"Nondescript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... secret dissatisfaction, compared himself with this sartorial model. Gordon's attire, purely serviceable, had apparently taken on a protective coloring from the action of time and the elements; his shirt had faded from a bright buff to a nondescript shade which blended with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... still afford great sport for many generations. There are long stretches which are never touched except by a stray Indian or Chinaman with a grasshopper or bit of salmon roe on a string tied to a long willow pole. Some years ago a nondescript individual who said he was a Cherokee half-breed turned up at Savona's Ferry and earned a living by fishing. Every day he caught more fish than he could carry, though he never revealed his secret. Some believed that he used set lines. His success showed that trout were far more ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... the buttery, the kitchens, the stables, the covered cart-shed that surrounded two sides of the court, were all crowded by idle people, partly belonging to Sir Daniel's establishment, and attired in his livery of murrey and blue, partly nondescript strangers attracted to the town by greed, and received by the knight through policy, and because it was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such as might have been predicted for the owner of the nondescript bed resting on the cabin floor. His neck, grimed, red and wrinkled as that of an ancient turtle, rose above his bare brown shoulders and his upper chest, likewise exposed. His only body covering was an undershirt, or two undershirts. Their flannel over-covering had left them ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... seemed "No Thoroughfare," Bond Street looked weird, inhuman; The spectres of past fashions were Around that lonely Woman. Some were the work of native hands, Some had arrived from foreign lands, Nondescript jumbles some! Pall-Mall had now nor sound nor tread, Park Lane was silent as the dead, Belgravia ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... still a fighting and menacing army. But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript, neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of articles which ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the Balonda men consists of the softened skins of small animals, as the jackal or wild cat, hung before and behind from a girdle round the loins. The dress of the women is of a nondescript character; but they were not immodest. They stood before us as perfectly unconscious of any indecorum as we could be with our clothes on. But, while ignorant of their own deficiency, they could not maintain their gravity ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... cushion, and had come to inspect his wares. A little further off, Archer, in a blue velvet coat, white satin waistcoat, and breeches and silk stockings, and Amoret, white-frocked, blue-sashed, and bare-headed (an innovation of fashion), were admiring the nodding mandarins, grinning nondescript monsters, and green lions of extraordinary form which an emissary from a curiosity-shop was unpacking. Near the door, in an attitude weary yet obsequious, stood, paper in hand, a dejected figure in shabby plum-colour—i.e. a poor author—waiting in hopes that his sonnet in praise of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seventeenth century was fairly packed away with its lavender in the store chest of the past, a score or more bands of freebooters were cruising along the Atlantic seaboard in armed vessels, each with a black flag with its skull and crossbones at the fore, and with a nondescript crew made up of the tags and remnants of civilized and semicivilized humanity (white, black, red, and yellow), known generally as marooners, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... in finding the house. It was one of a row of houses, nondescript but comfortable, in a pleasant street. It seemed familiar—I had seen Molly's snapshots of it often. I cannot tell you what it felt like to be really there—to walk down the street, up the path, up the steps to the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... about two hours before they reached the fisherman's hut, a nondescript, low-ceilinged shelter of logs, driftwood and untarnished metal plates off some wreck. Several times they were hailed by other fishermen, who addressed the old man as "Deacon" and asked jocularly about what kind of a ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... sat at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded—every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... the midst of a litter of nondescript baggage on the Manila mole when I came ashore from a rice-boat that had brought me across the China Sea from Saigon. The first glance marked him as a missionary, for he wore a huge crucifix cut out of pink shell, and as he hobbled about on the embankment ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... apartments at any price: a very neat room, for instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of dragoons, and lawyers' clerks. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He was a nondescript who had joined the ship as a landsman. Being so excessively timid and awkward, it was thought useless to try and make a sailor of him; so he was translated into the cabin as steward; the man previously ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... to our black sheep. Look where he stands. As he grows weary, he grasps the straps on either side to steady him. His attitude is a cunningly devised mode of tormenting his fellow-passengers. Either elbow of our nondescript just reaches the hat of your opposite neighbor or yourself. With each jolt of the stage, by a little dexterity of movement, or want of it, he can knock the hats over the eyes of two persons at a time, and by a little shifting ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... grizzled—trappers, miners, invalids seeking health, adventurers, speculators, a few half-breeds; all men of little education, but of fascinating experience; a few women of quiet poise and resourcefulness. Their clothes were nondescript and betrayed the fact that they had come from the East, having been sent west by condoning relatives, no doubt after having lived in more fashionable circles. There were two little children who fell asleep early in the evening in their ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... obliged to leave him outside in case he might hurt the rabbits, and he sat howling dolefully on the doorstep until they came out again. He escorted them into the garden afterwards, however, and so did a large nondescript kind of yard dog, which was called Bootles, and which allowed itself to be harnessed to a mail-cart, and drew Cyril up ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... too much credit for my idea. A fair share of it belongs to a bald-headed and snarling old nondescript whom I met one day in the Public Library and shall probably never meet again anywhere. Somebody had pointed me out—it was after that shooting mess—and the old fellow came up to me and growled out, 'Employed on a newspaper?' I admitted it. 'What do you ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the hand nor with the fist, neither with the wet nor with the dry. But he killed him in the morning twilight by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea. The foam of the sea is just such an object as a savage might choose to put his life in, because it occupies that sort of intermediate or nondescript position between earth and sky or sea and sky in which primitive man sees safety. It is therefore not surprising that the foam of the river should be the totem of a clan ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... flatboat, filled with iron-bound barrels, with an air of respectability hovering around it. Next will follow a rude scow, and close upon it an unwieldy 'bulk,' into which the oil has been pumped at the well. After this, perhaps, may be seen a rude nondescript, that surely was never dreamed of outside the oil region. It consists of a series of rough ladders, constructed of tall saplings. Between each pair of rounds in these ladders is placed a barrel of oil, floating in the water, but kept in position by its hamper. A number ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... in all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog—a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, which greatly ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... on the western side of the Edgeware Road. The house of Margaret's aunt was plainly enough indicated to me, as soon as I entered the street where it stood, by the glare of light from the windows, the sound of dance music, and the nondescript group of cabmen and linkmen, with their little train of idlers in attendance, assembled outside the door. It was evidently a very large party. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... story were, like the entrance, Moorish; but the principal ones below were square bays, mullioned. The castle was considered grand by the illiterate; but architects and readers of books on architecture condemned it as a nondescript mixture of styles in the worst possible taste. It stood on an eminence surrounded by hilly woodland, thirty acres of which were enclosed as Wiltstoken Park. Half a mile south was the little town of Wiltstoken, accessible by rail from London in about ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... silence and drew back, uttering a sigh that was half impatient and half sorrowful. I felt this sigh, nondescript as it was, re-echo painfully in my heart, and hung my head in remorse; but not before I had caught a glimpse of his face, and been struck by ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... and seemed to have no part in the seventy years which had bent the tall form, and rounded slightly the broad and massive shoulders. The Captain wore a rough pea-jacket and long boots, while his head was adorned with a nondescript covering which might have begun life either as a hat or a cap, but would now hardly be owned by ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... cut off upon both sides: behind me the murderers, before me this lurking nondescript. And immediately I began to prefer the dangers that I knew to those I knew not. Silver himself appeared less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned on my heel, and, looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, began to retrace my steps ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... equable temperature, should wear light colours. Light colours are far the best for sporting purposes, as they are usually much less conspicuous than black or rifle-green. Almost all wild beasts are tawny or fawn-coloured, or tabby, or of some nondescript hue and pattern: if an animal were born with a more decided colour, he would soon perish for want ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... disappointed by the contrast between the exterior and the contents. It would probably be far from easy to fill a small case with examples where a really valuable book was enshrined in a covering of corresponding character. It is our ordinary experience to meet with some obsolete nondescript classic, or some defunct theological treatise of alike infinitesimal worth, in a sumptuous morocco garb, bestowed on it by the author as a compliment to his sovereign, or by the sovereign as an oblation to his mistress. In those princely establishments for which such things were ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... which Buck presently observed the arrival of the remainder of the outfit. They came from the east, and Kreeger and Siegrist were with them. As Buck expected, the former rode the sorrel with distinctive white markings, while the latter bestrode a nondescript bay. The second of the two riders he had watched that afternoon had been mounted on just such a bay, and if there had been a lingering touch of doubt in Stratton's mind as to the identity of the two criminals, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Champigny, and Vaudreuil drew the first smoke, then the Iroquois deputies, and then all the tribes in turn. The treaty was duly signed, the representative of each tribe affixing his mark, in the shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, plant, or nondescript object. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... belonging to the Creek Confederacy, together with other Creeks who had fled across the border to escape the vengeance of Jackson at Tohopeka. All were bitterly hostile to the United States. There were Spanish freebooters, Irish roustabouts, Scotch free lances, and runaway slaves—a nondescript lot, and all ready for any undertaking that promised excitement, revenge, or booty. Furthermore there were some British soldiers who had remained on their own responsibility after the troops were withdrawn. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... dirty rag round his loins; and whenever we were going through dense undergrowth, or wading a swamp, he wore that filament tucked up scandalously short. Whenever we were sitting down in the forest having one of our nondescript meals, he always sat next to me and appropriated the tin. Then he would fill his pipe, and turning to me with the easy grace of aristocracy, would say what may be translated as "My dear Princess, could you favour me with ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... syndicate of rich Indians taking a flier in lottery tickets. In a manner almost, lordly he announces that he will take four hundred thousand oysters. Then a sale of two thousand follows at an advanced price to a nondescript said to have come all the way from Mecca; a towering Sikh from the Punjab secures twenty thousand at a reduced rate, and so on. In ten or twelve minutes the day's product is disposed of to greedy buyers for the sum of 62,134 good and lawful rupees. A clerk records names of buyers with expedition, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... hall poured the others of Edgemere Cottage, attired in a nondescript collection of garments hastily donned. Will, in his bath robe, had his collar and tie in his hand, though it is doubtful if he wore an article of dress to which it could be attached. From the servants' rooms came frantic demands to know if ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... us came a dog. On closer view he appeared to be a nondescript sort of dog of no particular family or breeding. But he was bent on one purpose, and that seemed to be to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the Germans. He had been gassed, and had evidently been the first to get out of the ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... an uproarious pack which greeted them. Every Old Gentleman owned a dog, and there was Peter's Mamie, two or three eager-eyed pointers, setters, hounds and Chesapeake Bay dogs. Old Mamie was nondescript, and was shut up in the kennels to-night only because Eric was away. She was eminently trustworthy, and usually ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... pleasant, freshly fortified town whose white population had grown to fifteen hundred, including a considerable number of English-speaking settlers. The country round was overrun with traders, who cheated and cajoled the Indians without conscience; the natives, in turn, were a nondescript lot, showing in pitiful manner the bad effects of ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... as they are, such my present tale is, A nondescript and ever-varying rhyme, A versified Aurora Borealis, Which flashes o'er a waste and icy clime. When we know what all are, we must bewail us, But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime To laugh at all things—for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... felt that I should enjoy the shelter and repose of a habitation. As we went along, indications of the new power, which had already effected the easy transit of the desert, were visible in small patches of coal, scattered upon the sand; presently we saw a dark nondescript object, that did not look at all like the abode of men, civilized or uncivilized; and yet, from the group hovering about an aperture, seemed to be tenanted by human beings. This proved to be an old boiler, formerly ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... as a daughter. Mr. Russel had one, which he milked twice a day, and drove in a curricle to visit the Queen of Madagascar. Doctor Lyall is writing a quarto from Madagascar, to deny the statement in toto; admitting, however, that there is a rumour of the being of some nondescript of the kind in the mountains, somewhat between the size of the elephant and the Shetland pony; but that he and we think the subject-matter will turn out asinine. But now a Mr. Ruppell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, comes at once to cheer and dishearten ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... the children came in,—two boys and a girl. The elder boy was eight, with his mother's fair hair, blue eyes, and fine features, and the same suggestion of race in the narrow high brow, the upward poise of the head. His younger brother was nondescript, with dark hair and full lips. Margaret observed her children with a curiously detached air, Isabelle thought. Was she looking for signs of Larry in that second son? Alas, she might see Larry always, with the cold apprehension of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... idols, which is two hundred feet high, and serves as a land-mark to the mariner, stands in the centre of a quadrangle, enclosed by a high stone wall, extending 650 feet on each side, and surrounded by minor edifices of nondescript shapes. The magnitude of these buildings forms their sole claim to admiration; they are profusely decorated with sculpture, but of so rude a description as to afford no satisfaction to the beholder. The great temple of Juggernaut was erected in the twelfth century. The idols ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... An abject nondescript cringed at Mary 'Liza's feet, whimpering piteously. The devil's broth concocted by Uncle Ike, according to my receipt, was warm starch, made blue with indigo. A few red peppers were boiled in it to dissuade the cats from licking it off before it could ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... of this nondescript service, and gladly accepted a position as assistant wagon-master under Wild Bill, who had taken a contract to fetch a load of ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... them that died last. But it was a long while before her lodgers got courage enough to come back. Then we went to the house of the Blazers, in 'Cow Bay,' and used to lodge there with Yellow Bill. They said Bill was a thief by profession; but I wasn't old enough to be a judge. Little Lizza Rock, the nondescript, as people called her, used to live at the Blazers. Poor Lizza had a hard time of it, and used to sigh and say she wished she was dead. Nobody thought of her, she said, and she was nothing because she was deformed, and a cripple. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... sort to the probably hypnotic or automatic consciousness of the cricket? What does it really represent, as seen from below? A twig, terminating in a bud, with two branching twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... I doubt not, anticipated that I am about to introduce that nondescript book bearing the running title—and it never had any other—of Silver Drops, or Serious Things; purporting, in a kind of colophon, to be "written by William Blake, housekeeper to the Ladies' Charity School."[1] The curious in old books knows too, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... sheet called The Gerrymander was published in March 1843, which contained a series of cartoons exhibiting the monstrosities of this apportionment. The Fifth District is called "the Nondescript."] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... eyes are gazing at the Frochard's neck, sensing something or other vaguely familiar. The old woman, who has been drinking, has unloosened her nondescript rig. The girl's gaze sees ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... with which he had locked the door below, Byrne threw open one after another the doors in the corridor. All the rooms were empty except for some nondescript lumber in one or two. And the girl seeing what he would be at stopped every time, raising the smoky light in each doorway patiently. Meantime she observed him with sustained attention. The last door of all ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... remelted, in the composition of pomatum for the hair, and gives more satisfaction to a customer than any of the "creams and balms," &c. &c., made up and scented with essential oils; the one smells of the flower, the other "a nondescript." ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... the Monarch, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred W. Ellet, arrived in the reach above Vicksburg. This was one of the nondescript fleet of rams, planned, built, equipped, and manned, under the orders of the War Department, by Ellet's elder brother, Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., but now acting under the orders of the Commander of the Mississippi fleet. Ellet promptly sent a party of four ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... before the last of the company had said good-night. We did not offer even the comfort of space. Once the small dining-room that had been Etty's studio, and the not over-large room that was J.'s, and the nondescript room that was drawing-room and my workroom combined, were packed solid, there was no place to overflow into except the short, narrow entrance hall, and I still grow hot at the thought of what became of hats and coats ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... he had been very quiet for two days. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... these nondescript papers, "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," Mr Poe has very boldly undertaken to figure forth the destruction of the world, and explain how that great and final catastrophe will be accomplished. It is a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Messrs. Hooper,[6] G——,[7] and Mack; also with Mr. Forbes.[8] There is a general medley of cabin passengers, recruits, sutlers' and quartermasters' agents, and crew, the latter not being dressed in uniform, but in nondescript old garments such as can be found at any old Isaac's shop. Those passengers who are outside our party are coarse-looking and disagreeable,—Mr. Forbes and Mr. Augustus Hurd of Boston being almost the only exceptions. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... that a small crowd had collected round the aeroplane. Mr. Daventry and Mr. Van Kloof were there, with several other Englishmen, and a number of Chinese coolies and nondescript natives stood at a little distance, gazing in wondering silence. Rodier had his watch in his hand, and looked reproachfully at his employer. Smith pressed through the crowd, shaking hands with the Englishmen one after another, but declaring that he had no time ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... and ornaments of two of the doors. Both of them have round arches, deep and curiously wrought, and the pillars of one of the two are formed of a peculiar knot or twine in stone-work, such as I cannot well describe, but it is both ingenious and simple. These pillars rest on two nondescript animals, which look as much like walruses as anything else. The pillars of the other door consist of two figures supporting the capitals, and themselves standing on two handsomely carved lions. The work is curious, and evidently very ancient, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from the great ribbed beams of oak and barren interspaces, graceful Peri floated on snow-white clouds and roguish Cupids swam through the azure depths, to the edification of nondescript prodigies, who constituted the massive molding, or frame, to the decorative scene. The ancient fireplace, broad and deep, had given way to an ornate mantel of marble; the capacious tankard and rotund pewter pot ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... to have turned it distinctly: for the Dickensian novel is a species by itself—neither strictly novel nor strictly romance, but, as Polonius might say, a picaresque-burlesque-sentimental-farcical-realist-fantastic nondescript. Not till Vanity Fair did the novel of pure real life advance its standard once more: while the historical novel-romance of a new kind may date its revival with—though it should scarcely trace that revival to—Esmond, or ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... fanfare) towards the gates where the horses were to enter from their stalls in the basement was a hussar-like shape that filled my romantic soul with joy; and the other figures of the management I thought very fortunate compromises between grooms and ringmasters. At any rate, their nondescript costumes were gay, and a relief from the fashions in the boxes and the promenade; they were costumes, and costumes are always more sincere, if not more effective, than fashions. As I have hinted, I do not know ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Fillmore Street which he had attended for a brief time, some ten years before, after his arrival in Hampton. The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent and bewildered Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age, to compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of rounded, knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles. And the minister was sensational and dramatic. He looked like an actor, he aroused in Edward Bumpus an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage. Half ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... slightly tinged with grey, was in part counteracted by his eyes, which had a strange twinkle in them—whether of humour or of roguery, it was difficult to say. Under all circumstances—whether in his light, nondescript summer costume, or in his warm sheep-skin, or in the long, glossy, dark-blue, double-breasted coat which he put on occasionally on Sundays and holidays—he always looked a well-fed, respectable, prosperous member of society; whilst his imperturbable ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... in a plain, blue, cotton blouse and skirt; her not over-tall figure swelling plumply beneath their starched folds. Her hair was of a nondescript brown, beautified by a glint of gold, so that her uncovered head looked bright in the sunlight. Her face was such as may be seen any day in the villages which nestle beneath the Sussex Downs, under whose shadow she was born; her forehead was ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Peter eyed this nondescript host with some such rueful aspect as a man would eye the devil, and determined to give his feather-bed soldiers a seasoning. He accordingly put them through their manual exercise over and over again, trudged them backwards and forwards about the streets ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... orang-utan, youthful but large. The boy was a Dyak in light cotton drawers, with the upper part of his body naked, brass rings on his arms, heavy ornaments in his ears, and a bright kerchief worn as a turban on his head. The man was a sort of nondescript in a semi-European shooting garb, with a wide-brimmed sombrero on his head, black hair, a deeply tanned face, a snub nose, huge beard and moustache, and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... trimmed, and a fine old tree or two. In a field called “the Park,” at the east end of the parish, are some fine trees, remnants of a former avenue. The ancient well, said to be Roman, in the rectory grounds, has already been mentioned. The church was re-fashioned in 1879, and an old, nondescript, flat-ceiled structure was converted into a substantial and well-designed edifice of Early Decorated style, with clock-tower and good clock, which gives out its notes of time ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... slightly flurried. His attenuated back is rounded off with a stoop between the neck and shoulders. He can hardly keep his hands from shaking. His signature is a work of art. He can stick at his desk for six hours without stirring. While we lunch at a restaurant, he consumes at the office some nondescript provisions which he brings in the morning in a paper bag. On Sundays he fishes, for a change; his rod takes the place of his pen, and his can of worms ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "pitching-track," in the forest, or on the prairies—in all sorts of places, they could not say exactly where—and when they were born was often a matter of doubt as well. [With reference to these nondescript birthplaces, the wonderful ease of parturition among Indian women may be referred to here. This is common, probably, to all primitive races, but is perhaps more marked amongst Indian mothers than any ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... cart. Bucephale left to himself regarded the family meeting with a grandfatherly air, until an earth-coloured nondescript emerged from the ground and led him off towards the house. After our embraces, we followed, Paragot dancing the delighted infant, Blanquette with her great motherly arm around my shoulders, and Narcisse soberly sniffing for adventure, after the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... he would throw his wig to the ceiling; he would dance a minuet. And then they had cards, forfeits, blind-man's-buff, until Mr. Blackstone, then engaged on his Commentaries in the rooms below, was driven nearly mad by the uproar. These parties would seem to have been of a most nondescript character—chance gatherings of any obscure authors or actors whom he happened to meet; but from time to time there were more formal entertainments, at which Johnson, Percy, and similar distinguished persons were present. Moreover, Dr. Goldsmith himself was much asked out to ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... the steps of the Beebe store, wearing a cloth cap which was, to say the very least, out of the ordinary. Its material was a fuzzy frieze of nondescript colors, a shade of dingy yellow predominating, and its shape was weird and umbrellalike. With it upon his head little Galusha resembled a walking toadstool—an unhealthy, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hall I thought their looks still less in keeping with the house. Both ladies were on the wrong side of forty, but their dress was that of young girls. Miss Doria Wymondham was tall and thin with a mass of nondescript pale hair confined by a black velvet fillet. Miss Claire Wymondham was shorter and plumper and had done her best by ill-applied cosmetics to make herself look like a foreign demi-mondaine. They greeted me with the friendly casualness which ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... a nondescript and dilapidated vehicle, and the horse was by no means a thoroughbred. But the whole ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... dogs had been fed, and the other Indians had come in, and squatted on the buffalo-skin with Nicholas, the first course was sent round in tin cups, a nondescript, but warming, "camp soup." ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... still, starry October night, and its freshness was grateful after the hot sleeper. Bates accepted the suggestion without comment. We walked to the end of the platform, where the hackman was already tumbling my trunks about, and after we had seen them piled upon his nondescript wagon, I followed Bates down through the broad quiet street of the village. There was more of Annandale than I had imagined, and several tall smoke-stacks loomed here and there ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... breaths in attention. There in the cabin of that curious nondescript whaleback they had come suddenly to the edge of a romance—a romance that had been lived through before they were born. Then Travis said in a low ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the writing is? Mr. Henry James lately brought out a volume of essays on "French Poets and Novelists." Mr. E. C. Stedman recently published a series of monographs on "The Victorian Poets." Are these books French and English, or are they nondescript, or are they American? Not only are they American, but they are more essentially American than if they had been disquisitions upon American literature. And the reason is, of course, that they subject ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the whole running back through the same lines of ancestry to the people of Asia. There still lurk in the subliminal consciousness of the race, as it were, vague memories of things that long ago passed from sight and knowledge. Such, for instance, was the mo'o; a word that to the Hawaiian meant a nondescript reptile, which his imagination vaguely pictured, sometimes as a dragonlike monster belching fire like a chimera of mythology, or swimming the ocean like a sea-serpent, or multiplied into a manifold pestilential swarm infesting ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... was found recently in the Lebanon.