"Mottled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to suppose that were an eye so constituted as to be able to see, say, cumulus masses of warmer air, strata mottled with traces of other gases, and beds of invisible matter in suspension, one might suppose that what we deem the clearest sky would then appear flecked with forms as many and various as the clouds that adorn ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seemed to be gazing on the sea. It was a man of dwarfish height and uncertain age, with a huge hump upon his back, features of great refinement, a long thin beard, and a forehead unnaturally large, over eyes which, although of a pale blue, mingled with a certain mottled milky gleam, had a pathetic, dog-like expression. Decently dressed in black, he stood with his hands in the pockets of his trowsers, gazing ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... out on the fat man's forehead. He dragged from his left hip pocket the familiar bandanna handkerchief. With it he dabbed softly at his mottled face. There was a faint, a very faint, note of defiance in ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... of degeneracy, no one knew. It refused to enter a house; it would not stay in a kennel. It would not eat in public, but gorged ravenously and stealthily in the shadows. It had the slink of a tramp, and in its patched and mottled hide seemed to simulate the rags of a beggar. It had the tirelessness without the affected limp of a coyote. Yet it had none of the ferocity of barbarians. With teeth that could gnaw through the stoutest rope and toughest lariat, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... early in May. The sun was low, and the street was mottled with the shadows of its paving-stones—smooth enough, but far from evenly set. The sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among them like a liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... gone far before a ruddy-hued fox tried to back out of their way on the trail, and managed successfully to merge his color with that of the yellow-brown verdure about him. Further on, Alec suddenly lifted his rifle and aimed, but the furtive mottled animal that had been crouching along the mottled limb of a tree leaped back with the least possible noise or disturbance of the foliage, ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... awkward haste, a nervous kind of shame. One man, whom Pierre found there when he entered, was still naked, and wrapped himself in the curtain before putting on a bandage with trembling hands. Another one, a consumptive who was frightfully emaciated, sat shivering and groaning, his livid skin mottled with violet marks. However, Pierre became more interested in Brother Isidore, who was just being removed from one of the baths. He had fainted away, and for a moment, indeed, it was thought that he was dead. But at last he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... silvery-green leaves, hung—with many a graceful loop and knot—ropes of wild grape-vine and curtains of virgin's-bower. Along the bank below the old fence, the wild blackberries disputed possession with the roses; while the little stream was mottled with the tender green of watercress and bordered with moss and fragrant mint. Above the arroyo willows, on the farther side of the glade, Oak Knoll, with bits of the pine-clad Galenas, could be glimpsed; but on the orchard side, the vine-dressed bank with the old gate under ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... as Cuyp would have chosen for a landscape; and just as I was wishing for something to animate it, the oxen belonging to the factory came down to drink and cool themselves in the bay, and completed the scene. The cattle here are large and well-shaped, something like our own Lancashire breed, and mottled in colour, though mostly red. On doubling the point of the bank, we came upon a small white church, with some venerable trees near it; beyond that was the house, with a long veranda, supported by white columns; and still farther on, the sugar-house, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... said to be some stronger," added Sandy Dowd, ponderously, for he had a habit of looking solemn at times, in spite of his blue eyes, red hair and mottled face. "An Allandale fellow told me they expected to wipe up the earth with both Belleville ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... every opportunity into delicate rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and form a dark curtain, throwing into relief her round white neck. Then she put down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms before her, still like the picture. Even the old mottled glass couldn't help sending back a lovely image, none the less lovely because Hetty's stays were not of white satin—such as I feel sure heroines must generally wear—but of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... wall-painting, sunshine has faded it, mould has mottled the broad surfaces of red and blue and green, and a later age has done away with the dresses represented; yet, when the frescos in the library of the Cathedral at Siena, for instance, were newly finished, they were the fashion-plates of the year and month, executed by a great artist, it is true, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... emptying their revolvers into the silent body. It had been suggested that they should shoot them both; but they were harmless folk who were not connected with the mines, so they were sternly bidden to drive on and keep silent, lest a worse thing befall them. And so the blood-mottled figure had been left as a warning to all such hard-hearted employers, and the three noble avengers had hurried off into the mountains where unbroken nature comes down to the very edge of the furnaces and the slag heaps. Here they ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... ranges, composed of great moraine-like heaps of clay, with large angular boulders. Pine and oak trees covered the heights, shrouded with long fringes and festoons of the moss-like Tillandsia. Many epiphytes grew on the oaks, amongst which the mottled yellow flower of an orchid hung down in spikes six ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... interrupted in a shaking voice. "Look here, I'd like—" He stopped, unable to go on, his agitation was so great. His chest heaved as from hard running, and his complexion, pallid at first, had become mottled; fiery splotches appearing at his temples and cheeks. "What do you mean by telling me—telling me there's talk about—about—" He gulped, and began again: "What do you mean by using such words as 'reputation'? What ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... was what we saw. The furniture was in disorder, and on a couch lay an old man sleeping a heavy drunken sleep. His mouth was open and his breath came stertorously. The face was purple, and large purple veins stood out on the mottled forehead. His scanty white hair was draggled over his cheek. On the floor was a broken glass, wet stains still lay on the boards, and the place reeked of spirits. The four looked for a second—I do not think longer at him whom they would have made their king. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... presence had a purpose, and that it was connected in some measure with the two people to whom my attention was so suddenly drawn. They were, in that somewhat heterogeneous crowd, sufficiently noticeable. The man, although he assumed the jauntiness of youth, was past middle-age, and his mottled cheeks, his thin, watery eyes, and thick red neck were the unmistakeable hall-marks of years of self-indulgence. He was well dressed and groomed, and his demeanour towards his companion was one of deferential good humour. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deck. Its low, square houses were glaring white; here and there a splotch of vivid Cuban blue stood out; the rickety, worm-eaten piling of its water-front resembled rows of rotten, snaggly teeth smiling out of a chalky face mottled with unhealthy, artificial spots of color. Gusts of wind from the shore brought feverish odors, as if the city were sick and exhaled a tainted breath. But beyond, the hills were clean and green, the fields were rich and ripe. That was the Cuba which ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... you, and curse your leprous, indolent souls! Why in the fiend's name—" But here he came to an abrupt stop on the lowest step, the sting of a sword's point at his throat, and now, out of breath, his purple face became mottled. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... you chose the one you'd lure from Alban. Look on her, I tell you, and when you've looked I've got ten fingers will squeeze your mottled goose neck, though you're king itself. DEIRDRE — coming between them. — Hush, Naisi! Maybe Conchubor'll make peace. . . . Do not mind him, Conchubor; he has cause to rage. CONCHUBOR. It's little I heed his rag- ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for me, ever. Lonesome! No, I should say not. Why, there's always a swarm of them around—sometimes as much as four or five acres—you can't count them; and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color and frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes, that you might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't; and there's storms of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... elegant pitchers hanging in every direction. Some of these, he said, were long and slender, others broad and short. The plant at which they were looking was a broad green one, variously tinted and mottled with red, and was large enough to hold two quarts ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... wall of mottled stone, We knew the sleeping beauty lay in state, Entangled in a mist of tears, to wait The prince whose kiss would raise her to ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... sat under the bowlder alone, a small brown creature in picturesque-looking rags, a mere waif and stray of a child, with her feet trailing in the pool; every now and then small mottled crabs scrambled crookedly along, or dug graves for themselves in the dry waved sand. The girl watched them idly, as she flapped long ribbons of brown seaweed, or dribbled the water through her hollowed hands, while a tired sea-gull that had lowered wing was skimming slowly ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... he pushed open the door and went in himself. And, having paid his money, and left his boots with the boy at the threshold, he was rewarded by the sight of the manager emerging from a box at the far end of the room, clad in the mottled towels which the bather, irrespective of his personal taste in dress, is obliged to wear in ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mottled in devising, Singing as though never sang Bird in close till now— Sharp are the javelins Of death that are seeking, Seeking even simple birds ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... porcelain, shown at bottom of photo, is decorated roughly in a neutral brown colour, which has imperfectly 'fluxed.' It, also, appears to be Chinese. Thickness 1/8 inch (nearly).—A brass or bronze object, cast. Probably portion of a clasp or buckle.—A brass finger ring containing a piece of mottled green glass held loosely in place by a turned-over denticulated rim. The metal ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... seen every Sunday morning, or on some important festival, issuing from his father's mansion, with a piece of old cloth tied about him from the middle to the knees, leaving a pair of legs visible, that were mottled over with characters which would, if found on an Egyptian pillar, put an antiquary to the necessity of constructing a new alphabet to decipher them. This, or the inverted breeches, with his father's flannel waistcoat, or an ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... in a beautiful little canon among the foothills. It was grown thick with twisted, mottled sycamores just budding into leaf, with vines and greenery of the luxurious California varieties. Birds sang everywhere and a brook babbled and ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... would bring the basin in sight, Lance turned off the trail and dismounted, tied the roan again and went forward slowly, his eyes intent on the tops of the trees around Cottonwood Spring. A rattler buzzed suddenly, and he stopped, looked to see where the snake was coiled, saw it withdraw its mottled gray body from under a rabbit weed and drag sinuously away, its ugly head lifted a little, eyes watching him venomously. An unwritten law of the West he broke by letting the snake go. Again he moved forward, from ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... distant approaching rumble of Polter's voice. Through the grille I could see across the floor of the ten-foot cage to the front lattice bars. Outside, there appeared a huge, pink-white, mottled blob—Polter's hand, a ridged and pitted surface with great bristling black ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... in an undecided way. The wind was southerly: it is what the deer call a dog-wind, having come to know quite well the meaning of "a southerly wind and a cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doe was her only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat was beginning to be mottled with the beautiful spots which make this young creature as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father, had been that night on a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond, and had ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... rock and as smooth as half-polished marble. A tessellated fret pattern is made along the borders of the corridor floor, consisting of triple rows of smooth cubes of marble inserted in the cement. The square balusters are of red-mottled marble, with base and entablature of dull rose. The square corner pillars support figures allegorizing the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... load of the supplies they had brought, and carried them out under the shade of an immense pine-like tree—a gigantic column of wood that stretched far into the sky to lose its green leaves in a waving sea of foliage. The mottled sunlight of the bright star above them made them feel very much at home. Its color, intensity, and warmth were all exactly the same ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... holland wrapper, with a limp cape and a trimming of dingy pink ribbon. The ex-waitress at Darch's Dining-rooms was absorbed in the contemplation of a large dish, containing a leathery-looking substance of a mottled yellow color, profusely sprinkled with little ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... towel, and further dried by waving through the air. A little turpentine on a rag will remove the mastic, but turpentine will not touch the shellac coating. The surface of the brass will be found irregularly acted upon, producing a sort of mottled look. To obtain a nice frosting the process of applying the mastic and etching must be repeated three or four times, when a beautiful coarse-grain mat or frosting will ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... nearer, the cavalry slowly approached, and halted in the plain about three