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More "Dingy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... farthys in the yaler spelin buk on the sheluff nere the side windy levin all my property to my saley Tryphena. I wud of kist u of i had dard beefor I leff wen I am more prospuz i wil dar of I get slaped for it The capen has fyred the blungeybush and i must go ashore with the dingy and get the tavun boy to get ma a ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... her feet, fast asleep. The child refused to go to bed till 'Uncle Rowland' came back. There was a bright fire in the grate, and a supper was spread on a table drawn close to it. Candles replaced the gas-lamp, and the room looked almost cheerful, in spite of its faded red curtains and dingy furniture. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... consists only of a loin-cloth, another cloth thrown over the shoulders and upper part of the body, which except for this is often bare, and a third rough cloth wound loosely round the head. All these, originally white, soon assume a very dingy hue. There is thus no colour in a man's everyday attire, but the gala dress for holidays consists of a red pagri or turban, a black, coloured or white coat, and a white loin-cloth with red silk borders if he can afford it. The Kunbi is seldom or never seen with his head bare; this ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... find there I hardly know. What I did find was a large chamber, as dingy as the rest of the house, and as much in need of refreshing, with a long table down the middle, at which some twenty persons sat eating, with the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... panes rattled again under another shower of gravel. Sweeny shook his wife into consciousness. He bade her get up and see who was in the back-yard. Mrs. Sweeny, a lean harassed woman with grey hair, fastened a dingy pink nightdress round her throat with a pin and obeyed ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... boy, I see them!" continued Hawkeye; "they are gathering for the rush, or they would keep their dingy backs below the logs. Well, let them," he added, examining his flint; "the leading man certainly comes on to his death, though it should ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... that whereon his eyes were fastened,—fastened beyond the possibility of withdrawal. How glossy black was that hair with its diadem of white roses! How miserably poor appeared the hues of the carnations and the pinks that formed her necklace, when in contrast with her flushing cheeks! How dingy were the lilies at her waist, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... she coughed a good deal as she worked. Then there was another move, and this time Mrs. Forest and her little daughter found themselves in one bedroom, and things began to grow very gloomy, and food even was scarce. At last there was a change. One day a lady came into the dingy little room, and all on a sudden it seemed as if the sun had come out again. This lady brought comforts with her—toys and books for the child, good, brave words of cheer for the mother. At last Annie's mother died, and she went away to Lavender House to live ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... dingy straw hat a white bandage was drawn tight around his head—so tight that from its under edge the coarse black hair bristled out in a distinct fringe. The blow of the wrench, then, must have cut through ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... little handbill announcing the sale of his father-in-law's furniture. He noted its date, which came and passed without Jude's going near the place, or perceiving that the traffic out of Alfredston by the southern road was materially increased by the auction. A few days later he entered a dingy broker's shop in the main street of the town, and amid a heterogeneous collection of saucepans, a clothes-horse, rolling-pin, brass candlestick, swing looking-glass, and other things at the back of the shop, evidently just ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... his shoulders, dropped wearily into a chair. He wore a rusty slouch hat, no coat, a faded blue flannel shirt, a Navy revolver; his trousers were hanging on his boot tops. A tangle of reddish-brown hair fell on his shoulders, and a mass of tawny beard, dingy with alkali dust, dropped ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and they are occasionally seen herding with shoals of Smolts in May. In this state they will take a worm very readily, and are, many of them, caught with the fly in the deeps; but they are unfit to eat, the flesh being white, loose, and insipid; although they have lost the red dingy appearance which they had when about to spawn, and are almost as bright as the fresh fish, their large heads and lank bodies render it sufficiently easy to distinguish them from fish which are only ascending the river, even if the latter were plentiful at this season; but this ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... healed, the dingy color slowly yielded to many washings, the woolly coat began to knot up into little curls, a new collar handsomely marked made him a respectable dog, and Sancho was himself again. But it was evident that his sufferings were not forgotten; his once sweet temper was a trifle soured, and, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... it was "no dacent." But the hair gave her its own theory before she had done with it, and this was the result. She had also washed her face and hands and neck, made the best she could of her poor, dingy dress, and put one of her own Sunday collars ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the fortunes of more than one middle-class husband and father—for the Duke always paid well for what he appropriated. He had grown old in his pleasant sins, and these, as such raiment will, had grown old and dingy with him; but if no longer splendid he was still splendour-loving, and drew to his court the most brilliant adventurers of Italy. Spite of his preference for such company, he had a nobler side, the ruins of a fine but uncultivated intelligence, and a taste for all that was young, generous ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... slightest details—such things as the slight difference in the length of the arms of the Chinaman who kept the "joint," the number of buttons down the front of the waist of the girl in the bunk opposite mine, across the dingy, little, sweet-scented room. Nothing escaped me, and also I was conscious of each passing second, or, rather, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... on the dusty flat, was the little cow-town, looking, in the distance, like a scattered herd of dingy sheep. He was glad his ride was ended for the day. He was thirsty, hot, and ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... so picturesque as the tartan. Her clothes were dingy and dust-stained. But they could not eclipse the divine, dusky youth of her. She was slender, as a panther is, and her movements had more than a suggestion of the same ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... then to bend his great height to squeeze through the little door. Once inside, he was at the corner of the Saint Margaret Chapel and could see, in the faint half-light, the rosy colours of the beautiful Saint Margaret window that glimmered ever so dimly upon the rows of cane-bottomed chairs, the dingy red hassocks, and the brass tablets upon the grey stone walls. He walked through, picking his way carefully in the dusk, saw for an instant the high, vast expanse of the nave with its few twinkling lights that blew in the windy air, then ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... century ago, tell me that it was pretty much then as it is now. Another thing discomposes the sensitive nerves of the English; especially those of our notable housewives. I allude to the rubbishing appearance of their grates—and the dingy and sometimes disgusting aspect of carpets and flowered furniture. A good mahogany dining table is a perfect rarity[199]—and let him, who stands upon a chair to take down a quarto or octavo, beware how he encounter a broken shin or bruised elbow, from the perpendicularity ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... central figure. I love to think of him as he seemed to me, when in the fresh dawn of manhood he sat with me in the old Haverhill farmhouse, revolving even then schemes of benevolence; or, with cheery smile, welcoming me to his frugal meal of bread and milk in the dingy Boston printing-room; or, as I found him in the gray December morning in the small attic of a colored man, in Philadelphia, finishing his night-long task of drafting his immortal Declaration of Sentiments of the American ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... coat, fitting like a sack, with the well-filled pockets bagging behind, like a poor man's dinner wallet. In lieu of the shrunk and darned white moleskins, receding in apparent disgust from the dingy tops, he had got his nether man enveloped in a pair of fine cinnamon-coloured tweeds, with broad blue stripes down the sides, and shaped out over ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... of the first to be built on the trail, and passing through the big front room in which two or three men were lounging, the marshal led his guests to his inner office and sleeping room. A fire was blazing in a big stone fireplace. Skins and dingy blankets were scattered about, and on the mantle stood a ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... a slow shepherd threading his way down one of the winding paths on a hillside, with his flock close behind him, necessarily expanded, yet keeping just at his heels, bending and twisting as it goes and looking rather like the tail of a dingy comet. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... to correct the fault in the manner I have previously hinted at." In the following remark, we can see the great defect in the colouring of Murillo's pictures, especially in his backgrounds, who appears always to have painted on a wet and dingy day. "But nothing can correct the cold of a sky concealed by the kind of clouds last mentioned, or rendered totally invisible by mist." He rescues the clear-obscure from the meaning commonly attached to it as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... yacht was so great that before the two dazed salts on board realized what had happened their master was far astern. They bustled to bring the Enchantress about and to come to his rescue in the dingy. Stunned by the blow of the—spar, he had gone down like a stone; so, in all probability, they would have been too late. When he came up the second time it was on the port bow of the Firefly, but completely out of reach. Giving the tiller to her friend, and stripping off ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Misses W. themselves; they lived close by, and frequently came to the store. Beneath our counter were endless packages, broken glass, refuse oils, rancid perfumes, dust, dirt, grease, charcoal, soap, and about everything else dingy and offensive to the eye and nose. The place afforded a wretched refuge for a hull so big and nice as our beau's, but there he was, much in our way too, with the mournful fact, for Charley, that if those "fine ladies" stayed less ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... called the "Venice of the East," and, inasmuch as waterways form the main thoroughfares in both, there is a certain resemblance. Shikaras (the Kashmiri canoes) are first-cousins to gondolas—rather poor relations perhaps; both are dingy and clumsy in appearance, and both are managed with an extraordinary ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... angler, and an admirable dish; a great chub; and three horned pouts, which swallow the hook into their lowest entrails. Several dozen fish were taken in an hour or two, and then we returned to the shop where we had left our horse and wagon, the pilot very eccentric behind us. It was a small, dingy shop, dimly lighted by a single inch of candle, faintly disclosing various boxes, barrels standing on end, articles hanging from the ceiling; the proprietor at the counter, whereon appear gin and brandy, respectively contained in a tin pint-measure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and way stations!" shouted the conductor of a railroad train, as the steamhorse, harnessed for his twenty mile trip, stood chafing, snorting, and coughing, throwing up angry puffs of mingled gray and dingy vapor from his sturdy lungs. "Cars ready for ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... procession filed through the streets to the collector's office. At its head was the admiral of the navy. Somewhere Felipe had raked together a pitiful semblance of a military uniform—a pair of red trousers, a dingy blue short jacket heavily ornamented with gold braid, and an old fatigue cap that must have been cast away by one of the British soldiers in Belize and brought away by Felipe on one of his coasting ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... her at the door, and took her down to Walter in the dingy dining room, upon whose shoulder ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... rain, that we owe our vegetable mould with its rich and beauteous mantle of sward and foliage. And next, stripping from off the landscape its sands and gravels, we see its underlying boulder-clays, dingy and gray, and here presenting their vast ice-borne stones, and there its iceberg pavements. And these clays in turn stripped away, the bare rocks appear, various in colour and uneven in surface, but everywhere grooved and polished, from the sea level and beneath it, to the height of more than ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... lower and lower, and the houses shabbier and shabbier—for all these shabby houses, burning soft coal, did their best to help in the destruction of their own value. They helped to make the quarter so dingy and the air so foul to breathe that no one would live there who had money enough to get "farther out" where there were glimpses of ungrayed sky and breaths of cleaner winds. And with the coming of the new speed, "farther out" was now as close to business as the Addition ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... mine, a delightful old lady, fresh, genial, and inquisitive, has in her possession an old volume, a family heir-loom, which is not the less dear to her for being somewhat dingy and dilapidated, and touching which she would gladly receive such information as your correspondents ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the same day the same gentlemen held a second conversation, but this time it was not in a dingy lawyer's office. The scene was a neat and pretty drawing-room, with all the necessary adornments native to such an apartment, and also a higher class of adornment—that of several interesting and ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... princess, with scarce visible features, seemingly kneaded (but not sufficiently pinched and modelled) out of the wet ashes of an auto da fe, in her black-and-white frock (how different from the dresses painted by Raphael and Titian!), dingy and gloomy enough for an abbess or a cameriera major, this childish personification of courtly dreariness, certainly born on an Ash Wednesday, becomes the principal strands for a marvellous tissue of silvery and ashy light, tinged yellowish in the hair, bluish in the eyes and downy cheeks, pale red ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... down a side-street, between rows of bare houses, houses with iron shutters and doors closed on the dingy secrets, the mean mysteries of trade; houses of high and solitary lights where some naked window-square hung golden in a ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... her. Straightway the Bishop suspended the Governor's chaplain. Then the Governor fined the Bishop in the sum of fifty pounds. The Bishop refused to pay, and was committed to Castle Rushen, and lay there two months. They show us his cell, a poor, dingy little box, so damp in his day that he lost the use of some of his fingers. After that the Bishop appealed to the Lord, who declared the imprisonment illegal. The Bishop was liberated, and half the island went to the prison gate to fetch him forth ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... had never been too poor to deny themselves the luxury of a tree. And a tree to Mrs. Robson meant none of the scant, indifferent affairs that most of the neighbors found acceptable strung with a few strands of dingy popcorn and pasteboard ornaments. No, the Robson tree was always an opulent work of art, freighted with bursting cornucopias and heavy glass balls and yards of quivering tinsel. The money for all this dazzling beauty usually came a fortnight or so before the eventful day in the shape ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... a shabby, dingy cart, but a smart little house upon wheels, with white dimity curtains festooning the windows, and window-shutters of green picked out with panels of a staring red. Neither was it a poor caravan drawn by a single donkey or emaciated horse, for a pair of horses in pretty good condition were released ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... place the woman had designated. The house was small and dingy, and two grimy babies were playing on ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... a small bonfire of sticks in a sheltered thicket, where a miraculous being—who was, as a matter of fact, a rather ragged and dingy vagabond—was cooking a tin of stew ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... account. So was it in every department. The Thunderer lies low, as I have said; much of her is below water, therefore light is scarce and valuable. During our perambulation we came to some machinery and bulkheads, etcetera, which were dingy in colour. 'Paint them white,' said the captain to the officer of each department; 'I don't point out details, but use as much white paint as you can. It makes the ship look light and cheerful.' Every order given was emphatic ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... rose again, and like an automaton—lifeless and thoughtless—she began putting the dingy, squalid room to rights. The Abbe helped her demolish the improvised screen; with the same gentle delicacy of thought which had caused him to build it up, he refrained from speaking to her now: he would not intrude himself on her grief ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... give one glimpses of genuine native life. Some of these streets are reached by scores of granite steps that climb the steep mountainside. These streets are not over twelve or fifteen feet wide, and the shops are mere holes in the wall, with a frontage of eight or ten feet. Yet many of these dingy shops contain thousands of dollars' worth of decorated silks and linens, artistic carvings, laces, curios and many other articles of Chinese manufacture. Unlike the Japanese, who will follow the tourist to the sidewalk and urge him to buy, these Chinese storekeepers show no eagerness ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... the Maker's gift and will. Whose else is it? It remains a religious duty, from oldest times, in the East.—Nor could Herr Professor Strauss, when I put the question, deny that for us at present it is still such here in the West! To that dingy fuliginous Operative, emerging from his soot-mill, what is the first duty I will prescribe, and offer help towards? That he clean the skin of him. Can he pray, by any ascertained method? One knows not entirely:—but with soap and a sufficiency of water, he can wash. Even the dull English feel ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... of the great city, in all the lofty workshops and yards and factories, huge hammers smote and clashed, and men, naked to the waist, reeking in dingy interiors, bent like gnomes at their tasks, while saws creaked, wheels turned, planes and mallets, and chisels shoved and cut and struck; and down in damp cellars sallow ghastly men and women wove rag-carpets, and twisted baskets in the midst of litters of puny, pale children, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the interior of the town and its external aspect, was as striking as it was full of pain. With the exception of the dull high street, which had the usual characteristics of a small agricultural market town, some sombre mansions, a dingy inn, and a petty bourse, Marney mainly consisted of a variety of narrow and crowded lanes formed by cottages built of rubble, or unhewn stones without cement, and from age, or badness of the material, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... I thought I did, speaking rather knowing. But when he asked if I'd been to sea, I had to say I hadn't; not on the high seas, nor in any such vessel as the Hebe Maitland. She was painted dingy black, like most of the others, and I judged from her lines that she was a fleet sailer and built for that purpose, rather than for the amount of cargo ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... been forthcoming had he not been the son of a Preston man. He had a sort of weak doggedness which I could not but admire. Neither he nor his work received the slightest encouragement; but he persisted in behaving as a personage: always he kept his dingy little flag flying. Wherever congregated the jeunes feroces of the arts, in whatever Soho restaurant they had just discovered, in whatever music-hall they were most frequenting, there was Soames in the midst of them, or rather on the fringe of ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... here too his visits could be but brief, for on the opposite side the court was shut in and overshadowed by the tall backs of great houses. They seemed, to Betty's fancy, to cast as much moral as physical shadow over the place. The houses in this court were small and dingy. If one looked straight up, there was a space of grey cloud visible; some days it would no doubt be a space of blue sky. No other thing even dimly suggesting refreshment or purity was within the range of vision. Pitt slowly paced along the row ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Alsatia, the sanctuary of blackguard ruffianism in bygone times; then there is a smell of gas, and a vision of enormous gasometers; and then down goes the funnel again, and Blackfriars Bridge jumps over us. On we go, now at the top of our speed, past the dingy brick warehouses that lie under the shadow of St Paul's, whose black dome looks down upon us as we scud along. Then Southwark Bridge, with its Cyclopean masses of gloomy metal, disdains to return the slightest response to the fussy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... yoke to bear; Surrender all the careless ease of home, And be forbid from schoolyard bounds to roam; For this with blandest smiles he softly asks That they with him will prosecute their tasks; Receives them in his solemn chilly lair, The rigid lot of discipline to share. At dingy desks they toil by day; at night To gloomy chambers go uncheered by light, Where pillars rudely grayed by rusty nail Of heavy hours reveal the weary tale; Where spiteful ushers grin, all pleased to make Long scribbled lines the price of each mistake. By four unpitying ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... rooms after the Fletchers' ball. The dawn was breaking as I let myself in. The air was heavy with the peculiar desolation of a London winter morning. The houses looked dead and untenanted. A cart rumbled past, and across the grey street a dingy black cat, moving furtively along the pavement, gave an additional touch of ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... changed, and unable to endure the confinement of the ship, he went for a lonely tramp round the streets. He hung round the Wheelers, and, after gazing at their young barbarians at play, walked round and looked at Flower's late lodgings. It was a dingy house, with broken railings and an assortment of papers and bottles in the front garden, and by no means calculated to relieve depression. From there he instinctively wandered round to the lodgings recently ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... all the way through. Everything—financially speaking, I mean,—has been against him. They have had continual anxiety and curtailment, until at last they have had to let their pretty house and go into dingy lodgings. My father is very down on Jack. He is a successful man himself, and don't you think it needs a very fine nature to keep up faith in a person who seems persistently to fail? But my sister never doubts. She loves her husband more, and idealises him more, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... consciousness she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... larch becomes green long before the native trees; and its green is so peculiar and vivid, that, finding nothing to harmonise with it, wherever it comes forth, a disagreeable speck is produced. In summer, when all other trees are in their pride, it is of a dingy, lifeless hue; in autumn of a spiritless unvaried yellow, and in winter it is still more lamentably distinguished from every other deciduous tree of the forest, for they seem only to sleep, but the larch appears absolutely ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a dingy little street, a cul-de-sac of very small houses in a row, each with an almost flattened bow window and a blistered brown door with a black knocker. He poised his bright new bicycle against the window, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... could take as many as three whole steps. After a time he managed to get into communication with Bollman who was in the room above. With a knotted handkerchief Bollman lowered a little ink in a walnut shell from his window, together with a scrap of dingy paper. Huger then wrote a letter of a few lines only to General Thomas Pinckney, then American Minister at London. His entreaty was to let his mother know that he was still alive; also to let Lafayette's friends know that he would certainly have escaped but that he had been recognized ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... dark and heavy bushes. On the opposite side is a small, square veranda. The building, which is two stories and a half high, was apparently a cheerful yellow color in the beginning, but it has become dingy with time and weather. The scars of its long battle with fate give it the appearance of being about to crumble and crash, after the fashion of the "House of Usher." It has windows with gloomy casements, opening ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can't keep it up alone, we ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... heroic forms of the builders, clinging high on their frail scaffoldings and nonchalantly hurling red-hot rivets through space, are so many young gods at play with elemental forces. The sweat-shop is transmuted into as grim and glorious a battlefield as any Tours or Gettysburg of them all. And the dingy, battered old "L" train, as it clatters through the East Side early on "morose, gray Monday morning," ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... intervals by a monotonous and expostulatory "allons donc!" thrown in by another dissentient southerner. He was an enormously fat man, the new disputant, and wore a mass of very greasy hair, hanging down over his shoulders. His flannel shirt, an exceedingly dingy specimen of British manufacture, did duty for a waistcoat also; but he was decore, though it was very doubtful to what order the medal on his breast ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... world. Each sees what is in himself, not what is outside. The jaundiced eye yellows all it beholds. The chameleon takes its color from the bark on which it clings. Man gives his color to what his thought is fastened upon. The pessimist's darkness makes all things dingy. The youth disappointed with his European trip said he was a fool for going. He was, for the reason that he was a fool before he started. He saw nothing without, because he had no vision within. He gave ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of light has a direct bearing on the children's behavior. Ask any school teacher, if you have never had occasion to notice it yourself, which days are the noisiest in her school-room, the bright, sunny ones, or the dingy days when it is difficult to see clearly across the room. Ask her if the pencils don't drop on the floor oftener, if small feet do not tramp and scrape more, if chairs don't tip over with louder reports, if tempers ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... to bed, and then with slow steps climbed up to her little attic room. It was cold and comfortless enough, bare of all luxuries, but even here the walls were lined with books, and Erica's little iron bedstead looked somewhat incongruous surrounded as it was with dingy-looking volumes, dusky old legal books, works of reference, books atheistical, theological, metaphysical, or scientific. On one shelf, amid this strangely heterogeneous collection, she kept her own particular treasures—Brian's ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a horizontal, they revolve with a velocity which frequently reaches 1200 a minute. The damp, dingy looking pile instantly spreads, a broad circle of yellow is first visible on the inner rim of the machine, and this slowly whitening finally becomes a shining ring of snowy sugar. To effect this result requires the aid of nine ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... both stooped down to pick up the pieces, Alice noticed that there was a hollow space back of where the tile had been, and that it contained something of a dingy white color. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... fruit and wine, which were hovering about the steamer, and getting in the way of everybody, while crying their wares. Many of these boatmen seemed as dark in complexion as any East Indian on board, and nearly all wore ear-rings, generally of silver, in the dingy lobes of their ears. They seemed noisy and quarrelsome, and often shrieked what seemed like terrible imprecations at each other, shaking their fists and scowling darkly, only to be laughing carelessly the next minute, as if nothing mattered. Dwight ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... it is always an inevitable inference that authors are,—and Cotton Mather published three hundred and eighty-two different works for his own share. Books were abundant enough at that day, though somewhat grim and dingy, and two complete Puritan libraries are preserved in the rich collection of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester,—without whose treasures, let me add, this modest monograph never could have been written. As for the minister's horse, the moral sentiment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a grey northern night, with a bitter wind driving the sea mist in billows over the marshes, and a waning half moon shining fitfully through the dingy clouds which scudded across a lead-coloured sky. By the light of the moon he saw the figure of the girl, already some distance from the house, swiftly making her way along the reedy canal path which threaded ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... we visit the dear old man in his dingy little house in old England while he peruses the foregoing letter? Yes, let us go. It is worth while travelling between four and five thousand miles to see him read it. Perhaps, if you are a critical ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... to where five or six narrow, crooked streets ran together, branching out like the fingers from my palm. I paused now uncertain which way to go amid so many devious courses, and deciding almost at hazard, turned down the best paved of all those dingy streets. I had hardly gone past more than two cross streets, when there stood at a corner, looking timidly this way and that, a slight girl, with blonde hair and eyes of Breton blue. She seemed so brave, yet so out of place and helpless at that hour of the night, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... day at Denderah, which had secretly depressed her. She looked out of the window of their compartment at the green plains of doura, at the almost naked brown men bending rhythmically by the shadufs, at the children passing on donkeys, and the women standing at gaze with corners of their dingy garments held fast between their teeth; and she felt as if she still saw the dark courts of Hathor's dwelling, as if she still heard the cries of the enormous bats that inhabit them. When the train stopped, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... between the houses, a glimpse might be had of the low country beyond, with its sluggish canal choked with rushes, a dingy windmill here and there, and stretching away on either side the flat meadows crinkling with yellow grain, and the green pastures dotted with huge black-and-white cattle. A narrow road, straight as a line in Euclid, and bordered by a row of trees each the counterpart of ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... in another of a bluish-green tint—which supplied me with soldiers enough to execute all the evolutions figured and described in the "Medley." The warmly-hued yellow shells represented Britons in their scarlet—the more dingy ones, the French in their uniforms of dirty blue; well-selected specimens of Purpura lapillus, just tipped on their backs with a speck of paint, blue or red, from my box, made capital dragoons; while a few dozens of the slender pyramidal shells ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... bats, extinguishing the flambeau, and leaving us in darkness, like Belzoni deserted by his Arabs in the heart of a pyramid. The torch at last relumed, we entered a tomb-like excavation, at every step raising clouds of dust; and at last stood before long rows of musty, mummyish parcels, so dingy-red, and so rolled upon sticks, that they looked like stiff sausages of Bologna; but smelt like some fine old ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... one bound outward, with her white breasts swelling and heaving, as if with a reaching expectancy, does not feel his own heart swell with a longing impulse to go with her to the far-off shores? Even at dingy, crowded wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities, the coming in of a ship is an event that never can lose its interest. But on these romantic shores of Maine, where all is so wild and still, and the blue sea lies embraced in the arms of dark, solitary forests, the sudden ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at the denouement. For now we were in Paris, rather meanly lodged in a dingy hotel on a narrow street leading from what with us might have been Piccadilly Circus. Our rooms were rather a good height with a carved cornice and plaster enrichments, but the furnishings were musty and the general air depressing, notwithstanding the effect of a few ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... which they wear, and the thinness of their limbs. Their dress consists of a dirty piece of cloth, or skin of kangaroo, tied about their waists, leaving the upper and lower parts of their bodies naked. Their color is a dingy black, although what exact shade they would represent were they washed quite clean is a matter of conjecture. A more filthy race of beings I never saw; and if we adopt the hypothetical theory of eminent medical gentlemen, that when the pores of the skin are closed, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... That's my best platter, is it? Broke all to bits, eh? I'll break—" But there was a flurry of dingy apron and dingier petticoats, and the little Princess had fled. She did not stop till she was in her Secret Place among the willows. Her small lean face was ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... saw the intrepid old man hurriedly collecting his few belongings, preparatory to making a welcome end to the long, tiresome ride in the train. Mrs. Gray had already telegraphed David Nesbit to be on hand at the dingy little station to meet him. The train rolled into it, puffing and clanging a noisy protest against the indignity of being obliged to stay its flight, even momentarily, before the scattered collection of frame dwellings dignified by the name ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... she turned off into a narrow lane, of that obscure and comfortless class which is to be found in almost all small oldfashioned towns, chill, without ventilation, reeking with all manner of offensive effluviae, and lined by dingy, smoky, sickly and pent-up buildings, frequently not only in a wretched but ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... come to the love part of my story, I am suddenly conscious of dingy common colors on the palette with which I have been painting. I wish I had some brilliant dyes. I wish, with all my heart, I could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which the souls of our grandmothers delighted,—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... off in darkness—downward. It was but the other evening as we were seated about the fire that there came upward from the basement a gibbering squeak. Then the woodpile fell over, for so we judged the clatter. Is it fantastic to think that some dark and muffled Persian, after his dingy tunneling from the banks of the Tigris, had climbed the pile of wood for a breath of night at the window and, his foot slipping, the pile fell over? Plainly, we heard him ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... back of the yards, was a good two miles; the distance had never seemed longer to Jurgis, and when he saw the familiar dingy-gray shanty his heart was beating fast. He ran up the steps and began to hammer upon ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... burthen. At the bow and stern she was decked, and those quarters were fairly raised. Amidship she was low and open, and pierced for twenty oars, ten to a side, all swaying listlessly from the narrow ports in which they were hung. Sometimes they knocked against each other. One sail, square and of a dingy white, drooped from a broad yard-arm, which was itself tilted, and now and then creaked against the yellow mast complainingly, unmindful of the simple tackle designed to keep it in control. A watchman crouched in the meagre shade of a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... paused to blow one of his favorite little smoke rings and watch it float to the dingy ridge-pole, where it flickered and faded into a blue haze "—and so, I'm going to say right out in meeting what I think of this town and the Committee they let measure out justice. Justice!" He laughed sardonically. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... fire; And a butcher of the town Had lost a flitch of bacon; And well the friar knew That the Gypsies it had taken; So suddenly he shouted: "Gypsy, ho! Hie home, and from the pot! Take the flitch of bacon out, The flitch good and fat, And in its place throw A clout, a dingy clout of thy brat, Of thy brat, A clout, a dingy ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... light of a frosty full moon. Between the shafts of his cart a trim-looking mare of about fifteen hands trotted lazily, forging, shying, and generally comporting herself in a way only possible to a grass-fed animal who has been in the hands of such as Mr. William Fennessy. The thick and dingy mane that had hung impartially on each side of her neck, now, together with the major portion of her voluminous tail, adorned the manure heap in the rear of the Fennessy public-house. The pallid fleece in which she had been muffled had given ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... enough?" And with this, the faithful waiter, who knew and remembered every officer who used the house, and with whom ten years were but as yesterday, led the way up to Dobbin's old room, where stood the great moreen bed, and the shabby carpet, a thought more dingy, and all the old black furniture covered with faded chintz, just as the Major recollected them ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could see the hidden springs at the very heart of the world. Moreover, the fact that he was a clerk in a fire insurance office, and did his work with strict attention, never allowed him to forget for one moment that, just beyond the dingy brick walls where the hundred men scribbled with pointed pens beneath the electric lamps, there existed this glorious region where the important part of himself dwelt and moved and had its being. For in this region he pictured himself playing ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... boats. The smoke of the kitchen fire issues from a sort of wooden cabin where several human beings breathe, eat, sleep, are born and die, sometimes without hardly ever having set foot upon the land. Pots of geranium or begonia give a bit of bright color to the dingy surroundings; and the boats travel slowly along the river, impelled by enormous oars, which throw long shadows upon ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and grim, at the corner of a gay street and a dingy vicolo, the street and alley contrasting in color like a Claude Lorraine with a Nicholas Poussin. Past one side of the palace drifts all day a bright tide of foreign sightseers, prosperous Romans, gay models and flower-venders, handsome carriages, dark-eyed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... One dingy little shop in the square interested him. It was directly opposite the Royal Cafe (with American bar attached), and the contents of its grimy little windows presented a peculiarly fascinating interest to him. Time and again, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... fastened it. He gave the candle to Lord Hartfield to hold, and then opened the box. It seemed to be full of books, which he began to remove, heaping them on the floor beside him; and it was not till he had cleared away a layer of dingy volumes that he came to a large metal strong box, so heavy that he could not lift it ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... shaking hands, Ovid took a chair, and looked about him. Even here he discovered but little furniture, and that little of the heavy old-fashioned sort. Besides the sideboard, he perceived a dining-table, six chairs, and a dingy brown carpet. There were no curtains on the window, and no pictures or prints on the drab-coloured walls. The empty grate showed its bleak black cavity undisguised; and the mantelpiece had nothing on it but the doctor's dirty and strong-smelling ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... approach, stared at us with their rolling eyes, and then scuttled away to hide themselves behind the house. Ha! Old Sybille! Is it you? She was standing before a caldron, suspended, gipsy-fashion, from a triangle of sticks—looking, for all the world, like a dingy parody of one of Macbeth's witches. She, too, stared at us, but without moving. I must introduce myself, I suppose. Now she has recognised me, and comes towards us with her enormous spoon in her hand. I wonder that her shriveled old turkey's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... to believe that any good thing could be in store for them, the burgesses and others assembled, and crowded into the place of meeting. Twenty-two delegates from the eleven plantations were there, clad in their dingy and dilapidated raiment, and wide-brimmed hats; most of them with swords at their sides, and some with rusty muskets in their hands. Their cheeks were lank and their faces sunburned; their bearing was listless, yet marked with some touch of curiosity ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... than one most felicitous suggestion, especially that of the admirable finale to the second act of the "Barbiere." It was during this visit of his to London, while Weber lay disappointed and dying in the dingy house in Great Portland Street, that this same Duchess of Canizzaro, better known by her earlier title of Countess St. Antonio, as a prominent leader of fashionable taste in musical matters, invited all the great and gay and distinguished ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... 4443.—Stem erect, sometimes 3 ft. high, and about 4 in. wide, deeply furrowed, the furrows usually numbering about fourteen; the ridges tumid and irregular, and coloured a dingy glaucous-green. Spines embedded in a tuft of grey wool, about a dozen spines in each cluster, 1 in. long, a few of them only half that length. Flowers on the top of the stem, three or four opening together, each being 3 in. long and wide; the tube short and scaly, with overlapping sepals ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... find something, however, in a sort of a nest fashioned among the bales near the middle of the wagon. What would have escaped an eye less trained to look for trifles attracted his at once. It was a dingy metal tag. Scott picked it up. It bore the name of a Medicine Bend saloon and the heads of three horses, from the design of which the saloon itself took a widely known and ill name. He laid his hand on the blanket from which ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Philip. It was as if a bright strange world had been spread before him compared with which the old was tarnished and dingy. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... real kindness in that poor little Cockney's finger than there is in your whole body!" Cecilia whispered, apparently addressing the unoffending cloth—which, having begun life as a dingy green and black, did not seem greatly the worse for its new decoration. "Hateful old thing!" A smile suddenly twitched the corners of her mouth. "Well, she can't stop the money for a new cloth out of this quarter's allowance, because I've just got it. That's luck, anyhow. I'll give it to Bob ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... John was carried was in the Brixton Road, near to the White House public-house. Fifty years ago it had been a rich merchant's home and was almost a country house, but now, like many similar houses, it had fallen to a dingy estate: it was, without embroidery of description, a lodging-house. Miss Squibb, who opened the door to him, had a look of settled depression on her face that was not, as he at first imagined, due to disapproval of him, but, as he speedily discovered, to a deeply-rooted ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Row, Bloomsbury, there is a small alley or passage leading into Queen Square, and rendered inaccessible to all but foot passengers by some iron posts. The shops in this passage are of a subdued exterior, and are overshadowed by a dingy old edifice dedicated to St. George the Martyr, which seems to have begun its existence as a rather handsome chapel, and to have improved itself, by a sort of evolution, into ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... morning Fred did not present himself at the dingy old building until nearly time for the whistle to sound, and those whom he had good cause to look upon as enemies were already at their places by ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... colours are all of what artists call middle tint (neither dark nor light), cannot fail to look dull and dingy, even ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the open prairie, and struck a harder bottom, the horses mended their paces, she felt sensibly relieved. At length they entered a small, new town, and drew up before a large, awkward building. The steps were lowered and Annie alighted, and soon found herself in a long, dingy apartment, with a bright pine-wood fire blazing and crackling in a huge, yawning fire-place at its farthest extremity. She was chilled, and sat down before the glowing hearth to warm her benumbed fingers. Presently ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... increased. It had ceased snowing, and a keen wind had arisen, tearing the clouds into shreds through which the stars gleamed. And presently the moon climbed up behind the belfry of the old church across the square, and sent one broad white ray through the dingy window and across the floor. All at once the great bell began to strike the midnight hour, its mingled vibrations filling the garret with tumultuous sounds. The vision of the fair girl faded, and old Marg was herself again, a hard, bitter, rebellious old woman, with a burning care ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... square figure of the boss, his soft hat, his flaming red beard, his dingy mackinaw coat, his dingy black-and-white checked flannel shirt, his dingy blue trousers tucked into high socks, and, instead of driving boots, his ordinary lumberman's rubbers. As a spot of colour, he wore a ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... lay along a small but potent river that turned a few factory wheels with its eager current, and it drew sustenance from the hill farms that encircled it for miles about. You had to take a dingy way train up to the main line if you were going the long day's journey to New York, so that the Center of the name was often ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... the lights. Adj. dark, darksome^, darkling; obscure, tenebrious^, sombrous^, pitch dark, pitchy, pitch black; caliginous^; black &c (in color) 431. sunless, lightless &c (sun) (light), &c 423; somber, dusky; unilluminated &c (illuminate) &c 420 [Obs.]; nocturnal; dingy, lurid, gloomy; murky, murksome^; shady, umbrageous; overcast &c (dim) 422; cloudy &c (opaque) 426; darkened; &c v.. dark as pitch, dark as a pit, dark as Erebus [Lat.]. benighted; noctivagant^, noctivagous^. Adv. in the dark, in the shade. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the room? It was stuffy and dingy and the pictures were of doubtful taste, but there were things to drink and smoke. The imperturbable Ikla would be sitting in his chair pulling at one of his impossibly luxurious pipes. You would ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... rolled away from the low and dingy station and was in the open country of Morovenia. Kalora and her elderly guardian and the young women who were to be her companions during the period of exile had been tucked away into adjoining compartments. Each young woman was muffled and veiled according to the most discreet ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... Thames, and thought proper to reserve it for private meditation. The relationship of the two was kept a profound secret, for reasons best known to themselves; but to the eye at least it was revealed by their striking resemblance, both being small, spare, dingy-complexioned men, with keen, cunning eyes, and faces that looked as hard and sharp as steel. Ever since they first heard of the prophecy, they had half ridiculed, half flattered, and kept remarkably familiar with Bill. That ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... washing her hands and patting her hair before the glass, put on her hat and descended to the rather dingy, old-fashioned drawing-room over the shop, where stood her lover alone at the open window, looking down upon the traffic in the broad, brilliantly-lit ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... boats had been washed away, the big coal pile was scattered like pebbles and some half of it lost. And one odd trifle gripped Madden's heart—the fresh paint over which the crew had toiled so patiently looked old and dingy. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... to etiquette to receive visits by day during the Ramadan—and found him "sitting in the corner of the divan at his ease, being afflicted with gout, in the old ample Turkish costume. The white beard, the dress of the Pasha, the rich but faded carpet, the roof of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in perfect keeping; and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture, which carried me a generation back to the pashas of the old school." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and dinner at seven, at a dingy little inn through a smelly back yard; there is not much to eat, and you fill up with rather nasty bread and unripe pears, and drink a sort of flat cider, as the water is ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... rain that drove into windows ever so slightly raised, and hurled itself angrily into your face whenever you ventured to open a door. It was a day in which fires didn't like to burn, but smoldered, and sizzled, and smoked; and people went around shivering, their shoulders shrugged up under little dingy, unbecoming shawls, and the clouds were low, and gray, and heavy—and every thing and every body seemed generally out ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... out because she was restless and was tired of the dingy and uncomfortable room. Without any definite intentions, she naturally followed the trail that Swiftwater had broken the day before. No wind stirred and the sky was clear. But it was very cold. The sun would not be up for ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... years ago throughout the south country. It is still there, I believe, although Zachary himself is dead and with him has departed most of the atmosphere of the place, and it is now smart and prosperous, although in those days it was dark and dingy enough. No one knew whence Zachary had come, and he was one of the mysteries of a place that deals, even now, in mysteries. He had arrived as a young man with a basket over his back thirty years before Peter saw the light, when Treliss was a little ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... frame buildings. Down every side street they could see, it was the same—never a hill and never a hollow, but always the same endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here and there would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores and dingy sheds and docks along it; here and there would be a railroad crossing, with a tangle of switches, and locomotives puffing, and rattling freight cars filing by; here and there would be a great factory, a dingy building ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... told us that his family had taken a large old house that had stood vacant ever since we had come to live with Mrs. Handsomebody. How often we had timidly passed its dingy front, wondering what might be within its closed ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... were covered with plain whitewash, the dirty brick floor had never been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety chairs, a round table, and a sideboard stationed between the two doors of a bedroom and a sitting-room. Windows and doors alike were dingy with accumulated grime. Reams of blank paper or printed matter usually encumbered the floor, and more frequently than not the remains of Sechard's dinner, empty bottles and plates, were lying about on ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... shoulders shrugged up to her ears, her dark eyes glancing around the tiny room with every expression of marked disapproval. It was certainly not a luxurious apartment. The low walls were of rough logs, the roof was a ragged piece of very dingy canvas, held in place by stones here and there. In one corner was a pile of dried grass and leaves, with a blanket thrown over it,—evidently Don Carlos's bed. There was a camp-stool, a rude box set on end, that seemed to do duty both for dressing and writing table, ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... the hall was Uncle Geoffrey's study—a somewhat grim, dingy apartment, with brown shelves full of ponderous tomes, a pipe-rack filled with fantastic pipes, deep old cupboards full of hetereogeneous rubbish, and wide easy-chairs that one could hardly lift, one of which was always occupied ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with a new plaything, in our beautiful house; but how, after it, shall we ever be able to reconcile ourselves to the comparatively dingy rooms in St. James's Square, which no furniture or decoration could render any thing like the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... This little house was "double" also—that Is, it was entered in the centre by a small square passage just big enough for the outer door to swing in. On one side of this entry was a tiny parlor, as dismal as rag carpet, fireless hearth, dingy paper and dark-green paper shades to the small windows could make it. On the other side of the entry was the tiny and cold bedroom of the senior Starbucks. In the centre of the house rose a massive chimney, big enough to retain all the heat from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... was a dingy, cut-throat place, which the delicate Gonzaga had not entered without a tremor, invoking the saints' protection, and crossing himself ere he set foot across the threshold. Some pieces of goat were being cooked on the embers, ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... again, and look brightly forward to another expedition to the Great St. Bernard, when Mrs. Cerjat and I shall laugh as I fancy I have never laughed since, in one of those one-sided cars; and when we shall again learn from Haldimand, in a little dingy cabaret, at lunch-time, how to secure a door in travelling (do you remember?) by balancing a chair against it on its ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... looked quite as dingy and dirty as when she visited it before. Solomon himself was just as shabby and he pulled at his ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... prolonged and shrieking, brought both of them to their feet. She glanced at the tin alarm-clock on the shelf. The hands stood at half-past five. The rest of the factory world was just arousing from sleep. She drew a shawl about her shoulders, and on her head put a dingy hat, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... she didn't; for this crippled little child Had lived within a dingy court, where sunshine never smiled; And for weary, weary days and months, the little one had lain Confined within a narrow room, and on a ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... eager, dark man, with too much "way." He dressed in black and rusty iron grey; had jet-black beads for eyes, a scrubby little black chin, wiry black hair striking out from his head in prongs like hair-pins, and a complexion that was very dingy by nature, or very dirty by art, or a compound of both. He had dirty hands, and dirty, broken nails, and looked as if he had been in the coals. He snorted and sniffed, and puffed and blew, and was generally in a perspiration. It was Mr. Pancks who "moled out" the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... quilted-satin poke bonnet. The beauty which had been hers in her youth was still hers although everybody could not see it. Uncle Billy could see it and Jeff Bucknor glimpsed it, as his old cousin stepped from her dingy coach. He had never realized before that Cousin Ann Peyton had lines and proportions that must always be beautiful—a set of the head, a slope of shoulder, a length of limb, a curve of wrist and a turn of ankle. The old purple poke bonnet might have been a diadem, so high did ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... about a dozen, all told. They were to leave Springfield February 11, and to consume about two weeks on the way. It was a dreary morning, partly drizzling, and partly snowing. A large crowd of neighbors had assembled at the dingy railway station to bid him good-by. The process of handshaking was interrupted by the arrival of the train. After the party had entered the car, the President reappeared on the rear platform. He raised his hand to speak, but ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... to fiction. Putting one thing aside, it is not one of its author's greatest triumphs. It begins with a good deal of that rather nauseous gush about the adorable candour of young persons which, in a French novel, too often means that the "blanche colombe" will become a very dingy dunghill hen before long—as duly happens here. There is, however, a chance for the novel reader of comparing the departure of two of these white doves[377] from their school-dovecot with that of Becky and Amelia from Miss Pinkerton's. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... short November day had turned from afternoon to night, and a great change had come over the aspect of the dim and dingy court. Opaque globes turned into flaring suns; incandescent burners revealed unsuspected brackets; the place was warmed and lighted for the first time during the week. And the effect of the light and warmth was on all the faces that rose as one while the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... inches. Mother McGinnis stood there with white eyes—they were white, I say—and a yellow face, holding together at her throat with one hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp thrust the dollar through the space without a word, ...
— Options • O. Henry
... utter shame." During this year he took a house at Hammersmith, Upper Mall, the garden of which ran down to the Thames, but still retained his residence in Harley Street. In 1812 he first occupied the house No. 47 Queen Anne Street, and this house he retained for forty years. It was dull, dingy, unpainted, weather-beaten, sooty, with unwashed windows and shaky doors, and seemed the very abode of poverty, and yet when Turner died his estate was sworn as under one hundred and forty thousand ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... Private equipages, which form one of the most imposing features of a modern city, were unknown. There was nothing attractive in a Roman street, dark, narrow, and dirty, with but few vehicles, and with dingy shops, like those of Paris in the Middle Ages. The sun scarcely ever penetrated to them. They were damp and cold. The greater part of the city belonged to wealthy and selfish capitalists, like Crassus, who thought more of their gains than the health or beauty of the city. The Subura, the Sub ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... side, and like all the American river-sides that I remember. Grimy business piles, sagging sheds, and frowsy wharves and docks grieve the eye, which the shipping in the stream does little to console. That is mostly of dingy tramp-steamers, or inferior Dutch liners, clumsy barges, and here and there a stately brig or shapely schooner; but it gathers nowhere into the forest of masts and chimneys that fringe the North River and East River. The foul tide rises and falls between low shores where, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... the hotel the landlord was asleep in the chair before the door. He arose with a yawn, rubbed his eyes, and led the way into the office where a dingy kerosene lamp was burning dimly. He stretched his arms as he looked at the clock that stood above the dusty pigeon holes back ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... at the figure of a whiskered skipper, wearing a dingy derby, who peered over the rail at this moment in response to a hail ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... is already more than the tale of a certain old man and his woes. Goriot, on the spot, is one of Maman Vauquer's boarders, and the mere fact is enough, by now, to differentiate him, to single him out among miserable old men. Whatever he does he carries with him the daily experience of the dingy house and the clattering meals and the frowzy company, with Maman Vauquer, hard and hungry and harassed—Mrs. Todgers would have met her sympathetically, they would have understood each other—at the head of it. Into ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... whoso entereth within this town, That, sheening far, celestial seems to be, Disconsolate will wander up and down, Mid many things unsightly to strange e'e; For hut and palace show like filthily; The dingy denizens are reared in dirt; No personage of high or mean degree Doth care for cleanness of surtout or shirt, Though shent with Egypt's plague, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents a strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were painted in India-ink—black houses, black passengers, and black sky. Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and color. Before you, shining in the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... screw loose with Lacey," the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the province of the master to that of the mistress a new element was apparent, struggling with, but unable to overcome, the predominant tendency to unthrift and seediness. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... or so passed before I saw Jaffery again. Happening to be in Westminster in the forenoon—I had come up to town on business—I mounted to his cheerless eyrie in Victoria Street, and rang the bell. A dingy servitor in a dress suit, on transient duty, admitted me, and I found Jaffery collarless and minus jacket and waistcoat, smoking a pipe in front of the fire. It wasn't even a good coal fire. Some austere former tenant had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... to receive her ladyship, who fatly rolled in, her tarnished hat askew, her torn thrice-dingy silks clutched ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... empty kegs, barrels had gone overboard, boats had been washed away, the big coal pile was scattered like pebbles and some half of it lost. And one odd trifle gripped Madden's heart—the fresh paint over which the crew had toiled so patiently looked old and dingy. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... they were too busy—too anxious for the success of their domestic plans, to have time for home-sickness. But when the first arrangements were made—when the taste and skill of Graeme, and the inexhaustible strength of their new maid, Nelly Anderson, had changed the dingy house into as bright and pleasant a place as might well be in a city street, then came the long days and the weariness. Then came upon Graeme that which Janet had predicted, when she so earnestly set her face against their going away from ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... justified and sustained by the action of this Church in 1789, when the Constitution, as amended, was made to provide for a House of Bishops, "with power to originate and propose acts," and also for the administration of discipline by the Episcopate alone. This was the Constitution to which—"on a dingy half sheet of paper"—Bishop Seabury and Drs. Jarvis and Hubbard, as representatives from Connecticut, and Dr. Parker, as deputy from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, set their hands in October, 1789, and by their act effected ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... melted away, and Foyle presently found himself in a dingy back street where the local police station was situated. Here also a crowd of men and women had gathered, and the reserve men at the door were repelling eager women who, not knowing who had been taken in the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... shape that the imagination might easily see a resemblance to a coffin. At the farthest extremity of the island was a low mound. The rest of the island was flat, low, and sandy, with no trace of vegetation perceptible from the ship, except a line of dingy green under the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... used to notice that she coughed a good deal as she worked. Then there was another move, and this time Mrs. Forest and her little daughter found themselves in one bedroom, and things began to grow very gloomy, and food even was scarce. At last there was a change. One day a lady came into the dingy little room, and all on a sudden it seemed as if the sun had come out again. This lady brought comforts with her—toys and books for the child, good, brave words of cheer for the mother. At last Annie's mother died, and she went away to Lavender House to live with this good friend who had made her ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... crowded alleys and back streets of the neighbourhood made a fire there particularly to be dreaded. The staircase of the mill ascended from the entrance at the western end, which faced into a wide, dingy-looking street, consisting principally of public-houses, pawnbrokers' shops, rag and bone warehouses, and dirty provision shops. The other, the east end of the factory, fronted into a very narrow back street, not twenty feet wide, and miserably lighted and paved. Right against this end of the ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of their cloudless future, the lovers enter the dingy mining town of Woodward. The weather-beaten cottages, which never have known a coat of paint, do not attract their attention. The groups of ragged children playing in the dusty road, scurry out of the path of the horses. On the hillside ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... dragons of our imagination. With his great bullet head and prick ears, his beetling brows and deep sunken eyes, his ferocious mouth and protruding tusks, his short thick neck and massive shoulders, his large, gawky, and misshapen trunk, coated with dingy brown fur, shading into dirty yellow on the stomach, his stout, bandy legs armed with curving talons, and his huge leathern wings hanging in loose folds about him, he looked more like an imp of Satan than ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... curled slightly over his ears. His cheeks were hairless and round, and apparently soft. He held himself very upright, walked with small steps and spoke gently in an inward voice. Perhaps from contrast with the magnificent polish of the room and the neatness of its owner, he struck me as dingy, indigent, and, if not exactly humble, then ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... little sanctum, scanning a still damp sheet of proof. His brow was furrowed, but the lines were those of conscious power. In the broken chair by the littered desk sat Billy Durgin, his eyes ablaze with the lust of the chase. As I pushed into the dingy little room Solon halted in his walk and, with a flourish that did not entirely lack the dramatic, he handed me the narrow strip of paper. The item ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... sailor life, the delightful walks in the surrounding country, the enchanted room, tenanted by the first fairy day-dreams of his genius, the day-school, where the master had already formed a good opinion of his parts, giving him Goldsmith's "Bee" as a keepsake. This pleasant land he left for a dingy house in a dingy London suburb, with squalor for companionship, no teaching but the teaching of the streets, and all around and above him the depressing hideous atmosphere of debt. With what inimitable humour and pathos has he told the story of these darkest days! Substitute John Dickens ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... by which the natural humours were pent up. She discoursed pathetically on the qualities of the departed, which, she said, would be the passport of her spirit to a sphere where he would again contemplate them unclouded by the dingy vapours of earthly feelings. She kept in the same strain for a lengthened period; but declared to me, when I visited him again, that he exhibited no signs of being moved by her discourse. He, once or twice, turned his ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... that she left the place, hurriedly, and sought elsewhere, trudging through long streets of mercantile establishments and factories, looking at signs displayed on bits of swinging cardboard or pasted to dingy panes. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... the probate of his father's will both sisters were of the number never spoken to. He was a thin, tall, sullen, dry, and dusty man. Dressed for church of a Sunday, he looked as if he had been stored a year in some neglected cellar. His broadcloth had a dingy aspect, his hair and beard and eyebrows the hue of a cobweb. He had a voice slow and rusty, a look arid and unfruitful. Indeed, it seemed as if the fires of hate and ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... grew very white, and her breath came short and hurried. She hesitated for an instant, then plunged her mittened hand into her coat pocket, and pulled out a dingy sheet of paper whose folds, worn till they were transparent, showed the marks of long service. With trembling hands, she smoothed it out, tearing it a little, in her excitement. ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... together, and promotes sociability and conversation. Our feline companions are flourishing. Young Baxter is growing in gracefulness and favour, and gives cat-like evidences of future worth. He possesses the fashionable colour of 'moonlight on the water,' apparently a dingy hue of the kitchen, and is strictly aristocratic in appearance and conduct. Tom, surnamed 'The Nipper,' from the manner in which he slaughters our enemies, the rats and the mice, is admired for his gravity and sobriety, as well as for his strict attention to the pursuits of his race. They both ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... experience; during the course of the long voyage we had made many friends. We reached Port Elizabeth on Christmas Eve, and were carried ashore through the surf by natives. Immediately after landing, we passed a yard full of old lumber. Protruding from a chaos of ancient rubbish was a signboard, bearing in dingy letters the legend: "Joseph Scully, Coach Painter." This is the only occasion upon which I have come across my name in South Africa. We landed at once, but some of the passengers elected to remain on board the Asia until next morning. This they had ample cause to regret, for a severe ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... active fingers, alert and sensitive, feeling over the dingy cloth they had exposed. Suddenly, with a movement too swift to be followed, they rent the covering away, and on the instant, rearing upwards, she ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... mislaid letter before we left the Thames, and thought proper to reserve it for private meditation. The relationship of the two was kept a profound secret, for reasons best known to themselves; but to the eye at least it was revealed by their striking resemblance, both being small, spare, dingy-complexioned men, with keen, cunning eyes, and faces that looked as hard and sharp as steel. Ever since they first heard of the prophecy, they had half ridiculed, half flattered, and kept remarkably familiar with Bill. That familiarity rather increased ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... he put himself into a cab, and had himself driven to the corner of Munster Court. It was a little street, gloomy to look at, with dingy doors and small houses, but with windows looking into St. James's Park. There was no way through it, so that he who entered it must either make his way into some house, or come back. He walked up to the door, and then taking out his watch, saw that it was half-past six. It ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... about the squeezed little furnished rooms and alcove, which formed her residence and professional offices in these reduced days, Rosalie Le Grange appeared the one thing within its walls which was not common and dingy. A pink wrapper, morning costume of her craft, enclosed a figure grown thick with forty-five, but marvelously well-shaped and controlled. Her wrapper was as neat as her figure; even the lace at the throat was clean. Her long, fair ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... found myself was one of a dingy suite in an old warehouse that had been converted into a newspaper building to house The Uplift, a weekly paper, edited by a Russian Jew named Borsky and financed by Schreiber. It was a typical anarchistic sheet, ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... dear to me—Look you!" she said, with a light, wistful laugh, "there have been times when I was afraid of everything you touched, and I hated everything you looked at. I would not have you stained; I desired to pass my whole life between the four walls of some dingy and eternal gaol, forever alone with you, lest you become like other men. I would in that period have been the very bread you eat, the least perfume which delights you, the clod you touch in crushing it, and I have often loathed ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... two dingy houses proved to be the spot for which he was looking; and, having stared about him for a while, he entered this alleyway. At the farther end it was crossed T-fashion, by another alley, the only object of interest being an iron post at the crossing, and the scenery being made ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... It was a dingy little room in which our hero found himself, having an empty and rusty fire-grate on one side and a window on the other, from which there was visible a landscape of paved court. The foreground of the ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... The jaundiced eye yellows all it beholds. The chameleon takes its color from the bark on which it clings. Man gives his color to what his thought is fastened upon. The pessimist's darkness makes all things dingy. The youth disappointed with his European trip said he was a fool for going. He was, for the reason that he was a fool before he started. He saw nothing without, because he had no vision within. He gave no sight, he received no vision. An artist sees in each Madonna that ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... was tired of him. I don't know on which side the disillusion was felt first. Think where I came from—from the dear old Castle, the moors, the lochs, the free fresh air of Scotland, to a dreary lodging of two little rooms in a dingy street, where I had to cut and contrive and economize to make ends meet. I was an ignorant girl, and I could not do it. I got into debt, and my husband was angry with me. Why should I tell you the petty, sordid details of my life? I soon found out ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... wretched desperation, he found himself at the well-known corner of the street leading out of the Strand. On his journey thither he had been trying to realize to himself what it would be to be the husband of Norah Geraghty; what would be the joy of returning to a small house in some dingy suburb and finding her to receive him. Could he really love her when she would be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, the wife of his bosom and the mother of his children? In such a case would ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... later Dick's eyelids fluttered. For a moment he stared up at the dingy lamp swinging overhead; then his lips parted in ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... deposited a quart bottle, a rack of chips, and a deck of cards on a little deal table in the dingy back ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... history had the dingy little street, in which North Lambeth Police Court stands, witnessed such scenes as were presented on that memorable 4th of December, when counsel for the Crown opened the case against ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... consequence," interrupted Miss Debby, "only I heard Matilda Shipley say yesterday, that there would be no use in dressing much for Mrs. Pelby Smith's party, as her low rooms, with their dingy, dirt-colored paper, could never be lighted up to make any one ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... young gentleman, suddenly seating himself at a dingy table in a very dark corner and motioning Sweetwater to do the same; "I've been looking for a man all day to go up to Boston for me, and I think you'll do. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... superintendent was heavy and he was slight. So from a position always before his own face his fists battered the other man's features blank. And he tore that new shirt, and trampled on the thirty dollar hat; and the chaps grew old and dingy from constant ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... an arithmetical progression in point of size—the largest being known as the first cutter, the next largest the second cutter, then the third and fourth cutters. She also carried a Commodore's Barge, a Captain's Gig, and a "dingy," a small yawl, with a crew of apprentice boys. All these boats, except the "dingy," had their regular crews, who were subordinate to their cockswains—petty officers, receiving pay in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... family? The carriage, when it left the wharf, had been driven up a long narrow street, quite different from any the children had ever seen before. On either side irregularly built houses, most of them old and dingy, stood close together. Here and there was a new one, which had the air of having dropped down by mistake. They left this street, and turning into another, crossed a bridge, which spanned an arm of the river that ran through part of the town. Now the houses began to be large ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... could have all that was requisite for the journey ready, and procure a closed helmet, which Don Quixote said he must by all means take. Samson offered him one, as he knew a friend of his who had it would not refuse it to him, though it was more dingy with rust and mildew than bright and clean like ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... which Hanmer charitably gave up for his accommodation, with a pardonable vanity. Dawson had got a lancer's uniform from his London tailor; but how to get into it was a puzzle; it was delightful to see his attempts to unravel the gorgeous mysteries which were occupying every available spot in his dingy bedroom. The shako was the main stumbling-block. Being unfortunately rather small, it was no easy matter to keep it on his head at all; and how to dispose of the cap-lines was beyond our united wisdom. "Go without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... parcel which I saw was directed to Polly, which I untied, and lo! the most wonderful camel's-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I immediately drew it through my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirely cover our little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, but splendid in appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked in one corner, which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobody knows how ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... back, I can see that to Jimmie the little house was a sort of prison. He loved men and women, contact with his own kind. He had even liked our dingy old office and our dreary, dried-up selves. And here, day after day, he sat alone—as an artist must sit if he is to achieve—es bildet ein Talent ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... One dry, agonized sob racked her; and then she sat on the floor, to stare vacantly at the dingy walls of the room. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... were at the end of the wet weather), the sodden, dingy pines, the muddy road, and the black powder-riven cliffs formed a gloomy background against which the black and white liveries of the jhampanies, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and Mrs. Wessington's down-bowed golden ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... when two men, one old and gray, with a hump on his shoulder, called at a dingy old brick on Clark street and rapped on a narrow door ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... distant centuries, that they can hardly focus on a room. If a scholar chances to sneeze because of the infection, let it be his consolation that the dust arises from the most ancient and respected authors! Pages move silently about with tall dingy tomes in their arms. Other tomes, whose use is past, they bear off to the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... trudged on; down King William Street; over the bridge spanning the misty river; along the Borough Road; until he arrived at Union Street. He had so far failed in his quest for lodgings; but in Union Street he espied a coffee-house; and as he had become both tired and hungry, he entered the dingy little place, sat down, and ordered a cup of coffee and ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... country, which the farmers' wives of those days took pride in preparing for the winter-wear of their "men folks," was an article of superior wearing qualities, and handsome in its way. But it was the half-cotton fabric, dingy and napless, considered good enough for summer wear, in which Ben was arrayed. Made as a loose frock and overall to be worn in the hay-field, or following the plough, it was well enough; but made into a tight-fitting Sunday-suit, it was not handsome, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the tempest's roar, Smiled at the storm, nor deign'd to wish it o'er. 'Twas dull instinctive boldness—like a fire Pent up in earth, whose forces ne'er expire, By grossest fuel nourished, but immured In dingy night, shine heavy and obscured; Sustain'd by this thro' all the scenes of strife, Whose dark succession form'd his chequer'd life, He ne'er the soul's sublimer courage felt, That warms the heart, and teaches it to melt; That nurses liberty's expanding seeds, And ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... and church the town simply consisted of a row of dingy bungalows on either side of the highroad, with a group of the same on the mountain side. Since the American advent the place has been ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... man," who officiated as waiter seems to have been touched from the very first with the quiet simplicity of the two ladies, and he tried to make them feel comfortable and at home in the long, low, dingy room up-stairs, where the meetings of the Trade were held. The high narrow windows looked into the gloomy Row; the sisters, clinging together on the most remote window-seat, (as Mr. Smith tells me he found them, when he came, that Saturday evening, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... shook him awake. He was lying in a dingy bunk somewhere in the gloom of the cramped forecastle. "Come, young'un," growled a voice, strange to Jeremy, "you've slept the clock ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... bird who was born to sing! They have made him a cage; they have clipped his wing; They have shut him up in a dingy street, And they praise his singing and call it sweet; But his heart and his song are saddened and filled With the woods and the nest he never will build, And the wild young dawn coming into the tree, And the mate that never his mate will be; And day by day, when his notes are heard, They freshen ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... in the least bored who might have been and was seen on that wintry afternoon in Nineteen hundred, lounging with one shoulder to a wall of the dingy salesroom and idly thumbing a catalogue of effects about to be put up at auction; but his insouciance was so unaffected that the inevitable innocent bystander might have been pardoned for perceiving in him a pitiable victim of the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... that they see not. O awake indeed, Romans! and you will see that the Christ who is to save men is no wooden dingy effigy of bygone superstitions, but such as Art has seen him in your better mood,—a Child, living, full of love, prophetic of a boundless future,—a Man acquainted with all sorrows that rend the heart of all, and ever loving man with ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... through the gorge beneath, and ahead lay a sharply rising waste of rock and snow. His path led across it, and after a word or two with the men on the line he began his journey, breaking through the thin, frozen crust. The sounds behind him grew fainter and ceased; the trail of dingy smoke which had followed him melted away, and he was alone in the wilderness. His course was marked, however, by a pile of stones here, a blazed tree there, and he plodded on all day. When night came he found a hollow free from snow beneath a clump of juniper, and lay awake, shivering under his blankets. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... again under another shower of gravel. Sweeny shook his wife into consciousness. He bade her get up and see who was in the back-yard. Mrs. Sweeny, a lean harassed woman with grey hair, fastened a dingy pink nightdress round her throat with a pin and obeyed ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... idleness. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. Ashamed to toil, art thou? Ashamed of thy dingy work-shop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Churchill sat leaning a little forward, as if intent on Dyce's movements, but his elbow rested on the arm of the rocking chair, and holding his hand up to screen his face from the blaze of the fire, he was closely watching Bedney. When Dyce shook out and held up a faded, dingy blue silk handkerchief, the lawyer noted a sudden twinkle in the old man's eyes, but no other feature moved, and he stooped to take a coal of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in the smaller place for a time, dearest, and how lucky we don't have to take a lease, as we should in England." Her mind jumped to perceive any practical advantage. Already, mentally, she was arranging furniture in the cheaper place, planning for a screen, a tin tub, painting the dingy woodwork. They asked for the refusal of both studios till the next day, and for that evening ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... I waited again, hiding this time, and after an interval the creature moved and hastened away from the poles, where it was, in a measure, exposed, to the more secure shelter of some bushes. Then I saw that it was of a clear white, while so-called white ferrets are usually a dingy yellow, and the white tail was tipped with black. From these circumstances, and from the timidity and anxious desire to escape observation, I could only conclude that it was a ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... as he was entering his own house, and burst into a confidence: "Cy, my boy, come aft and splice the main-brace. Cyrus, what a female! She knocked me higher than Gilroy's kite. And her mother was as sweet a girl as you ever saw!" He drew his son into a little, low-browed, dingy room at the end of the hall. Its grimy untidiness matched the old Captain's clothes, but it was his one spot of refuge in his own house; here he could scatter his tobacco ashes almost unrebuked, and play ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... scholar had seemed to him to be one of the most helpful influences at work in the United States. As already noted Page had met the future President when he was serving a journalistic apprenticeship in Atlanta, Georgia. Wilson was then spending his days in a dingy law office and was putting to good use the time consumed in waiting for the clients who never came by writing that famous book on "Congressional Government" which first lifted his name out of obscurity. This work, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... on the mantelpiece, where it quite brightened up the dingy nursery. The nursery was dingy, because it was a basement room, and its windows looked out on a stone area with a rockery made of clinkers facing the windows. Nothing grew in the rockery except ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... Of the four great buildings just noticed, that of the Mint, or rather its facade, pleases me most. It is a beautiful elevation, in pure good taste; but the stone is unfortunately of a coarse grain and of a dingy colour. Of the BRIDGES thrown across the Seine, connecting all the fine objects on either side, it must be allowed that they are generally in good taste: light, yet firm; but those, in iron, of Louis XVI. and des Arts, are ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and crofts of Portray. He had a heavy stiff hat, which he carried in his hand. He wore a black swallow-tail coat and black trousers, and a heavy red waistcoat buttoned up nearly to his throat, round which was tightly tied a dingy black silk handkerchief. At Portray no man was more voluble, no man more self-confident, no man more equal to his daily occupations than Andy Gowran; but the unaccustomed clothes, and the journey to London, and the town houses overcame him, and for a while almost silenced him. Mrs. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... until, at last, just under the ground-glass roofing, the names of Smith and Hanbury were to be seen painted in large white letters across a panel, with a laconic invitation to push beneath it. Following out the suggestion, the Admiral and his companion found themselves in a dingy apartment, ill lit from a couple of glazed windows. An ink-stained table, littered with pens, papers, and almanacs, an American cloth sofa, three chairs of varying patterns, and a much-worn carpet, constituted ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... windows are furnished with latticed shutters; these, when not closed, fold back on either hand against the wall, and being painted green, and kept with much care and freshness, would invest humbler dwellings with an attractive air, especially in the eyes of an Englishman, accustomed to the dingy aspect of our city residences, which look as though the owners had resolved on making them as forbidding as possible without, in order to enhance the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... compartment at the green plains of doura, at the almost naked brown men bending rhythmically by the shadufs, at the children passing on donkeys, and the women standing at gaze with corners of their dingy garments held fast between their teeth; and she felt as if she still saw the dark courts of Hathor's dwelling, as if she still heard the cries of the enormous bats that inhabit them. When the train stopped, she got up slowly, and let Nigel help her ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... work in Dr. Stillbury's practice continued longer than I had bargained for. Day after day went by and still found me tramping the dingy streets of Kennington or scrambling up and down narrow stairways; turning in at night dead tired, or turning out half awake to the hideous jangle of the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... rarely as Vina Nettleton, might be expected to become snappy and excited. Bedient was proving a rather stiff drug. Mrs. Wordling now wished to observe his action upon Beth Truba. "I'll appear to regard it as a perfectly lady-like party, which it was," she mused, in the dingy interminable stairways,—the elevator being an uncertain quantity—"and run no risk of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... by the window caught her eye. She walked over and looked at them. The lantern gave so little light that she could scarcely see anything, but she managed to make out that one was a dingy chromo with a Scriptural subject. The other was a battered "crayon enlargement," a portrait of a man, a middle-aged man with a chin beard. There was something familiar about the ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... slowly trundling in among a maze of tracks and sidings, with long trains of gondolas, coal-cars, and dingy-brown freight-boxes on both sides. Cullin was shouting to invisible switchmen, and presently the train came bumping to a stand. Another minute and two or three early birds among the yardmen were climbing aboard ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... knocker being applied, the green door was opened by a disagreeable-looking old woman, who answered to the question, "Is Mr Moxton in?" with a short "Yes," and, without farther remark, ushered our hero into a very dingy and particularly small office, which, owing to the insufficient quantity of daylight that struggled through the dirty little windows, required to be lighted with gas. Ned felt, so to speak, like a thermometer which was ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... 'Tis thus they preach, From Christiania to Cadiz, Recruited as they talk and teach By dingy lads and draggled ladies; Without a sunbeam or a song, With no clear Heaven to hunger after; The Dismal Throng! the Dismal Throng! The foes of Life and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... through the gloom Of Market-street's opaque simoom, A queue of people, parti-sexed, Awaiting the command of "Next!" A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign: "Teeth dusted nice—five cents ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... I, Mr. Pelton. I came to have a talk with you." Yesler pushed forward into the dingy sitting-room with the pertinacity of a bookagent. "I heard you were not well, and I came to find out if I can do ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... under an umbrella if one lived under it in the right neighbourhood and on the right side of the street, which axiom is the reason that a certain child through the first six years of her life sat on certain days staring out of a window in a small, dingy room on the top floor of a slice of a house on a narrow but highly fashionable London street and looked on at the passing of motors, carriages and people in the dull ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the Americans adjourned for coffee to Ciret's, a little cafe in the village which nestles among the hills not far from the camp. The cafe itself was like any one of thousands of French provincial restaurants. There was a great dingy common room, with a sanded brick floor, and faded streamers of tricolor paper festooned in curious patterns from the smoky ceiling. The kitchen was clean, and filled with the appetizing odor of good cooking. Beyond it was another, inner room, "toujours reservee a mes Americains," ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... flags and coloured lanterns, while just outside the broad windows a wonderful tropic sky, hung with silver stars, added its enchantment to the scene. No carriage being available in the town, we walked from the dingy little wharf to the Headquarters Building, arrayed in our very best, and followed by a guard of armed soldiers, our escorts ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... piece, and, amid an avalanche of blessings, we passed on to Dawsey's 'mansion'—if mansion it could be called—a story-and-a-half shanty, about thirty feet square, covered with rough, unpainted boards, and lit by two small, dingy windows. It was approached by a sandy walk, and the ground around its front entrance was littered with apple peelings, potato parings, and the refuse of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... disgorged a crowd drunk with joy, gin, and whisky. Every one chattered, argued, discussed, disputed, applauded, from the gentleman lounging upon the barroom settee with his tumbler of sherry-cobbler before him down to the waterman who got drunk upon his "knock-me-down" in the dingy taverns of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... now-a-days if anything with a decrease of comfort from the 1880 accommodation, because of the greater overcrowding; and there has been no general increase of speed, no increase in smooth running, no increase in immunity from accident now for quite a number of years. One travels in a dingy box of a compartment that is too ill-lit at night for reading and full of invincible draughts. In winter the only warmth is too often an insufficient footwarmer of battered tin, for which the passengers fight fiercely with their feet. An observant person cannot fail to be struck—especially ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... moment the dingy swing-doors of the War Office flew open and a red-tabbed, handsome figure of a man, with gold braid on his cap and crossed swords on his epaulettes, came briskly out on to the steps. He caught sight of Terry and, throwing her ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... when they were at last settled in their new seats, did a great deal to relieve the bareness of the dingy school-room. All at once the room seemed to be very ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... remain in this retreat until dark, as he had first intended. Instead, he drew a dingy, ragged dress from the bundle beneath the thwart and in this disguised himself as an old woman, drawing a cotton wimple low over his head and forehead to hide his short hair. Concealing the child beneath the other articles ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... perhaps as well that it did not; for to look on it from the river, or from a distant height—like a long line of houses hung on the breast of romance—and afterwards to enter it and find yourself in the midst of a narrow, dingy street, where scarce two wheelbarrows could pass, produceth only disappointment, and that, too, of the bitterest kind. It seems, indeed, that the Devonians have conceded so much of their beautiful county to the barrenness of Dartmoor, that they grudge every ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... kindness in that poor little Cockney's finger than there is in your whole body!" Cecilia whispered, apparently addressing the unoffending cloth—which, having begun life as a dingy green and black, did not seem greatly the worse for its new decoration. "Hateful old thing!" A smile suddenly twitched the corners of her mouth. "Well, she can't stop the money for a new cloth out of this quarter's allowance, because I've just got ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... come to spend that next evenin' trottin' up and down this block in the sixties between Ninth and Amsterdam. I must say it didn't look specially promisin' as a place to work up community spirit and that sort of thing. Just a dingy row of old style dumb-bell flats, most of 'em with "Room to Rent" signs hung out and little basement shops tucked in here and there. Maybe you know the kind—the asphalt always littered with paper, garbage cans left out, and swarms of ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... The woman's outcry echoed from the dingy walls. She lay on her knees and wrung her hands. "Nicholas, Nicholas, constable, God in heaven, what has he done? I swear he is as innocent as a new-born babe! He never cuts grass in other people's fields, he tears off no branches in the wood—he never climbed the fence to steal the pastor's ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... a low, dingy building of brick, which stood right across the end of a squalid street, and completely blocked the way. Over the door was a grimy sign-board, on which could faintly be distinguished the vague ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... ante-room, came back, and after placing the lamp on the chimney shelf, seated herself by her mother, a little behind the painter, so as to be able to look at him at her ease, while apparently much interested in the burning of the lamp; the flame, checked by the damp in a dingy chimney, sputtered as it struggled with a charred and badly-trimmed wick. Hippolyte, seeing the large mirror that decorated the chimney-piece, immediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide. Thus the girl's little ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... the hills of Galilee. He was as unsafe when He went up to Jerusalem as John Huss when he went to the Council of Constance with the Emperor's safe-conduct in his belt; or as a condemned heretic would have been in the old days, if he had gone and stood in that little dingy square outside the palace of the Inquisition at Rome, and there, below the obelisk, preached his heresies! Christ had been condemned in the council of the nation; but there were plenty of hiding-places among the Galilean ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have said it was "no dacent." But the hair gave her its own theory before she had done with it, and this was the result. She had also washed her face and hands and neck, made the best she could of her poor, dingy dress, and put one of her own ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... lay there in an extremely uncomfortable position, watching the shadows cast upon the dingy ceiling, as the distorted heads and shoulders of the men were seen moving to and fro. Sometimes he could distinguish what they carried, whether it was bale or tub, and upon which shoulder it was carried, till by degrees, as he found that he was not discovered, his thoughts began to ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... can't really elude the Carnival. As the days elapse it filters down into the manners of the common people, and before the week is over the very beggars at the church-doors seem to have gone to the expense of a domino. When you meet these specimens of dingy drollery capering about in dusky back-streets at all hours of the day and night, meet them flitting out of black doorways between the greasy groups that cluster about Roman thresholds, you feel that a love of "pranks," the more vivid the better, must from far back ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... thinking, if the disembodied spirits of former inhabitants were ever conscious of them, how they must pity themselves for their old places of imprisonment. Sometimes a face would appear behind the dingy glass of a window, and would fade away into the gloom as if it had seen enough of life and had vanished out of it. Presently the rain began to fall in slanting lines between him and those houses, and people began to collect under cover of the public passage opposite, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... that worthy, resplendent in dingy scarlet uniform. "He alwuz knows if people ain't afraid of him. Try him with this, missy." "This" was an apple, and Jumbo deigned to accept it at Norah's hands, and ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the ultimate effects of the daily occupations of many men in the City of London, who, seated in a dark and dingy counting-house in pursuit of gain, form and execute schemes the eventual tenor and bearing of which are not to enrich themselves but the human race. No doubt amongst the mass are noble minds who have ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... muttered Dalton, as he turned back into the little office room, which had never looked so dim and dingy before. "For a girl that's ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... bartenders breathed and looked again. Men were crowding like mad through the back doors. De Spain, at the cigar case, looked intently into the rainy street, lighted from the corner by a dingy lamp. The four men near him had not stirred, but, startled and alert, the right hand of each covered the butt of a revolver. De Spain moved first. While the pool players jammed the back doors to escape, he spoke to, without looking at, the bartender. "What's ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... sharpened stakes in front of a trench smashed almost out of recognition, and endless barbed-wire torn and blown into grotesque piles by the violence of our bombardment; and through the debris slunk the predatory Bedouin with his dingy galabeah full of loot. At one place a Turkish camel with a gaily caparisoned saddle trotted up to us and joined the column for company; he earned his keep, too, after he had recovered from the effects of his long fast and had ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... street they could see, it was the same—never a hill and never a hollow, but always the same endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here and there would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores and dingy sheds and docks along it; here and there would be a railroad crossing, with a tangle of switches, and locomotives puffing, and rattling freight cars filing by; here and there would be a great factory, a dingy building with innumerable windows in it, and immense volumes of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... was burning, and the whole place was aglare with yellow light. The wild groups stood out black against the trodden and dingy snow, while overhead rolled clouds of sooty smoke. It occurred to Berenice that the accident had taken place so near Brookfield that many persons must have come from the town. She seized a respectable-looking man by the arm, and asked him if he knew of any way in which ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... to the mayor's office, and been married; then they had got on a car and ridden through Mercer's dingy outskirts to the end of the route in Medfield, where, beyond suburban uglinesses, there were glimpses ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... lined with tar-paper, on which were pinned lithographs of Robert G. Ingersoll, Karl Marx, and Napoleon. Under a gun-rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy books, shotgun shells, and fishing tackle. Bone was reading by a pine table still littered with supper-dishes. Before him lay a clean-limbed English setter. The dog was asleep. In the shack was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... a row of dignified houses on Oxford Street—yet not on Oxford Street. A miniature park, some forty feet in depth, acts as a buffer-state between the street itself and the little group of town houses. It is an oasis in the great plains of London's dingy dwelling-places, a spot where the owners are rarely seen unless the season is at its height, when gaily cloaked women and stiff-bosomed men emerge at theatre-hour and are driven to the opera. Throughout the day the Gardens (probably so styled on account of the complete absence ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... true, sat upon the cushions in the dingy room; you would have certainly touched a human body if you had laid a hand upon his arm, but by an effort of will which left him sitting absolutely motionless with half-closed eyes, he, in spite of the heat, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... snubler— She trips something over; Og stirrer og skuer And, her eyes declining, Gyldne Luer Beholds a shining, Og rodmer og baever And red'neth and shaketh, Og skjaelvende haever And trembling uptaketh Med undrende Aand With wondering sprite Udaf sorten Muld From the dingy mould, Med snehvide Haand, With hand snow-white, Det rode Guld. The ruddy gold. En sagte Torden A gentle thunder Dundrer; Pealeth; Hele Norden The whole North wonder ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... that life is unreasonable. The intellect, if it could be impartial, would tell us to cease; but a blind partiality, an instinct quite distinct from thought, drives us on to take desperate chances in an essentially bankrupt lottery. Shaw seems to accept this dingy estimate of the rational outlook, but adds a somewhat arresting comment. Schopenhauer had said, "Life is unreasonable; so much the worse for all living things." Shaw said, "Life is unreasonable; so much the worse for reason." Life is the higher ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... didn't get on with him any better than the men, for she ups and dies one day, leavin' her baby, a year-old gal. One o' the crew was fond o' that baby. He used to get the black nurse to put it in the dingy, and he'd tow it astern, rocking it with the painter like a cradle. He did it—hatin' the cap'en all the same. One day the black nurse got out of the dingy for a moment, when the baby was asleep, leavin' him alone with it. An idea took ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... cannon on the parapets and her sweet-toned bells in the spires; her towering chateau on the heights and her long, low, queer-smelling warehouses in the lower town; her spick-and-span caleches and her dingy trolley-cars; her sprinkling of soldiers and sailors with Scotch accent and Irish brogue and Cockney twang, on a background of petite bourgeoisie speaking the quaintest of French dialects; her memories of an adventurous, glittering past and her placid contentment with the tranquil ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... pile of five or six nibbled-looking volumes in dingy covers resting upon one corner of the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... concerned. Stepping behind a tree at the edge of the field she strained her eyes to watch the hulking figure as it moved swiftly on. Then she gave a little exclamation of surprise and triumph. The man was hurrying up the steps of a dingy little house that stood at the end of a row of similar houses which bounded the side of the field directly opposite where she stood. Again consulting her watch, she hesitated. It was almost seven o'clock, and she was at least a mile from Wayne ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... district. There is a peculiar green color in vegetation which is an unmistakable sign that it is living upon the fat of the land. I need hardly say that, in this case, the color of the vegetation gave unmistakable signs of the poverty of the soil; but in the midst of the dingy yellowish-green of the herbage, I came upon one square of bright green grass. In answer to my enquiry I was told that, a "lambing-fold had been there last year," and my informant added his opinion, "that the manure would be so ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... was a screw loose with Lacey," the owner of this place. It was going down hill like its master. A general air of neglect and growing dilapidation impressed the most casual observer. The front gate hung on one hinge; boards were off the shackly barn, and the house had grown dingy and weather-stained from lack of paint. But as you entered and passed from the province of the master to that of the mistress a new element was apparent, struggling with, but unable to overcome, the predominant tendency to unthrift and seediness. But everything that Mrs. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... perpetual wail, and the corners of what had once been a pretty mouth drooped in an eternal peevishness. She found herself in a morass of misery and shabby discomfort, but had her days continued in an even tenor she would still have lamented. "A dingy body," was Mrs. Morran's comment, but she laboured in kindness. Unhappily they had no common language, and it was only by signs that the hostess could discover her wants and show her goodwill. She fed her and bathed her face, saw to the fire and left her to ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... of boyish vanity to take the blue ribbon with its silver anchors off the new hat and replace it with the dingy black band from the old one, but Ben was quite sincere in doing this, though doubtless his theatrical life made him think of the effect more than other lads would have done. He could find nothing in his limited wardrobe with which to decorate Sanch except ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Dominican habit, descending into hell. The tapestry on the furniture was full of winged heads and fantastic flowers; on all sides were seen great art in weaving and masterly borders, which recalled the margins of old prayer-books. Dulled and dingy colors, producing the impression of things which had emerged from the mist of ages, and only glass window-screens, framed in columns and pointed arches, were brilliant with the colors of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. The window-panes ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... briskly in the direction of Marylebone, and stopped at last at a dull, yellow-washed house, which bore on its door a very dingy brass plate, inscribed in red letters, 'M. et Mdlle. Tirard. Salon de Danse.' Ernest opened the door without ringing, and turned down the passage towards the salon. 'Remember,' he said, turning to Harry Oswald by way of a last warning, with his hand on the inner door-handle, 'coute que coute, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... swept off the wine and loaf to the cupboard, and then, coming back for the platter I had used, took it, opened the back door, and went out, leaving the door ajar. The draught which came in beat the flame of the lamp this way and that, and gave the dingy, gloomy room an air still more miserable. I rose angrily from the fire, and went to the door, intending to ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... a light irradiating all such gatherings which is totally irrespective of gas or wax-candles. It can shed a mellow lustre on dingy rooms, frayed carpets, and shabby furniture; nay, I have seen its tender rays impart a rare and spiritual beauty to an old, worn, long-loved face; but on the other hand, when this magic light is quenched, or even temporarily shaded, not ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... proceeded to the Birthplace, where a very gentlewomanly female exhibited the apartment in which the Infant Bard first saw the light. Alack! there was but little light to behold, being a shockingly low and dingy room, meagrely furnished with two chairs and a table, on which was another of the busts. As I came in, I uttered a remark which I had prepared for the occasion. "It was here," I said, reverently, "here that the Swan of Avon was hatched!" At which ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... It was from him, presumably, that Joe had inherited his passion for melody and harmony; and it was no wonder that David recognized so soon in the blind boy the spirit that made them kin. At the first stroke of David's bow, indeed, the dingy walls about them would crumble into nothingness, and together the two boys were off in a fairy world of ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... was held at Fond du Lac. The Church edifice was unfinished, and the celebrated school house having been burned, as stated in a former chapter, the Meeting was held in the Court House. At that time the building, though now so dingy, was new, and aspired to be the most respectable edifice in the village. To prepare the Court House especially for the Quarterly Meeting, the floors were newly carpeted with sawdust, even then a famous product of the village, and the seats well broomed. The place was crowded with ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... annual plant, attaining a height of six feet, having dingy red, funnel-shaped flowers, and viscid leaves. The leaves are the officinal part, and their active properties depend on a peculiar, oily-like alkaloid, called Nicotin. The flavor and strength of tobacco depend on climate, cultivation, and the mode of manufacture. That most esteemed by ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... not even the most careful observer, would have recognised in the two dusty figures, the once spruce forms of Captain Thomas Tomb and Dingy David. ...
— The Pirate's Pocket Book • Dion Clayton Calthrop
... little dingy, belonging to the 'Monkshaven,' had been cast away as soon as the men had disembarked from her, and there was something melancholy in seeing her slowly drift away to leeward, followed by her oars and various small articles, as if to rejoin the noble ship she had so lately quitted. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... thin wiry legs, walked by his side, in a dingy white coat, and blue facings, and great pewter buttons, with his silver gray hair escaping from under his battered three-cocked hat; and his shrewd puckered resolute face, in which the boy could read no promise of sympathy, showing so white and phantom-like in the moonlight, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Francis walking up and down the little garden, his soutane tucked up, and his breviary in his hand, all looking ghostly in the dim afternoon light. Now the village was passed, they were flying through wide open gates, and under the shadow of the dear old trees. There was Danton Hall, not the dingy, weather-beaten Danton Hall she knew, but a much more modern, much more elegant mansion; and there on the gray stone steps stood her father, handsome and portly, and kindly as ever; and there was Grace ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... the "sixties" was a very dark and dingy place. The streets were sparingly lit with the dimmest of gas-jets set very far apart: the shop-windows made no display of lights, and the general effect was one ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... as he sat thus, came Sir Pertolepe according to his wont, but to-night he leaned upon the shoulder of Beda the Jester, whose motley flared 'gainst rugged wall and dingy flagstone and whose bells rang loud and merry by contrast with ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... to leave the school for the eight weeks of holiday. It was dreary indeed sitting in the great school-room, with its long rows of empty desks, with nothing before one to break the monotony of the four walls but the great map of France and the big dusty cross with its dingy wreath of immortelles. It is true, we did not bewail the absence of our companions. In fact, it was with a tranquil sense of security that I began my work every morning in vacation, knowing that I should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... it ever came from her hand but half performed. A good deal of feeling arose from this difference of opinion, which was getting to rather an uncomfortable height, when, all at once, the potatoes that Isabel cooked for breakfast assumed a dingy, dirty look. Her mistress blamed her severely, asking her master to observe 'a fine specimen of Bell's work!'-adding, 'it is the way all her work is done.' Her master scolded also this time, and commanded ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... slowly along the ancient streets that they appear to be deposited by secretion, like corals and shells. I took a book to a printer, and found he was the grandson of the man who published "Junius" in 1769, doing business in the same dingy court and office, with the old regularity and deliberation. When I said, that, for want of time, I should have to risk formidable errata and print at the rate of sixty-four pages a day, he plainly suspected me of derangement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... houses on either side relinquished their tenancy, and went to reside in other quarters of the town, where there was less chance of interruption from evil spirits. From being so long without an inhabitant, the house at last grew so ruinous, so dingy, and so miserable in its outward appearance, and so like the place that ghosts might be supposed to haunt, that few persons cared to go past it after sunset. The knocking that was heard in one of the upper rooms ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the overseer of the party, was the first to dash up to the middle in the water. "Hi," exclaimed that dingy individual, making a torrent of remarks in Portuguese, while he darted his long pole hither and thither; then, observing that Martin and Barney were gazing at him open mouthed, he shouted, "Look out, boys! here Jim comes! Take care, ole feller, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... paw soon healed, the dingy color slowly yielded to many washings, the woolly coat began to knot up into little curls, a new collar handsomely marked made him a respectable dog, and Sancho was himself again. But it was evident that his sufferings ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... pictures of Turner were evolved from a life as dingy and uncomely as could well be. It is difficult to conceive any correspondence, any rapport between workmanship so exquisite, and a workman in every way so unattractive, so little estimable. But just as from the small dusky insect ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... hiding-places before sunset. The presence of the steamer awakens a faint simulacrum of life and interest in sleepy Boeroe, and a native woman, in the rusty black calico wherewith Dutch Calvinism counteracts the Eastern love of glowing colours, brings a rickety chair from her dingy hut, and sets the precious possession under a shadowy nutmeg-tree in the village street. A little crowd assembles, for local excitements are few, and the Malay phrase-book, an inseparable companion, aids in carrying on a halting conversation, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... kisses, clung a little closely about Pamela's neck, and when the cab-door had been shut, saw her dimly through the smoky glass, and the mistiness in her eyes; saw her shabby dress, and faded face, and half-longed to go back; remembered sadly how many years had passed since she had left the dingy sea-port town to go to London, and meet her fate, and lose it, and grow old before her time in mourning it; saw her, last of all, and so was whirled up the street, and out of sight. And in like manner she was whirled through ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... itself had no doubt. It was very large and had a long heavy handle that always stood out stiffly; there was a knob on the top of the pump that had once been gilded but that was a long time ago, when the Pump was aristocratic and presumed itself to be a Fountain. It was dingy and broken now, but the Pump was none the less proud and dignified; it took pleasure in holding out its handle stiffly and never letting it down though people stumbled against it every day. "It had been there the longest," the Pump ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... rejoined his squadron had dragged perceptibly. Captain Frazer was in Cape Town; Carew was still in hospital at Johannesburg where, under the eyes of Alice Mellen and her cousin, he was fast resuming his old finical habits. Dingy and veldt-stained though he might be, Carew at heart would always remain the exquisite. However, exquisite that he was bound to be, he was even more the soldier, and his gay eyes had clouded, as he had wrung Weldon's ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... ought to be magnanimous enough to think that it's all for the best, since he can do infinitely more for her than I ever could. She will be the millionaire's wife, and I'll go back to my dingy little office and write paragraphs heavy enough to sink a cork ship. Thus will end my June idyll; but should I live a century I will always feel that Gilbert Hearn ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... voice,—trying to bring them out distinctly and with full effect. It was only a queen, to be sure; but somehow (missing the royal robes) Miriam could see only a woman. Close upon this came another shock. These dingy, untidy, soiled-looking men were now making love to the young Prima Donna,—first one and then another; this one in bass, and that one in baritone, and she answering in her clear soprano. Answering,—sometimes responding. Then they touched her, and handled her, and ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... narrow street, dirty, and ill-paved. Dingy tenement blocks and a few unattractive stores were on either side. All about were jabbering men and chattering women—though not one word of what they said could Pollyanna understand. Moreover, she could not help seeing that the people looked ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... in.—a quantity of rain that has twice been exceeded at Selborne in the short period of my observations. Dr. Huxam remarks that frequent small rains keep the air moist; while heavy ones render it more dry, by beating down the vapours. He is also of opinion that the dingy, smoky appearance in the sky, in very dry seasons, arises from the want of moisture sufficient to let the light through, and render the atmosphere transparent; because he had observed several bodies more diaphanous when wet than dry; and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... canary of a more reflective character and retiring disposition than the first, could have afforded a dust of the golden hue of his feathers to make his Teneriffean cousins more presentable without being much less yellow himself—their hue, so far as Mick and I noticed, being more of a dingy white than chrome. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... head of which was the fish market—a very important institution, where the product of the sea formed a considerable portion of the food of the people. The boat in which he sailed was an old, black, dingy affair, which needed to be baled out more than once a day to keep her afloat. The sail was almost as black as the hull, and had been patched and darned in a hundred places. The skipper and crew of this unsightly old craft was Leopold ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... accustomed all her life to dingy hotels and lodgings, glanced up at the grand staircase and imposing hall in rapturous surprise. Mme. Walraven stood ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... or should be, washed everyday; rub soap on the towels. Put them in the water; let them stand half an hour or so; then rub them out thoroughly, rinse faithfully, and dry outdoors in clear air and sun, and dish-cloths and towels need never look gray and dingy—a ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... it was sultry midsummer, Floy lived in the hot, stifled city, up four pairs of stairs, in a room looking out on dingy brick walls, and gloomy black sheds. Her mamma was dressed in black, and looked very sad, and very tired; bending all day over that tiresome writing desk. Sometimes she looked up and smiled at Floy; and ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... a moment, Anna!" In such a hurry, do! There was Anna, "Wait! I'm in a hurry, too! Where is that pomatum? You Malvina! if you don't help me, I'll—There! take that, Miss! Now fly around!" Malvina, with a faint, dingy pink suddenly brought out on her pale sea-green face, did fly around, while I, hushing my guitar in the tumult, watch each running over the other, in silent amazement, wondering if order can come out of such confusion, and if the people downstairs ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... commander-in-chief, with his erect and graceful seat in the saddle, his imposing dignity of demeanor, and his calm and measured tones, as deliberate as though he were in a drawing-room. Jackson was a very different personage. He was clad in a dingy old coat, wore a discolored cadet-cap, tilted almost upon his nose, and rode a rawboned horse, with short stirrups, which raised his knees in the most ungraceful manner. Neither in his face nor figure was there the least indication of the great faculties of the man, and a more awkward-looking ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... an alley near by, where he turned in, and with some difficulty found his way to the dingy staircase. Opening the door to Jennie's gentle "Come in," he said, "I have brought you a handful of flowers to look at ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Driven by a mighty tempest. Sadder and more bitter feelings, Deeper, darker fears betake him, As, above the groans around him, Coming from the pit of terrors, Bitter wailings, mournful cryings, Rise and fill the air with anguish. Now in view the dingy walls stand, In their black and dismal bearing, Of the gloomy pit of terrors; Gloomy, like a loathsome dungeon. Now before the gate he standeth, Worn, and weary, and dejected; And the lurid glares break through it Of the flames for ever burning; And he sees the shames, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... of these streets are reached by scores of granite steps that climb the steep mountainside. These streets are not over twelve or fifteen feet wide, and the shops are mere holes in the wall, with a frontage of eight or ten feet. Yet many of these dingy shops contain thousands of dollars' worth of decorated silks and linens, artistic carvings, laces, curios and many other articles of Chinese manufacture. Unlike the Japanese, who will follow the tourist to the sidewalk and urge ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... said Mary. "I prefer the green fields, and the woods, and the gay flowers, and the songs of birds, to the narrow streets, the dingy houses, and the cries of London; but yet I opine that happiness comes from within, and that, if the heart is at rest, contentment may be found ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... and pleasure and their tongues busy with questions, the girls cantered down the narrow, crooked wagon road called "Main Street." They read the names over the doors of the dingy little shops, commenting gayly ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
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