedy, unprepossessing, but carrying under his dilapidated exterior some remains of the man ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... down town, and came back in a rather dilapidated buggy, with a lamb-like looking horse, and said with a laugh, as he ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... hours that shrapnel scarred car would be carrying its freight back to Boulogne, where a table at the restaurant Mony had already been secured for dinner. Then back through the night, to call at various dilapidated farms and holes in the ground, in the area where shrapnel and crumps are not unknown. . . . But just for a few brief hours the occupants of the car were going to soak themselves in the Waters of Forgetfulness; they were going to live—even as the tripper from the slums lives his little ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... little figure dipped in front of her and she recognized Miss Brennan, who had once been a lady's maid to a Mrs. O'Hart and had survived the provision made for her before the O'Harts were off the face of the earth. She had come to live in one of the dilapidated lodges on the place, with very little between her and starvation beyond the old-age pension, supplemented by contributions from charity. The old woman was nearer ninety than eighty, but was still lively and intelligent, despite her eccentricity. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... of long meadow grass was interspersed here and there with clumps of goldenrod and asters and wild shrubs and with small second-growth trees. At the side of the doorway was the tree which they had collided with, a twenty-foot white birch. The hut was even more dilapidated than they had supposed. It looked as if a good wind would send its twisted, sun-split grey boards into a heap. Inside, however, with the sunlight streaming through doorway, window and cracks, it looked more ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... shipped their steers on the railroad, with a tiny stockyard and a small ranchmen's hotel and saloon combined. Now the boom city, if such it might be called, consisted of a long straggling main street with a much dilapidated boardwalk on one side only. In the middle of the street the mud was all of a foot deep, and through this wagons and automobiles plowed along as best they could. All of the buildings were of wood, and none ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... care, had improved a little and promised a modest income. The house, though somewhat dilapidated, was easily made livable. But the one thing that was full of glory and splendor, triumphantly prosperous, was the great avenue of beeches. Their long, low aisle of broad arches was complete. They shimmered with ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... finally become a kind of gigantic mediaeval apartment house for the peasants of the region. The salle d'honneur was cut up into little rooms, the room of the seigneur became a haymow, and the cellars of the towers were used to store potatoes in. About twenty little chimneys rose over the old, dilapidated battlements. A haymow in this castle was the most picturesque thing I ever saw in a cantonment. It was the wreck of a lofty and noble fifteenth-century room, the ceiling, still a rich red brown, was supported ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... relief, and, to prevent all danger, no bishop should keep up a larger retinue than the king allowed. All bishops and cathedrals, with their chapters, must hand over to the king all income not absolutely necessary for their support. Since many monasteries were dilapidated and their lands were lying waste, an officer must be appointed by the crown to keep them up and hand over all their rents not needed for that purpose to the crown. The nobility were declared entitled to all property that had passed from their ancestors to the Church since ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... particle of manure that he would not save; everything would be done with a zeal and an enthusiasm which he had never known before; and by the time the few years had run on when the farm should become his without any further purchase, he would have turned a dilapidated, miserable little farm into a garden for himself and family. Now, this statement may be commented on by some of the newspapers. You will understand that I do not propose a forced purchase, or any confiscation. I would undertake even to give—if I were the Government—to every ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... Arabs turned, and, jumping a low wall, fled off into the night. Sambo was at once released. Meantime, Sandy, as the unofficial cashier of the expedition, made an inventory of the treasure trove. It appears that Sambo had scented out in a strange way a very ancient and dilapidated tomb, which these Arab robbers had intended to despoil ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... sorry to interfere, Mr. ——," said the judge, "but do you not think that, by introducing a little order into your narrative, you might possibly render yourself a trifle more intelligible? It may be my fault that I cannot follow you—I know that my brain is getting old and dilapidated; but I should like to stipulate for some sort of order. There are plenty of them. There is the chronological, the botanical, the metaphysical, the geographical—even the alphabetical order would be better than no ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... quote about the pere de famille is pretty true. It is a difficult role to play; particularly when, as in my case, it is united with that of oncle d'Amerique and general superintendent of all the dilapidated and tumble-down foreigners who pass this way!" The regulation of such a house in New England was far more difficult than it is at present, and Cambridge farther away from Boston, with its conveniences and privileges, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... shimmering gauze. The grainfields on the lowlands across the river were shining gold. But the slate-colored dust from the unpaved streets of that section of Millsburgh known locally as the "Flats" covered the wretched houses, the dilapidated fences, the hovels and shanties, and everything animate or inanimate with a thick coating of dingy gray powder. Shut in as it is between a long curving line of cliffs on the south and a row of tall buildings on the river bank, the place was ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... to Venice to pick up Berovieri goblets and other things, Leslie stayed at the Hotel Europa and Peter in the Palazzo Amadeo. The Palazzo Amadeo is a dilapidated palace looking onto the Rio delle Beccarie; it is let in flats to the poor; and in the sea-story suite of the great, bare, dingy, gilded rooms lived Hilary and Peggy Margerison, and three disreputable infants who insisted on bathing ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... requesting them to be promptly on hand when the seals were affixed. Eighty persons arrived from Vatan, Saint-Florent, Vierzon and the neighboring country, all in deep mourning,—widows with sons, children with their fathers, some in carrioles, some in wicker gigs, others in dilapidated carts. Imagine the scene between the old woman's servants and the first arrivals! and the consultations among the notaries! It created a sort of ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... loud cracking sounds, pleasant to hear on the damp winter's morning, and the flame shone red through chinks of the rusty door. A dark-green carpet in passably good condition covered the floor; three or four broad divans, spread with oriental rugs, and two very much dilapidated carved chairs with leathern seats, constituted the furniture; the walls were hung with sketches of heads and figures; half-finished portraits stood upon two easels, and others were leaning together in a corner; a couple of small tables were covered with colour-tubes, brushes, and palette-knives; ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... fixed for the opening of the most brilliant pageant known to modern history. On the green space in front of the dilapidated castle of Guisnes, on the soil of France, but within what was known as the English pale, stood a summer palace of the amplest proportions and the most gorgeous decorations, which was furnished within with all that comfort ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris |
