"Musty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general tactics have historical interest and importance because, according to Spenser Wilkinson, they show where some of Napoleon's strategic "miracles" were born. Bourcet's observations are as vital as if they had been written in 1910, but, as will be seen, many of them are somewhat musty ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... and thorough system of cleansing and cleaning throughout the house, that had been very welcome to the soul of Mrs. Eccles; but into the library they had not penetrated. The old bookshelves remained untouched; the old books, in their musty brown calf bindings, were undesecrated by profaning hands. All sorts of quaint chairs and bureaus, gathered together out of every other room in the house, had congregated here. The space over the mantelpiece was adorned by a splendid ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... smile of fields, and the blur of swift-gliding hedges, and the driving perfume of clover-laden winds that passed strong into spread nostrils. For Alan Porter, the son, there were columns of figures and musty-smelling bundles of tattered paper money where he clerked in the bank. There had been great unison in the Porter household over the placing of Alan. In addition to horse lore, John Porter was a fair judge of human nature, and, beyond ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... her down a short stair into a narrow passage, nowhere lighted from the outside. The door went to behind them, as if some one had banged it in anger at their intrusion. The passage smelt very musty, and was ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... waiting for sometime in a musty drawing-room where cobwebs lurked in corners and everything looked the worse for time, she appeared in fearful and wonderful array,—layers of powder concealing the dusky tint of her complexion, innumerable jewels tinkling on her person, and hands ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... said, when his turn came to speak: One of my fields, on the wrong slope of a hill-side and surrounded by trees, scarcely ever sees the sun; and by consequence its crops are short when arable, and when in pasture its grass sour, and the hay musty. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... suspicions proved too correct. He took that box to his private room, and with some trouble unlocked it. A damp and musty smell came forth, as when a man delves a potato-bury; and then appeared layers of parchment yellow and brown, in and out with one another, according to the curing of the sheep-skin, perhaps, or the age of the sheep when he began to die; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... any way, full of unaccountable noises after dark—rustlings of garments along unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... reality. How glorious it will be! I can see our little house now nestling among the hills, shaded by great spreading trees with flowers and vines and golden fruit all about it, rich plumaged birds and gorgeous butterflies. Oh! I can hardly wait. Who would live in a musty palace when one has within reach such a home, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... our reason cannot keep pace with them, and that's why it has been lagging behind a little. Yes, we wish among other things to change the furnishings a little in the churches, and to remove the windows because the air seems so musty. Yes, and there is a lot more we want, but that will have to ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... I have the musty look of a solitary," said Davenport. "That's true, of late. But as to getting about, 'man delights not me'—to fall back on Hamlet again—at least not from my present point ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... he cried, 'did I forsake My native wood for gloomy walls? The silver stream, the limpid lake, For musty books and ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... sir," said Frawley, "I was just thinking—after all, it has been a bit of a while since I've been home—indeed, I should like it very much if I could take a good English mutton-chop and a musty ale at old Nell's, sir. I can still get the two ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... left to wait in a square, cheerless, dimly-lighted room pervaded by a musty smell, that had for only furniture a couple of chairs and a praying-stool, and for only ornament a great, gaunt crucifix hanging upon one of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... thing Fred did was to switch on the light of his torch and inspect the warren in which he had found sanctuary. It was not at all the musty, bad smelling place he had expected it to be. The walls had been plastered and stained a dull grey, which did not reflect the light from his torch appreciably. The arrows appeared, as Boris had said ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... shoulders. There seemed to be many preliminaries to an audience with this Captain Carew. Through the door the Jap held open he saw the outlines of a bed, and a rag of carpet. When he stepped through the door, the musty, sour air of the room smote his nostrils like ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... discontented and arrogant innovators, who affect to call the place by its old name of Morton; but these are the mere vassals of a man who once owned the patent, and who has now been dead these forty years. We are not the people to keep his old musty name, or ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... on, finding history after history of the towns and cities scattered through New England and the Middle States, most of them on a par with those last mentioned, in all styles of print and binding, some decrepit and musty with age, others fresh and enticing, with gaudy covers and scores of illustrations; some like Sewall's History of Woburn with no table of contents or index, and so practically useless; a few like Staples's Annals of Providence, scholarly and creditable; yet none of them ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... hunger; then Boston, with a rusty iron pot from the galley, to which he fastened the end of his rope, dipped up some of the water from over the side. It was warm to the touch, and, aware that they were in the Gulf Stream, they crawled under the musty bedding in the cabin berths and slept through the night. In the morning there was no promise of the easterly wind that Boston hoped would come to blow them to port, and they secured their boat—reeving off davit-tackles, and with ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... almost forgetting young Mistress Oldfield, who is still reading the "Scornful Lady," and putting new life and grace into lines which nowadays seem a bit academic and musty. The captain has not forgotten her, however; on the contrary, he is so charmed with what he hears that he makes some flimsy excuse to get into that room behind the bar whence the silvery voice proceeds. There he first meets Nance, surrounded by what audience we know not, and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... round the large, dull room. Emaciated forms of narrow, antique sofas were seen dimly in the musty-smelling twilight. Screens worked in red and green wools stood in the vicinity of the fireplace, the walls were lined with black pictures, and the floor, hidden in dark shadow and sunken in places, conveyed an instant idea of ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Joe put his plan into execution by applying for and receiving a month's leave of absence, and taking the first train, he arrived early on the second day at Denver. Here he hastened to the court house and had the city clerk search in musty records and when he came close to the date that Joe had calculated tallied with Kansas Shorty's story, they found James McDonald's name, and the sentence the judge had imposed which read: "Imprisonment in the Colorado State Reformatory at Buena ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... evangelist is rather slight. The night is cold. The wind bites and the street has a dismal air. The evangelist stands around the corner from the old book store in whose windows thousands of musty volumes are piled like the bones of hermits. The man who owns this curious book store is a sun-worshipper. And the evangelist on the soapbox is ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... for any building, whether it is the Parthenon or a farm-house. Without it, places lack their intimate personality, as photographs lack the personality of men and women. My memory of the Athenaeum Library is of the familiar, slightly musty smell of books, of the faint creaking of the librarian's boots, and the hum of bees and the whirr of a mowing machine, of the smell of an early summer afternoon, the white glare of the North Walk stretching beside the river, and the reflection ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... her ladyship, "to look up at your window before he goes off; for if he will play Romeo, you, I dare say, will play Juliet, and this old castle is quite the thing for the musty family of the Capulets: I dare say Shakespeare thought of it when ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... ourselves that we are observing life, when we are merely noting the occasions when some musty old notion of ours happens, by chance, to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... all the official institutions of England. But Dickens was doomed to see the very blackest aspect of nineteenth-century England, something far blacker than any mere bad government. He went not to a prison but to a factory. In the musty traditionalism of the Marshalsea old John Dickens could easily remain optimistic. In the ferocious efficiency of the modern factory young Charles Dickens narrowly escaped being a pessimist. He did escape this danger; finally he even escaped the factory itself. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... sunlight fell across his shoulder upon the superb gems, gleaming and scintillating from the depths of their hiding-place. But he paid little heed to them, for, in a long and narrow receptacle within one side of the box, his keen eye had discovered a paper, yellow and musty with age, the sight of which thrilled him with hope. He quickly drew it forth, and a single glance at its title assured him it was indeed the object of his search. With a low cry of joy, he locked and replaced the metallic ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... our musty books, Grown almost hateful to our eyes; We longed to roam the country nooks, We longed to hear the murmuring brooks, ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... of the sitting-room was an old table, and on it several musty books. The boys looked the books over, but found little to interest them. As relics the volumes were of ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... continental Great Powers always made war on him, but not without his thrashing them soundly until they pleaded in their humility to be allowed to lick his boots. You may search English State papers in any musty hole you like, and you will find no authoritative record that comes within miles of justifying the opinions or the charges that have been stated or written against him. Let us not commit the sacrilege, if he is ever ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 1915, we are still too close to the eighteen nineties, still too liable to be influenced by their ways, to be able to speak for posterity and to pronounce the final judgment upon those evil years. It is possible that the critics of the twenty-first century, as they turn over the musty pages of the Yellow Book, will ejaculate with feeling: "Good God, what a dull time these people must have had!" On the whole it is probable that this will be their verdict. They will detect the dullness behind the ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... board; the windows are never opened; probably the shutters are kept always shut; perhaps some kind of stores are kept in the room; no breath of fresh air can by possibility enter into that room, nor any ray of sun. The air is as stagnant, musty, and corrupt as it can by possibility be made. It is quite ripe to breed small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, or ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... wheat yield per acre has increased more than two bushels since the first edition of this book, but it would not help the garden maker. The increase of possible products tends to counterbalance the increased cost of labor. So only the musty parts have been cut out of the book, which is more ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... mealy-mouthed, and dares not. Sweet smells he cannot abide; wishes that the pure air were generally corrupted; nay, that the spring had lost her fragrancy for ever, or we our superfluous sense of smelling (as he terms it), that his corn might not be found musty. The poor he accounts the Justices' intelligencers, and cannot abide them. He complains of our negligence of discovering new parts of the world, only to rid them from our climate. His son, by a certain kind of instinct, he binds prentice to a tailor, who, all the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... them. "If Helen finds any pleasure in that musty old room," she said, one cold January morning, "I'm sure I'm glad. But she would be a great deal more sensible and cheerful if she'd sit up in the parlor with me, if she didn't do anything more than play patience. But then, Helen never was like ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... catch some glimpses of the moon, Wrapt in a mantle of unearthly white, (The only rapping of an ancient sprite!) Stalked round in silence till the break of day, Then from the Earth passed unperceived away. Now all is changed: the musty maxim fails, And dead men do repeat the queerest tales! Alas, that here, as in the books, we see The travelers clash, the doctors disagree! Alas, that all, the further they explore, For all their search are but confused the more! Ye great departed!—men ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... stink in the nostrils, stink like a polecat; smell strong &c adj., smell offensively. Adj. fetid; strong-smelling; high, bad, strong, fulsome, offensive, noisome, rank, rancid, reasty^, tainted, musty, fusty, frouzy^; olid^, olidous^; nidorous^; smelling, stinking; putrid &c 653; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his own congregation, and been quoted among the godly as a powerful preacher of the word; but in addition to this, he went out of his way to attack Jeremy Bentham, and the town was up in arms. The thing was new. He thus wiped the stain of musty ignorance and formal bigotry out of his style. Mr. Irving must have something superior in him, to look over the shining close-packed heads of his congregation to have a hit at the Great Jurisconsult in his study. He next, ere the report ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... great nervous antidote is passed and replaced, and then, with the lighted lanterns worked around under their arms, they go down the tottering ladder. Down they go into a great, damp, musty cavern, to which their ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... battered books mostly about fishing, and a large Visitors' Book lying on a centre-table, between a Bradshaw and an old guide-book. Shut up, in winter, the little room would smell intolerably close and musty. But with the windows open, and a rainy sun streaming in, it spoke pleasantly of holidays for plain hard-working folk, and of that "passion for the beauty flown," which distils, from the summer hours of rest, strength ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... solicitor comes, he and your man can have an evening over a lot of musty papers and the thing will be done. Again, my boy [taking HORACE'S hand], I welcome you to our family. God ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... Mrs. Betsey. "Your aunt declared it smelled musty from being shut up. She has such a nose," and the little old lady shook ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... reply. His knowledge of the world had long ago opened his eyes to the narrow-minded bigotry which swayed the Russian Jewish people in their prejudices against anything foreign. He, too, deplored the fact that intellects so bright and alert should be content to linger in these musty catacombs. Full well he knew that the constant searching for hidden meanings in the Scriptures was the direct cause of many of the superstitions which had crept into Judaism. He, too, had in his youth yearned ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... avoided red as being the color usually affected by women and girls. At the table he was moderate in his appetite but particular as to the nature of his food and the manner in which it was set before him. Nothing would induce him to touch any meat that was "high" or rice that was musty, nor would he eat anything that was not properly cut up or accompanied with the proper sauce. He allowed himself only a certain quantity of meat and rice, and though no such limit was fixed to the amount of wine with which he accompanied his frugal fare, we are assured that he never allowed himself ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... was foul with dirt and cobwebs, full of a musty odor. The swallows had nested along the ridge-pole. They fluttered out of the door, chattering protest against the invasion. Rat nests littered the corners and the brown rodents scuttled out with alarmed squeaks. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... situation and capabilities went. Young Mrs. Ladbruk, whose husband had just come into the farm by way of inheritance, cast covetous eyes on this snug corner, and her fingers itched to make it bright and cosy with chintz curtains and bowls of flowers, and a shelf or two of old china. The musty farm parlour, looking out on to a prim, cheerless garden imprisoned within high, blank walls, was not a room that lent itself readily either to comfort ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... getten moor nor he could carry, an' tha knows as weel as me 'at he can sup moor nor what ud mak some fowk druffen, an' walk as steady as if he'd swallow'd a church, steeple an' all; an' he ligg'd him daan o' some sheets o' wool 'at wor bi th' rooad side, an' as Musty wor goain past he saw him, an' soa he thowt he'd have a marlock, an' he went an' fun up some ov his chums an' they gate sooit an' daub'd his face wol he luk'd war nor old ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... went away about six, unless it was winter time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company to ice creams, jellies, or sillabubs, or regaled them with 10 musty almonds, moldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present age of refinement. Our ancestors were fond of more sturdy, substantial fare. The tea table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... rejoicing in the buzzy silence, the murky glimmer, and subterranean secrecy, which imparted a touch of melodrama to their experiences. All sorts of smells were wafted through the hoarding from the neighbouring cellars; the musty smell of vegetables, the pungency of fish, the overpowering stench of cheese, and the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... said Clint. They listened. All was silent again. A damp and musty odour pervaded the place. Under their feet the floor boards had rotted and as they made a cautious circuit of the interior they trod as often on soil as on wood. The hut was apparently empty of everything save a section of rusted ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... he might spread his coat for a bed. He stumbled against a ladder, which mounted upward into the cavernous mow of a loft. He climbed the creaking rungs, found footing on the dry floor, and stopped to sniff at the odor of the few wisps of dry, musty hay scattered thinly over the rough boards. He took a step forward, stumbled over a pair of legs and landed headfirst on the stomach ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... in this letter; but I'll call at Charles', and know the shape of his snuff-box, by which I can settle his character. Though indeed, to know his full capacity, I ought to be informed, whether he takes Spanish or musty.[292] ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... above, and a curtain like a shadow, hiding the end. In these passages hung the smoky perfume of incense; and from over tile-topped walls came the fragrance of roses and lemon blossoms, half choked with the melancholy scent of things old, musty and decayed. Beautiful pillars, brought perhaps from ruined Carthage, were set deeply in the whitewashed walls, looking sad and lumpy now that centuries of chalk-coats had thickened their graceful contours. But to compensate for loss of shape, they were dazzling ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... are apt to get reasty, thro' the ill quality of the fruit; and sometimes thro' the badness of the cask will get musty, or fusty. ...
— The Cyder-Maker's Instructor, Sweet-Maker's Assistant, and Victualler's and Housekeeper's Director - In Three Parts • Thomas Chapman
... the front seat of the open wagon. Behind him, his mother and Jim sat stiffly, hand in hand. They gazed dully at the black thing ahead, and sobbed softly, now singly, now together. Both—himself as well—were dressed in complete black; old musty black, gotten out of the dark, hurriedly, and with the close smell of the closet still upon it. Even the horses conformed to the sober shade. They had been supplied by a neighbor on account of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... take care they are perfectly fresh-gathered when the weather is tolerably dry; for, if they are picked during very heavy rain, the ketchup from which they are made is liable to get musty, and will not keep long. Put a layer of them in a deep pan, sprinkle salt over them, and then another layer of mushrooms, and so on alternately. Let them remain for a few hours, when break them up with the hand; put them in a nice cool place for 3 days, occasionally stirring and mashing them well, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... departure from her usual demeanor. As for myself the long sunshine of a summer day and the conviction that at last the opportunity had come to me to play the role of a minor hero gave me a peace that amounted almost to buoyancy. No need had I of the teachings of the musty old philosophers reposing on my bookshelves. John Stanhope had learned more of life in a few short hours than all his tomes could impart. His books had helped him many times in diagnosing the cases of his friends; when John fell ill they mocked and ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... material things. Not that all this was in the document itself; but by studying it so earnestly, and, as it were, creating its meaning anew for himself, out of such illegible materials, he caught the temper of the old writer's mind, after so many ages as that tract had lain in the mouldy and musty manuscript. He was magnetized with him; a powerful intellect acted powerfully upon him; perhaps, even, there was a sort of spell and mystic influence imbued into the paper, and mingled with the yellow ink, that steamed forth by the effort of this young ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... me marvellous ease to have boxed his ears with it. Had I been Mistress Katherine, it should have gone hard with me but I would have pulled Master Doctor out of his study, and made him lake with little Jack and Maudlin, in the stead of toiling o'er yon old musty commentary. Nell saith she loveth to read it. In good sooth, but I ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... from * *. Have they set out from * *? or has my last precious epistle fallen into the lion's jaws? If so—and this silence looks suspicious, I must clap on my 'musty morion' and 'hold out my iron.' I am out of practice—but I won't begin again at Manton's now. Besides, I would not return his shot. I was once a famous wafer-splitter; but then the bullies of society made it necessary. Ever ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a great deal of this forgotten chivalry. His nursery had been haunted by such musty phantoms; and when he first came to the Northern city, he stayed at a hotel which was frequented by people who lived in this past—old ladies who were proud and prim, and old gentlemen who were quixotic and humorous, young ladies ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... derived his words as often as he used them,—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... the Bar-O entanglements and complications. It's an old story. Grandaddy knows all about it but he doesn't talk. There are few facts and many rumors. For three generations it's been a sort of a gnaw-bone, to be dug up and chewed on when there's nothing else. It's a musty old tradition, a sort of a remnant of the old days, that present day newsmongers use as a yardstick for comparisons. If a modern domestic complication breaks out, the current gossip outmatches it by the entanglements in ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... barn she wandered, and up the rickety ladder she climbed into the cobwebby loft. A figure moved impatiently at the far end of the loose boards, and as Peace's eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she saw it was Faith, curled up among a lot of ragged papers and coverless magazines, musty and ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... had long since lost heart and passed away. A dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life from the outside must come, and ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... old ladies have thought if she had called it out? As it was, Lady Lavander patted her approvingly, said she loved to see young people modest and humble-minded, and gave her a slice of very highly-spiced, rather musty ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... stays upon old ships, A weightless cargo in the musty hold, — Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips, Of stormy midnights, — and a tale untold. They have remembered islands in the dawn, And windy capes that tried their slender spars, And tortuous channels where their ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... blew, the ocean rolled Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue Bowed its eternal bosom, and the dew Of summer night collected still, to make The morning precious. Beauty was awake! Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead To things ye knew not of—were closely wed To musty laws, lined out with wretched rule And compass vile: so that ye taught a school Of dolts to smooth, inlay and clip and fit; Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Easy was ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to wear my boots as straight as you. No, I'm damned if I wouldn't give five-and-twenty bob!" We laughed. We had some rolls of smoked beef, which caused the ants to come about the camp, and we had to erect a little table with legs in the water, to lay these on. One roll had a slightly musty smell, and Gibson said to me, "This roll's rotten; shall I chuck it away?" "Chuck it away," I said; "why, man, you must be cranky to talk such rubbish as throwing away food in such a region as this!" "Why," said he, "nobody ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... instead turned her practical mind to consideration of the immediate moment. The so-called parlor was hopeless she knew, and she dismissed it from the list of possibilities at once. It was a sparsely furnished, gloomy room, damp and musty from being tightly closed all summer, and the unpainted, rough boards had ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... line, Where never sun presumes to shine, With straws, and filth, and time beset, Where all is fish that comes to net, That musty film, the Muse supposes Figures the web ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... no reply. Already she was fathoms deep in thought. The musty-smelling lift shot them up to the top floor; Beverley, stepping out ahead of Clo, had the air of having forgotten her existence. The girl's anxiety deepened. The best she could do was to guide her friend through dimly lighted, ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the pretty clothes which she took care to provide at once for herself, spending lavishly out of the diminishing sum her husband had sent her, and thinking not of the morrow, nor the day when the board bills would be due, became well known. The musty little parlor of the ancient relative was daily filled with visitors, and every evening Kate held court, with the old aunt nodding in ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved: we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty, the bedding has to be carried out and laid in the sun every day, with the forecast that it may be demolished at any moment. The confinement is dreadful. To sit and listen as if waiting for death in a horrible manner, would drive me insane. I don't know what others do, but we read ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... proprietors of real-estate in this extraordinary highway of antiquity are never mentioned in public like owners in any other street; but they are shabby, dreary, hopeless-looking old piles, suggestive of having, perhaps, been hurried and tumbled through musty law-suits scores of times, and occupied at last by the robber Law itself for costs. On a certain dark, foggy afternoon in December, one of the seediest of the fallen brick brotherhood presented a particularly dingy appearance, as the gas-lights necessitated ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... said Mrs. Mumpson complacently. "A musty odor exudes from these closed receptercles. Men have no comprehension of the need of such caretakers as ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... into a poet myself—think of that!—me, for these dozen years a musty, cobwebbed groper in philosophies and religions! I have been sitting here by my fire for hours, smoking and dreaming and rhyming, rhyming and dreaming and smoking; and pretty soon the rumble of the first milk-waggons will come up from ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... he made his way at leisure was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory: ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... merely confined to the Via Giulia; it extended to the whole district, once so fine and fashionable, but now fallen into sad decay, far removed from modern life, and exhaling a faint musty odour of monasticism. Towards San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where the new Corso Vittorio Emanuele has ripped up every olden district, the lofty five-storeyed houses with their dazzling sculptured fronts contrasted violently ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... been the will of the Lord. This had occasioned her to make some reflections, and then to reason upon those reflections; as for instance, that since her husband chose rather to devote himself to his studies, than to the duties of matrimony, to turn over musty old books, rather than attend to the attractions of beauty, and to gratify his own pleasures, rather than those of his wife, it might be permitted her to relieve some necessitous lover, in neighbourly charity, provided she could do it conscientiously, and to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... cripple, sitting crouching in a corner of the room. It was all miserably desolate. The paper shields kept out the light of the sunbeams; and though the place was tolerably clean, it had a close, musty, disagreeable, shut-up smell. But all Daisy thought of at first was the cripple. She went ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... but a toy Filled with duty and with joy; Not too closely should we guard Our brief time from being scarred; Never high on musty shelves Should we hoard it for ourselves. It is something we should share In another's hour of care— Something we should gladly give That another here may live; We should never live it through Keeping ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... the midst of a curious litter. Clusters of dried herbs hung from the ceiling, and all among them were clumps of old boots, shriveled skins, battered pans, scrap-iron, sheep-skins, useless touloupes, and on the floor musty old clothes, moth-eaten furs, and sheep-skin coats that even a moujik of the swamps would not have deigned to wear. Here and there were old teeth, ragged finery, dilapidated hats, and jars of strange ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... hall was filled with sombre shadows; the motionless air was heavy with a musty, choking odor. In the dimness a few tattered hangings were visible on the walls; a rope, with bits of crumbling evergreen clinging to it, trailed from above one of the low windows. The panelled double door of the ballroom was shut; no sound came ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... likes being made love through instead of to—specially on behalf of a musty divinity ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... been considered obscure, and which their explanations do not always clear up; to the temptation to display their proficiency in the ingenious art of manipulating facts and figures culled from a dozen musty volumes into one ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the lines of Lady Macbeth from Mabel's shabby books; and something of millinery from the little Irishwoman who kept a shop on the corner, with "Elise" written across its window. She learned all of Wallace's parts, and usually Mabel's as well. Often she went to the piano in the musty parlour of the Geary Street house and played "The Two Grenadiers" and "Absent." She brimmed with energy; while Wallace or Mabel wrangled with the old costumier, Martie was busily folding and smoothing the garments of jesters and clowns and Dolly Vardens. She had ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... except Jervis and Mr. Clay, the latter of whom, when the bishop's part of the ceremony was done, took the remainder upon himself, and proceeded to make his explanations in a voice which Mary declared made her think of musty ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... afraid you've lived in your musty old books so long, Dudley," with mock seriousness, "that you've lost all count of time. It is about a thousand years since sane and sensible men believed all that drivel about women's only sphere being the home, and since women ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... misgivings did the three lads plunge forward in the darkness, feeling their way with outstretched hands as they entered the tunnel. A close, musty smell, as of things long mildewed and moulded, filled the air, and an oppressive silence lay on everything. Unconsciously, since entering this place, their conversation ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... dirty. That's natur! Trim 'er up an' curl 'er 'air an' she's worth looking at. Natur! Lor', Passon, if ye likes wild natur ye ain't got no call to keep a gard'ner. But if ye pays me an' keeps me, ye must 'spect me to do my duty. Wherefore I sez: why not 'ave this 'ere musty-fusty place, a reg'ler breedin' 'ole for hinsects, wopses, 'ornits, snails an' green caterpillars—ah! an' I shouldn't wonder if potato-fly got amongst 'em, too!—why not, I say, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... them, saw the white gleam of a robe that fell down his length in smooth, still folds, saw his hands—greenish skin stretched tight over fleshless bones. Suddenly it seemed to him that the air was musty and fetid. ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... a peace be concluded as soon as that was done; and this with such appearances of religion as might work on the people, and make them impute it to the piety of their prince, and to his tenderness for the lives of his subjects. A third offers some old musty laws, that have been antiquated by a long disuse; and which, as they had been forgotten by all the subjects, so they had been also broken by them; and proposes the levying the penalties of these laws, that as it would bring in a vast treasure, so there might be a very good pretence for it, since ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... commission that placed upon his shoulders a responsibility that encompassed not alone the life of Gahan and Tara but the welfare, perhaps the whole future, of Gathol. And so he hastened them onward through the musty corridors of the old palace where the dust of ages lay undisturbed upon the marble tiles. Now and again he tried a door until he found one that was unlocked. Opening it he ushered them into a chamber, heavy with dust. Crumbling silks and furs adorned the walls, with ancient weapons, and great ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dusty, musty little shop set in a dingy street, A doorsill old and scarred and worn by many tired feet, A row of cases, vaguely glassed, a safe against the wall, And, oh, the ache of many hearts—the fabric of ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... that were good, and they might have served him for a volume of marine memoirs. But I was with him when we freighted the Kut Sang with adventure and sailed out of Manila, so his musty records of rescues and wrecks lacked life for me. In the old logbooks I found no men to compare with the Rev. Luther Meeker; or Petrak, the little red-headed beggar; or Long Jim or Buckrow or Thirkle. ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... because it is not alike known to all from what stock I am sprung, with the Muses' good leave I'll do my endeavor to satisfy you. But yet neither the first Chaos, Orcus, Saturn, or Japhet, nor any of those threadbare, musty gods were my father, but Plutus, Riches; that only he, that is, in spite of Hesiod, Homer, nay and Jupiter himself, divum pater atque hominum rex, the father of gods and men, at whose single beck, as ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... with the modern passion for efficiency, learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have discovered that there was much to unlearn. The early scribes piled fancy upon invention, believing or pretending that Rembrandt was a miser, a profligate, a spendthrift, and so on. "Houbraken's facts," we read, ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... was not empty, in the sense that it was unfurnished. The unknown was using an electric torch of extraordinary brilliancy, and revealed a dilapidated hall-stand and a musty chair. He took ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... allowance for this, it is false. For, if the influence of the twelve signs does not emanate from the stars occupying the space of those signs, it must emanate from nothing—a doctrine well suited, no doubt, to musty old sages of your superstitious Chaldea, but quite out of court in our progressive age—the last decade of our cultured ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne |
