|
|
|
More "Leaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obliquely gleaming eye-ball raise; Despair, with gorgon-figured veil o'erspread, Speeds to dark Phlegethon's detested maze. Lo, startled at the heavenly ray, With speed unwonted Indolence upsprings, And, heaving, lifts her leaden ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... fear: he started up and procured an iron tool with which he could break the seal of the cover, and took a hammer and chisel with him. With the aid of these instruments he broke through the leaden seal; but scarcely had it given way, when the lid opened, and a blue curling smoke arose from it, and from the midst of it issued a hideous old woman in a strange dress. She carried a crutch under her left arm, and held another in her right hand. She limped over the side of the vessel, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... for the cross of Christ and the arms of France. On the ninth of April, they were all assembled on a ridge slightly elevated, for the celebration of this all-important ceremony. First, they raised a massive column, at the foot of which they buried a leaden plate, bearing an inscription in Latin, to the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... early twilight fell from the leaden sky, and the shadows began to skulk behind the bushes, and the birds gathered to their nests with sleepy twitter, she tripped over a little stone, fell weakly to the ground, and lay still. She had not the strength to get ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... to take place at midnight and it is past eleven when Oliver drops back into the stag line after being stuck for a dance and a half with a leaden-footed human flower-basket who devoted the entire time to nervous giggles and the single coy statement that she just knew he never could guess who she was but she recognized him perfectly. He starts looking around for Ted. There he is, scanning the clown's parade with the eyes of an anxious ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Were as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee - Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, unhappily, I'm ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... when she touched me,—when she stooped to press her lips to mine. At that instant the accumulating rage which had been smouldering in my breast through all those leaden torturing hours, sprang into flame. Leaping off my couch of rugs, I flung my hands about her throat,—and then she knew I was awake. Then she strove to tighten the cord which she had suffered to become unduly loose. Her baleful eyes were fixed on mine. I knew ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... leaden feet, he moved toward the door. Gropingly his hand reached for the knob. Thus he stood for another long minute, and then with a sudden gesture he straightened his giant frame, threw back his mighty shoulders and, with fearless head held high, swung ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... If his mind had not been so lethargic because of the things that weighted it, like the leaden soles upon a diver's boots, he would have roused himself to say, "Look here, a chap can't pull a girl who is as sweet as a flower and as trusting as a babe, out of trouble and then make bazaar love to her; he can't do it if he's any sort ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... is heavy. This somber reverie of earth and sky has a sacredness of its own, but it fills the spectator with a vague and stupefying ennui. Light brings life: darkness may bring thought, but a dull daylight, the uncertain glimmer of a leaden sky, merely make one restless and weary. These indecisive and chaotic states of nature are ugly, like all amorphous things, like smeared colors, or bats, or the viscous polyps of the sea. The source of all attractiveness is to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Lincoln, York, and the governor of the Tower were ordered to collect and forward all the mangonels, quarrels, and bows and arrows they could gather; and for seventy days missiles of all kinds, immense stones, leaden balls, and javelins were rained upon the castle; and Greek fire—a new and terrible mode of destruction—was also used in the siege. But it was only when their provisions and other resources were exhausted that the garrison capitulated; and it was ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... seeing how leaden-colored his handsome face had turned, he forgave as promptly and as freely as he was learning to pardon the telling of a serviceable lie, or the perpetration of an occasional barbarism in speech, by Patricia. For he, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Silvery-voiced Tenor, some performing dogs, the whole of the Town Band, the Man with the Bath-chair and general crowd of "loafers," assemble opposite my dining-room windows, braving south-west wind (half a gale of it), and a general downpour, leaden sky, and indications of "being in" ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... same name, is a pleasant fertile country. The first town founded by Europeans in America was St. Domingo. The bones of Christopher Columbus and his brother Lewis are deposited in two leaden coffins in ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... handsome case of dark wood, in a corner, and two or three chairs, with a table and bureau, that had evidently come from some dwelling of more than usual pretension. The clock was industriously ticking, but its leaden-looking hands did no discredit to their dull aspect, for they pointed to the hour of eleven, though the sun plainly showed it was some time past the turn of the day. There was also a dark, massive chest. The kitchen utensils were of the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... by laying ashes over the fire, that no smoke shall ascend among the leaves, which are slowly stirred with the hand until perfectly dry. The tea is then poured into chests, and, when transported, placed in boxes enclosing leaden canisters, and papered to keep out the dampness. In curing the finest kinds of tea, such as Powchong, Pekoe, etc., not more than ten to twenty leaves are fired in the pan at one time, and only a few pounds rolled at once in the trays. As soon as cured, these fine teas are packed in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... upon his time were incessant. He would rise in his unlovely room at the Tuscarora House, leaden from insufficient sleep, to be buttonholed before he breakfasted—sometimes, even before he dressed; this man must be placated, that threatened, the other convinced by reason; another must be visited in sickness, another found work, for yet another must gratuitous lawyering be done—all ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... we known that we were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling. As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them into "tears of sensibility," or mould them into dull praise, and an affected show of candour. We were not silent during the author's life-time, either for his reproof or encouragement (such ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Ghetto mind, grasping and acquisitive, clever as a Norman peasant or a Jew pedlar is clever, and beyond that outrageously stupid and ugly. It was a new view and yet the old familiar view of her husband, but now she saw him not as little eager eyes, a sharp nose, gaunt gestures and a leaden complexion, but as shops and stores and rules and cash registers and harsh advertisements and a driving merciless hurry to get—to get anything and everything, money, monopoly, power, prominence, whatever any other human being seemed ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Rheumatism (I think Rheumatic Gout) in one leg as has given him no rest or sleep since. It is, he says, 'as if somethin' was a-tearin' the Flesh off his Bones.' I showed him two of the guilty Screws which had almost let my Leaden Keel part from the wooden one: he says he had desired the Smith not to make too large heads, and the Smith accordingly made them too small; and some Apprentice had, he supposes, fixed them in without further ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... good-by to Kitty he and Carroll alighted one evening at a little station in northern England. Brown moors stretched about it, for the heather had not bloomed yet, rolling back in long slopes to the high ridge which cut against leaden thunder-clouds in the eastern sky. To the westward, they fell away; and across a wide, green valley smooth-backed heights gave place in turn to splintered crags and ragged pinnacles etched in gray and purple on a vivid saffron glow. The road outside the station gleamed with water, and a few big ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... night of torment, and another dreary, overcast day and leaden, troubled sea. And no Miss West. Wada, too, is sea-sick, although heroically he kept his feet and tried to tend on me with glassy, unseeing eyes. I sent him to his bunk, and read through the endless hours until my eyes were tired, and my brain, between lack of sleep and ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... rough, and hard to find. More than once Ramona stopped, baffled, among the rocky ridges and precipices. Her clothes were torn, her face bleeding, from the thorny shrubs; her feet seemed leaden, she made her way so slowly. It was dark in the ravines; as she climbed spur after spur, and still saw nothing but pine forests or bleak opens, her heart sank within her. The way had not seemed so long before. Alessandro ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... sharp jags Cut brutally into a sky Of leaden heaviness, and crags Of houses lift their masonry Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie And snort, outlined against the gray Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh The goaded city gives, not day Nor night can ease her ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... the two by the time relation of dynamical connection. For if I place the ball on the cushion, its previously smooth surface is followed by a depression, but if there is a depression in the cushion (I know not whence) a leaden ball ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... one hundred and fifty yards. The scene was so pretty, so romantic, never did I so thoroughly realize that I was in Central Africa. I felt momentarily proud that I owned such a vast domain, inhabited with such noble beasts. Here I possessed, within reach of a leaden ball, any one I chose of the beautiful animals, the pride of the African forests! It was at my option to shoot any of them! Mine they were without money or without price; yet, knowing this, twice I dropped my rifle, loth to wound the royal beasts, but—crack! and a royal one was on ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... cried Frank, and they relapsed into their chairs. But a half-hour passed and the grey cloud was thicker and the rain more heavy. The cheerless leaden river flowed slowly under drifting skies. Beyond an expanse of shining pavement the great black Abbey towered ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... a brazier here, was exposed, a new leaden crucifix, about two feet and a half high, for sale; it had been cast preparatory to the reinauguration of the archbishop of Rouen, which was to take place upon the next Sunday week, in the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... protocol from congress announced to the astonished Genoese that their republic would be incorporated with the territories of the king of Sardinia. The fate of its old rival, Venice, was similar; the whole of Lombardy with its fine capital, Milan, was subjected to the leaden yoke of Austria. Of all the sovereigns by right of French conquest Murat, King of Naples, alone was permitted to hold his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... afraid not in sufficient quantity to answer all the purposes of cleanliness and convenience; articles in which, it must be allowed, our fellow-subjects are a little defective — The water is brought in leaden pipes from a mountain in the neighbourhood, to a cistern on the Castle-hill, from whence it is distributed to public conduits in different parts of the city. From these it is carried in barrels, on the backs of male ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... see in Ladies eyes, With our selues. Doe we not likewise see our learning there? O we haue made a Vow to studie, Lords, And in that vow we haue forsworne our Bookes: For when would you (my Leege) or you, or you? In leaden contemplation haue found out Such fiery Numbers as the prompting eyes, Of beauties tutors haue inrich'd you with: Other slow Arts intirely keepe the braine: And therefore finding barraine practizers, Scarce shew a haruest of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tells his own story, "of a scene which awoke in me fear of him, and also exhibited his own disposition. Upon one of the lowest flights of stairs sat an old blind beggar, and rattled with his little leaden box that people might drop a bajocco therein. Many people passed by my uncle without noticing his crafty smile and the waivings of his hat; the blind man gained more by his silence—they gave to him. Three had gone by, and now came the fourth, and threw him a small coin. Peppo could no longer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... came on, and the moon began to make herself felt, I took up my old position at the window, with the garden squirt at hand and two full jugs of water on the floor—plenty more to be got from the bathroom if wanted. The leaden box of the Five Jars was in the right place for the moonbeams to fall on it.... But no moonbeams would touch it to-night! Why was this? There were no clouds. Yet, between the orb of the moon and my box, there was some obstruction. High up in the sky was a dancing ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James
... be no doubt that the mode of preserving water intended for food or drink in leaden reservoirs, is exceedingly improper; and although pure water exercises no sensible action upon metallic lead, provided air be excluded, the metal is certainly acted on by the water when air is admitted: this effect is so obvious, ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... laughter to reply, she stood leaning on her trailing-pole and looking over his shoulder as he repitched his sketching easel, squeezed the colours from the leaden tubes, and set ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... our earning. {80} Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes! Live now or never!" He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever." Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: CALCULUS racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: TUSSIS attacked him. "Now, master, take a little rest!"—not he! (Caution redoubled! {90} Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled, Back to his studies, fresher than ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... find himself hatless, coatless, filthy, unshaved, blear-eyed, palsied. Not a cent of money was left, and so that day and night, in spite of the deadly nausea that beset him and the trembling weakness that hung like a leaden weight upon every limb, he walked all the thirty-eight miles home again to East Haven. He reached there about five o'clock, and in the still gray of the early dawning. Only a few people were stirring in the streets, and as he slunk ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Proof against Shot given by Satan. The belief of the Covenanters that their principal enemies, and Claverhouse in particular, had obtained from the Devil a charm which rendered them proof against leaden bullets, led them to pervert even the circumstances of his death. Howie of Lochgoin, after giving some account of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Europe was electrified, and soon the intelligence crossed the waters. Our telescope was directed to this object. All had hitherto failed,—no eye had ever seen it round and planet-like from its disk. The evening finally came round for the examination. Time moved on its leaden wings; but twilight faded away at length, and I took my seat, with my assistant, at the instrument. I directed the telescope to that point of the heavens. I found four stars in the field of view. The first was ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... before, the evening threatened to be stormy. The lightning flashed its pale rays across the leaden sky, the air was heavy and the slight breeze excessively sultry. Tasio had apparently already forgotten his beloved skull, and now he was smiling as he looked at the dark clouds. Near the church he met a man wearing an alpaca coat, who carried in one hand a large bundle of candles and in the other ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... children; and yet the carnal man found pleasure in the stirrings of those graceless days! Come hither, younker; thou hast often sought to know the manner in which the horsemen are wont to lead into the combat, when the broad-mouthed artillery and pattering leaden hail have cleared a passage for the struggle of horse to horse, and man to man. Much of the justification of these combats must depend on the inward spirit, and on the temper of him that striketh at the life of fellow-sinner; but righteous Joshua, it is known, contended with the heathen ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... repairing of the nave of the minster, Drake, the historian of York, obtained leave to search under the said slab, and there found a coffin of stone, containing a leaden box, in which were bones wrapped in sarcenet. There was no inscription by which the remains could be identified, and they ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... in the doorway of the outer room, his arms outstretched, barring the entrance. His face had gone the grey leaden hue of the frightened Oriental and his eyes held a curious look of pity. His attitude put the crowning touch to Craven's anxiety. He went a ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... to her tone. Melancholy had this man in leaden grip. "I lose hope," he said. "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. Do not ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... heathen though they were, laughed, with just contempt, at such men and their prayers, and asked—Do you suppose that any God, if he be worth calling a God, will answer such a request as that? Nay, in our own times, have not the brigands of Naples been in the habit of carrying a leaden image of St Januarius in their hats, and praying to it to protect them in their trade of robbery and murder? I leave you to guess what answer good St Januarius, and much more He who made St Januarius, and all heaven and earth, was likely to give to ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... they passed the lighted shop-windows, the smallest halted to look at the time on a leaden watch which was suspended from his neck by ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... more than God To waken beauty in a human brain? Is this the real, the cold, undraperied truth— A skeleton admitted as a guest At life's loud feast, wearing a life-like mask? No, no; my heart would die if I believed it. A blighting fog uprises with the days, False, cold, dull, leaden, gray. It clings about The present, far dragging like a robe; but ever Forsakes the past, and lets its hues shine out: On past and future pours the light of heaven. The Commonplace is of the present mind. The Lovely is the True. The Beautiful Is what God made. Men ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... with the quaint fourteenth-century belfry, and the clock whence sprang out the brightly painted leaden figure of a knight, to smite the chime with his sword at each hour. In the market-place beneath, the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... larger air. Even the exquisite courtesy of the officer who has invited you in the blandest terms to declare that you have no contraband, has belied the voice of rumour and imparted a glow of satisfaction. And then you are thrown miserably into the leaden despair of Hoboken, and the vision of Liberty herself ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... one after another, with steaming breath, for it is winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, and through the opened door I catch a momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and snow-clad tombstones. Somehow or other I find the strain which Handel has wedded to the words "There the ploughman near at hand," has got into my head and there is no getting it out again. How marvellously old ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... stones of "The Bloody Corner," where the retreating Danes, cut off from their ships, made their last fruitless stand against the Saxon sheriff and the valiant men of Devon. Within that charmed rock, so Torridge boatmen tell, sleeps now the old Norse Viking in his leaden coffin, with all his fairy treasure and his crown of gold; and as the boy looks at the spot, he fancies, and almost hopes, that the day may come when he shall have to do his duty against the invader as boldly as the men of Devon did then. And past him, far below, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... shouting storms with flood The purblind hollows with a leaden rain And flat the gleaning-fields to choking mud And writhe the groaning woods with bursts ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... though she thought it a most peculiar looking sky. And now, as the light came slowly, they were able to get an idea what the sea in which they had been wallowing all night looked like. It was a fearsome sight. As they gazed their hearts sank within them. Mountains of leaden water rose into the air, then sank out of sight again, and when the "Sue" went into one of those troughs of the sea it was like sinking into a great black pit from which there was no escape. Yet the buoyant hull of the sloop rose every time, shaking the water from her glistening ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... skies Is no sky lovelier. The clouds are deep; Into their grey the subtle spies Of colour creep, Changing that high austerity to delight, Till ev'n the leaden interfolds are bright. And, where the cloud breaks, faint far azure peers Ere a thin flushing cloud again Shuts up that loveliness, or shares. The huge great clouds move slowly, gently, as Reluctant the quick sun should shine in vain, Holding in bright caprice their rain. And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... railroad friends in order to learn something about getting a train ready for its run. He found them walking on opposite sides of it, examining each car by the light of their lanterns, and calling to each other the inscriptions on the little leaden seals by which the doors were fastened. These told where the cars came from, which information, together with the car numbers, and the initials showing to what road they belonged, Conductor Tobin jotted down in his train-book. ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... proved that the wound which Major St. John had received in the Mexican War was a correct barometer. From a leaden, lowering sky the rain fell steadily, and a chilly wind was fast dismantling the trees of their blossoms. The birds had suspended their nest-building, and but few had the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... needed something strong indeed to sadden his cheerfulness and leaden his energy. That evening I talked with Hermione in the drawing room. She looked more lovely than ever dressed all in white, with a single row of pearls around her throat. Her delicate features ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... about the poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,—"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... of half-consciousness. He could hear the mosquitos buzzing about his face, he could hear, too, the sounds of life rise up from the street below; but he was able to move neither arm nor leg, and his head seemed fastened to the floor by immovable leaden weights. That his son was lost was all ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... horse a little way, then launched him into a gallop, tearing on and on, sun, wind, trees swimming, whirling like a vision, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, save the leaden pounding of his pulse and the breathless, terrible ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes: Live now or never!" He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever." Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: 85 Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him. "Now, master, take a little rest!"—not he! (Caution redoubled, 90 Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled, Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... campaign against mankind; it was in German soil that he planted his seed. Flamby, I tell you that the Hohenzollerns are a haunted race, ruling a haunted land, doomed and cursed. About them are obscene spirits wearing the semblance of men—of men gross and heavy, and leaden-eyed; and upon each brow is the mark of the Bull, the sigil ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... seemed to pass with leaden wings. It were as though all the world were standing still. The figures of the others stood out dimly, Margaret's white dress alone showing clearly in the gloom. The thick respirators which we all wore added to the strange appearance. The thin light of the lamps showed ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... there was unrest enough, and revolt enough of a desultory and unorganized sort, but every struggle, apparently every aspiration, for a free political and religious life ended in a more solid confirmation of the leaden misrule which weighed down the hearts of the people. To such an apathy the pensive monotone of this sick poet's song might well seem the only truth; and one who beheld the universe with the invalid's loath eyes, and reasoned from his own irremediable ills to a malign mystery presiding over all human ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... fished and fished and fished and fished, and still he caught no more than the day before; until just at sunset he cast his net for the last time for the day, and, lo and behold! There was something heavy in it. So he dragged it ashore, and what should it be but a leaden box, sealed as tight as wax, and covered with all manner of strange letters and figures. "Here," said he, "is something to pay for my bread of yesterday, at any rate;" and as he was an honest man, off he marched with ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... gray. Drew heard a snap of shots, but they seemed very far away. And the leaden cold of the water crept farther up his body, turning the throb into a cramp. He tried not to cry out; for him there ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... was sharply deafening in the confined space of the corridor. With a spurt of flame the leaden pellet struck over my head against the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... into the gardens, we followed the gardener through the deepening gloom to the wood, where, in former days, an ancestor of the Byrons set up leaden statues of satyrs, which the country-people called "the old lord's devils"; and very much like demons they looked. The tree was pointed out upon which Byron cut the names of "Augusta" and "Byron," with the date, during a last walk the brother and sister ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the East, and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was patient and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on familiar things. He seldom looked at a newspaper and he never opened a letter without a contraction of the heart. It was not that he ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... are liable to tin or lead contamination, the former proceeding from the tin pipes and vessels, the latter from citric and tartaric acids and cream of tartar used as ingredients, these being crystallized by their manufacturers in leaden pans. Almost all "canned'' goods contain more or less tin as a contamination from the tin-plate. While animal foods do not attack the tin to any great extent, their acidity being small, almost all vegetable materials, especially fruits ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... out for the well-known figure of Hodge, ere the hind was descried through a cloud of hot dust, urging on his steed to the extremity of a short but laborious trot. Needless were it to dwell upon the anxiety and foreboding with which he awaited the nearer approach of this leaden-heeled Mercury. To lovers the detail would be unnecessary, and to others description would fail to convey ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... wreckage, which told of some sudden and fatal storm far out on the ocean of life. Then Holmes hurried with a cushion for his head and I with brandy for his lips. The heavy white face was seamed with lines of trouble, the hanging pouches under the closed eyes were leaden in colour, the loose mouth drooped dolorously at the corners, the rolling chins were unshaven. Collar and shirt bore the grime of a long journey, and the hair bristled unkempt from the well-shaped head. It was a sorely-stricken ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... always called these encounters 'slugs,' and, if the truth be told, they were, one and all, very fond of a 'slug.' To carefully search the hedges for a handy stick, and then cut a ferocious knob out of the root end with your pocket-knife; above all, to cast leaden bullets and march forth with them and a catapult—these things were dear to the ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... walked slowly toward the house. It was April, but there were still patches of snow here and there, fast melting under a drizzling rain. It was a gray world, a bleak, black-and-brown world, above and below. The sky was leaden; the road and the footpath were deep in a muddy ooze flecked with white. The tree-trunks, black, with bare branches, were lined against the gray sky; nevertheless, spring had been on the way for a week, and a few sunny days would bring the yearly miracle ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Street, Pepys tells us, that the practice of blowing up houses began. Most of the livery companies lost their halls. Clothworkers' Hall burned for three days and three nights, the flames being fed with the oil that was stored in its cellars. The Leaden Hall was partly saved. Gresham House also escaped; but the Guildhall suffered severely, its outer walls only ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... smashed everything in view. He did not like that Fourth of July sound, so, springing to a bank, he went bumping and heaving down to the meadow and had just stampeded the horses when, for the first time, Gringo exposed himself to the hunter's aim. His flank was grazed by another leaden stinger, and Gringo, wheeling, went ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... insufficient in quantity. In the camps fever was prevalent. Smallpox, measles and lesser diseases became malignant and wrought terrible ravages. Tents became more dangerous than battle-fields. What the bullet began, the hospitals completed. More men died through disease than through leaden hail. But the noble army of physicians and nurses wrought wonders. Think of it! Twenty-six thousand men dead or dying ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... was not the leaden rule of Lesbos [Aristophanes, Nic. Eth., v. 14.]; it could not be bent to suit the diversities of individual character, but was a rule iron and inflexible, which applied equally to all. His measure was that of Procrustes; the cleverest boys could not stretch themselves beyond it, the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... a fine day the sky had become leaden and overcast with great clouds: a storm was threatening. ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... causing convulsions, or an effusion to the head, inducing coma. In the first instance, the infant cries out with a quick, short scream, rolls up its eyes, arches its body backwards, its arms become bent and fixed, and the fingers parted; the lips and eyelids assume a dusky leaden colour, while the face remains pale, and the eyes open, glassy, or staring. This condition may or may not be attended with muscular twitchings of the mouth, and convulsive plunges of the arms. The ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Leaves her home amid the wild, Tripping soft with dewy feet, Summer's flowery carpet sweet, Morpheus—drowsy power—to meet. Ruler of the midnight hour, In thy plenitude of power, From this burthen'd bosom throw Half its leaden load of woe. Since thy envied art supplies What reality denies, Let thy cheerless suppliant see Dreams of bliss inspired by thee— Let before his wond'ring eyes Fancy's brightest visions rise— Long lost happiness restore, None can need thy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... together, closed the spaces left by mortality, and the flags began to approach each other. Then the gray men began to come up the slope, and there were thousands of them. But shell yielded to canister, and the muskets of the infantry sent out death in leaden showers, so that the great charge began to melt like wax over heat, and the flags hung close together like a trophy of battle in a chapel. But still the gray men came. And now, in a storm of flame and smoke, they reached the ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... look so odd, that they ventured, his wife and Mary, to exchange glances full of doubt and wonder. He hung so much over the side of the chair, that if it had not been one of cyclopean clumsiness and weight, he would have borne it to the floor. A leaden tint was darkening the pallor of his face. They were becoming alarmed, and finally braving everything his wife timidly said, "Tom!" and then more sharply repeated it, and finally cried the appellative loudly, and again and again, with the terrified accompaniment, "He's dying—he's dying!" ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... in other words, a number would be worked at a time, and centering, even of a rough kind, would be left to the last; but this process will be treated hereafter. At present I shall assume that only one lens will be made at a time. Consequently we now enter on the stage of fine grinding by hand. A leaden pedestal, for the sake of stability, must be provided on which to mount the lens, so that the surface to be operated on may be nearly horizontal (Fig. 50). Before this can be done, however, fresh ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... tempt him—it had become for him a symbol of their lives. A quick glance assured him that the amethyst had disappeared. She was literally drinking his gift away in absinthe. The spring passed, and Ambroise did not regain his former health. His limbs were leaden, his head always heavy. The alert waiter was transformed. He took his orders soberly, executed them soberly,—he was still a good routinier; but his early enthusiasm was absent. Something had gone from him that night; as she went to her carriage with ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... and there a volley of belching flame—but all indistinct, terrible and indescribable. Solid shot, conical shell and spherical case went humming, hurtling and howling through the air, blotting out rebels and slaying loyalists. The leaden messengers of the sharp-shooters went shrieking to their living targets, killing, crippling and intimidating; buck, ball and Minie bullets missed and made their marks; and the rattling volleys of companies and platoons became at ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... fashions. This winter it will be a question between whether we can afford to pay for it, and whether we can afford to do without it. We think the absolute necessity of some diversion, something to lift the leaden cloud, and keep us in a state of natural buoyancy and courage, already settles the question. Music we shall have, simply because we need it. Or view it from the opposite side, from the point of mere political economy. Music, in many ways, has built itself up into a great industry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... thought it wise to venture on deck the whole party very willingly repaired there. The sky was still a dull, leaden color, but around the spot where the sun was hiding behind the banked-up clouds shone a misty radiance, sure prophecy of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... musical instruments, and Jewish contrivances; and he goes into his study, not to wrestle with the Spirit, but to consult the evil one; and then he goes into the steeple-house, and, instead of the milk of the word, pours ladles-full of leaden legality among ye, till ye all look like his own dumb idols, instead of faithful souls ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... to his feet, still laughing, flung off the black cap with its little row of leaden saints and the rusty black mantle which mimicked the king's habit, and stood delighted and defiant before Thibaut, the Franois Villon who thus a second time ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... there came that queer staggering of earth and sky. The trees gave way to the stretch of sand; the waves, leaden-colored and cheerless, dotted with white caps rolled up on the lonely shore. As before Sutter felt that same exhilaration, that same reversal to the spirit of his youth. But despite his mental excitement he maintained an awareness of the situation and a remembrance ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... be impervious as a stone wall. Now they were deep and innocent as a girl's, now they rollicked with the buoyant youth in them. Comrades might see them bubbling with fun, and the next moment enemies find them opague as a leaden sky. Not the least wonder of them was that they looked out from under long lashes, soft enough for any maiden, at a world they appraised with the shrewdness ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... Speed gasped, and calling upon his uttermost atom of strength, quickened the strides of his leaden legs. Skinner had fallen! ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... me!" ejaculated Bess Harley. "Talk about the 'leaden wings of Time.' Why! Time sweeps by us on electrically-driven, ball-bearing pinions. Here's another week gone, ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... the event of prolonged drought they were obliged to send to the mainland opposite; in time of war they had recourse to a submarine spring, which bubbles up in mid-channel. Their divers let down a leaden bell, to the top of which was fitted a leathern pipe, and applied it to the orifice of the spring; the fresh water coming up through the sand was collected in this bell, and rising in the pipe, reached the surface uncontaminated by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... him in a degree; he breathed more freely, though heavily, and with difficulty still; but gradually the deadly, leaden color of his face was replaced by the hue of life, and his heart began to beat more loudly. Consciousness did not return to him; he lay motionless and senseless, with his head resting on her lap, and with Flick-Flack, in eager affection, licking ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... nor did she open her eyes. She rested on him and on the bed like a leaden weight. He kissed her fondly, a ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... vacancy of mind, even of men who in Europe had shone in the various professions. Amongst them was a well-known Polish author,[41] who, upon his arrival here, only three years ago, set to work upon an historical novel to lighten the leaden hours of exile. But it must be more than disheartening to realise that your work, however good it may be, will never reach the printer's hands. In six months the book was thrown aside in disgust, and in less than a year afterwards the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... all over, when the crowds had gone, the top lowered and the stakes pulled, he was hitched to the leaden-wheeled band-wagon to strain and tug at the traces all through the last weary half of the night. But when fame has started your way, be you horse or man, you cannot escape. Just before the season closed Calico was put on the sawdust. This was ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... fixed on his guard; he was motionless, and under the influence of a leaden sleep. Dick Sand, bringing his lips to the door-sill, thought he might risk murmuring Hercules's name. A moan, like a low and plaintive ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... found himself gazing on the divine lineaments of the risen Christ. And this brought to him a sense of almost awed repose. It released him from the vicious circle of self, of sharp-toothed disappointment and leaden-heavy discouragement, in which he had so long fruitlessly turned. He seemed consciously to slough off the foul and ragged garment of the past and all its base, unprofitable memories, as the snake sloughs off her old skin in the warm May weather and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... innocent, regarded through the medium of a yawning muzzle, than the rounded and neatly-polished butt. The huge mouth seems to dilate as you look upon it. You already begin to fancy you behold the leaden mass—the three-ounce bullet—issuing from its stronghold, like a relentless baron of the middle ages, going forth under his grim archway, seeking only whom he may devour. The sight is apt to diminish the influence of skill. Nerves are necessary to such sportsmen, and nerves ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... faith Oxford ought to be like—that its highest educational work should just be the deliverance of us all from flunkeyism and money-worship—and then looks at matters here without rose-colored spectacles, it gives one sometimes a sort of chilly leaden despondency, which is very ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... her Hamlet, though there were moments of leaden lapse which suggested physical exhaustion; and there was no range in her elocution expressive of the large vibration of that tormented spirit. Her voice dropped out, or jerked itself out, and in the crises of strong emotion it was the voice of a scolding ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his pace, though he did not look round, and all of a sudden turned sharply round the corner of a projecting house. I ran up to this corner, turned round it as quickly as the negro.... Wonderful to relate! I faced a long, narrow, perfectly empty street; the fog of early morning rilled it with its leaden dulness, but my eye reached to its very end, I could scan all the buildings in it ... and not a living creature stirring anywhere! The tall negro in the cloak had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared! I was bewildered ... but only for one instant. Another feeling at once took possession of me; ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... capable of having and had some practical effect. Mr. Froude exaggerates when he says that Carlyle killed the pseudo-science of orthodox political economy; for the fundamental truths in the works of Turgot, Smith, Ricardo, and Mill cannot be killed: but he pointed out that, like Aristotle's leaden rule, the laws of supply and demand must be made to bend; as Mathematics made mechanical must allow for friction, so must Economics leave us a little room for charity. There is ground to believe that the famous Factory Acts owed some of their suggestions to Past and Present. Carlyle ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... a kiss. The taxi drove off, and Doggie went back into the house with leaden feet. The meeting, which he had morbidly dreaded, had brought him no comfort. It had not removed the invisible barrier between Peggy and himself. But Peggy seemed so unconscious of it that he began to wonder whether it ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... seen him look, arose before me with appealing faces, and filled me with vague terrors. When I awoke, the recollection that Uriah was lying in the next room, sat heavy on me like a waking nightmare; and oppressed me with a leaden dread, as if I had had some meaner quality ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... forget how cheerless looked the earth when first I came above it, so dull and black, save where a few snowflakes had been drifted by the wintry winds; all else was bleak and bare. There was not a gleam of sunshine athwart the leaden sky to cheer us, nor a bird to meet us with a friendly greeting, for even the robins kept so near the houses for warmth and shelter, they came not to the spot where we grew, alone and sad; and as to the trees, they as yet stood silent above us, only the Holly was still decked ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... the white wig, all over the flabby cheeks, hanging in big loose folds upon the short, loose-folded red neck; massive features, but coarsened and drawn; and dull, thick, silent-looking lips, of purplish red scarce redder than the red skin; pale blue eyes tending to a watery greyness, leaden, vague, sad, but with angry streakings of red; something inexpressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased in the whole face: such was the man who awaited Louise of Stolberg in the Compagnoni-Marefoschi palace at Macerata, and who, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... last ounce of energy in their exhausted frames. They were blind, deaf and dumb, straining, gasping, forcing "heart and nerve and sinew" to drive the leaden boat through those last few yards. Suddenly, far above their heads, rang out the crack of a rifle, and the next instant another. The crew ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... stroke to re-enter at the point of the bayonet into his self-esteem; and, like all such, it was fruitless in the end. He got to bed with the devil, it appeared: kicked and tumbled till the grey of the morning; and then fell inopportunely into a leaden slumber, and awoke to find it ten. To miss the appointment with old Killian after all had been too tragic a miscarriage: and he hurried with all his might, found the groom (for a wonder) faithful to his trust, and arrived only a few minutes before noon in the guest-chamber ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sorrows of the poor, and their bottomless egotism in contact with the well-to-do. He brooded on his own love, and his own unhappiness, and his own father's cruelty. His nights were sleepless and his days leaden. He tried hard to read for his first class, but for once even ambition failed: it ended in flinging books away in despair. He wandered about dreaming and moping for some change, and bitterly regretting his excessive ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the condition of the human soul awakened from its long sleep in nature, and become conscious at once of its divine source and of the leaden burden of its fleshy envelope. Egypt is humanity new-born, bound still with an umbilical cord to nature, and strong not so much with its own strength as with the strength of its mother. This idea is aptly symbolized in those gigantic colossi flanking the ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and lonely. He dreaded his evenings, which he knew not how to spend; dreaded the recurring Sunday, interminable in duration, whose leaden hours seemed never to reach their end. His only solace was in his work, which took him out of himself and prevented him from thinking. He made a weekly pilgrimage past the Quintans' house. The blinds were always drawn. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... cheering ray of sunshine had visited them, and the air, which was extremely warm, seemed loaded with vapour. The spirits of the prisoner were depressed in proportion, and since the first hour of his imprisonment he had never, perhaps, felt so much as at that moment, all the leaden weight of dull captivity, the anguish of uncertainty, and the delay of hope, which, ever from the time of the prophet king down to the present day, has made the heart sick and the soul weary. It was in vain that his daughter, with the tenderest, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... eye fixed on the fingers of the clock, counting the seconds, the minutes, like dagger-strokes. At every noise which arose, I started up; the day broke. The leaden hours crowded one upon another. It was noon—evening—night; as the clock fingers sped on, hope withered; it struck eleven and nothing appeared; the last minutes of the last hour fell, and nothing appeared. It ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... told her that there was in the air some discreditable secret. More than once she had wondered whether her people had been the express company robbers for whom a reward was out. She tried to dismiss the suspicion from her mind, for the fear of it was like a leaden weight at her heart. But many little things contributed to the dread. Rutherford had sent her just at that time to spend the week at Battle Butte. Had it been to get her out of the way? She remembered that her father had made to her no explanation of that scene in which she ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... and consideration for the busy clergyman compelled her to go down with these last words, feeling as if there were a leaden ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of hundreds of their comrades. Nearly four hundred had fallen in that attack. The hill had cost a great deal of blood, but it was worth all it cost, and they would not give it up. So they braved the leaden rain and iron hail through the weary hours of that winter night. They only waited for daybreak to storm the inner works and take the fort. Their ardor ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Meanwhile, Philip, with his leaden methods, was pondering and seeking fresh pledges and guarantees from the English Catholics. Before his temporising answer came Elizabeth had frightened Mary's advisers into doubt, while she was holding the English ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... all count of time; his wrist watch was smashed on his wrist. He ran through a reeling eternity, sobbing for breath, stumbling, tripping, fighting a leaden weariness; and ever the same unreasoning terror urged him on. The moon and ragged skyline swam about him; the blood drummed deafeningly in his ears, and his eyeballs felt as if they would burst from their sockets. He had nearly bitten his swollen tongue in two falling over an ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... canoe's bows. The sky was getting dark, and now the lines that streaked the lake were white, but the wind was astern and they were going fast. The glimmering reflections had vanished and the rocks ahead rose sharply from the leaden water. The point was some distance off, but Lister knew he must reach ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... brown, and very adroit in all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes poured full of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the bar or the stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him lighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little miracles behind him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at our exercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the tour of a table upon his ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... cheerless as could well be. The sky was of one leaden hue, broken here and there by the clouds which hung lower down in the strata. The waves, when not covered by foam, were of the same tint. To sit where I was I found was impossible. I got up and walked about and stretched my legs. ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... father was just dead, and as, in accordance with German etiquette, the Count's funeral obsequies could not take place for a month, in the presence of all his relatives and friends, who came from a great distance, the corpse, embalmed and placed in a leaden coffin, lay in state under a canopy in the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... my lowly pipe When weary, sad, and leaden-brow'd; At such a time behold me ripe To blow my ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with a little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another—as a breeze curves the leaden winter lake here and there. She could not get his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds—tradition telling us she has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... t' give us the rain now, I dunno," Murphy predicted, staring up at the leaden clouds through his thick glasses. "Ye better git up some firewood, Mike, and make the camp snug agin foul weather. An' av' the both of ye ain't got yer place tight an' ready fer a sthorm, ye betther be stirrin' yerselves an' let ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... either inclination or leisure to weigh thy leaden arguments, except in the pig, or, as thou wouldst ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... of this chamber there is arranged a small leaden siphon, a b c, whose longer leg, a, passes through the bottom, where it is soldered, and whose shorter one, c, ends in close proximity to the bottom. Finally, a galvanized iron chain, G H, fixed at G to the bottom of the reservoir, and provided ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... we piled out into the cockpit the mate gave a yell and sailors sprang to haul down the topmast-and main-topmast-staysails. Off in the southwest, which had been leaden from horizon to meridian showing no distinction of water and sky, appeared a spot of light, a glow, growing rapidly brighter. Before it the misty rain was being wiped as if by magic ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... space. Above, below, on all sides, was a leaden atmosphere. Neither sun, nor moon, nor stars illumined it, but only some dull, phosphorescent light, which seemed to be born of the murky, stagnant air. It was such a strange, sickly, wavering gleam as she had seen above decaying wood, fish, and other substances. All around was absolute stillness. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the valve, which was impossible to work from the gate house above, when his foot slipped in the mud. As the pipe was partly open, his leaden-soled boot became jammed in the crack. Try as he did, he could not get loose, and he was losing hope when Joe came ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... other's hearts with steel, or those leaden missiles of which thou hast told me. Oh! Leo, when the nations are beggared and their golden god is down; when the usurer and the fat merchant tremble and turn white as chalk because their hoards are but useless dross; when I have made the bankrupt Exchanges of the world my mock, and laugh across ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... music in general? for there is no such thing as a soul.