"Draughty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hurts again. Let's get into a decent room and talk it over there. I hate draughty halls and unwarmed rooms. There's a fire in the little side parlor off the dining room. That's my own private den. I want to get there and lie down. That rabbit pie I had for lunch doesn't agree with me, I'm afraid. Do ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... and it isn't bad either. You'd better put on your coat; the hall's draughty." And waiting till Sweetwater did so, he led the way back to his own room. Brotherson's manner expressed perfect ease, Sweetwater's not. He knew himself changed in looks, in bearing, in feeling, even; but was he changed enough to deceive this man on the very spot where ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the gentleman differs from that of the vulgar in that he fears yet goes; and I lifted the latch, and entered boldly. The scene which met my eyes inside was sufficiently commonplace to reassure me. At the farther end of a long bare room, draughty, half-lighted, and having an earthen floor, yet possessing that air of homeliness which a wood fire never fails to impart, sat a single traveller; who had drawn his small table under the open chimney, and there, with his feet almost in the fire, was partaking of a poor meal of ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... quite useless for Mildred to try to combat her mother's fierce resentment. Day after day she wandered through the desolate, draughty rooms, bewailing her hard lot, regretting the lost glories of Kingsland, and nursing her resentment toward her odious daughter-in-law; and when the bridal pair returned, and Milly timidly suggested the propriety of calling, my ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Agatha—"especially when it's cold. Rags wouldn't be so bad in summer, but they must be awfully draughty in winter. And I spend less in sweets than any of the others, because my teeth ache. I've often wished we could do something for the Mission; but I'm so poor, and I sha'n't get any goose-money till autumn. I wish we could ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the raft, was to render the cave habitable by stopping up all the holes which made it draughty. Sand, stones, twisted branches, wet clay, closed up the galleries open to the south winds. One narrow and winding opening at the side was kept, to lead out the smoke and to make the fire draw. The cave was thus divided into three or four rooms, if such dark dens with which a donkey would scarcely ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... ice-water and wear very thin clothes indoors. Their rooms are hotter than ours ever are, even in the height of the summer—when we have a summer! But no wonder, either, that Americans in England shiver at our cold, draughty rooms. They are ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... comfortable, though, of course, it is old-fashioned. I prefer more modern furniture; but Uncle David seems to think his queer old chairs and table all that can be desired, and did not appear interested when I told him where we got our things. I have a large room, rather draughty, but otherwise pleasant, with plenty of space for clothes, which is a comfort. I do think it's intensely annoying to be expected to keep your clothes in your ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... that I've not been there lately. I am so very seldom in England nowadays. Besides, the old place is so cold and gloomy. It is draughty even on a summer's day. My wife liked it when we were married—liked it until somebody told her of a family legend, how Hugh de Weymount, in the fifteenth century, walled up his wife in the north tower and left her to starve to death. Ever since she heard that story she has hated the old place. ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... for the first time what French billets were like and experienced the insanitary conditions prevailing on the small farms and the draughty and dirty barns. Looking around the countryside all seemed quiet and peaceful. The ploughman ploughed the fields, others sowed and the miners went to their daily tasks as usual. At times it was difficult ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... disguised as a woman or priest, landing at night; a dark man stealing documents from a tapestried chamber of some castle, where bats and cobwebs shared the draughty corridors—such scenes were incomplete unless a Night-Wind came in audibly at critical moments. It wailed, moaned, whistled, cried, sang, sighed, soughed or—sobbed. Keyholes and chimneys were its favourite places, but trees and rafters knew it too. The sea, of course, also played a large ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... here several times lately," Hewitt said; "they feed you very well. No, not that table"—he seized my arm as I turned to an unoccupied corner—"I fancy it's draughty." He led the way to a longer table where a dark, lithe, and (as well as could be seen) tall young man already sat, and took ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... by two corners under the draughty punkah while Samson traced the boundaries with his finger. It was exactly as he thought: without that little palace and its grounds, the state of Sialpore would be bounded exactly by the river. Take away the so-called River Palace with the broad acres surrounding it, and ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... pit of his stomach that something really rather exciting was about to happen. By surely half-past seven he rose laboriously from his bed, huddled himself into his black-sheep wrapper and settled himself down as warmly as could be expected, close to the draughty edge ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... feudal times, who spent their lives in the sport of encamping outside of fortresses, at whose walls they occasionally butted with rams, lances, and strong language, leaving their wives and children in badly drained and draughty castles. If any one wishes to see brave men and true, simply come to a fire with Evan and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and sallied out to fetch her. Poor Susie, standing shivering before her maid's bolted door, scantily clothed, anxiously watching the flame of her candle that threatened each second to be blown out, alone on the wide, draughty landing, frightened at the sound of her own calls mingling weirdly with the creakings and hangings of the tempest-shaken house, was an object deserving of pity. It