[791] Nos. 3 and 4 come from Salamis in Cyprus, where they were found by M. Alexandre Di Cesnola,[792] the brother of the General. No. 3 represents a robed figure holding two nondescript animals by the hind legs; the creatures writhe in his grasp, and turn their heads towards him, as though wishing to bite. The remainder of the field is filed with detached objects, scattered at random—two human forms, a griffin, two ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Monsignore holds ecclesiastical rank at Rome, as a Lady of the Bedchamber at St. Petersburg holds military rank, where she is a major-general; there is no other. He is free to marry, and I presume to do anything else, but he must preserve a certain orthodox gravity of dress and conduct; he is a curious nondescript, about an equal mixture of the cardinal and the dandy. This Monsignore is a very clever, agreeable man, and gave me some information about the administration of law in this country. There seems to be a good deal of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... is a nondescript animal; singing from some unknown region, his voice possesses no natural character, but its tones are forced, strained, and artificial. Our tenors and counter-tenors—a sort of musical hermaphrodite, almost peculiar to this country, and scarcely recognized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Piero, whose rugged Neptunian features, sea-wrinkled, tell of a rough water-life, boasts a bass of resonant, almost pathetic quality. Francesco has a mezzo voce, which might, by a stretch of politeness, be called baritone. Piero's comrade, whose name concerns us not, has another of these nondescript voices. They sat together with their glasses and cigars before them, sketching part-songs in outline, striking the keynote—now higher and now lower—till they saw their subject well in view. Then they burst into full singing, Antonio leading with a metal note that thrilled ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... from which the pupil gets his first and most lasting impressions should be of large size and accurate form, and not of the nondescript character usually found in books of this class. That it should be free from superfluous line and flourish, and yet have grace and beauty. That it should be adapted for both copying ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.
... language and the name were both derived (that is, were immediately so derived, for remotely the Ziph language may ascend to Nineveh) from Winchester. Dr. Mapleton, a physician in Bath, who attended me in concert with Mr. Grant, an eminent surgeon, during the nondescript malady of the head, happened to have had three sons at Winchester; and his reason for removing them is worth mentioning, as it illustrates the well-known system of fagging. One or more of them showed to the quick medical eye of Dr. Mapleton symptoms ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... expeditionary force composed of aviation, ambulance and motor units, thus being the only independent Asiatic nation whose troops served on European soil) the king abolished the white elephant upon a red ground which from time immemorial had been the national standard, substituting for it a nondescript affair of colored stripes which at first glance appears to be a compromise between the flags of China and Montenegro. In doing this, I think that the king made a mistake, for he deprived his country of a distinctive emblem which was associated with ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... on which wise and profitable observations will be found in this book would be superfluous. The wine is good, and needs no bush. So much may be said that the book is one to interest that nondescript person, the general reader in Europe or America, as well as the Anglo-Indian official. Besides good advice and sound teaching on matters of policy and administration, it contains many charming, though inartificial, descriptions of scenery and customs, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... building was falling into decay: it was of immense size, with two rows of windows, with an old-fashioned ceiling covered with gilt carving, with a gallery with mirrors on the walls, red and white draperies, marble statues (nondescript but still statues) with heavy old furniture of the Napoleonic period, white and gold, upholstered in red velvet. At the moment I am describing, a high platform had been put up for the literary gentlemen who were to read, and the whole ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the same direction as ourselves on the level, dusty road two miles southwest of Ghent. As we approached a cross-road marked by a tavern, a couple of direction-posts, and nondescript stucco buildings, we made out two Belgian sentries, with their rifles lifted overhead and indulging in some acrobatic exercises which we interpreted as a signal to halt. Van Hee swapped cigarettes with them and gossiped in their native tongue, in return for which they ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... nonchalance for Bassett's benefit, declared that old Chuan Kai kept "a dozen Chinks on the job", and that they all slept in rooms directly above the restaurant. The persons who sat at the inlaid tables and leaned heavily on their elbows as they scanned the much-fingered menus were a nondescript lot—some the riff-raff of the town who found it cheaper to eat at Kai's than to eat elsewhere, others, more respectable in appearance, who doubtless had been drawn to ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... more seriously than I intended. I was thinking of Mr. Regulus, and most devoutly hoped for his sake, this wild, nondescript girl would never reach his heart through the medium of his vanity. She certainly paid him the most dangerous kind of flattery, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... so brilliant a lecture-room as his evening banqueting-hall; highly connected students from Rome mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable to his deserts. Herod was noted for his repartees; and we have instances on record of his setting down, according to the emergency, both the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... or a hurdy-gurdy—but there was music, and it was loud, and there was a platform laid over the cobble-stones of the street, and on that platform ten or more couples were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking beams of side-wheelers. The men were of that nondescript type one would expect to see in a fifteen-cent dancing place, but the women were of curious appearance, for all were dressed alike, the costume being a fringed khaki suit with knee-length skirt, a bandana at the neck, and a sombrero. On inquiry I learned ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... in their hats, eagle-nosed Spaniards under the boina of the Pyrenees, Spaniards from Castile speaking like a gatling-gun in action, now and again even a snappy-eyed Andalusian with his s-less slurred speech, slow, laborious Gallegos, Italians and Portuguese in numbers, Colombians of nondescript color, a Slovak who spoke some German, a man from Palestine with a mixture of French and Arabic noises I could guess at, and scattered here and there among the others a Turk who jabbered the lingua franca of Mediterranean ports. I "got" all who fell ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Tucker as he tucked in the last end of a nondescript frill over a group of tiny cabbage plants, "there's not even a smack of frost in the air! It's ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a rather nondescript and poor pack of hounds; and the fact discouraged me. I wanted to hunt the bad cinnamons and the grizzly sheep-killers, with which this rim-rock country was infested. I had nothing against the acorn-eating brown or black bears. And with this pack of hounds I doubted that we could hold ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... ever more unlike than were the host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript: yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts had wings; and as the silken sounds rustled round our little ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... accompanied by a band of music: fortunately, this remained in the regal barge. It consisted of a flute with four holes, a nondescript instrument, seemingly made of stones; a drum made out of the hollow trunk of a tree, covered at each end with skin, of what kind it is needless to inquire. The sounds emitted by this orchestra were of an ear-rending nature, and of a kind graphically ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... from his body in the shape of an inverted V, the palm of his hand, with half curled, contorted fingers, almost touching his chin, as his head sagged at a stiff, set angle into his right shoulder. Hair straggled from the brim of a nondescript felt hat into his eyes, and curled, dirty and unshorn, around his ears and the nape of his neck. His face was covered with a stubble of four days' growth, his body with rags—a coat; a shirt, the button long since gone at the neck; and trousers gaping in wide rents at the knees, and torn at ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... infancy can be deemed uncouth, she was an uncouth little atom of humanity. Her blue checked homespun dress, graced with big horn buttons, descended almost to her feet. Her straight, awkwardly cropped hair was of a nondescript shade pleasantly called "tow." As she came into the light of the fire, she lifted wide black eyes deprecatingly ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... artistic proclivities of its inmates has it aught to do with the centuries when our English tongue was otherwise written or spoken than it is to-day. Ye Hutte is a vast, barn-like building, plain and bare save for an inviting vine-grown porch vaguely Gothic in reminiscence, although nondescript in fact. It was erected by some dissenting society for public worship: hence its interior is one immense vaulted room, with cathedral-like windows and choir-gallery across one end. "The body of the house," to speak ecclesiastically, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... that the lower animals possess, in their degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with ourselves; in their degree, I say; for a zooephyte and a caterpillar have brains, though not in the head; and to this day Waterton does not know whether he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked with either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang outang. Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses instincts like them: all we can with any show of reason deny them is moral sense, and in our arbitrary refusal ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road, filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul with disgust. But ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... rose-flowered cretonne. She said the chromos in the hall spoiled the entire second floor. So the gold frames, glittering undimmed, the checks as rosily glowing as ever, found temporary resting-places in a nondescript back chamber known as the serving room. Then the new sleeping porch was built for Ted, and the portraits ended their journeying ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... happily terminated; Mrs. Warner, her children, and sister, were enriched, and Caleb Jennings was set up in a good way of business in his native place, where he still flourishes. Over the centre of his shop there is a large nondescript sign, surmounted by a golden boot, which upon a close inspection is found to bear a resemblance to a huge bureau chest of drawers, all the circumstances connected with which may be heard, for the asking, and in much fuller detail than I have given, from ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren |
