"Tumble-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rabbit. You see, he was so busy minding other people's business that he didn't have time to attend to his own. So his brown and gray coat always was rumpled and tumbled and dirty. His house was a tumble-down affair in which no one but Mr. Rabbit would ever have thought of living, and his garden—oh, dear me, such a garden you never did see! It was all weeds and brambles. They filled up the yard, and old Mr. Rabbit actually ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... feebly along the road in his violet stockings, supported by his clerical secretary, and followed at a respectful distance by his two attendant footmen with their threadbare liveries. At last, out of the dreary waste, at the end of the interminable ill-paved sloughy road, the long line of the grey tumble-down walls rises gloomily. A few cannon-shot would batter a breach anywhere, as the events of 1849 proved only too well. However, at Rome there is neither commerce to be impeded nor building extension of any kind to be checked; the city has shrunk up until its precincts are a world ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Carbonels, much amused, passed under the hunt, went some distance further, and found a green churchyard, quite shut in by tall elm trees, which, from the road, almost hid the tiny tumble-down church, from whose wooden belfry the call proceeded. It really seemed to be buried in the earth, and the little side windows looked out into a ditch. There were two steps to go down into the deep porch, and within there seemed to be small space between the roof and the top of ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... later Tom Osborne, rather forlorn and miserable from his night's imprisonment in a tumble-down shack, walked out, his bonds ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... spruce gentlemen with their hands in the pockets of symmetrical trousers, were always to be seen in warm weather, contemplating their undeniable boots in dusty warehouse doorways; which appeared to be the hardest work they did, except now and then carrying pens behind their ears. A dim, dirty, smoky, tumble-down, rotten old house it was, as anybody would desire to see; but there the firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son transacted all their business and their pleasure too, such as it was; for neither the young man nor the old had any other residence, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Mourina, fifteen versts off, where our friends have a villa. The property belongs to Prince Woronzoff, who was brought up in England; but instead of following the example of our good landlords, he imitates the bad ones, and allows his cottages to get into a very tumble-down condition. They are built of wood, so the lower part becomes rotten, and the rest sinks. Were they placed on foundations of stone, they would last far longer. They now offer no unfit epitome of the state of Russia. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... is not. "Change slowly—if change you must" has ever been the motto of China, and for years the capital itself was an example of the saying. Improvements were not encouraged. There were no more public buildings in 1879 than in 1863. I doubt if a single tumble-down wall had been replaced—the dirt and smells still remained, and the roads were no smoother. Only a few more Legations had established themselves there, and, by clustering together, they formed what might by courtesy be ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... house. The little town lay quiet, except for the rhythmic noises coming from the big Massey Steel Mills. Suzanna looked in their direction and stood a moment watching the sparks coming from the big round chimneys. Over across fields were the tumble-down cottages occupied by the employees of the Massey Steel Mills. Suzanna did not often go in their direction. The squalor made her unhappy and set in train so many questions she was quite unable ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... rather a footpath or cowpath, bordered with cornfields and orchards. We were still on home ground, for my father's vegetable garden and orchard were here. After a long straight stretch, the path suddenly took an abrupt turn, widening into a cart road, then to a tumble-down wharf, ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... light upon some twisted root-trunk, to which the shadows have given outstretched arms. The vague feelings, too, so absolutely unaccountable, that the sight of a lonely gate, or weir, or park-railing, or sign-post, or ruined shed, or tumble-down sheep-fold, may suddenly arouse, when we feel that in some weird manner we are the accomplices of the Thing's tragedy, are feelings that Dickens alone among writers seems to understand. A road with no people ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... pasturage; but from August to January they are sown with rice; and fields of batata are occasionally seen. After four hours we arrived at the little village of Maguiring (Manguirin), the church of which, a tumble-down shed, stood on an equally naked hillock; and from its neglected condition one might have guessed that ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... wet grass, Nick leading. He took a path through a dark forest swamp, over logs that spanned the stagnant waters, and at length, just as the mist was growing pearly in the light, we came out at a tumble-down house that stood in an open ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Harley P. Hennage looked over the rail fence into the feed corral at San Pasqual and discovered that Bob McGraw's horse was gone, a man on a tired horse rode up from the south, turned in through the ruined doorway of one of the roofless tumble-down adobe houses, and concealed himself and his horse in the area formed by ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... and Ohio Railroad station, in the Fourth Ward, known as Harpville, on the east bank of the Stony creek. A rudely constructed platform extends over a washed-out ditch, partially filled with debris. In the vicinity is a large barn and several smaller outhouses, thrown in a tumble-down condition. Piled against them are beams and rafters from houses smashed into kindling wood. All about the station are boxes, empty and full, scattered in confusion, and around and about these crowds are clustered as best they can. A big policeman stands upon a raised platform made of small ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... so we slipped in and searched around, and found a trap-door in a cupboard—where they'd have shoved me down if they hadn't given up the idea half-way. It lets you down into a passage just like this, that runs down to the water and comes out in the courtyard of one of those tumble-down old pigeon-cotes by the Quai du Seujet. We came out there, and then tried over this side, through a trap by the Molard jetty I'd noticed before, and it led us here. There are dozens of these trappons on both sides. Lots of them are inside houses. I always thought they led only to cellars.... ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... tenant on the morrow—he strolled homewards after them. But as they passed on straight through the town he got a bit curious, and, keeping out of sight, followed astern, along the narrow country roads which led to nowhere special. He saw them pull up before the great tumble-down Talayot which stands opposite the big stone altar, and watched them produce lantern, shovel, and pickaxe, and begin to dig; after which, feeling that his interest had evaporated (so he said), or, more probably, being oppressed with sleepiness, ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... come to tell you that they've fixed the coronation for Monday next if you feel up to it, and that the new palace is begun—a very different one, let me tell you, from this wretched affair with its tumble-down walls ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... a mile north of New Salem, just under the bluff, still stands, but long since ceased to be a dwelling-house, and is now a tumble-down old stable. Here Lincoln was a frequent boarder, especially during the period of his closest application to the study of the law. Stretched out on the cellar door of his cabin, reading a book, he met for the first time "Dick" Yates, then a college student at Jacksonville, and destined to become ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... moment's notice an organist and about a hundred singers are called upon to execute a florid piece of music which many have never seen nor heard; the accompaniment is played at sight from a mere figured bass, on a tumble-down instrument two hundred years old, and the singers, both the soloists and the chorus, sing from thumbed bits of manuscript parts written in old-fashioned characters on paper often green with age. No one has ever denied the extraordinary musical facility of Italians, but if the outside world knew how ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... her more than half an hour to get to a distant part of the little town, but at last she stopped in front of a small tumble-down house. She drew a rusty old hook from her pocket and stuck it into a little hole in the door, which suddenly flew open. How surprised Jem was when they went in! The house was splendidly furnished, the walls and ceiling of marble, the furniture of ebony inlaid with gold and precious stones, ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... neighbourhood were disposed to wonder why Mrs. Cavers lived on in the old tumble-down Steadman house after her husband's death. "Why doesn't she go home to her own people?" they asked each other—not in any unkindly, spirit, but because they naturally expected that she would do this. Libby Anne had told ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... neighbors of the other villages (Pl. XXXIV). The houses and courts are in keeping with the general character of the people and exhibit a degree of neatness and thrift that contrasts sharply with the tumble-down appearance of some of the other villages, especially those of the Middle Mesa and Oraibi. There is a general air of newness about the place, though it is questionable whether the architecture is more recent than that of the other villages of Tusayan. This effect is partly due to ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... after The Excursion. Byron called Crabbe "Nature's sternest painter, and her best." He was a minutely accurate delineator of the harsher aspects of rural life. He photographs a Gypsy camp; a common, with its geese and donkey; a salt marsh, a shabby village street, or tumble-down manse. But neither Crabbe nor Cowper has ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... and charged across the sky. Phelan scanned the heavens with an experienced weather eye, then began to look for a possible shelter from the coming shower. On either side, the fields stretched away in undulating lines, with no sign of a habitation in sight. A dejected old scarecrow, and a tumble-down shed in the distance were the only objects ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... The tumble-down cottage was not empty, as he had thought, for two people were standing in the doorway. He stopped abruptly. The man in worn overalls and the girl beside him, with her bobbed hair, bright eyes, and faded pink gingham apron, did not look like a very forbidding pair. But Oliver's uneasy conscience ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... his cottage, and was always provoked when it was spoken of as a 'tumble-down old shanty.' He always looked as if he meant to say, "Don't take it ill of me, good old house: the people only abuse you so that they may get you cheap." Hansei stood his ground. He would not sell his home for a penny less than it was worth; and besides that, he owned the fishing-right, which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... chronic decay; and as the city flourished twelve hundred years before Christ,—indeed may be said to have been at the zenith of its glory at that period,—it is not surprising that it should be in a tumble-down condition in our day. This very dilapidation, however, renders the river front one of the most picturesque sights imaginable. Being a British possession, there is a European quarter of the town, quite modern in aspect, ornamented with large and fine public structures, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... thought as how you'd been in some break-neck tumble-down country, zur, for Tit's knuckels showed she'd ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... standing before him, framed in the doorway from which streamed the glare from a big reading lamp, the man of mystery—the fellow who had escaped from the tumble-down tenement—the man he and Bailey had pulled ashore on ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... which Spurge indicated. There, lying moored to the wharf, at a point exactly opposite a tumble-down sail-loft, was one of those strongly-built tugs which ply between the fishing fleets and the ports. It was an eminently business-looking craft, rakish for its class, and it bore marks of much recent sea usage. But Copplestone ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... where a stone Triton blew patiently at a conch-shell plugged with turf, she paused and dug at the mortared joints of the basin with the point of her sunshade; and I thought the confidence was coming. But it was by the tumble-down gate at the end of the chestnut avenue that she turned ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... with four seats and the chaise in which I drove) were brought suddenly up to a gate with the Royal arms over it; and here we were introduced to as queer an exhibition as the eye has often looked on. This was the state-carriage house, where there is a museum of huge old tumble-down gilded coaches of the last century, lying here, mouldy and dark, in a sort of limbo. The gold has vanished from the great lumbering old wheels and panels; the velvets are wofully tarnished. When one thinks of the patches and powder that have ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for our admission, that we stepped at once from the small front court into the drawing-room, from which a door opened into a stone kitchen. The rest of the accommodation corresponded with this primitive mode of entrance; the whole place was in what is commonly called a "tumble-down" condition: there was certainly plenty of garden, and two large meadows, but, like the rest of the place, they were sadly out of order. When we said it was not at all the house we had expected to find from reading the advertisement, ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... From Voudrin's tumble-down shanty Sturgeon Lake was nearly a hundred miles southwest. Given rivers and lakes to traverse, McTavish could almost do the distance in a day, for Mistisi, his leader dog, was an animal of tremendous strength and remarkable intelligence. But in this wilderness of rock-strewn ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Grange in the summer of 1849, my husband having discovered the place in one of his rambles, and taken a fancy to it. At first I certainly thought we could never make it our home, it was so dilapidated and tumble-down; but by the time winter came on we had had several repairs done and alterations made, and the ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Hawkinses and their fortunes, and bore them a hundred and thirty miles still higher up the Mississippi, and landed them at a little tumble-down village on the Missouri shore in the twilight of a ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... shows no ability to improve the squalor of her surroundings. She passes her life in a dark, smoke-filled dwelling with broken furniture and a mud floor, together with pigs, chickens and babies enjoying a limited sphere of action under the tables and chairs, or in the tumble-down courtyard without. Her work is actually never done and a Chinese bride, bright and attractive at twenty, will be old and faded ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... horse in the tumble-down stable, the roof was half off, the rafters hanging down, the walls crumbling—an old place. It had been in the family of Jean Baptistine for many years. He was a lone man, no wife, three sons fighting, and his daughter—ah well, she was where no ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... bottle of wine over the head, the earth was loosely thrown in, and the party went away. There is no more melancholy spot to me than a Turkish cemetery. The graves are squeezed tightly together, and the headstones, generally in a tumble-down state, are shaped like a coffin standing on end, or like a round hitching-post with a fez cap carved on the top. Weeds and rank wild-flowers cover the ground, and over all sway the dark, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... a time, there was a poor couple who lived in a tumble-down hut, in which there was nothing but black want, so that they hadn't a morsel to eat, nor a stick to burn. But though they had next to nothing of other things, they had God's blessing in the way of children, and every year they had another babe. Now, when this story begins, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... led me down the village to an old cow-house, in which we found a tumble-down sort of diligence, such as they used to run early in this century, between some of our remote villages. There were three old mules, too, none of which were strong enough to carry a man, but together they might draw the coach. The sight of their gaunt ribs and spavined legs gave me more delight ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The tumble-down, two-roomed house in which the Warrens lived was across the road from the schoolhouse, and Mrs. Warren's voice was penetrating. Lem was accepted throughout his school-life at the home estimate. The ugly, overgrown boy, clad in cast-off, misfit clothing was allowed to play with ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... because my father remembers you have promised him buck and boar and moufflon—is that the right name for those strange creatures? We intend to crave your hospitality on our way to Bastia, where we are to embark, and I trust the della Rebbia Castle, which you declare is so old and tumble-down, will not fall in upon our heads! Though the prefect is so pleasant that subjects of conversation are never lacking to us—I flatter myself, by the way, that I have turned his head—we have been talking about your worshipful self. The legal people at Bastia have ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... old Flanders, the home of so much romance, the scene of so many stirring deeds, from the market-places with the narrow gables heaped up in piles around them, from the belfries soaring to the sky, from the winding streets and the narrow lanes, in which the houses almost touch each other from the tumble-down old hostelries, from the solemn aisles where the candles glimmer and the dim red light glows before the altar, from the land of Bras-de-Fer, and Thierry d'Alsace, and Memlinc, and Van Eyck, and Rubens, the land which was at once the Temple and the Golgotha of Europe, into the clear, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... lived an old man and his wife in a dirty, tumble-down cottage, not very far from the splendid palace where the king and queen dwelt. In spite of the wretched state of the hut, which many people declared was too bad even for a pig to live in, the old man was very rich, for he was a great miser, and lucky besides, and would often ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... de), father and mother of Octave de Bauvan. Relics of the old Court, living in a tumble-down house on the rue Payenne at Paris, where they died, about 1815, within a few months of each other, and before the conjugal infelicity of their son. (See Octave de Bauvan.) Probably related to ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... place, but it was precisely because she was not in the place where she belonged that she felt she could not. She had learned that the little garden was reserved for the boarders and that the factory hands were not privileged to sit there. She could not see any seats near the old tumble-down house where she was to lodge, so she left the table and sauntered down the ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... took refuge from the fire of their enemies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenic squalor and gypsy luxury of color: sag-roofed barns and stables, and weak-backed, sunken-chested workshops of every sort lounge along in tumble-down succession, and lean up against the cliff in every imaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepitude; light wooden galleries cross to them from the second stories of the houses which back upon the alley; and over these galleries flutters, from a labyrinth of clothes-lines, ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... present life a defence and a strength. Like some poor lunatic, out upon a moor, that fancies himself ensconced in a castle; like some barbarous tribes behind their stockades or crowding at the back of a little turf wall, or in some old tumble-down fort that the first shot will bring rattling down about their ears, fancying themselves perfectly secure and defended—so do men deal with these outward things that are given them for another purpose altogether: they make ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... on the outskirts of the village, in an old tumble-down shanty of his own, lived a poor Jew with a lot of half-starved, forlorn-looking children, and a half-crazed, careworn, hard-working wife. The husband and father had been laid up with consumption for the last few months, and ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... not stray far from a certain corner of Farmer Green's wood lot. He preferred to hunt where he knew the lay of the land. And since he liked especially to hunt along old stone walls, he picked out a long stretch of old tumble-down wall that reached through ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... in the native town by Europeans. The buildings on either side are very irregular, and of various descriptions; some consist of ranges of small shops, with a story above in a very dilapidated and tumble-down condition. Then comes a row of large mansions of three floors, which look very much like the toy baby-houses constructed for children in England, the windows being so close together, and the interiors so public; others intervene, larger, more solid, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... Such a tumble-down shanty as that. It was not fit for decent people to live in, and mercy knew she was glad her sojourn there was to ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... symbol, the big enamelled tin teapot. At the NW. corner is the door to the scullery and to the small walled-in garden which contains—in order of importance—flotsam and jetsam for firewood, old masts, spars and rudders, and some weedy, grub-eaten vegetables. At the top of the garden is a tumble-down cat-haunted linhay, crammed to its leaky roof with fishing gear. No doubt it is the presence everywhere of boat and fishing gear which gives such a singular unity to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... very far removed from the haunts of men. The pool was said in the neighbourhood to be exceedingly deep, and the dark still water looked mysterious enough to be so; but then this is said of every pond or lake of romantic appearance in all parts of the country, just as every tumble-down ruin or gloomy deserted house is sure to have the name of ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... animals—in an appallingly filthy condition, in two miserable, tumble-down sheds, open on all sides, and not more than 8 ft. high. They were reduced to that condition by intermarriage among themselves; brothers with sisters—a most frequent occurrence among the "civilized" of Central Brazil—and even fathers ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... child. "Can't you see it for yourself? I—I am a mere guttersnipe compared to the de Vignes. They live in a great house with lots of servants and cars. They never do a thing for themselves. I don't suppose Rose could do her hair to save her life. While we—we live in a tumble-down, ramshackle old place, and do all the work ourselves. I've never been away from home in my life before. You see, we're poor, and Billy's schooling takes up a lot of money. I had to leave school when he first went ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... crowd and silently wended our way through a neighboring alley, at the head of which stood a tumble-down old barn, owned by one Ezra Wingate. In former days this was the stable of the mail-coach that ran between Rivermouth and Boston. When the railroad superseded that primitive mode of travel, the lumbering vehicle was rolled in the barn, and there it stayed. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the look he had read in her eyes, he paused again, yet followed doggedly nevertheless. She led him down Holborn Hill past the Fleet Market, over Blackfriars Bridge, and so, turning sharp to the right, along a somewhat narrow and very grimy street between rows of dirty, tumble-down houses, with, upon the right hand, numerous narrow courts and alley-ways that gave upon the turgid river. Down one of these alleys the fluttering cloak turned suddenly, yet when Barnabas reached the corner, behold the alley was quite deserted, save for a small and pallid ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... for spite and anger, bestowed every one a parting pinch on their tumble-down old bondsman; then they handed him to his son, and swung back with careless ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... sensitive fellow, as I am by nature, to have to bear the sort of assumption and insolence one meets with. I furnished my rooms well, and dressed well. Ah! you stare; but this is not the furniture I started with; I sold it all when I came to my senses, and put in this tumble-down second-hand stuff, and I have worn out my fine clothes. I know I'm not well dressed now. (Tom nodded ready acquiescence to this position.) Yes, though I still wince a little now and then—a great deal oftener than I like—I don't carry any false colors. I can't quite ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... its Banbury cakes and tumble-down station is passed. Hurrah for the "Flying Dutchman," running easily and smoothly, sixty miles an hour, well within himself. He is not tired, he does not pant or whistle, he goes calmly, swiftly along.... Here is Swindon—what o'clock is it? Look! Twelve minutes past one! "Crimea" is ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... entirely too tumble-down to use,' said one of the men, sadly; and I knew he was right, for I had examined ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... much in that cosy mountain village: the children capered by his side all day; he smelt the woods and flowers; he heard the leaves rustle on the poplar's crest; and had merely to think of a certain room in the tumble-down old Citadelle for a wave of courage and high anticipation to sweep over him like a sea. A new feeling of harmony was taking him in hand. It was very delightful; and though he felt explanation beyond his reach still, his talks with Minks provided peep-holes through ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... selected was one called Dotheboys Hall, a long, cold-looking, tumble-down building, one story high, in a dreary part of the country. It belonged to a man named Squeers, a burly, ruffianly hypocrite, who pretended to the world to be a kind, fatherly master, but in fact treated his pupils with ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE, at Tuskegee, Alabama, is one of the most uniquely interesting institutions in America. Begun, twenty years ago, in two abandoned, tumble-down houses, with thirty untaught Negro men and women for its first students, it has become one of the famous schools of the country, with more than a thousand students each year. Students and teachers are all of the Negro race. The Principal of the school, Mr. Booker T. Washington, is the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... two companions thoroughly explored the shore as far as they went on the lower part of the lake. From time to time Prescott consulted his watch. In all the time that they were out they passed only one building, a tumble-down, weather-beaten shack that looked as though it had not been inhabited in twenty years. Not even a vestige ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... in a little, dirty, tumble-down public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants, being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford, attracted so many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was one of the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... don't know, any more than you do. The first time I saw him, was in an old tumble-down building, where the wind played hide and go seek through the timbers; and where more men, women, dogs and children were huddled together, than four walls of the ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... fixtures, with the stock of ales and spirits, of a small inn in the center of a lonely little village, perched on the summit of a hill, and called Mount Stanning. It was not a very pretty house to look at; it had something of a tumble-down, weather-beaten appearance, standing, as it did, upon high ground, sheltered only by four or five bare and overgrown poplars, that had shot up too rapidly for their strength, and had a blighted, forlorn look in consequence. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... have been renovating my father's large workroom. That delightful, tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and the green weather-stains we have known all our lives on the high whitewashed wall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's yard, for the coolness, in summertime. Among ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... hill-side, where once had been a lumberman's station and hay-farm. It was abandoned now, and lonely in that deeper sense in which widowhood is lonelier than celibacy, a home deserted lonelier than a desert. Tumble-down was the never-painted house; ditto its three barns. But, besides a camp, there were two things to be had here,—one certain, one possible, probable even. The view, that was an inevitable certainty; Iglesias would bag that as his share of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... brought up heathens, and all who come to grief by ill-usage or ignorance or neglect; all the little children who are overlaid, or given gin when they are young, or are let to drink out of hot kettles, or to fall into the fire; all the little children in alleys and courts, and tumble-down cottages, who die by fever, and cholera, and measles, and scarlatina, and nasty complaints which no one has any business to have, and which no one will have some day, when folks have common sense; and all the little children who have been killed ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... it, lad!" I exclaimed in some excitement. "Your master's life hangs upon your speed—hold, wait! do you remember that old tumble-down shed we passed on our way here; the one which had once been ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... her taste,' said Lady Merrifield, 'I congratulate those to whom a compound tumble-down-stairs ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... song in her heart never ceased. Day by day a fresh note was added; everything she touched; everything she saw was transformed. The old tumble-down house with its propped-up furniture and makeshift carpets seemed to have become already the place she planned it to be. There would be vines over the door and a new summer kitchen at the back'; and there would be a porch where her mother could sit, ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... is not made a place of residence by foreigners like Florence, and that it has no commercial activity to enhance the cost of living. Househunting, under these circumstances, becomes an office of constant surprise and disconcertment to the stranger. You look, for example, at a suite of rooms in a tumble-down old palace, where the walls, shamelessly smarted up with coarse paper, crumble at your touch; where the floor rises and falls like the sea, and the door-frames and window-cases have long lost all recollection of the plumb. Madama la Baronessa is at present occupying these pleasant apartments, and ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... night, contrary to my own wish, in Leven, Fife; and this morning I had a conversation of which, I think, some account might interest you. I was up with a cousin who was fishing in a mill-lade, and a shower of rain drove me for shelter into a tumble-down steading attached to the mill. There I found a labourer cleaning a byre, with whom I fell into talk. The man was to all appearance as heavy, as hebete, as any English clodhopper; but I knew I was in Scotland, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I think he took his little place here, because it would be so painful for him to receive any friends at that tumble-down castle. He has not yet been able ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old gray rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... wander hopelessly amongst tangled undergrowths and into swampy depressions. This track presently crossed a larger clearing, where was a hut set up by charcoal burners long ago. Time had cracked and warped its planks, but pieces had been nailed across weak places, giving the hut a botched and tumble-down appearance but keeping it weather-tight. The hut was divided into a shed for tools and storage, or perhaps for stabling a horse upon occasion, and a larger chamber which served as a dwelling. From a hole in the roof of this part a thin wreath of smoke ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... housekeeping and family government. It consisted of never spending any money. He bought no machines. The reaping machine was the one exception, and a bitter point with the old man. He entered on no extensive draining works, nor worried his landlord to begin them. He was content with the tumble-down sheds till it was possible to shelter cattle in them no longer. Sometimes he was compelled to purchase a small quantity of artificial manure, but it was with extreme reluctance. He calculated to produce sufficient manure in the stalls, for he ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of Paragot was not a palace. It stood, low and whitewashed, amid a medley of little tumble-down erections, and was guarded on one side by cowsheds and on the other by the haystack. You stepped across the threshold into the kitchen. A door on the right gave access to the bedroom. A ladder connected with a hole in the roof enabled you to reach the cockloft, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the oldest in it. I cannot say that the first impression produced by the wharf at which we landed, or the streets we drove through in reaching our hotel, was particularly lively. Rickety, dark, dirty, tumble-down streets and warehouses, with every now and then a mansion of loftier pretensions, but equally neglected and ruinous in its appearance, would probably not have been objects of special admiration to many people on this side the water; but I belong to that infirm, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Necessidades Palace, and the Estrella, whose dome and domelets, built to mimic St. Peter's, look only like hen and chickens. Then in due time came the Carmo Church, still unrepaired since 1755; Blackhorse Square, still bare of trees; the Government offices, still propped to prevent a tumble-down, and the old Custom House, still a bilious yellow; the vast barrack-like pile of S. Vicente, the historic Se or cathedral with dumpy towers; the black Castle of Sao Jorge, so hardly wrung from the gallant Moors, and the huge Santa Engracia, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... they perceived, close to the road, a dim light shining from a single point in a huddled group of buildings. The wagon turned into a corral, close to a tumble-down shanty, and as Rankin rode up to the opening the children were just disappearing in at the door, while the woman slowly and painfully climbed down over the wheel. Rumpety stood by, jeering at ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... me, Hester!" replied her brother. "How you could see anything pathetic, or pitiful as you call it, in that disreputable old humbug, I can't even imagine. A more ludicrous specimen of tumble-down humanity it would be impossible to find! A drunken old thief—I'll lay you any thing! Catch me leaving a sov where he could ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Every college contained some of them, but their head-quarters were at Caius, whither they were attracted by Mr. Clayton, who was at that time senior tutor, and among the sizars of St. John's. Behind the then chapel of this last-named college was a 'labyrinth' (this was the name it bore) of dingy, tumble-down rooms," and here dwelt many Simeonites, "unprepossessing in feature, gait, and manners, unkempt and ill-dressed beyond what can be easily described. Destined most of them for the Church, the Simeonites ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... sure I should like England better," declared Mary positively. "London is much finer than New York, which is very ugly, I think, and our dear little villages are so pretty. I never saw such queer tumble-down places as you have here in the country. I think our hedge-rows and lanes are ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... girls cannot bake. Every day they furnish us with real homemade crullers and pies at a small cost, and their coffee, holy smoke! it makes me homesick to even write about it. The girls have their headquarters in an old tumble-down building and they must have some nerve, for the Boche keeps dropping shells all around them day and night, and it would only take one of those shells to blow the whole outfit ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... at Lorenzo Marquez. Through the kindness of one of his native or half-breed wives, who could talk a little Dutch, I managed, however, to get a lodging in a tumble-down house belonging to a dissolute person who called himself Don Jose Ximenes, but who was really himself a half-breed. Here good fortune befriended me. Don Jose, when sober, was a trader with the natives, and a year before had acquired from them two good buck wagons. Probably they were ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... little party felt enterprising, there lay beyond, the park, its slopes covered with wild strawberries, and with woods where they could gather flowers unchecked. Further, there was no going, except on alternate Sundays, when there was service in the tumble-down Church at the park gate. It was in far worse condition than the Church at home, and was served by a poor forlorn-looking curate, who lived at Brentford, and divided his services between four parishes, each of which was content to put up with a fortnightly alternate morning ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... words were like a whipstroke that made Lepailleur rear. And once again he poured forth all his spite. Ah! surely now, it wasn't his tumble-down old mill that would ever enrich him, since it had enriched neither his father nor his grandfather. And as for his fields, well, that was a pretty dowry that his wife had brought him, land in which nothing more would grow, and which, however much one might water it with ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... expressions they had been going upon the wrong tack. The card for them to play was 'the poor.' But here a serious difficulty arose. There was only one poor person in the whole parish, a cantankerous old fellow who lived in a tumble-down cottage at the back of the church, and fifteen able-bodied women (eleven girls, three old maids, and a widow) wanted to ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... Winchester, I had three more years of school before me, having as yet endured nine. My father at this time having left my mother and sisters with my younger brother in America, took himself to live at a wretched tumble-down farmhouse on the second farm he had hired! And I was taken there with him. It was nearly three miles from Harrow, at Harrow Weald, but in the parish; and from this house I was again sent to that school as a day-boarder. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... around and see the various changes that have taken place in this "good old town" I am sometimes lost in wonderment. Narrow, inconvenient, ill-paved streets have been succeeded by broad thoroughfares—old tumble-down houses have been replaced by handsome and costly buildings, while the poor little humble shops that once were sufficient for our wants have been completely eclipsed by the gigantic and elegant "establishments" of the ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... eyes he dragged his weary, aching feet as quickly as he could towards the spot, and soon came to a miserable-looking little cottage. As he drew near he saw that it was in a tumble-down condition, the bamboo fence was broken and weeds and grass pushed their way through the gaps. The paper screens which serve as windows and doors in Japan were full of holes, and the posts of the house were bent with age and seemed scarcely able to support ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... light burning upstairs in the "Herald" office. From the street a broad, tumble-down stairway ran up on the outside of the building to the second floor, and at the stairway railing John turned and shook his ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... and spent the night with them. We had smashed the bottom plate of one of the cars, so that all the oil ran out of the crank-case, but with a side of the ever-useful kerosene tin we patched the car up temporarily and pushed off at early dawn. Our route wound through groves of palms surrounding the tumble-down tomb of some holy man, occasional collections of squalid little huts, and in the intervening "despoblado" we would catch sight of a jackal crouching in the hollow or slinking off through the scrub. Deli Abbas proved a half-deserted straggling ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... three times on a door of a tumble-down shack. Cautiously it was opened a few inches. There was ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... stead a gallant recorder, called Hypocrisy, that is somewhat like Sincerity in form, but of much greater compass, and combines the whole gamut. Come, be ruled—be a disciple of Simon Canter for the evening, and we will leave the old tumble-down castle of the knight aforesaid, on the left hand, for a new brick-built mansion, erected by an eminent salt-boiler from Namptwich, who expects the said Simon to make a strong spiritual pickle for the preservation of a soul ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... proprietor of the resort into which I had determined to penetrate. Also, from my early youth I had heard Jacob Ensley and the Last Chance spoken of in tones of dread disapproval. Before I should become really frightened I hurried down the hill, past the squalid and tumble-down mill cottages which I had never really seen before, where it seemed to me millions of children swarmed in and around and about, and at last arrived at the infamous social ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cleared tract of land, where a pleasant greenness of young potato vines hid the sand. In the centre was a tumble-down cabin, with a mud chimney on the outside. The one window had no sash, and its rude shutter hung precariously by a single leathern hinge. The door was open, revealing that the interior was papered with newspapers. Three or four yelping ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... lamented remains. The monument and vault in the church were then, alas! all that remained of my vast possessions; for my father had sold every stick of the property to one Notley, an attorney, and we received but a cold welcome in his house—a miserable old tumble-down place it was. [Footnote: In another part of his memoir Mr. Barry will be found to describe this mansion as one of the most splendid palaces in Europe; but this is a practice not unusual with his nation; and with respect to the Irish principality claimed by him, it is known that Mr. Barry's grandfather ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old French portion of the town, the thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque: being built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows, approachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street. There are queer little barbers' shops and drinking- houses too, in this quarter; and abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking casements, such as may be seen in ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... I saw before me a dreary church. It was old, tumble-down, and dirty—not in the least venerable—very ugly—a huge building without shape, like most of our churches. I shrank from the look of it: it was more horrible to me than I could account for; I feared it. But I ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... the greedy capitalists who are battening on the sorrows of the poor." He was almost conscious of a feeling of guilt as he recalled the fresh, pure air of the park and contrasted it with this atmosphere. The name of Berry Hill seemed curiously inappropriate for the level streets lined with tumble-down tenements; and its suggestion of the long-ago days when vine-clad uplands swelled between the narrowing rivers, and little children steeped their fingers in nothing more harmful than the blood of berries, lent an added pathos to the gloom of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the whole building was rotting and crumbling away from top to bottom, with its smudgy claret-colored paint, quite moldy. The stationer's and the tobacconist's were still there. In the rear, over some low buildings, you could see the leprous facades of several five-storied houses rearing their tumble-down outlines against the sky. The "Grand Balcony" dancing hall no longer existed; some sugar-cutting works, which hissed continually, had been installed in the hall with the ten flaming windows. And yet it was here, in this dirty den—the Hotel Boncoeur—that the whole cursed life had commenced. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... instead for a walk to Beggar's Stile. We climbed up the steep carriage-drive to the lodge, passed through the big iron gates, turned sharply to the left, and went down the road which the park palings border and the elms behind them shade, past the little copse beyond the park, till we came to a tumble-down gate with a stile beside it in the hedgerow; and this was Beggar's Stile. It was just on the brow of the little hill which sloped gradually downward to the village beneath, and commanded a wide view of the broad shallow valley and of the ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... the water was fresh, a bright yellow as far as the salt tide had prevailed. Between where they stood and the distressed waters of the bay was a stretch of yellow sand. A little to their right was a dismantled, tumble-down cottage, which served to emphasise the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... rattle of a tinny piano, the squeak of a raspy violin, a high-pitched, hectic burst of laughter; while, flanking the street on each side, like interjected inanimate blotches, rows of squalid tenements and cheap, tumble-down frame houses silhouetted themselves in broken, jagged points against the sky-line. And now and then a man spoke to her—his untrained fingers fumbling in clumsy homage at the brim ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... a warm, dark evening in late May, with the frogs piping their sweet, high note, and the first of the fireflies wheeling over the wet meadows near the tumble-down house where 'Lias lived. The girls took turns in carrying the big paper-wrapped bundle, and stole along in the shadow of the trees, full of excitement, looking over their shoulders at nothing and pressing their hands over their mouths to keep back the giggles. There was, ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... my ambition. The privations that I endured, the life I led, I will not recount to you. I performed the most menial service, and worked months like a beast of burden. For want of a shelter, I slept in deserted yards and tumble-down houses. Upon a piece of bread and a drink of water I lived, saving, with miserly greediness, the money which I earned as messenger or day-laborer. At the end of a year, I had earned sufficient to buy an ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... one that fust sot the thing a goin' was old Mother Hokum, that used to live up in that little tumble-down shed by the cranberry-pond up beyond the spring pastur'. They had a putty bad name, them Hokums. How they got a livin' nobody knew; for they didn't seem to pay no attention to raisin' nothin' but childun, but the duce ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... No. 27 Washington street. This building is also owned by 'Butcher Burke,' and is one of the most filthy and horrible places in the city. We passed under an old tumble-down doorway that seemed to have no earthly excuse for standing there, and into a dismal, dark entry, with a zig-zag wall covered with a leprous slime, our conductor crying out all the time: 'Steady, gentlemen, steady, keep to your left; place is full ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... his siesta when we arrived, and we had to walk up and down in the sun, in front of his dwelling, a miserable tumble-down cottage, for two hours, before any one ventured to arouse him. At length we were admitted into his presence. We found him sitting in a room without a matting; a few chairs and benches forming its only furniture. He was rubbing his eyes as we entered, as if not yet awake, and in a sleepy tone ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... at the memory of the fact that things were now reversed; that he was following Squint Rodaine as Rodaine once had followed him. Swiftly he moved, closer—closer; the scar-faced man went through the tumble-down gate and approached the house, not knowing that his pursuer was less than ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... degraded into dinginess, and the faded, patched chintz sofa, that was not only comfortable, but respectable, in the old wainscoted sitting-room, has suddenly turned into "an object," when lang syne goes by the board and the heirloom is incontinently set adrift. Undertake to move from this tumble-down old house, strewn thick with the dbris of many generations, into a tumble-up, peaky, perky, plastery, shingly, stary new one, that is not half finished, and never will be, and good enough for it, and you will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... couldn't, or wouldn't, tell his new neighbours what had brought him along. But he bided a bit with Mrs. Ford, the policeman's wife, as a lodger, and then, when he'd sized up the place and found it suited him, he took a tumble-down, four-room cottage at the back-side of the village and worked upon it himself and soon had the place to his liking. A most handy little man he was and could turn his skill in many directions. And ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... last bridge, a village of 800 people, on a narrow ledge between an abrupt hill and the Hirakawa, a most forlorn and tumble-down place, given up to felling timber and making shingles; and timber in all its forms—logs, planks, faggots, and shingles—is heaped and stalked about. It looks more like a lumberer's encampment than a permanent village, but it is beautifully ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... constant boom-boom of the guns like a continuous thunderstorm. We began to feel fearfully hungry, and stopped beside a high bank flanking a canal and not far from a small cafe. Bunny and I went to get some hot water. It was a tumble-down place enough, and as we pushed the door open (on which, by the way, was the notice in French, "During the bombardment one enters by the side door") we found the room full of men drinking coffee and smoking. I bashfully made my way towards one of ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... made their very tumble-down barn a perfect model of neatness. They sleep within about 3 yards of the horses' heels. Hunt in particular never likes to be far away from "my 'osses," as he calls them. I have less and less say in the matter of the 'osses as time goes on! I merely say: "Hunt, I want a horse and an orderly ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... nothing but rubbish, and were surround by dogs and half-naked, dark-brown gutter-boys. There is a circular garden in the centre of the European part, with faded flowers, and a kiosk for the band to play in. The most picturesque and the dirtiest part is the Arab town, with its tumble-down houses and bazar. The people wear gaudy prints and dirty mantles bespangled with gold. There were a great many low-class music-halls and gambling- and dancing-saloons. Port Said is in fact a sort of Egyptian Wapping, and I am told the less one knows ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... in mournful procession until we came to a small waterside tavern, whose inmates my uncle peremptorily awakened, and soon had forth a gruff, sleepy fellow to show the way and unlock a tumble-down outhouse, into which they bore their silent burden, followed ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... others far behind. "We really ought to wait for the girls," said Nyoda, coming to a halt when she discovered that they were so far in the lead, and seating herself on a stone fence she helped herself to the blackberries which grew against it, and held out a handful to Sahwah. Opposite them was an old, tumble-down house, weatherbeaten and bare of paint, its empty window sashes gaping like eyeless sockets. The girls had named it the "Haunted House," and wove many a tale of mystery about it. Beside it was an apple orchard, its trees dying of old age, and under one of them was a grave with a headstone. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... felt. She hung over him, and sprinkled him with Eau-de-Cologne; then as his hair teased him by falling into his eyes, he asked her to cut the front lock off. There was something sad in doing this, for that 'tumble-down wave,' as Charlotte called it, was rather a favourite of Amy's; it always seemed to have so much sympathy with his moods, and it was as if parting with it was resigning him to a long illness. However, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the mossy walk between the box-hedges, the hum of bees and the scent of roses filling the air, and the sweet monotonous murmur of the sea on the shingly beach in our ears! For, mounting still higher by terraces and another flight of steps through a tumble-down gateway, you came upon the open cliffs; and the long blue line of the sea and the fresh sea-breeze greeted you with a thousand thoughts of home. For England lay beyond ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... side of the fence, an old and long neglected apple orchard, a tumble-down log barn, and the wreck of a house with the fireplace and chimney standing stark and alone, told the story. The place was one of those old ranches, purchased by the Power Company for the water rights, and deserted by those who once had called it home. From the gate, ancient wagon tracks, overgrown ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... high fragment of brick wall topped by a marble ball or two—which had been shot at for marks—and passing, just beyond, some huge clumps of box, they came to a square brick building with a rude wooden addition at one side, and saw some tumble-down sheds a short distance beyond ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... in the mountains of western North Carolina, far up on the mountainside, at the head of a cove, there lived a fifteen-year-old boy. He had sisters and brothers and parents, but they dwelt in a little tumble-down shack and were wretchedly poor. Jake was the oldest of the children, and he had to work hard in the little patch of corn on the steep mountainside, which barely ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... most striking feature of antiquity met thus far on our journey were curious stone terraces built across the small gullies. They are called trincheras (trenches). Some of them do not appear to be very old, and many present the appearance of tumble-down walls, but the stones of which they are constructed were plainly used in their natural state. Although many of the boulders are huge and irregular in shape, they were used just as they were found. The building material always conformed to the surroundings: in places where conglomerate containing ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... creaked open with a noise that must have sounded throughout the empty house. I recollected then that it was impossible to keep it shut without locking it. The landlord had long ago ceased to concern himself with his tumble-down property. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... ruffian including me in his salute. I do not appreciate the Montenegrin custom of kissing among men; it is not pleasant. An empty hut was immediately put at our disposal. It was the most primitive and tumble-down habitation that we had had as yet. Of course it rained. It was almost the first rain on the trip, and we had to lie up here a whole day as P. was unwell and unable to ride. Everyone turned out to make the hut comfortable, but it was ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... tumble-down house jest outside of Jonesville. The father wuz, I couldn't deny, a shiftless sort of a chap, good-natured, always ready to obleege a neighbor, but he hadn'nt no faculty. And I don't know, come to think of it, as anybody is any more to blame if they are born without a faculty, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... that temple," Pei Ming explained, "really faces south, and is all in a tumble-down condition. I searched and searched till I was driven to utter despair. As soon, however, as I caught sight of it, 'that's right,' I shouted, and promptly walked in. But I at once discovered a clay figure, which gave ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... explore the house, and spent some time in doing so as noiselessly as possible. The house was very old and tumble-down, damp so that the paper in the attics was peeling from the walls, and rat infested. Some of the door handles were stiff and I was afraid to turn them. Several rooms I did inspect were unfurnished, and others were littered with ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... tardy realization that the journey was more painful to the dog than to himself gave Link a fresh grip on his determination. And at last,—a long and tiring last,—they reached the tumble-down farmhouse where Link Ferris ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... quainter of the two, and commands, moreover, a noble view. As it stands at the turn of the bay, its skirts are all waterside, and round from North Reach to the Bay Front you can follow doubtful paths from one quaint corner to another. Everywhere the same tumble-down decay and sloppy progress, new things yet unmade, old things tottering to their fall; everywhere the same out-at-elbows, many-nationed loungers at dim, irregular grog-shops; everywhere the same sea-air and isleted sea-prospect; and for a last and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... something that is worth more than Edith's farm, tumble-down cottage, roses, and all. So remember that those lips were made to kiss, not to ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... lamp. A tumble-down couch stood against the wall, and in an opposite corner a heap of tattered quilts had been flung disdainfully. Tables and chairs and even the floor were piled with papers and cheaply covered books ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Uncle Cradd heard of the smash from that horrible phosphate deal he was at the door the next morning at sun-up, driving the two gray mules to one wagon himself, with old Rufus driving the gray horses hitched to that queer tumble-down, old family coach, though he hadn't spoken to father since he ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... had any spending money. Todd might have by and by when school was out, and he began selling fly-paper again, as he had done the summer before; but it was understood in the tumble-down little cottage that Todd called home that every penny thus earned was to be saved toward the purchase of a ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... course of study at Clinton, N. Y. Miss Barton's remarkable executive ability was manifested in the fact that she popularized the Public School System in New Jersey, by opening the first free school in Bordentown, commencing with six pupils, in an old tumble-down building, and at the close of the year, leaving six hundred in the fine edifice ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in no respect a home. And he goes out of doors, not to read the day's newspaper, or to buy the gay shilling volume, but to imbibe the invisible atmosphere of genius, and to learn by heart the oral traditions of taste. Out he goes; and, leaving the tumble-down town behind him, he mounts the Acropolis to the right, or he turns to the Areopagus on the left. He goes to the Parthenon to study the sculptures of Phidias; to the temple of the Dioscuri to see the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed take our Sophocles or Aeschylus ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... About fifteen years ago his property was sold in lots, and the people bought all the farms. You never saw such a stir in the world.' He pointed out the houses on the hill-side which had been built to replace old tumble-down tenements, the red soil appearing under the plough, and cultivation going on with such general activity as had not been witnessed till within these last few years. The appearance of these villages ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... improvements. There were no hydraulic presses in those days for the baling of jute, and the work had to be done by hand screws worked from the upper floor, on the same principle as the capstan of a sailing vessel, by gangs of coolies in old, tumble-down and dilapidated godowns. The jute was compressed into bales weighing 300 lbs. only, and it was not until the advent of the hydraulic presses in the seventies that bales containing first of all 350 and later 400 ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... Just got here only a few minutes ago," said he, laying off his overcoat. "But upon my word!" he added, surveying me from head to foot, "I didn't expect to find such a big, strapping fellow as you are. Your surroundings are quite as I had supposed they would be. Cramped quarters in a miserable tumble-down back street! I suppose your guardian provided ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... eyes, the garden appeared almost as well planted as her own, and from the chimney of the tumble-down cabin a lazy curl of smoke rose. Under the dark pine clump the outlines of a narrow mound could be plainly seen, and beside it lay a spade and a ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... ward, just beyond the locality written about, was another terrible rendezvous for an equally desperate set of men. It was known as Slaughter-house Point, and a criminal here was, for a time, safe from the police, as its many intricate streets and tumble-down houses offered a safe hiding-place for every kind of outlaw, even up to very recent years. Here the terrible garroter dwelt for a long time; aye, and throve, too, until our criminal judges began sentencing every one of them convicted before them ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... best substitute for such rambles as one can take through these mouldy boroughs (or burrows) is to be found in such towns as Salem, Newburyport, Portsmouth. Without imagination, Shakespeare's birthplace is but a queer old house, and Anne Hathaway's home a tumble-down cottage. With it, one can see the witches of Salem Village sailing out of those little square windows, which look as if they were made on purpose for them, or stroll down to Derby's wharf and gaze at "Cleopatra's Barge," precursor of the yachts of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rarely or never accept what is really the first demonstration and exemplification of a new departure in scientific knowledge. Such is the timidity of the human mind—such its conservative attachment to the known thing and to the old method as against the new—that it prefers to stay in the tumble-down ruin of bygone opinions and practices, rather than go up and inhabit the splendid but ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... Court and three times the height. We did all sorts of other things. We stopped at wild mountain gorges alive with the rustle of water and aglow with wild-flowers. We went on foot through one-streeted, tumble-down villages and passed the time of day with the kindly inhabitants. And the August sun shone ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... while the clatter of his mother's housework came from the kitchen. He didn't wish he was back there, but it was pleasant to think of it now and then, and how the yellow farmhouse looked and the red barn where his father never had been able to find time to paint the door, and the tumble-down cowshed where the shingles were always coming off. He wondered dully what it would be like out there at the front. It couldn't be green and pleasant, the way the country was here. Fellows always ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... gladly undertaken the job, as soon as the night set in made his preparations, and went to the place indicated—an uncanny-looking, tumble-down, lonely old shrine, all overgrown with moss and rank vegetation. However, Jiuyemon, who was afraid of nothing, cared little for the appearance of the place, and having made himself as comfortable as he could in so dreary a spot, sat down ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... signs of occupation are visible, for some water. This place is simply a deserted Mussulman village, from which the inhabitants probably decamped in a body during the last Russo-Turkish war; the mosque is in a tumble-down condition, the few dwelling-houses remaining are in the last stages of dilapidation, and the one I call at is temporarily occupied by some shepherds, two of whom are regaling themselves with food of some kind out ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... my dear Mr. Cole," were his last words to me. "My own place is as ancient and as tumble-down as most ruins that you pay to see over. And I'm never there myself because—I tell you frankly—I hate it ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... gloomy neighborhood in which his childhood had been spent it was to learn that his mother was dead and that another family occupied the tumble-down cottage that ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Mr. McMaster he was making the usual round previous to the opening of the school, beating up unreliable scholars, and had entered a damp, noisome alley, lined on either side with tumble-down apologies for houses. Mr. McMaster took one side and Bert the other, and they proceeded to visit the different dwellers in this horrible place. Bert had knocked at several doors without getting any response, for the people were apt to lie in bed late ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... gave birth to a new race of peasant owners, who were frugal, industrious, thrifty, and assiduous in the cultivation and improvement of the soil. In a few years the face of the country was transformed. A new life and energy were springing into being. The old tumble-down farm-houses and out-offices began to be replaced by substantial, comfortable, and commodious buildings. Personal indebtedness became almost a thing of the past, and the gombeen man—one of Ireland's national curses—was fast fading out ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... melancholy tone, which had something of inexpressible sadness in it. "Why, Jenny!" said she, rousing herself, but not before her eyes were swimming with tears, "own, now, that you never saw those dismal, hateful, tumble-down old houses there look half so—what shall I call them? almost beautiful—as they do now, with that soft, pure, exquisite covering; and if they are so improved, think of what trees, and grass, and ivy must be on such ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