miles away—three great serpents of men—the light-coloured one, the 21st Lancers; a much longer and a blacker one, the Egyptian squadrons; a mottled one, the Camel Corps and Horse Artillery. From this distance a clearer view was possible, and we distinguished many horsemen riding about the flanks and front of the broad dark line which crowned the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... make friends with nobody," Mike answered suspiciously, his skin turning a mottled red under its coat of tan. "I told ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... two days' moon was driving across the window; then stars, darkness, dawn and sunrise painted the open square; till rustling, and turning towards the light, she awoke. At the top of the window a magpie wiped his beak on a branch, bent head, and tail bent to balance him —then dropped like a mottled pebble out of sight. She sat up, drew the table prepared overnight towards her, lit the lamp for the chocolate —thinking of the dim Julien who might pay his beautiful visit in turn with ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... sprinkled over, until it runs down from the centre in many little branches or rivulets. While running, a solution of copperas is sprinkled on, and carried along the branches which radiate from the central trunk, producing the dark-mottled colored effect which resembles, more or less nearly, a tree with ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... adds novelty to luxury in the list of indoor grapes. The fruits are mottled pink in color, deepening sometimes to a dark shade of pink, and are borne in long, slender clusters. The grapes ripen early and are unsurpassed in quality but are, all in all, rather difficult ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... world of drab tones that she came into. Down below was impenetrable blackness, shading softly overhead into blue-gray which was mottled by lighter areas from breaks in the floes above. All was calm. There was no sign of life save for an occasional vague shadow that, melting swiftly away, might have been a fish or seaweed. Placid always, would be this shrouded sea of mystery, ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... deep abyss of subconsciousness we learn that it is spring. The mottled goosebone of the Allentown prophet is no more meteorologically accurate than our subconscience. And ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... was of an oval shape, about ten inches long and four or five thick. It was of a mottled-grey colour, and had a thick rind. We found it somewhat like an Irish potato, and exceedingly good. The yam was roundish, and had a rough brown skin. It was very sweet and well flavoured. The potato, we were surprised to find, was quite sweet and exceedingly palatable, as also were the plums; ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... The Chalk rises abruptly from the low lying argillaceous plain to form the Chiltern Hills. The form of the whole of the hilly district round Chesham, High Wycombe and the Chalfonts is determined by the Chalk. Reading beds, mottled clays and sands, repose upon the Chalk at Woburn, Barnham, Fulmer and Denham, and these are in turn covered by the London Clay, which is exposed on the slopes about Stoke Common and Iver. Between the Tertiary-capped Chalk plateau and the Thames, a gentler ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... his father in goods, not money; and he stood there—most at the bottom of the school—in his scraggy corduroys and jacket, through the seams of which his great big bones were bursting—as the representative of so many pounds of tea, candles, sugar, mottled-soap, plums (of which a very mild proportion was supplied for the puddings of the establishment), and other commodities. A dreadful day it was for young Dobbin when one of the youngsters of the school, having run into the town upon a poaching excursion for hardbake ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat his wife, the hostess of the Ship. Eighteen years have passed since we saw her last, and in these years she has become more plump, a little more set in features, and mottled in complexion, but hardly otherwise ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... each other good humouredly. In the pool box were two men. One —the auctioneer—a perfect specimen of the "sport"; a ponderous individual, brazen of face and voice, who presented to the crowd an amazing front of mottled face, diamond stud, bulging shirt sleeves, and a bull-neck encircled by a soiled eighteen-and-a-half inch paper collar. The other gentleman, who handled the tickets, was unclean, unshorn, and cadaverous-looking, ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... dark Winter thy mansions should blight, With his chill mottled show'rs, and his flickering light, His moon that gleams wanly through snows falling fast, His pale mist that floats on the wings of the blast: With the voice of each river more fearfully loud— Every torrent all foam, and the heaven all cloud! Alas! that stern Winter has power ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... red face became mottled with yellow; a thick-fingered, tottering hand made a clutch at the tell-tale ribbon. "Medal!" the man cried, wonderfully sobered. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thrown out of their original positions and a pile of them had been taken outside the turf wall for road-mending and to finish the walls against the gate posts, but the broad track of the roadway, composed of large odd-shaped stones, averaging about a foot in width, was still strikingly in evidence—a mottled band passing straight through ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... this house, and every rock and tree and flower; but no son of the Isle of the Gael forgets the little mother-lap of earth whereon he was nursed, or the smell of the burning peat, or the song of the robin, or the drone of the big mottled wild bee, or the cry of the wild geese when the winter is nigh. Even Columba the holy pined for the lack of these things. This is what he says in one of the songs which ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... trampled sand, And dripped from the knife in the virgin's hand. Then rose his kinsmen's savage yell. Swift as the doe's Wiwaste's feet Fled away to the forest. The hunters fleet In vain pursue, and in vain they prowl, And lurk in the forest till dawn of day. They hear the hoot of the mottled owl; They hear the were-wolf's [52] winding howl; But the swift Wiwaste is far away. They found no trace in the forest land, They found no trail in the dew-damp grass, They found no track in the river sand, Where they thought ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... blackest iron covered with pitch; and her hue was not more frightful than her form. High cheeks had she, and a face lengthened downwards, and a short nose with distended nostrils. And one eye was of a piercing mottled grey, and the other was as black as jet, deep sunk in her head. And her teeth were long and yellow, more yellow were they than the flower of the broom. And her stomach rose from the breast bone, higher than her chin. And her back was in the shape of a crook, and her legs were ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... this twilight hour they burned brightly yet, trying hard to pierce the bitter cold outside with a ray of warmth and cheer. Where the lamps in the delicatessen store made a mottled streak of brightness across the flags, two little boys stood with their noses flattened against the window. The warmth inside, and the lights, had made little islands of clear space on the frosty pane, affording glimpses of the wealth within, of the piles of smoked ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... consentingly slipped the rings from her small mottled hands. It was soothing to feel herself in Mrs. Heeny's grasp, and though she knew the attention would cost her three dollars she was secure in the sense that Abner wouldn't mind. It had been clear to Mrs. Spragg, ever since their rather precipitate departure from Apex ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... and have enough of the droop in them to make them as useful in covering the sides of the box as they are in spreading over its surface. If pink and white varieties are used to the exclusion of the mottled and variegated kinds the effect will be found vastly more pleasing than where there is an ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... a brown duck coat with a sheepskin collar, the wool of which had been dyed a mottled saffron, and corduroy breeches as roomy of leg as Taterleg's state pair. These were laced within the tall boots which he had bought in Chicago, and in which he took a singular pride on account of their novelty ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... did. I only say she could; and under sufficiently strong provocation, I have no doubt she would.) She knew where the purple violets and the white innocence first flecked the spring turf, and where the ground-sparrows hid their mottled eggs. All the little waddling, downy goslings, the feeble chickens, and faint-hearted, desponding turkeys, that broke the shell too soon, and shivered miserably because the spring sun was not high enough in the morning to warm them, she fed with pap, and cherished in cotton-wool, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... straggling village street, mottled with patches of dead grass and weeds. Along it, here and there, like kernels of seed scattered on fallow ground, a sprinkling of one-story houses. This the background. In the midst of it all, covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... brought me a present, so fine a present—a mantle of the most wonderful lace that ever I saw, and a comb of mottled shell mounted in gold to keep it off the hair. He made me wait while he showed me how to put it on, and that ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... the animal and then with the skill of professional butchers proceeded to cut up the carcase into huge joints. While they were thus engaged the Colonel went to a small, straight-stemmed tree common in the jungle and, clearing away a patch of the outer mottled bark, disclosed a white inner skin, which he cut off in long strips. With these, which formed unbreakable cordage, they fastened the heavy joints to the pad ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... red face was the colour of liver, purple and mottled with bursting rage. His fingers worked at his sides. He set his lips, and his small eyes never left ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... of pearl beads she had found in the treasure trunk. Laughing merrily, they all raced to the long mirror which stood at the other end of the garret; though cracked and discolored they were able to distinguish the gaily clad figures within its mottled depths, more like the quaint images of an old tapestry than happy, romping children at play. Then they scattered to their own games, the boys to stage an exciting battle between a red skin and a gallant soldier, the little girls to comfort ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... hands and greeting one another with the plain but cordial courtesy of the country. Gregory heard one russet-apple-faced man say that "Betsy was better," and an old colored woman, with a visage like that apple in black and mottled decay, said in cheerful tones that "little Sampson was gittin' right peart." A great raw-boned farmer asked a half-grown boy, "How's yer mare?" and the boy replied that the animal was better also. All seemed better that bright day, and from a group near came the expression, "Crops were ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... The gray bulk swept down on him in a great swirl that almost flung him off his feet; as he reeled, catching at the corner of the wreck for support, he saw the rough, mottled skin shoot past hardly a foot away. Mart swiftly jerked up his kris and lunged ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... White-faced, scared-looking, yellow-eyed men who belong to societies for the suppression of vice. Men who boast that they neither drink nor smoke. Men who mop their bald heads with perfumed handkerchiefs. Men with drawn, mottled faces, in the last stages of arterio-sclerosis. Silent, stupid-looking men in thick tweeds who tramp up and down the decks of ocean steamers. Men who peep out of hotel rooms at Swedish chambermaids. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... aged man, the principal headman present, a wrinkled old savage, scarred by encounters with wild beasts, and mottled with skin disease and dirt, lifted up his voice and spoke, shaking his straggling mop of frowsy grizzled hair in time to the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... "grown-ups," and filled with an unsocial hatred for the baby whose matutinal ablutions were consummated at the same hour at which the old lady usually took her walk. I can remember that I was supposed to assist in some way at those ablutions, probably to hold the mottled soap, which curiously resembled the infant's limbs when pinched with cold; and so, I suppose, I would steal out and join the lady and her dog, walking a little to one side as we drifted slowly up the dull suburban street into the park. Sometimes we went as far as the lake, and I have faint ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, grey, blue, and scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... exactly as we had been doing with 'unparalleled success' in Cashel, Fermoy, Tuam, etc.,—that is to say, we announced garrison balls and private theatricals; offered a cup to be run for in steeple-chase; turned out a four-in-hand drag, with mottled grays; and brought over two Deal boats to challenge ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... In a few years almost every great house in the kingdom contained a museum of these grotesque baubles. Even statesmen and generals were not ashamed to be renowned as judges of teapots and dragons; and satirists long continued to repeat that a fine lady valued her mottled green pottery quite as much as she valued her monkey, and much more than she valued her husband. [62] But the new palace was embellished with works of art of a very different kind. A gallery was erected for the cartoons ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have seen him there, lolling upon the swaying bough of the jungle-forest giant, his brown skin mottled by the brilliant equatorial sunlight which percolated through the leafy canopy of green above him, his clean-limbed body relaxed in graceful ease, his shapely head partly turned in contemplative absorption and his intelligent, gray eyes dreamily devouring the ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 1930's we have seen occasional individuals with abnormal foliage—somewhat mottled, usually curled and often misshapen. Thinking that a virus might be the cause of this trouble the senior author tried grafting some of the shoots on to healthy stocks. The grafts were in no case successful because the scions were too weak. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... and at work and shining! Going into the blessed wilderness, the blood of the plants throbbing beneath the life-giving sunshine seems to be heard and felt; plant growth goes on before our eyes, and every tree and bush and flower is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of the sky are mottled with singing wings of every color and tone—clouds of brilliant chrysididae dancing and swirling in joyous rhythm, golden-barred vespidae, butterflies, grating cicadas and jolly rattling grasshoppers—fairly ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... of the valley the foot hills were mottled with a carpet of beautiful, maroon-colored, delicately-tinted verdure, and towering above all rose peak on ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... of the breeding season the bobolink undergoes a complete change; his form changes, his color changes, his flight changes. From mottled brown or brindle he becomes black and white, earning, in some localities, the shocking name of "skunk bird;" his small, compact form becomes broad and conspicuous, and his ordinary flight is laid aside for a mincing, affected gait, in which he seems to use only the very tips ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... overflow of animal activity, shaded gradually into the white of lethic Winter; then in slow dissolution relinquished supremacy to the tans and mottled greens of Springtime. Unsatisfied as man, the mighty cycle of the seasons' evolution moved on until the ripe yellow of harvest and of corn-field wrote "Autumn" on the broad ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... awkward ungainly walk, the legs doubling under him; the drooping tail with bare spots down its length, suggesting past indignities. He was not a large dog—only about as high as a chair seat; he had mottled lips, too, and sharp, sawlike teeth. One ear was gone, perhaps in his puppyhood, when some one had tried to make a terrier of him and had stopped when half done. The other ear, however, was active enough for two. It would curl forward in attention like a deer's, or start up like a rabbit's in alarm, ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a suddenness that was surprising, the shower came down hard. Little dark spots mottled the ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... some places partly covered with moss, and a few weeds had sprung up in the corners, and along the edges by the walls. At the foot of a broad, easy flight of steps, leading up to a covered porch, two majestic Egyptian sphinxes lay keeping guard; their huge rounded flanks mottled here and there with patches of moss and lichens. Although the large chateau looked lonely and deserted, it had a grand, lordly air, and seemed to be kept in perfect order and repair. Isabelle was led up the steps and into the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... his "corral," [Footnote: Corral: an inclosure for animals.]—a hedge of tessellated [Footnote: Tessellated: checkered.] pine boughs which surrounded his bed,—he dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends. Some ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... every hour of inactivity was a real menace to the success of their plans, no one can wonder that they chafed over this most exasperating delay. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been melancholy enough to watch the mottled, wet, green walls of their tents and to hear the everlasting patter of the falling snow and the ceaseless rattle of the fluttering canvas, but when the prospect of failure of their cherished plan was added to the acute discomforts of the situation, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... is called paighambari phul or the prophet's flower. Among Composites Calendulas and Carthamus oxyacantha or the pohli, a near relation of the Carthamus which yields the saffron dye, are abundant. Both are common Mediterranean genera. Silybum Marianum, a handsome thistle with large leaves mottled with white, extends from Britain to Rawalpindi. Interesting species are Tulipa stellata and Tulipa chrysantha. The latter is a Salt Range plant, as is the crocus-like Merendera Persica, and the yellow Iris Aitchisoni. A curious plant found in the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... meeting-house. We often came upon an immense body of drakes sitting upon the edge of an ice-floe, looking very much like a regiment of hussars at a distance drawn up in line of battle. The duck is not so gaudy as her husband. She is quite contented in a full suit of mottled brown and olive gray, presenting a texture on the back somewhat similar to the canvas-back species of Chesapeake Bay. About half-past ten o'clock in the evening, Toolooah and I walked up to the crest of a ridge, north of camp, to see if there were ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... was engaged on a night long programme of interdiction fire laid down with irregular intensity on cross roads and communication points in the enemy's back areas. Under screens of camouflage netting, these howitzers with mottled bores squatting frog-like on their carriages, intermittently vomited flame, red, green and orange. The detonations were ear-splitting and cannoneers relieved the recurring shocks by clapping their hands to the sides of their head and balancing on the toes ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... memory of voices departed. The Day-Spirit walked in the west to his lodge in the land of the shadows; His shining face gleamed on the crest of the oak-hooded hills and the mountains, And the meadow-lark hied to her nest, and the mottled owl peeped from her cover. But hark! from the teepees a cry! Hear the shouts of the hurrying warriors! Are the feet of the enemy nigh,—of the crafty and cruel Ojibways? Nay; look!—on the dizzy cliff high—on the brink of the cliff stands Winona! Her sad face up-turned ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... perceived, not the merely technical sort like themselves, but people with yellow faces and black eyes. They looked very seedy and shabby, and smoked very much, and talked volubly in unknown tongues. The entrance hall, a place of mottled marble, with clerks behind a counter all of whose faces looked as if they were masks, was thick with them; and it was when they turned to stare and whisper as Anna-Felicitas passed and Anna-Rose was thinking ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... most curiously marked: in addition to the black and white of his mother's skin, he had gray and yellow mottled in all over him. Jim thought it looked as if his skin had been painted, so ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... rushing under the bridges, And crushing among the piles, In gray mottled masses the drift-ice passes, Like seaward-floating isles;— So Life shall return from its solstice, and burn In trappings of gold and blue, The world shall pass like a shattered glass, And the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Shann's voice scaled up. He was close to the ragged edge, and the last push toward the breaking point had not been the Throg speech, but that message from Thorvald. If the Survey officer was going to make any move in the mottled dusk, it would ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... The fire was filled with pictures; her thoughts were wandering here and there, bridging the gap between the past and the misty future. After awhile the savory odor of the young speckled rooster, that had fought all the other chickens but was now stewing in a mottled blue-and-white granite pan, smote her nostrils and won her thoughts from dreaming. She sat up and pushed back her hair like one ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... good drawing card, and having won the first game of the present series, bade fair to draw a record attendance. The long lines of bleachers, already packed with the familiar mottled crowd, sent forth a merry, rattling hum. Soon a steady stream of well-dressed men and women poured in the gates and up the grand-stand stairs. The soft murmur of many voices in light conversation and laughter filled ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... with a gentle declivity from the plain, and fenced along each edge by a parapet of strong mason-work. Thus situated, the hacienda of Las Palmas—so named from the numerous topes of palm-trees which mottled the plain in front—not only defied the flood, but might have served as a fortress of no despicable strength. The proprietor of this dwelling, as well as the extensive estate surrounding it, was Don Mariano ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... a stranger entered the village from the direction of the downs. He was a short, stout person in an extraordinarily shabby top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. His cheeks were alternately limp and tightly puffed. His mottled face was apprehensive, and he moved with a sort of reluctant alacrity. He turned the corner of the church, and directed his way to the "Coach and Horses." Among others old Fletcher remembers seeing him, and indeed the old gentleman was so struck by his peculiar agitation that he inadvertently ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... lie and bully me. Anything would do to tell me, I'd swallow it like one of those big grapes." She was speaking in gusts, between the labored heavings of her breast; her eyes were staring and dark; and her hands opened and shut, shut and opened, continuously. Fanny's cheeks were now mottled, there were fluctuating spots of red, blue shadows, on the pallor ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall, And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; And it mottled the worter with amber and gold Till the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled; And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, Or a wownded apple-blossom ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... that night in a broad bank of horizontal, mottled grey cloud, through which his beams darted in golden splendour at brief intervals for nearly half-an-hour after we had lost sight of the great luminary himself; and just about the time that the spars and canvas of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... a dandy as one sees in gambling-saloons and behind liquor-bars), was far from being a thing of beauty. He was so obnoxiously gross and shapeless, that it seemed as if he did it on purpose and to be irritating. His fat head was big enough to make a dwarf of, hunchback and all. His mottled cheeks were vast and pendulous to that degree that they inspired the imaginative beholder with terror, as reminding him of avalanches and landslides which might slip their hold at the slightest shock ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... not thy fortune troll upon the wheels Of yonder dancing cubes of mottled bone; And drown it not, like Egypt's royal harlot, Dissolving her rich pearl in the brimm'd wine-cup. These are the arts, Lothario, which shrink acres Into brief yards—bring sterling pounds to farthings, Credit to infamy; and the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... stood there from the beginning of the world, wide-branching elms, and dark pines overshadowed the highway, opening now and then into vistas of green fields where stood a cottage or two, with a herd of mottled cows grazing down by the brook. On the higher ridges the trees formed a close phalanx, and with their dark tops cut the horizon into a long, irregular line of forest, as if offering battle to the woodman's axe that was threatening to invade ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of the Visayan woman, or rather what had been a body, lay on the floor in the center of the room, a shapeless mass of crushed bones and flesh. An enormous python lay coiled in one corner. His mottled skin glistened in the morning light, but he did not move, and his eyes were tight shut, as were those of the "green devil" after ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... was, and it appears to have been the impression of several of the assistants here, that the willow leaves stand out dark against the luminous photosphere. On looking at the Sun, I was at once struck with the apparent resolvability of its mottled appearance. The whole disc of the Sun, so far as I examined it, appeared to be covered over with relatively bright rice-like particles, and the mottled appearance seemed to be produced by the interlacing of ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... popular of the cultivated varieties, the far famed MUSA CAVENDISHII, there is little of graceful form, save the broad leaves mottled with brown. All the vitality of the plant is expended in astonishing results. A comparatively lowly plant, its productions in suitable soil are prodigious. In nine or ten months after the planting of the rhizome, it bears under favourable ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... supplied with cotton by the Almighty. Owing to the heat, in my opinion, the cattle of this country are much smaller than those of Italy. It is a great rarity to see a red cow in this country, as they are all black or white, or mottled with black and white spots. Beasts of prey, such as lions, leopards, and wolves, are numerous, and there are plenty of hares. Wild elephants go about in troops, like the wild swine in Italy, but can never be tamed, as they are in other parts of the world. As the elephant ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... act only through and for the good of each being, yet characters and structures, which we are apt to consider as of very trifling importance, may thus be acted on. When we see leaf-eating insects green, and bark-feeders mottled gray; the Alpine ptarmigan white in winter, the red grouse the color of heather,—we must believe that these tints are of service to these birds and insects in preserving them from danger. Grouse, if not destroyed at some period of their lives, would increase in countless numbers; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... up on a stool, his back against the thin partition, when John Aldous sauntered in. There was still a groggy look in his mottled face. His thick bulk hung a bit limply. In his heavy-lidded eyes, under-hung by watery pouches of sin and dissipation, there was a vengeful and beastlike glare. He was surrounded by his friends. One ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... comes forth, her appearance is quite changed, so fat has she grown. She is then led by night to the river and bathed in presence of all the women of the village. Next day she flaunts before the public in her gayest attire, her head bedecked with ornaments and her face mottled with red paint. So everybody knows ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... with a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray hair to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with straps that extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled thread knitted by his niece, whom he always called "the little Saillard," stout shoes with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of mixed colors. He looked very much like those verger-beadle-bell-ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks who are taken to be caricatures ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... this clamor, calmly aloof, yet withal watchful of eye, sits the coachman, beshawled to the ears of him, hatted to the eyes of him, and in a wondrous coat of many capes; a ponderous man, hoarse of voice and mottled of face, who, having swallowed his hot rum and water in three leisurely gulps, tosses down the glass to the waiting pot-boy (and very nearly hits a fussy little gentleman in a green spencer, who carries a hat-box in one hand and a bulging valise in the other, and who ducks indignantly, but ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... betrayed emotion. Pringle's shameless mendacity shocked him. But it was Creagan's sorry plight that he must affect never to have seen this insolent Pringle before. The sheriff's face mottled with wrath. Pringle reflected swiftly: The sheriff's rage hinted strongly that he was in Creagan's confidence and hence was no stranger to last night's mishap at the hotel; their silence proclaimed ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... ex-creditors were pictures of astonishment. Mr. Gott's expressive countenance turned white, then red, and then settled to a mottled shade, almost as if he had the measles. Polena ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... blossoms in a creamy aggregation as large as a water-bucket, contributed floral beauty and variety. The distance was undulating prairie, bisected by stretches of the intermittent streams peculiar to the region lined with the rich green of live-oak and water-elm. A richly mottled rattlesnake lay coiled beneath a pale green clump of prickly pear in the foreground. A third of the canvas was ultramarine and lake white—the typical Western sky and the flying clouds, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... colour and of the consistence of liver, without mottling. After respiration they expand and occupy the whole thorax, and closely surround the heart and thymus gland. The portions containing air are of a light brick-red colour, and crepitate under the finger. The lungs are mottled from the presence of islands of aerated tissue, surrounded by arteries and veins. The weight of the lungs before respiration is about 550 grains, after an hour's respiration 900 grains; but this test is of little value. The ratio of the weight of the lungs ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... who should I see striding down but Jim himself. But he was a different man from the big, kindly fellow who had supped his porridge with us the other morning. He had no collar nor tie, his vest was open, his hair matted, and his face mottled, like a man who has drunk heavily overnight. He carried an ash stick, and he slashed at the whin-bushes on either ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... red face became mottled with yellow: a thick-fingered, tottering hand made a clutch at the tell- tale ribbon. 'Medal!' the man cried, wonderfully sobered. 'I have ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The full-charg'd udder yields its willing streams, While Mary sings some lover's amorous dreams; And crouching Giles beneath a neighbouring tree Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee; Whose hat with tatter'd brim, of nap so bare, From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair, A mottled ensign of his harmless trade, An unambitious, peaceable cockade. As unambitious too that cheerful aid The mistress yields beside ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... Ligustrum napalense, Rosa watsoniana—— Now really could that thing be a rose? It looked more like a cross between a fern and an ostrich plume. I looked closer. Each slender light green leaf was mottled with lighter green, a miracle of exquisite tracing, and the thing was in bud, millions and millions of buds no bigger than the eggs in a shad roe. Yes, it was a rose. I looked at the drop of blood on the ball of ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... Bink, who grunted as it struck him in the ribs, but serenely continued to smoke, his mottled face ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... his eyes starting from the sockets, as he peered up into the tree, apparently at some terrible object. I looked up also, and saw a large yellow snake, nearly ten feet long, let itself gradually down directly over the coffin, between me and the bright glare, (the outline of its glossy mottled skin glancing in the strong light, which gave its dark opaque body the appearance of being edged with flame, and its glittering tongue, that of a red hot wire,) with its tail round a limb of the cottontree, until its head reached within an inch of the dead man's face, which it licked with its ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines, and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely with the wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like birds pursued. But there was not the slightest dustiness, nothing less pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the early morning twilight. The next eye to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching, white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the table's debris, and turned his face from the window. His movement dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... in the world, he certainly did less evil, and, as he lay in his bed, under a white counterpane upon which the dawning light, sifting through the vines that curtained the glazed front of his sleeping room, fell in a mottled Japanese pattern, and while the ivy that covered the Gothic ceiling trailed long tendrils of the palest and most delicate green, each leaf glossed as if it had been varnished, this unheroic-hero, this pantheistic-devotee, this heathenized-Christian, this half-happy-go-lucky ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... enough to catch his attention. Being utterly unlike anything he had ever seen before, it aroused his interest, and he slanted slowly upward. A moment later a second fly touched the water, a light gray, mottled thing, with a yellow body, and pink and green hairs fringing its neck. This, too, was strange to him. He rolled a foot higher, not with any immediate idea of trying them, but under his usual vague impulse to investigate everything pertaining to his pool. Just then the mist-swirls lifted slightly, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... from me on the ground. When I looked again the Indian was gone. I went to the tree. The Indian had had but an instant, but he had secured himself out of reach of my eyesight; had faded into the background as a partridge screens itself behind mottled leaves. If I followed him, a knife would be slipped out at me from behind stump or tree trunk, and the dog might not have ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... direction indicated that her demise might take place in Kincaid's arms, but a startled side-step saved him and she sank heavily upon the red plush sofa. Her teeth chattered with a touch of nervous chill and her skin looked mottled. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... of discourses by standing, as it were, in the street, on a level with all these phases of humanity. Ascend now some lofty post of observation; some high watch-tower. The mottled tide flows and dashes far below you. The sounds of strife and endeavor rise faintly to your ears, and are drowned in the upper air. So in the altitude and comprehensiveness of faith, all this that seemed ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... fat shoulders of the girl's companion stiffen suddenly as the woman's hand rested at his elbow; as she moved away, a little rippling shiver was plainly visible in the muscles of his back, beneath his coat—mute token of relaxing tension. An instant later one plump and mottled hand was carelessly placed where the woman's had been; and was at once removed with ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... down on her bed of rocks to sleep for evermore, a mottled monster whose only covering was the night; indifferent to storm and calm, to time and tide, to darkness and light, she sat serene in her little sea. Her lofty walls towered high above the waves that broke tremblingly against them, as if afraid of this strange object ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... some of the most important occur on the shore at Portsoy, as for example the gabbro masses in Portsoy Bay with enstatite, hypersthene and labradorite, the graphic granite with microcline, muscovite and tourmaline at East Head, the chiastolite-schist west of the marble quarry, the mottled serpentine with strings of chrysotile. Resting unconformably on these metamorphic rocks, Old Red sandstone strata are met with in a few places. Thus, they cross the Spey and appear in the Tynet Burn east ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... wicked eyes of a huge python faced him. The great snake, escaping somehow from the catastrophe to the menagerie ship, had swum for the same refuge Jack had chosen. Now it was dragging its brilliantly mottled body, as thick as a man's thigh, up upon the hatchway. The floating "raft" dipped under the great snake's weight, while Jack, literally petrified with horror, watched without motion ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... mind, a sun-mottled kitchen with a black iron range, and along the walls festoons of looped-up green peppers. White bread now in abundance for small mouths not so hungry. At evening, Simon Meyerburg, with rims of dirt under his nails, entering that kitchen door, the girl child ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... leading down a steeply shelving hillside. We shall find the brethren coming back from the hills, if they aren't back already. It is daylight on the hills though it is night still in this valley; and looking up they saw a greenish moon in the middle of a mottled sky of pink and grey. Over the face of the moon wisps of vapour curled and went out: and the asses, Joseph said, are loath to descend the hillside for fear of this strange moon, or it may be they are frightened by the babble ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... late as this," said Mrs. Dax, rocking herself furiously. She strongly resembled one of those mottled chargers of the nursery whose flaunting nostrils seem forever on the point of sending forth flame. Leander, the fat lady, and Miss Carmichael ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... are stained. It is this stain in the horn that is the direct evidence of the injury, and is itself popularly known as the corn. It may vary in size from quite a small spot to a broad patch as large as half a crown, while its colour may be a uniform red, or a mottled red and white. The microscopic changes in this connection are illustrated in ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... the Greek boubon ("groin")—because it attacks the lymphatic glands of the groins, armpits, neck, and other parts of the body. Among its leading symptoms are headache, fever, vertigo, vomiting, prostration, etc., with dark purple spots or a mottled appearance upon the skin. Death in severe cases usually occurs within forty-eight hours. Bacteriologists are now generally agreed that the disorder is due to a bacillus identified by investigators both in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of bowlders and other eroded material, both coarse and fine, down into the valleys and over the lower hills, where much of the moderately coarse can now be seen exposed on the surface, and fine specimens collected without the use of a hammer. The brilliantly colored, striped and mottled agates, and the bright, delicate tints of the quartz crystal, are particularly attractive to the majority of visitors. The beauty of these gaily colored rocks is quite extensively utilized by the inhabitants of the southern ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... to the door and stood watching as she hurried along the copper-matted path of the woods sunflecked and mottled with shadow. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... he exclaimed, whilst the skin of his face took a mottled hue that was the nearest approach he ever made to a blush. "The tallow've been a dropping, Abel, my boy. I think 'twas the wind when you opened the door, maybe. And I've been a trying to fix un more firmly. That's all, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... tall captain, with an air of relief, as Captain Trimblett turned and revealed a hot face mottled and streaked with red. "Make him listen to reason. He won't do it ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... told you so, Will," cried Josh, whose ruddy-brown face was looking mottled with white. "I know'd the gashly old job was wrong. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... little steamer lay silent, dark, and motionless in the shadow of the high Halfa bank. And beyond this one point of civilisation and of comfort there lay the limitless, savage, unchangeable desert, straw-coloured and dream-like in the moonlight, mottled over with the ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... poets sing a dirge: The year must perish; all the flowers are dead; The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail Runs in the stubble, but ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... as they had grown upon the bodies of the birds and covered him as his own hair had done. Mostly they were pure white in color, but some from the gray gulls gave his majesty a slight mottled appearance. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... is, therefore, one of the many coincidences in thought and discovery by minds wholly independent of each other, which have been directed to the same subjects. This is an evitable result. If two men look at the moon, both must see that it is round, bright, and mottled; and if two minds far apart, turn their attention to similar subjects, the probability is that their views will coincide. The most powerful mind will of course make the deepest and ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... man looked at the sky. It was evening and the sun had set. The sky was all mottled with grey clouds. "I paint beautiful pictures and give them away," he declared. "My brother is in the penitentiary. He killed a man who called him ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... coming; and as the morning wore on the crowd of birds increased until they were in hundreds, then in thousands, perpetually wheeling and swooping and rising and hovering over him in a great white cloud. And they were of many kinds, mostly white, some grey, others sooty brown or mottled, and some wholly black. Then in the midst of the crowrd of birds he saw one of great size wheeling about like a king or giant among the others, with wings of amazing length, wild eyes of a glittering yellow, and a yellow beak half as long as Martin's ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... he woos are sought For form or color or beauty's sake?— That, touched with sorrow, he mourns to-day Some mottled Helen beneath ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... down the street in the bright spring sunshine, followed by the performers, mounted on well-groomed horses, some of which were beautifully mottled. There were other horses, many of them—a few drawing chariots, driven by Amazons. Then came the funny clown, in his little cart, with his jokes and grimaces for ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish |
