"Mud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gin, the whisky, the pale ale, and the other intoxicants which are indispensable at seances in England, had been entirely consumed by the transcendental reptile to fortify him on his return journey to the mud-banks of the Nile. Nor has the spontaneous apparition been wanting to complete the experiences of Dr Bataille. He was seated in his cabin at midnight pondering over the theories formulated in natural history ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... have thought she was too old to stand it, for we was always on the move, and I have seen her sleeping on what was nothing else but mud, with the rain coming down tremenjous. But she was a tough old customer, and always came to time, outlasting men that could have tossed her in the air, or run with her a block and never taken breath. But, of course, it couldn't be kept up for ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... the bee that stung mother that was tickling father. When he went into the house, mother's other eye had bunged for sympathy. Father was always gentle and kind in sickness, and he bathed mother's eyes and rubbed mud on, but every now and then he'd catch inside, and jerk and shudder, and grunt and cough. Mother got wild, but presently the humour of it struck her, and she had to laugh, and a rum laugh it was, with both eyes ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... so unarmed, so ignorant, so small, we who live on this particle of mud which turns round ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... remarkable even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud'. ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... deep, the efforts of the victim to struggle out had done nothing but churn up a mass of black muddy water in which he sank deeper every moment, and it was already nearly to his shoulders when with a cry of joy, half choked however, by the mud, he cried, "Ha! my good lad! Are there any ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... volcanism; situated along the Pacific "Ring of Fire"; the country is subject to frequent and sometimes severe earthquakes; mud slides; tsunamis ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... these cumbrous trappings of fleshy pride! We will promote an universal Christian education—we will teach charity by examples, and live unto all men by a personal abstinence from the bickerings and malice of civil life. We will not defile the sacred lawn with the mud of turnpike acts—we will no longer sweat in the House of Lords, but labour only in the House of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... was! What contests of swimming and diving! What water fights and mud fights! What careering of figures, stark naked, through the rushes and trees! ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... ravenous maw of death, it would be impertinence in me to make any comment on it; but when the whole globe lends its aid to supply this destructive settlement, and its baneful effects arising more from the letch a Dutchman has for stagnant mud than from climate, I hope the indulgent reader will pardon my spleen, when I tell them professionally that all the mortality of that place originates from marsh effluvia, arising from ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... to take offence at him, he was so good-natured. He would get out of his bed in the middle of the night, hitch up his horse and pull his bitterest enemy out of the mud. He had on an occasion ridden all night through a blizzard to get a doctor for the wife of a negro neighbor in a cabin near by who was suddenly taken ill. When someone expressed admiration for it, especially as ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... time now they could hear the hoofs of the two teams sinking into and pulling out of mud. It grew deeper as they descended the long grade toward the bridge and clouds obscured ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... half through the meal when Ernest appeared. "Mud-pie making is hard work," he groaned, sliding stiffly onto ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... considerable distance, along which the water lay pretty deep, having long overflowed its proper banks, and wandered lazily for miles over meadows on either side of the road. Here they were stopped by a cart greatly overloaded with wood, the two heavy wheels of one side having sunk deep in the mud. An old man in smock-frock, and five or six other carters in the same dress were working hard, apparently ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... a twelvemonth ago; You've hobnobbed with Louis Napoleon, Eugenie, and kissed the Pope's toe. By Jove, it is perfectly stunning, Astounding,—and all that, you know; Yes, things are about as you left them In Mud Flat ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... islands, and especially at Hispaniola, stagnant lakes and ponds upon whose waters flutters a whole world of aquatic birds, because those waters are covered with grasses, and little fish and a thousand varieties of frogs, worms, and insects live in that liquid mud. The work of corruption and generation ordained by the secret decree of providence is promoted in these depths by the heat of the sun. Different species of birds swarm in these waters: ducks, geese, swans, divers, gulls, sea-mews, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... with these billies from Troy. Troy an' Looe. What's between the two in an ordinary way? A few miles; which to a thoughtful mind is but mud and stones, with two-three churches and a turnpike to keep us in mind of Adam's fall. Why, my own brother married ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seen the executrix and son-in-law, whom that great genius deceased, my well-beloved cousin in folly, King Corny, chose for himself. As to that thing, half mud, half tinsel, half Irish, half French, Miss, or Mademoiselle, O'Faley, that jointed doll, is—all but the eyes, which move of themselves in a very extraordinary way—a mere puppet, pulled by wires in the hands of another. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... from the work, and for a time restored the schools to something of their earlier importance. Among other reforms it is recorded that he forbade teachers to put irons around the boys' necks, to cover them with mud, to make them kneel on peas, or to brutally beat them. Diesterweg (R. 244) describes similar punishments as characteristic of eighteenth-century German schools. The eighteenth- century German schoolmaster shown in Fig. 142 ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... live at Hendersonville, his pecuniary means much reduced. He says that he made a pedestrian tour back to St. Genevieve to collect money due him from Rozier, walking the one hundred and sixty-five miles, much of the time nearly ankle-deep in mud and water, in a little over three days. Concerning the accuracy of this statement one also has his doubts. Later he bought a "wild horse," and on its back travelled over Tennessee and a portion of Georgia, and so around to Philadelphia, ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... ammunition on our part, and destruction of timber where the enemy were partially sheltered. Not a gun, so far as I can learn, was fired against our fortifications. Gen. Pemberton must have known that none of the enemy's infantry and artillery had marched in this direction through the storm, and in the mud, or else ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... cast by the towering, fernlike trees, whose tops disappeared in murky fog. Tangled vines impeded their progress. Quagmires lay in wait for them, and tough weeds tripped them, sometimes throwing one or another into the mud among squirming small reptiles that lashed at them with spiked, poisonous feet and then fell to pieces, each piece to lie in the bubbling ooze until it grew again into a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Zambesi and its Tributaries, page 452.] That same evening Zombo had a narrow escape. After dusk he ran down to the river to drink. He chanced to go to a spot where a crocodile was watching. It lay settled down in the mud with its head on a level with the water, so that in the feeble light it could not be seen. While Zombo was busy laving the water into his mouth it suddenly rushed at him and caught him by the hand. The limb of a bush was fortunately within ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... eminent satyrist in his second Book, line 270, represents the Dunces diving for the Prize of Dulness, he in a particular manner dignifies Oldmixon, for he makes him climb a lighter, that by leaping from it, he may sink the deeper in the mud. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... that the philosopher Diderot, sitting in his own room before a good fire and wrapped in a well-lined dressing-gown, should insist on his doing his five and twenty leagues a day on foot, through the mud in winter.[310] ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... although some few did by throwing across a ladder, the storming party stood exposed to a terrific fire. Captain Holland ordered a retreat, but it was not managed any better than the attack. The light guns were removed too quickly, and the heavy ones were stuck so fast in the mud that they could not be removed at all. The Taepings attacked in their turn, and the greatest confusion prevailed, during which the survivors of the larger half of the Ever Victorious Army escaped in ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... through the nose, in hopeless ridicule of a Frenchman's notions of an Englishman's occupations—presumed across Channel to allow of his breaking loose from shooting engagements at a minute's notice, to rush off to a fetid foreign city notorious for mud and mosquitoes, and commence capering and grimacing, pouring forth a jugful of ready-made extravagances, with 'mon fils! mon cher neveu! Dieu!' and similar fiddlededee. These were matters for women to do, if they chose: women and Frenchmen were much of a pattern. Moreover, he knew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to recapture the city, the defenders opened sluice gates to cut off the northern approach, and at the same time set fire to the boats which had carried the Spanish to the island. The Spanish, terrorized by both fire and water, waded through mud and slime to the northern shore. During the same week Flushing was taken, and before the end of June the Dutch were masters of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Boston. There was quite a collection of people, looking on or taking leave of passengers,—the steam puffing,—stages arriving, full-freighted with ladies and gentlemen. A man was one moment too late; but running along the gunwale of a mud-scow, and jumping into a skiff, he was put on board by a black fellow. The dark cabin, wherein, descending from the sunshiny deck, it was difficult to discern the furniture, looking-glasses, and mahogany wainscoting. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... born with the Missouri Compromise and lay a-dying amid the echoes of Manila and El Caney: stirring times for living, times dark to look back upon, darker to look forward to. The black-faced lad that paused over his mud and marbles seventy years ago saw puzzling vistas as he looked down the world. The slave-ship still groaned across the Atlantic, faint cries burdened the Southern breeze, and the great black father whispered mad tales of cruelty into those young ears. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... campaign," he added, referring to the junior senator, "they wouldn't wood up at all, they was just listless. But Gorse and Barbour and the rest wanted him, and we had to put him over. I reckon he is useful down there in Washington, but say, do you know what he always reminded me of? One of those mud-turtles I used to play with as a boy up in Columbia County,—shuts up tight soon as he sees you coming. Now Theodore Watling ain't like that, any way of speaking. We can get up some enthusiasm for a man of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... much disliked the flocking of the gentry, etc., to London, as he said in his address to the council of the Star Chamber: "And therefore, as every fish lives in his own place, some in the fresh, some in the salt, some in the mud, so let every one live in his own place—some at Court, some in the city, some in the country; specially at festival times, as Christmas, and Easter, and the rest." Nay, he issued a proclamation ordering the landed gentry to repair to their country ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... open; the dam is up; and the great tide of unmitigated philistinism, hounded on by dreadful protectors of dreadful "young persons," invades the very citadel of civilisation itself, and pours its terrible "pure" scum and its popular sentimental mud over the altars of the defenceless immortals. No one asks that these tyrannical young people and their anxious guardians should read the classics or should read the works of such far-descended inheritors of the classical tradition who, like Remy de Gourmont, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... taken—to that time the largest capture of artillery made by the Allies—and a number of prisoners. Hundreds perished miserably, but General Foch held back his artillery from an indiscriminate slaughter of men made helpless in the slimy mud. Thus ended the "Affair of the Marshes of St. Gond," which broke still ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the bay and shook the buildings of the town, the inhabitants leaped from their beds, and looking out of the windows, saw the sky lurid with flames. Their dread and uncertainty were increased, when they heard the heavy splash of soldiers through the mud, and the next moment saw their bayonets gleam out of the gloom, as they hurried forward towards the fire. In the meantime, other negroes had rushed to the spot, so that soon there were assembled, in proportion to the white population, what in the present population of the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... sword in one hand and lantern in the other, and with him Emlyn, who also held a sword which she had plucked from a fallen man, Emlyn still foul with the filth of the sewer and the mud of ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... went down to the land of black mud and came near to the wheat God had showed them and saw that it was ripe and ready for reaping, they did not have a sickle to reap it with. So they readied themselves, and began to pull up the wheat by hand, until ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt
... themselves, O girl, have our eyes lighted on thy like. O damsel, unadorned and without gay robes as thou art, thou beautifiest this wood exceedingly. Still, O thou of faultless limbs, thou canst not look so beautiful, when (as at present) thou art soiled with mud and dirt, as thou couldst, if decked with every ornament and wearing gorgeous apparel. Why, O excellent girl in such plight servest thou a decrepit old husband, and one that hath become incapable of realising pleasure and also of maintaining ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... discover a way of getting from Pehtang on to some of the main roads leading to the Peiho; for the whole of the surrounding country had been under water, and was more or less impassable. In fact, the region round Pehtang consisted of nothing but mud, while the one road, an elevated causeway, was blocked by the fortified camp just mentioned as having been discovered by the reconnoitering party. A subsequent reconnaissance, conducted by Colonel (now Lord) Wolseley, revealed the presence of a cart-track which might prove available ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a precipice to gain time—the rocks cut her face and hands. Swarms of birds, frightened from their nests, surrounded her. Their cries filled her with terror. Reaching, on the farther side, shallow streams over which thin ice lay, she bravely forged ahead—the ice broke—her feet sank into the mud. Her breath gave out—she felt paralyzing pangs in her lungs. Yet the cries behind—which had become somewhat more distant—urged her on. Again and again, in crossing water moving with broken ice ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... the works of ancient philosophers. Remember too that these volumes of mine describe fishes only, distinguishing those that spring from the union of the sexes from those which are spontaneously generated from the mud, discussing how often and at what periods of the year the males and females of each species come together, setting forth the distinction established by nature between those of them who are viviparous and those who are oviparous—for thus I translate the Greek phrases ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... refers, it is impossible to avoid noticing, as a separate excellence, the faithful representation of general nature. Looking not merely to the litter of novels that peep out for a single day from the mud where they were spawned, but to many of more ambitious pretensions—it is quite evident that in framing them, the authors have first addressed themselves to the involutions and developement of the story, as the principal object of their attention; and that in entangling and unravelling the plot, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... I didn't get orf so easy. I was dragged out of the cars and rolled in the mud for several minits, for the purpose of "takin the conseet out of me," as ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... unwounded were so dazed by the onslaught which the guns had made upon their position that they offered no resistance. The bombardment had swept away the wire entanglements; and the British had only the greasy mud with which to contend, when they ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... approaching speed been attempted, the entire demolition of the wheels in a few minutes must have been the necessary result. No sooner had we quitted this terrible pavement than we sank to our axle-trees in sand, mud, and water; for, to render the journey perfectly delectable, the rain fell in torrents and ceaselessly." {108b} The state of the road Borrow attributed to the ill-nature of the King of Denmark, for immediately on leaving his dominions it improved ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... are always situated in the water; they are composed of clay, which they make into a kind of mortar with their paws: these huts are of an oval figure, divided into three apartments raised one above the other, and erected on piles driven into the mud. Each beaver has his peculiar cell assigned him, the floor of which he strews with leaves or small branches of the pine tree. The whole building is generally capable of ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... and put on their own boots they were punished by being "blindfolded" and stood upon a cricket in the middle of the floor. Apparently the worst offence scholars could be guilty of was to bring in mud or wet upon the polished floor of the school-room. At this school one very small boy who wore high boots, but who was unable to take them off without assistance, having been punished for his "stubbornness," was taken away from the school by his ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... not thresh with flails. The material is strewed over a round and smoothed floor of dried mud in the open air and threshed by different connivances. In Egypt the favourite is a chair-like machine called "Norag," running on iron plates and drawn by bulls or cows over the corn. Generally, however, Moslems ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... where is our Tom Mann for Everybody? Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into the great crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her feet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where all the little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up—the scorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fighting as cowards always have to fight, in herds ... where is the man who is ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the Sea, the Magdalen at the feet of Jesus, the ridiculous Consummatum est—look at them all: these prints are matchless for platitude, effeteness, poverty of spirit. They might have been designed by the first-comer, and are painted with muck, wine-sauce, mud! ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... You had better arrange with your man to leave your undress uniform out; so that when you get back from the ball you can slip into it and have the other packed up. That's what I am going to do. I can't afford to have my best uniform spoiled by having to sleep in it in the mud. A captain's pay doesn't run to ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... suppose one of those old Ninevite or Egyptian builders, with a couple of thousand men—mud-bred, onion-eating creatures—under him, to be set to work, like so many ants, on his temple sculptures. What is he to do with them? He can put them through a granitic exercise of current hand; he can teach them all ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... business streets were slippery with mud and thronged with drays and wagons of every description, which, with the continual passing of the street cars, made it a difficult and often a dangerous matter ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... next morning. It is a delightful day, shaming yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a carriage, in a land where carriages are never cleaned. Everybody is brisk; and as we finish breakfast, the horses come jingling into the yard from the Post-house. Everything taken out of the carriage ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... whatever, but immanently intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing, trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That would have been even worse than with us: it would have been to proclaim virtue and vice mere bubbles and chimeras. He who really thinks so even ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... encamped, elated with their victory over the Indians, and still more exultant over their daily success in trapping and hunting, one day an express rode into the camp, and informed them that the rendezvous was to be held, that year, upon the Mud river, a small stream flowing circuitously from the south into Green river. The party, having a large stock of beaver on hand, set out to cross the main ridge of the Rocky mountains, to dispose of their furs at the rendezvous. It required a journey of eight days. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... finally in good round English oaths for cowards, and I know not what. They looked very startled and recoiled into the ditch. I must have looked alarming—a gaunt, dirty, unshaven figure towering above my motor-cycle, without hat, bespattered with mud, and eyes bright and weary for want of sleep. How I hated the French! I hated them because, as I then thought, they had deserted us at Mons and again at Le Cateau; I hated them because they had the privilege of seeing the British ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... much of his magic thunder from his fire-tube that he killed or wounded many of the Indians, and yet kept himself from harm though his clothes were torn with arrow-shots. At last, however," said the runner, "the 'captain' had slipped into a mud-hole in the swamps, and, being there surrounded, was dragged out and made captive, and he, Ra-bun-ta, had been sent on to tell the great news to ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... stand sideways to let elderly people or ladies pass, who in their turn should express their thanks by a slight inclination of the head. We are further directed to tread on the middle of the stone, and not slip carelessly into the mud, and run the risk of splashing our neighbour. An Englishwoman, it is observed, either allows her petticoats to sweep the streets, or lifts them in an awkward manner, sometimes even using both hands; whereas a Parisian with her right hand gathers all the folds to that side, and raises the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... is very much like a Robin's. It is made of leaves, rootlets and fine twigs woven together with an inner wall of mud, and lined with ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... turban, and cut deeply into my head. I flew through the streets upon the wings of fear, and at last ran against an unknown object, which I knocked down, and then fell alongside of, rolling with it in the mud. I recovered myself, and looking at it, found it to be alive, and, in the excess of my alarm, I imagined it to be Shitan himself; but if not the devil himself, it was one of the sons of Shitan, for it was an unbeliever, a Giaour, a dog to spit upon; in short, it was a Frank hakim—so renowned ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... water. Extra timbering was needed and the men risked their lives as they wedged the props under the cracking beams, while now and then they worked for a shift with buckets to help the clanging pump. Their clothes were always wet, and they were generally smeared with mud when they came up to eat and sleep. The miners grumbled, and Scott and Thirlwell felt the mental and physical strain. They were highly strung and often irritable, while when they sat by the stove when work was over they only talked about the difficulties they had struggled with all day ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... been blown over, there were broken branches of trees scattered about. The tents were covered with leaves blown from the trees, and there were many mud puddles. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... mother, of his wives and of his best benefactors; a man whose whole being was so steeped in every namable and unnamable vice that body and soul of him were, as some one said at the time, nothing but a compound of mud and blood; and in the prisoner's dock stood the best man the world contained, his hair whitened with labors for the good of men and the glory of God. Such was the occupant of the seat of justice, and such the man who stood in the place of ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... when they came upon a bank of mud, that had formerly been covered with water. So recently had the water dried from it, that, in spite of the hot sun shining down upon it, the mud was still soft. They had not gone many steps further, ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... mud from heel to head, Our gallant lord his true men led. Will Lund's earl halt his hasty flight, And try on land another fight? His banner yesterday was seen, The sand-bills and green trees between, Through moss and mire to the strand, In arrow ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... would do most good. At this critical moment, when the eager watcher felt that he was just about to learn the exact methods of these wonderful architects of the wild, a stick in the slowly settling mud beneath his feet broke with ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... his sermons on "The King who went a journey," and the "Hail, Mary"; and told him of the escape at Blainscow Hall, where the servant-girl, seeing the pursuivants at hand, pushed the Jesuit, with quick wit and courage, into the duck-pond, so that he came out disguised indeed—in green mud—and was mocked at by the very officers as a clumsy suitor ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... like some huge, porcupine-like creature, crawled steadily onward, filling the air with the shuffling of innumerable feet. The men kept stumbling over each other, and swore viciously in half tones; they slipped in the mud and sank knee-deep into the wheel-tracks filled with cold water. "Some ...
— The Shield • Various
... the river, and the sweating coolies dip their brown bodies in it, and the sun beats down pitiless. A junk gets loose from its moorings, and drifts down stream, stern first, on the slow current. Who cares? No one. It will beach itself presently, on a mud flat, and can be recovered towards evening. The great heat lies over all the land, and cholera is in the slowly flowing water, and the fishermen and the coolies and the children live and work and play by the river bank, and they have no fear of it, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... bring to the firing line all the men I could find of the regiment. Going to the dressing station, collected those who had brought or assisted wounded there, thence across a portion of the field passed over a few hours previous. Men were found almost exhausted, soaking wet, or a solid mass of mud, resting as comfortably as if in the finest of beds; many of them had been on picket duty all night before, to which was added the hard day's work not then completed. After locating all I could, we went to the crest of the San Juan Hill, to the left of the sunken road, where the First U.S. Cavalry ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... Bridewell all descend, (As morning prayer, and flagellation end)[325] 270 To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dikes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin,[326] And who the most in love of dirt excel, Or dark dexterity of groping well. Who flings ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... were not wanting in endeavors to keep these cities clean, to judge, at least, by the published 'regulations for the police.' Every householder was obliged to put the Scotch proverbs in force, and keep clean and 'free from filth, mud, dirt, rubbish straw or hay' one-half of the street opposite his own house The 'cleanings' were to be deposited on the beach, as they still are in portions of Montreal and Quebec which border on the river. Treasure-trove in the shape of stray hogs ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... interfere with him for digging up that stuff, sir. I mean keepers or the like. And there's been two of 'em here, simminly. Oh, yes, look at the footmarks, only they don't tell no tales. I like marks in soft mud, where you can tell the size, and what nails was in the boots. Stuff like ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... an unfortunate coincidence, William Smith overtook me at the end of the High Street, just as our sergeant was coming round the corner in the opposite direction. At sight of the latter we halted, dropped our parcels in the mud, stiffened to attention and saluted. The last was a thing we ought not to have done, even allowing for his leggings, which were (and are still) of a distinctly upper-military type. But in the special ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... ebony or silver or gold; and each had his own idol, after the measure of his competence; whilst the idols of the common soldiers and of the people were some of granite, some of wood, some of pottery and some of mud; and all were of various hues yellow and red; green, black and white. Then said the Personage to my sire, 'Pray your idol and these idols to be wroth with me.' So they aligned the idols in a Divan,[FN522] setting my father's idol on a chair of gold at the upper end, with mine ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... fear of my cultivating too strong an affection for Mud Ocean, as navigated by the Dutchman. If I had a chance to see real water and real ships, ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... individual exertions. The main direction that the stream will take is manifest enough perhaps; but it may come down upon long tracts of level ground which it will overspread quietly, or it may enter into some rocky channel which will control it; or it may meet with some ineffectual mud embankment which ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... from the road, which was quite near, by catching sight of something unusual through the blind; the brief says there were no curtains or shutters. Now look at the photographs of the footprints. See in No. 1, found outside the window, the toes are pressed down deeply into the mud. The owner of the feet was standing on tip-toe to get a better view. But in No. 2, which was found near where the son thought he saw a person running, the toes are spread out quite wide. That is the footprint of some one who was in a great hurry. Now it is not probable that a boy had ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... rather more gently: "I firmly believe that it required greater self-control in that senior-lieutenant to refrain from putting his little finger into his mouth than to lead his men under the heaviest fire against one of those Chinese clay and mud walls." ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; their dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... at the first sign of danger, for had we broken through we should have probably all disappeared in the bog. Hatthi was as much relieved as myself on reaching terra firma. My guide told me that this land had no bottom, that under the packed surface there was twenty feet of soft, black, loamy mud. This set me thinking. I was after something of this nature. In the course of the next day we came upon a somewhat similar piece of ground, some 300 acres in extent, still covered with the original reeds and other vegetation. The soil was in places exposed and was of a ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Jesus Christ? In regard to their virtue and efficacy, No. In regard to their motive—in one aspect, No; in another aspect, Yes. In regard to the spirit that impelled Him we may copy Him. The smallest trickle of water down a city gutter will carve out of the mud at its side little banks and cliffs, and exhibit all the phenomena of erosion on the largest scale, as the Mississippi does over half a continent, and the tiniest little wave in a basin will fall into the same curves as the billows of mid-ocean. You and I, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... preserving its incomparable natural features. Even this tranquil portion of the Park is undermined by just such fiery forces as are elsewhere visible, but which here manifest themselves in different ways. Thus, in the midst of this natural beauty is a horrible object, known as the Mud Geyser. We crawled up a steep bank, and shudderingly gazed over it into the crater. Forty feet below us, the earth yawned open like a cavernous mouth, from which a long black throat, some six feet in diameter, extended to an unknown depth. This throat was filled with boiling mud, which rose ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... erythraeum) with that found over large spaces in the Red Sea, and whence its name of Red Sea is derived. [8] Their numbers must be infinite: the ship passed through several bands of them, one of which was about ten yards wide, and, judging from the mud-like colour of the water, at least two and a half miles long. In almost every long voyage some account is given of these confervae. They appear especially common in the sea near Australia; and off Cape Leeuwin I found an allied but smaller and ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... they journeyed from Roseland to Treelawn, found the sun just warm enough to be pleasant, for it was in the early part of March. The road was in fine condition, for there was neither mud nor dust. A gentle breeze wafted the sweet scented odors from the flower-decked fields, with their carpets of green. All nature seemed smiling, for was it not its mating season? What was all the chattering going on in the trees and the songs in the bushes, ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... those poor men breaking stones, ceaselessly repairing the roads, the aeroplane bases, the depots of munitions, above all the villages filled with troops, all those dear little soldiers, some of them fresh and clean, going, the others yellow with mud returning—all this spectacle grips ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... week I read in the papers of a fellow who was found on a road on his face and hands, and the doctors said he must have been in that position for hours! Fancy—your nose, for instance, Rossmoyne, in the mud, and your heels ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... soft and glistening. It was said he brushed them every night, as a woman does her hair. His white teeth looked factory-made. His skin was red and rough, as if from perpetual sunburn; he often went away to hot springs to take mud baths. He was notoriously dissolute with women. Two Swedish girls who had lived in his house were the worse for the experience. One of them he had taken to Omaha and established in the business for which he had fitted her. He still ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... as possible. Half a dozen active men will build a very comfortable primitive log-house in ten or twelve days; that is, cut and lay up the logs and chink them, put on a bark roof, cut holes for the windows and door, and build a chimney of mud and sticks. Sawing boards by hand for floor and doors, making sash and shingles, is ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... herons, mud-hens, sandpipers, and curlews are marsh and shore birds that feed and wade in the shallow salt water, and nest on the banks or, like the heron, in trees near the bay. The heron is a frog-catcher, and he will stand very ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... became more contracted, and the patches of jungle larger and more frequent. By degrees the open ground ceased altogether, and we found ourselves in a narrow path of deep mud passing through impenetrable thorny jungle. Nevertheless our guide insisted upon pushing on to a place which he compared to that which we had unfortunately left behind us. Instead of going two miles, as we had originally intended, we had already ridden sixteen at the least, and ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... half a dozen was typical, grubbing through the slime of the swamp, snarling at each other, now and again fighting over a leaf, then squatting down in the mud where they were, to chew on it, their torture of mind and body momentarily forgotten. Rags, mud-caked and foul, partly covered their emaciated bodies: their hair ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... the same material uniformly. I have seen the nest of the robin quite destitute of mud. In one instance it was composed mainly of long black horse-hairs, arranged in a circular manner, with a lining of fine yellow grass; the whole presenting quite a novel appearance. In another case the nest was chiefly constructed of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... was across arable land, and was ploughed up with the rest of the field every autumn, after which it was trodden out afresh. The thaw had so loosened the soft earth, that lumps of stiff mud were lifted by his feet at every leap he took, and flung against him by his rapid motion, as it were doggedly impeding him, and increasing tenfold ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... (Katongo) might be healthy, but was informed that no part of this region is exempt from fever. When the waters begin to retire from this valley, such masses of decayed vegetation and mud are exposed to the torrid sun that even the natives suffer severely from attacks of fever. The grass is so rank in its growth that one can not see the black alluvial soil of the bottom of this periodical ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... from Rugby, and not know your Thucydides better than that? There's Alcibiades, that little purple-headed, foppish pin, by Socrates. This rusty-colored one is that respectable old stick-in-the-mud, Nicias." ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... were narrow and miry, and were not improved by a heavy rain which fell during the march, and by the passage of successive trains of wagons and batteries of artillery. The march was slow and toilsome. The infantry labored along with mud-clogged feet, casting sour looks and candid curses at the cavalry and couriers, who bespattered them. The artillery often stuck fast, and the struggling horses failed to move the pieces, until the cannoneers applied themselves ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one they break their necks or their limbs. They will here meet with ruts which I actually measured four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer; what therefore must it be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... intended for Queen Marie Thrse, but who led the simplest of lives, bored almost to extinction. She used to compare the carp languishing in the tanks of Marly to herself—"Like me they regret their native mud." ... At first Mme. de Maintenon dined, in the midst of the other ladies in the square salon which separated her apartment from that of the king; but soon she had a special table, to which a very few other ladies, her ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... help the child, they found that all the Nothing had been used up (and that is why there is none of it about to-day). So the little fellow began to cry, but they, to comfort him, said: "Tut, lad! tut! do not cry; do your best with this bit of mud. It will always serve ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... and twenty knights were riding along the highway in the northern part of Spain. As they were passing a deep mire they heard cries for help, and turning, saw a poor leper who was sinking in the mud. One of the knights, a handsome young man, was touched by the cries. He dismounted, rescued the poor fellow, took him upon his own horse, and thus the two rode to the inn. The other ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... horizon, with a blue and white streak between. To the north-north-east beyond the point, a little low land is to be seen running out from the point, with water in the far distance. Rode down to the beach to see what that was composed of; found it to be sand, mud and gravel; firm ground next the shore. Tried a little distance with the horses, but found it too soft to proceed with them. I then dismounted, and tried it on foot, but could only get about two miles; it became so soft, that I was sinking to the ankles, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... generally be at one with me in my appreciation. Such harmony of intelligences is the rarest thing. All through life we long for it: the desire drives us, like a demon, into waste places; too often ends by plunging us into mud and morass. And, after all, we learn that the vision was illusory. To every man is it decreed: thou shalt live alone. Happy they who imagine that they have escaped the common lot; happy, whilst they imagine it. Those to ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... likin' it a bit. When we got to the top of the pasture she started to whine and whicker and stamp, and no matter how loud I whoa-ed she kept on a-stamping and I was plumb scared she'd pitch me off in the mud. Then I started to smell a funny smell, like somethin' burning. Now, don't ask me how anything could burn in all that water, because I ...
— Year of the Big Thaw • Marion Zimmer Bradley |