took some minutes to induce Hilton to open ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... lectern stood, falling on his knees in the regular and habitual manner which of itself gave him consolation and satisfaction. He sank down, his hair hanging over his face, and pressed his head, already going bald in front, to the cold damp strip of drugget on the draughty floor. He read the psalm old Father Pimon had told him warded off temptation. He easily raised his light and emaciated body on his strong sinewy legs and tried to continue saying his prayers, but instead of doing so he involuntarily ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... for a new venture over such luncheon as the best hotel could give us. It was not so good a hotel as the lunch it gave. It was beyond the cleansing tide of modernity which has swept the Roman hotels, and was dirty everywhere, but with a specially dirty, large, shabby dining-room, cold and draughty, yet precious for the large, round brazier near our table which kept one side of us warm in romantic mediaeval fashion, and invited us to rise from time to time and thaw our fingers over its blinking ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... seemed as if this particular house was entirely ruined by such incidents; the Prior was finickin, the junior-master tyrannical, the paints for illumination inferior in quality, the straw of his bed peculiarly sharp, the chapter-house unnecessarily draughty. And until he learnt from his confessor that this spiritual ailment was a perfectly familiar one, and that its symptoms and effects had been diagnosed centuries before, and had taken him at his word and practised the ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... behind her in her grief. Sir Nicholas sat still a moment, sick and shaken; he knew what it meant; but it had never come so close to him before. He got up presently and went to the door to listen for he knew not what. But there was no sound but the moan of the wind up the draughty staircase, and the sound of a prisoner singing somewhere above him a snatch of a song. He looked out presently, but there was nothing but the dark well of the staircase disappearing round to the left, and the glimmer of an oil lamp somewhere ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... came, and it began to be cold in my hut. There was a fireplace where I cooked my food, but the wood burned poorly and it was very draughty, though I had caulked the walls as well as I could. The autumn was past, and the days were growing shorter. The first snow was still melting under the rays of the sun. Presently the ground was bare again, but the nights were cold, ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... away from him. To the end of his life he remembered the excuses—the consolations that the child would live; suffered very little, if at all; would walk with crutches; would certainly live. God was more merciful. A window was opened too wide on a draughty day—after a short, painless illness his daughter died. But the lesson he had learnt so glibly at Cambridge should be heeded now; no child should ever be born to ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don't. The gates are always kept closed, and it isn't worth any one's while to open them for L10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class ticket up to town. What are we ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... in those horrid little tents on the draughty station," she called out; "and we are sure to get to somewhere in this train, ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... two we returned to Festubert, and Cadell gave me a shake-down on a mattress in his billet—gloriously comfortable. The room was a little draughty because the fuse of a shrapnel had gone right through the door and the fireplace opposite. Except for a peppering on the walls and some broken glass the house was not damaged; we almost laughed at the father and mother and daughter ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... for childhood's bliss, A dread of what is coming, come what May matrimonially—or is It draughty somewhat? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... through the wind-swept dusk of the apartments with the tumult of their unfamiliar voices and impermanent presences, like relays of migratory shades condemned to speed headlong round the earth without leaving a trace. The babble of their irruptions ebbed out as suddenly as it had arisen; the draughty corridors and the long chairs of the verandas knew their sight-seeing hurry or their prostrate repose no more; and Captain Whalley, substantial and dignified, left well-nigh alone in the vast hotel by each light-hearted skurry, felt more and more like a stranded tourist with no aim in view, ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... from the peg near the fire where it had been hung the night before to dry wrapped himself snugly in it; and then, with a little bow, preceded Dan into the cold and draughty corridor that opened from the bar into the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... extract nails from discarded boxes. With these, and a brick for a hammer, he covered the sloping roof walls of the garret mansion with stage beauties, art supplements, Buster Browns, Happy Hooligans, baseball giants and magazine covers. This art paneling covered every draughty hole or crack. Flour sacks draped Jimmy's sofa-couch. All that last night, while the Montreal Express brought Jimmy into the hills, there sounded the persistent tap-tapping ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... covered with roses, and put a cologne-soaked handkerchief into the pocket of her blue velvet coat. The little girl did not have many pleasures; there were very few children in the neighbourhood, and Julia was not very strong; she easily caught colds in dark O'Farrell Street, or in the draughty hall. All winter long she had been hanging over the coal fire in the front room, or leaning against the window watching the busy street below—but today was spring! Sunlight glorified even the dreary ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... you'd dream they longed to look All their lives through into some drift of wings. You've dandled them and fed them from the book And know them to the bone; impart to us— We'll keep the secret—a new trick to please. Is there a bridle for this Proteus That turns and changes like his draughty seas? Or is there none, most popular of men, But when they mock us that we ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... people. Above all, don't bore him. I do not say, never be serious, because it is a great mistake to think Lazarus can only guffaw. Read "The Death of Little Nell" or of Paul Dombey, and look at Mrs. Lazarus's eyes. Read Tom Hood's "Song of the Shirt," and see whether the poor seamstress out in the draughty penny seats at the back appreciates it or not. I did hear of one parish at the West End—the very same, by the way, I just now commended for sticking to the "penny" system—where Hood's "Nelly Gray," proposed to be read by the son of one of our best known actors, was tabooed ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the place was empty. Dave pulled off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane, clicked the catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in. I handed in the swags to him. The room was very draughty; the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs, so we tried the partitioned-off room—the bedroom—and that was better. It had been lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left by ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... think I must have been very comfortable at the North Pole—if I had only known it. Another man in my place might be inclined to say that this Newfoundland boat-house was rather a sloppy, slimy, draughty, fishy sort of a habitation to take shelter in. Another man might object to perpetual Newfoundland fogs, perpetual Newfoundland cod-fish, and perpetual Newfoundland dogs. We had some very nice bears at the North Pole. Never mind! it's all one to ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... grows warmer. That henhouse must be fixed before next winter. It's too draughty," said Hi. "And then, hens can't lay well—especially through the winter—if they haven't ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... it, made no attempt to conceal that, but was full of little comfortable suggestions which made her want to cry. "You'll have no more sapping upstairs directly after dinner, I suppose!" was one of them; another was, "No more draughty adventures by the Round Pond." Lucy thought that she would have stood like Jane Shore by the Round Pond, in a blizzard, for another week of him. But she adored him for his intention, and was also braced by it. Her sister Mabel, who had three boys, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the 3rd Brigade were moved into huts at Lark Hill. They were certainly an improvement upon the tents, but they (p. 032) were draughty and leaky. From my window I could see, on the few occasions when the weather permitted it, the weird and ancient ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... down the draughty passage that led to the offices of the long-since-deserted dwelling-house. There was a large apartment at the end of the passage—the kitchen, to judge from the character of the fittings. The room had been formerly lighted by electricity, ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... still shelters among her own children in her hut. They, too, had to be fed; for Marianne was helpless to care for them. There was the little boy, too, of the Gavons—left alone, with a case of measles well developed when I found him, on the draughty floor of a loft; the mother and father had been drunk together for three days at Bar la Rose. And there were others—the Mere Gailliard, who would have been sold out for her rent, and poor old Varnet, the fisherman; he had no home, no money, no friends; he is eighty-four years old. Most of the winter ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... occasion a significant remark was made by a lady friend who came to call. She will undoubtedly remember now when she reads these lines that she said, on leaving the studio: "This is a curiously draughty place. I feel as if it had been blowing hot and cold on me all the time I have been here, and yet ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... but otherwise he was a very kindly and genial man. To Joan he was excessively polite, and so afraid that her capabilities might not come up to his expectations that for the first few days he left her practically with no work to do. She sat in a large, well-lit—if draughty—room, opposite Mr. Strangman ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... were not long in disposing of their lunch. It was too cold for comfort in their draughty dining-room, and they were not invited to enter the inhospitable gates. In half an hour they were wending their way down the north side of the peak by gradually declining roads, headed for the much-talked-of home of the Witch in Ganlook Gap, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... predicament. The corridor was dark, and draughty, and he was far from home; what was he to do? "Three courses," as the wise man says, "were open to him." Either he might camp out where he was, and by the aid of door-mats and carpet extemporise a bed till the morning; or he might commence a demonstration ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... that very minute you, with a hard cold, were sitting out in that draughty shed smoking because she wouldn't allow you to smoke in your ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... up, cold and melancholy, and stood shivering on the draughty platform while the baggage was taken out of the train. Then the engine, puffing and blowing, set to work again, and dragged the train away. The children watched the tail-lights of the guard's van disappear into ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... and these had to be kept fairly straight, imposing a terrific strain upon the back. In addition to this, the boys were compelled to face the furnace each time they came back, passing from the heat of the melting oven, in front of a draughty open door, to the ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... other, with a laugh of intelligence. 'I call a day like this "the blue room". It's the least draughty apartment in all the confoundedly draughty ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... must find it very draughty, I should fancy. [To SIR JOHN.] John, you should have your muffler. What is the use of my always knitting mufflers for you if you ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... "He has come out of it very well, but I dread the day when he must go home to a busy, careless mother and a draughty cottage. He ought to have a couple of weeks ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... see—to Mr. Korner himself. Thinking over the sort of things Mrs. Korner did say and did do, tears sprung into Mr. Korner's eyes. Noticing that a policeman was eyeing him with curiosity, he dashed them aside and hurried on. Pacing the platform of the Mansion House Station, where it is always draughty, the thought of his wrongs returned to him with renewed force. Why was there no trace of doglike devotion about Mrs. Korner? The fault—so he bitterly told himself—the fault was his. "A woman loves her master; it is her instinct," ...
— Mrs. Korner Sins Her Mercies • Jerome K. Jerome
... is fearfully draughty," remarked Lady Mary, close to Betty's shoulder. "I don't want to stay ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... question of taste. Personally, I can't imagine anything more depressing and uncomfortable than being cooped up in a draughty frame house miles away from anywhere. There's no reason why you should not go, though, if you like that sort of thing. Of course, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... corner of the hall was there a glimpse of staircase visible. I had not thought about it before, but now I realised that it was just this absence which gave that touch of comfort and privacy which is wanting in the ordinary entrance "lounge". There was no draughty well, no galleried space overhead, from which curious ears could overhear private confidences. I stared round mystified, till Charmion opened yet another doorway, and behold! there was the staircase, the oddest, curliest specimen of its kind, mounting ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Oh, Frederic, cannot you, in the calm excellence of your wisdom, reconcile it with your conscience to say something that will relieve my father's sorrow? FREDERIC: I will try, dear Mabel. But why does he sit, night after night, in this draughty old ruin? GENERAL: Why do I sit here? To escape from the pirates' clutches, I described myself as an orphan; and, heaven help me, I am no orphan! I come here to humble myself before the tombs of my ancestors, and to implore their pardon for having brought dishonour on the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... adaptable. Practical experience, and one's early failures, teach one more than anything else how a nest should be made, and yet often when you are satisfied that you have selected a most suitable spot for nesting purposes, you will find a duck occasionally preferring a miserably draughty position for her nest within a yard of the snug retreat you have devised for her. The only thing then to be done is to leave her alone until she has settled down to lay steadily, when you can gradually introduce pieces of broom, &c., so as to shelter her nest as much ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... to a draughty, unconsidered table by the door. Paragot looked at it, then at Madame Boin and then at his own private and particular table usurped by Monsieur Papillard and his associates, and swore a stupefied oath of considerable complication. A weird, pug-nosed, pig-eyed, creature with a goatee beard ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... room is big and draughty it might be well to have one of those big screens put round your bed at night—though, truth to tell, I would die myself if I were to be so shut in with all kinds of—of "things", that put their heads round the sides, or over the top, and look on me!' The image which she had called ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... in the summer, but draughty and cold in the winter; as it was now warm weather, Von Barwig and his friends did not suffer any inconvenience at this time. The men did not see much of each other in these days. Pinac and Fico had secured engagements on an excursion steamboat that plied its way to Coney Island and back. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... preferred the beauty of the spot to the more sociable but draughty ranches in the valley of Bear Forks River; so they settled in the crater, and named the farm Rainbow Cliffs, but the original nick-name clung, and gradually the owners, from habit, also came to ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... we've forgot. This morning 't was my stone batter-pot. Chauncey said he thought it was getting cold enough for buckwheat cakes. I don't suppose you want to have stray tramps in there in the old house, building fires in the loom-room, where, if a spark got loose, it would blaze up them draughty stairs, and the whole house would go in a minute." Cerissa stopped to ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the butler. "I know you're going to scold me, Daddy. It's all my fault that you were kept waiting. It took me so long to persuade General Braithwaite. By the time he'd consented—— I had to dress like a hurricane. I'm not at all sure that I'm properly hooked up the back. I know I feel draughty." Then, as though she had not remembered that he was expected, "Why, hullo, Tabs! In a dinner-jacket! You ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... waited on the stone stairs; it was very draughty. And the man in the glass case looked at us as if we were the museum instead of him. We waited a long time, and then a boy ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... such a Spanish way of flirting with a fan. Nevertheless they do not get married. No admirer has ever been able to get over the sight of that singular home. The wasteful and useless extravagance, the want of plates, the profusion of old tapestry in holes, of antique and ungilt lustres, the draughty doors, the constant visits of creditors, the slatternly appearance of the young ladies in slipshod slippers and dressing gowns, put to flight the best intentioned. In truth, it is not everyone who could resign himself to hang up ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... the Armstrongs', on little police jobs of the philanthropist; and, now he came to think of it, it was in itself a depressing house. The rooms were very high and very cold; the decoration mean and provincial; the draughty corridors were lit by electricity that was bleaker than moonlight. And though the old man's scarlet face and silver beard had blazed like a bonfire in each room or passage in turn, it did not leave any warmth behind it. Doubtless this spectral discomfort ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... whirling the snowflakes into a little heap inside the half-open door. Even beyond the little heap of snow, right inside the barn among the whisps of hay and straw, and beyond the pile of turnips piled up in one far corner, it was still bitterly cold and draughty. ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... fallen; the wind was rising without, and seemed to rustle and whistle in the draughty passages of the old house. Thalassa placed one lamp at the head of the stairs, and others in the niches of the passage, where they flickered feebly and diffused a feeble light. Halfway down the passage he paused before a closed door. It was the room in which Sisily's mother ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... you must take off your shoes and catch a violent cold, in order to show your respect for Allah; while in Europe, on entering a similar religious building, you must uncover your head, no matter how draughty the place may be, since the deity who presides there appears to be indifferent to the danger of consumption or chest-diseases for his worshippers; why certain clothes or foods are prescribed in London or Paris for Sundays and Fridays, while certain others, just ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... Clark's Hills. Rachael did not dislike it, and it was a huge adventure to the boys. Nevertheless, she began to feel that a longer stay down on the bleak coast might be unwise. The old house, for all its purring furnace and double windows, was draughty enough to admit icy little fingers of the outside air, here and there, and the village, getting under storm shutters and closing up this wing or that room for the winter, was so businesslike in its preparations as to fill Rachael's heart ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... said to be haunted, and its silent, spectral appearance certainly suggested an abiding-place of evil spirits. But one of the ruined huts, although pitch dark and partly filled with snow, offered a pleasanter shelter than our draughty tent, and I insisted upon a halt. Drift-wood was plentiful (it always was near the mouth of a river), and a fire was soon kindled, or rather a bad imitation of one, for this fuel only yields a dull, flickering flame. This latter, however, melted the snow sufficiently to convert the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... he is hard, hard. I never saw a man with a chin like his, who was not tyrannical, and idolatrous of his own will. My dear, such men are as uncomfortable to live in the same house with, as a smoky chimney, or a woman with shattered nerves, or creaking doors, or draughty windows. They are a sort of everlasting east wind that never veers, blowing always to the one point, attainment of their own ends, mildewing all ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in good spirits, and inclined to like Paris increasingly. Do you know I think you have an idea in England that you monopolise comforts, and I, for one, can't admit it. These snug 'apartments' exclude the draughty passages and staircases, which threaten your life every time that you run to your bedroom for a pocket-handkerchief in England. I much prefer the Continental houses to the English ones, both for winter and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... black pierrette kit with yellow bobbles. The rehearsals were mostly conducted in the back of the ambulance on the way there, and the rest of the time was spent feverishly muttering one's lines to oneself and imploring other people not to muddle one. The show was held in a draughty tent, and when it was over the Padre made a short prayer and they all sang a hymn. (Life is one continual paradox out in France.) I shall never forget the way those Guardsmen sang either. It was perfectly splendid. There they stood, rows of ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... a distressing misfortune came upon Sir Joshua. He meant to learn all that a man could learn in a given time of the art treasures there, and while he was working in a draughty corridor of the Vatican, he caught a severe cold which rendered him deaf. He continued deaf till the end of his life and had to use an ear-trumpet when people talked ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain under a dripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his little heart would break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but when a rather shame-faced young woman came along, as if returning from her work, he burst ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... times by FitzGerald!) leads to the little one-storeyed cottage in Boulge Park, where he lived from 1838 till 1853. It probably is scarcely changed at all, with its low-pitched thatch roof forming eyebrows over the brown-shuttered windows. "Cold and draughty," says the woman who was living in it, and who showed me FitzGerald's old parlour and bedroom. The very nails were still in the walls on which he hung his big pictures. Boulge Hall, then tenantless, a large modern ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... looks. They are warm and pleasant to unshod feet, and therefore suitable for bedroom use. They are soft to shoe tread, and give colour and comfort to a summer piazza. They can be hung as portieres in draughty places with a certainty of shelter, and can be lifted and thrown upon the grass to be washed by the downpour of a thunder shower, and left to dry in the sun without ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... windows and to the two little beds were of an ugly drab color; and the view out of these windows only revealed a narrow street. At Kitty's own home she had a bedroom in the Castle end; the paper hung in ribbons, the door was draughty, the bedstead rickety and old; but what a view there was from the windows! A view of Lake Coulin and the mountains in the distance, and the park lying verdant and green between the lake and the house. What a breeze blew in at ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... churchyard cough myself," declared the Arts mistress. "I stayed in bed all Saturday and Sunday, and it was really a little better, but it was as bad as ever after a day in this big draughty hole." ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that Mr. Daly had commanded me to play at the Saturday performance, saying that if the work made me worse, the doctor would have all day Sunday to treat me in. He really seemed to think that using a carriage did away with all possible danger in passing from a warm room, through icy streets, to a draughty theatre. But certain lesions that I carry about with me are proofs of his error. However, I dared not risk losing my engagement, so I obeyed. My chest, which had been blistered and poulticed during my illness, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the new Presbyterian verity. A thing of slow and long evolution, the Church had assimilated and hallowed the world-old festivals of the year's changing seasons. She provided for the human love of recreation. Her Sundays were holidays, not composed of gloomy hours in stuffy or draughty kirks, under the current voice of the preacher. Her confessional enabled the burdened soul to lay down its weight in sacred privacy; her music, her ceremonies, the dim religious light of her fanes, naturally awaken religious emotion. While these things, with the native tendency to resist authority ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... cheerless morning. The temperature had risen and a thick rain was falling. There was nothing to do out-of-doors so Nan remained within. It was Friday, and one of Delia's sweeping days. She was shut up in the draughty parlor with a mob-cap on her head "cleaning for dear life," as she expressed it. After a brief experience of the cold and discomfort of open windows and clouds of dust, Nan gave up trying to talk to Delia and wandered out of the parlor as disconsolately as she had wandered ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... the first watch and three shapeless figures clad in duffel coats with big hoods and wearing heavy sea-boots stood silent in the draughty, canvas-screened wheel-house as M.L.822 wallowed northwards through the seas which came in endless succession out of the snowy mist. It was just the ordinary everyday patrol duty, when nothing was expected but anything might happen, so eyes were strained ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... recommend you not to stay long in this miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... thirty years ago, how many pretty sights should we have missed! Little Marie Wilton would not have romped about the stage in her childish glee (she enjoyed the work from the first, and even liked playing in a draughty booth when the company of roaming "artists" could get no better accommodation). Little Ellen Terry, too, would not have played in the Castle scene in "King John," and crowds of worthy matrons would have missed having that "good ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... shriek. He was thunderstruck with surprise. Almayer came out of the office, leaving the door ajar, passed close to his servant without taking any notice, and made straight for the water-chatty hung on a nail in a draughty place. He took it down and came back, missing the petrified Ali by an inch. He moved with long strides, yet, notwithstanding his haste, stopped short before the door, and, throwing his head back, poured a thin stream of water down his throat. While he came and went, while he stopped ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... remember a station on the line, some way below Vienne, where the Rhone fleets seaward between vine-clad hills. This was Villon's Siberia. It would be a little warm in summer perhaps, and a little cold in winter in that draughty valley between two great mountain fields; but what with the hills, and the racing river, and the fiery Rhone wines, he was little to be pitied on the conditions of his exile. Villon, in a remarkably bad ballad, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exposure to cold, chilling winds, draughty, damp quarters, and drinking cold water when perspiring. Injuries to the costal pleura by fractured ribs and punctured wounds may cause it ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... yards away, in a corner of an arable field, the very windiest and most draughty that could be chosen, where the hedge is cut down so that it can barely be called a hedge, and where the elms draw the wind, the men of the family crowd over a smoky fire. In the wind and rain the fire ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... hideous fact, that every one of his children is dead! The crude grave has gaped before the cock to suck in every one of those shrunk forms, so indigent of vital impulse, so pauper of civism, lust, so draughty, so vague, so lean—but not before they have had time to dower with the ah and wo of their infirmity a whole wretched "army of grand-children." And yet this man of wisdom is on the point, in his old age, of ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... afforded by the bay of the great window in the library. When Stewart had returned to the girl he noticed that she had provided the harbor with a breakwater—a tall Japanese screen; waiting there she had found the room draughty, she informed him. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... there; it will be wet across the grass. Put on your 'ats an' take wraps wi' you in case you get 'ot, for the barn may be draughty,' said Mrs Clay. ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... raining when they withdrew from this stale spectacle, but she had obstinately refused to take a cab, had even, on the way, insisted on loitering under the dripping awnings of shop-windows and poking into draughty passages, and finally, when they had nearly reached their destination, had gone so far as to suggest that they should turn back to hunt up some show she had heard of in a theatre at the Batignolles. But at that he had somewhat irritably ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... distempered wall of the draughty corridor, a queer smile on his face, Fiorsen wondered why the devil he was there, and what the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... accident that Claude stumbled across the plot. Featherstone was speaking to Ayscough on the telephone, on the question of the price of Little Badholme. Claude was flabbergasted—L25,000 for a place that was leaky and draughty through half the year, and which showed a tendency to slide seaward! The whole business was disgusting. He waited until his father had finished, and then ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... expected that Shafto would see one familiar face, and he felt completely "out of it," as he took a scat at a draughty table between two elderly people, whose interest was entirely concentrated upon their meals ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... with a feverish cold. This cold and her new dress were Mrs. Baines's sole consolation at the moment. She had prophesied a cold for Sophia, refuser of castor- oil, and it had come. Sophia had received, for standing in her nightdress at a draughty window of a May morning, what Mrs. Baines called 'nature's slap in the face.' As for the dress, she had worshipped God in it, and prayed for Sophia in it, before dinner; and its four double rows of gimp on the skirt had been accounted a great ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and found herself in the midst of a fight between the governess and Margaret, who wanted to go to the draughty passage window, which she fancied had a better view than that of her nursery. Luckily, Aunt Ethel was almost the only person whom Margaret did not like to see her naughty; and she subsided into a much less objectionable lamentation after Uncle Harry and his anchor buttons. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the belongings of this strange being would have included a pick, a shovel, a pan, and an old sluice-box, none of which he ever used, also a blanket, a big knife, a billy, and a Greek Testament. The cave, although draughty, was comfortable and fairly dry. Now and then I shared it with Fabayne; generally on those occasions when I sold my tent. He was a charming companion, not alone was he exceedingly well-read, but he was sympathetic and helpful to a degree. I have many ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... again! [Putting her arm round her.] Come, I want you to put your uncle's coat by the fire. He will be cold, coming out of that draughty church. ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... while he delivered an epic on the "soul of a jellyfish"; he was then tossed in the "sacred blanket" and put through other Bedouin initiations; after which he was tucked comfortably in Jock's bed, while Jock, bound hand and foot and rolled in blankets, made horrid Highland remarks from the draughty floor ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... pungent ammonia smell incidental to recently tenanted stables. The prisoners who were allotted to those stalls in which the wet straw still remained were compelled to lie down upon it so that they had a far from inviting or savoury couch. Yet there were many who preferred the unsalubrious and draughty stalls to the loft overhead, and prices for the former ruled high, as much as 100 marks—L5—being freely given for this accommodation. This speculation in the quarters for the prisoners constituted one of the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... summer term, the one which followed seemed stagnation itself. The arrival of the report had been an excitement, it is true; but when that was over the days passed by in uneventful fashion, until autumn waned and winter came back, with the attendant discomforts of dark mornings, draughty corridors, and coatings of ice on the water in the ewers; for this was a good, old-fashioned winter, when Jack Frost made his appearance in the beginning of December, and settled down with a solidity ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... usual, and looked nearly as cross as when she went to bed; but she said nothing more about going: and Friskarina took care at breakfast to show her every possible good-natured attention; she gave her by much the largest share of the cream, took the draughty side of the hearthrug herself, and, in short, did everything she could to show that she was anxious to be kind and civil to her; but all her little politenesses ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... the situation. There was only one solution: the saloon, the congregating-place of men, the place where men hobnobbed with John Barleycorn. Well do I remember the damp and draughty evening, shivering without overcoats because we could not afford them, that Louis and I started out to select our saloon. Saloons are always warm and comfortable. Now Louis and I did not go into this saloon because we wanted a drink. Yet we knew that saloons were not charitable institutions. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... clothed legs like rock pillars, while out of the loose squirrel parka a corded neck rose, brown and strong, above which darkly gleamed a rugged face seamed and scarred by the hate of Arctic winters. He had kicked off his deer-skin socks, and stood bare-footed on the cold and draughty floor, while the poison he had imbibed showed only in his heated face, Silently he extended a cracked and hardened hand, which closed like the armoured claw of a crustacean and tightened on the crunching fingers of the other. Captain's expression remained unchanged and, gradually slackening ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... crops. All these things did the neolithic peoples sooner or later; so that it would not be strange if palaeolithic man withdrew in their favour, because he could not compete. Pre-history is at present almost silent concerning the manner of his passing. In a damp and draughty tunnel, however, called Mas d'Azil, in the south of France, where the river Arize still bores its way through a mountain, some palaeolithic folk seem to have lingered on in a sad state of decay. The ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... been waiting to bid you good-bye. Father is going to walk with me to Hillside, so Percival will not mind my being so late. How cold your face and hands are, and I am as warm as possible! You have been running about those draughty passages, and have taken a chill. She ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the single occupant of the sitting-room when Mrs. Forsyth bustled in. "I'll tell the girls," Mrs. MacCall said, briskly, and she shut the visitor into the room, for on this cold day the big front hall was draughty. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... was large and roomy, but draughty to an extreme. At night the icy wind whistled through its crevices, and we had to bury our heads in blankets. The whole family shared it with us, and in one corner stood an unwearied calf, too tender to brave ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... staircase leading to the principal floor was unpolished and rude, and the walls were rudely whitewashed. My own bedroom, which in many ways was delightful, was reached by a vaulted passage so cold and draughty that the Princess advised me always to wear my hat when I traversed it. There was not a bell in the house, and, if I had not had my own servant with me, who was placed in a room near mine, I should have ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... a draughty level with an extinguishable candle close to the main shaft, with 30 or 40 miles of levels around, and no end of winzes? No, no, Captain Jan, go on; I'll stick to you now through thick and thin like your ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bedford" was in the lowest quarter of Whitechapel and crowded daily with sullen and sad-looking people. It was hot, smelly and draughty. When we went in I observed that Phoebe was a favourite; she waved her hand gaily here and there and ordered herself a glass of bitter. The men who had been hanging about outside and in different corners of the room joined up to the counter on her arrival and I heard a lot of chaff ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... Graden stood in a bleak stretch of country some three miles from the shore of the German Ocean. It was as large as a barrack; and as it had been built of a soft stone, liable to consume in the eager air of the seaside, it was damp and draughty within and half-ruinous without. It was impossible for two young men to lodge with comfort in such a dwelling. But there stood in the northern part of the estate, in a wilderness of links and blowing sand-hills, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forty-six farm-houses and a yadoya— all dark, damp, dirty, and draughty, a combination of dwelling- house, barn, and stable. The yadoya consisted of a daidokoro, or open kitchen, and stable below, and a small loft above, capable of division, and I found on returning from a walk six Japanese in extreme deshabille occupying the part through which I had to pass. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... toilers who look with fear to the approaching summer because it is then the hot tenement kills their babies. Their one chance of life then depends upon the supply of ice that is hawked from door to door in small pieces, since tenements have rarely other refrigerator than the draughty air-shaft. The greed of politicians plotted to deprive them of even this chance. They had control of docks and means of transportation and they cornered the supply, raising the price from thirty to sixty cents a hundred pounds and suppressing ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... time, no account of the city scenery of Chicago is complete without the admission that the gorges and canyons of its central district are exceedingly draughty, smoky, and dusty. Even in these radiant spring days, it fully acts up to its reputation as the Windy City. This peculiarity renders it probably the most convenient place in the world for the establishment of a Suicide Club on the Stevensonian model. With your eyes peppered with dust, with your ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... he thought, "the varnish is all off and those shiny leather seats are damned cold and slippery, draughty too, I should say; hood doesn't close properly. Must let in the ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... "ballast-train" on the railway. Exhausting if not brutalizing labour, that is. At ten or eleven at night the gangs of men start off, travelling in open trucks to the part of the line they are to repair, and there they work throughout the night, on wind-swept embankment or in draughty cutting, taking all the weather that the nights bring up. This man endured it for some twelve months, until a neglected chill turned to bronchitis and pleurisy, and nearly ended his life. After that he had a long spell of unemployment, and was on the point of going back to the ballast-train ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... been at rather a low ebb when I first encountered it in London. Men breakfasted in public, as we have just seen, in order to indulge in it; and I remember a terrible Club where it raged on two nights of every week, in a large, dark, and draughty room, while men sat round an indifferent fire, drinking barley-water, and talking for talking's sake—the most melancholy of occupations. But at these dismal orgies one never heard anything worth remembering. The "pious and intellectual ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Mother should clothe her nuns in their own tweeds. He was probably right in supposing that the new costumes would add a gaiety to the religious life. Other jests followed, and he sat down amid a flutter of applause after promising that when he next presided over the Winter Assizes in a draughty court-house he would send for a Robeen blanket and wrap his legs ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... before so collecting, as a friend of mine did once. But the heat inside those iron houses is far greater than inside mud-walled, brick, or wooden ones, and the alternations of temperature more sudden: mornings and evenings they are cold and clammy; draughty they are always, thereby giving you chill which means fever, and fever in West Africa means more than it ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... thinks as much of her dress as a girl of sixteen. 'At our age, my dear Julia,' I said to her, 'we need not trouble ourselves about that. You may depend on it, no one will notice what we have on. For myself, I shall put on my Paisley shawl and my thickest boots. Picnics are always draughty and damp.' I don't think she quite liked it. Now, do you suppose the Palmers have asked Mr Goodwin? Anna Forrest's so much there, that I should almost think ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... looked upon her lovely face the spirit of chivalry returned. She had thought of him in his unconsciousness and she had been brave and true. Bound by a new determination to find food and water for her and to provide other shelter than the draughty crannies among the rocks, he painfully started up the slope toward the edge of the forest. Soon he stood upon the broad, smooth plateau, looking into the green, ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... bed with his eyes wide open, and staring still at the old print, which he could see from his bed by the light of the candle, which he had left alight on the mantel-piece to keep him awake. The flame waved up and down, for the room was draughty; and, as the lights and shadows passed over the old man's face, Melchior almost fancied that it nodded to him, so he nodded back again; and as that tired him he shut his eyes for a few seconds. When ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... force of the wind, and the raindrops beat upon it with the force of buckshot. Through the entrance slit, through the open stovepipe hole, the gale poured, bringing dampness with it and rendering the interior as draughty as a corn-crib. Rolling himself more tightly in his blankets, Linton addressed the darkness ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach |