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} I believe it must have relief: as if all animal functions were accelerated by means of light, bold, unfettered, self-reliant rhythms, as if brazen and leaden life could lose its weight by means of delicate and smooth melodies. My melancholy would fain rest its head in the haunts and abysses of perfection; for this reason I need music. But Wagner makes one ill—What do I care about the theatre? What do I care about ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... And on each hill-top mounted high, Her sickle wav'd in extasy; Till Ross, thy charms all hearts confess'd, Thy peaceful walks, thy hours of rest And contemplation. Here the mind, With all its luggage left behind, Dame Affectation's leaden wares, Spleen, envy, pride, life's thousand cares, Feels all its dormant fires revive, And sees "the Man of Ross" alive; And hears the Twick'nham Bard again, To KYRL'S high virtues lift his strain; Whose own hand cloth'd this far-fam'd hill With ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... set off at a sharp angle towards the north. We were now among the woods again, and the tangled undergrowth tried me sore. We had been going for about three hours, and, though I was hard and spare from much travel in the sun, my legs were not used to this furious foot marching. My feet grew leaden, and, to make matters worse, we dipped presently into a big swamp, where we mired to the knees and often to the middle. It would have been no light labour at any time to cross such a place, pulling oneself by the tangled shrubs on to the rare patches ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... accident, giddy with the attempt to look over, horrified by the danger, confused and distressed by the hair that came wildly flapping about her head and face, and by the puffs of wind at her hoop, had sunk down in the centre of the little leaden square, clinging with all her might to the staff of the weathercock, and feeling as if the whole tower were rocking with her, absolutely seeing the battlements dance. How was she ever to be safely got ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... till thou run out thy race, Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours, Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace; And glut thy self with what thy womb devours, Which is no more then what is false and vain, And meerly mortal dross; So little is our loss, So little is thy gain. For when as each thing bad thou hast ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... country-town garden. Joanna was at a children's service. Ah, mon Dieu! The desolation of that Sunday afternoon! The death, my son, that was in the air! Ah! I choked, I struggled. The garden-wall, the leaden sky closed in upon me. I walked out. I came ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... an echo. All notions of unworldly and unselfish attachment are branded with the name of romantic follies, unworthy of sensible persons; and the idealities of love, like all other idealities, are fast disappearing beneath the leaden ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and peaks of snow revealed through chasms in the drifting cloud; how desolate the glaciers and the avalanches in gleams of light that struggle through the mist! There is a leaden glare peculiar to clouds, which makes the snow and ice more lurid. Not far from the house where I am writing, the avalanche that swept away the bridge last winter is lying now, dripping away, dank and dirty, like a rotting whale. I can see it from ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... heart a plaster, composed of a certain quantity of oriental saffron, red rose-leaves, sandal-wood, aloes, and amber, liquified in oil of roses and the best white wax. In the morning, he must take it off, and enclose it carefully in a leaden box till the next night, when it must be again applied. If he be of a sanguine temperament, he shall take sixteen chickens; if phlegmatic, twenty-five; and if melancholy, thirty, which he shall put into a yard where the air and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of decentralization and the advocates of centralization refusing for many months ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a disconcertingly leaden stare, the while he thought over what had been proposed. "That's right enough," he announced at last, "but I shall expect you to do some writing too. Since we're dealing on this basis, there must be no doubt about the guarantee that you ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. For a long time ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... (1787) amputated it, and thought it quite enough to cover the wound with that large leaden plaster which looks like the lid of a stewpan. Thus was the marvelous art of the Middle Ages treated in almost every land, but particularly in France. We find three sorts of injury upon its ruins, these three marring it to different depths; first, Time, which has made insensible ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... its surface in the spring had been burned off by sagacious Indians, bent on impeding by every known device the march of troops through their lands,—and what device the Indian does not know is little worth knowing. Under a dripping leaden sky the earth lay desolate and repulsive. Miles away to the north the dim, castellated buttes and pinnacles of the range were still faintly visible, and the tortuous trail of the column of twos winding its way ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the thoroughfare in a new, impersonal way. She felt as if now she were only passing through the slushy streets on her way to new lands. From the tracks of the Elevated Road dripped great drops of turbid water. The sky was leaden and an easterly wind, in spite of the thaw, brought the chill humidity that is more penetrating ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... resembled the divine Raffaelle. But his nose, that feature of the human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening; leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent; perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without definite aim or system. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... had gone the queen ran to the window: the few clouds which were chasing one another in the sky an hour before had thickened and spread, and—all the blue was blotted out, to give place to a hue dull and leaden as pewter. Mary Stuart's presentiments were thus realised: as to the little house in Kinross, which one could still make out in the dusk, it remained ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral, leaden tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the bat flew in circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from all quarters, the sun had set, the sabbath had commenced. The forge was mute, the fire extinguished, the prance of horses and the bustle of men in a moment ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... the bullets hissed and the shells shrieked; and, God, how slow—slow—slow was the run! Crittenden's legs were of lead, and leaden were the legs of the men with him—running with guns trailing the earth or caught tightly across the breast and creeping unconsciously. He saw nothing but the men in front of him, the men who were dropping behind him, and the yellow line above, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... excellent, though I'm afraid not in sufficient quantity to answer all the purposes of cleanliness and convenience; articles in which, it must be allowed, our fellow-subjects are a little defective — The water is brought in leaden pipes from a mountain in the neighbourhood, to a cistern on the Castle-hill, from whence it is distributed to public conduits in different parts of the city. From these it is carried in barrels, on the backs of male and female porters, up two, three, four, five, six, seven, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Devil was no uncommon creature; A leaden-witted thief—just huddled Out of the dross and scum of nature; 340 A toad-like lump of limb and feature, With mind, and heart, and ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Canada dispatched M. de Celeron de Bienville, with 300 men, to traverse the vast wilderness lying from Detroit southeast to the Apalachian Mountains. Assuming this range as the limit of the British colonies, he directed that leaden plates, engraved with the arms of France, should be buried at particular places in the western country, to mark the territories of France, and that the chief of the expedition should endeavor to secure a promise from ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... was overcast, the ground was covered with snow, the weather was damp, and very cold for the last of March. As evening drew on, and the leaden sky lowered, and the chill damp penetrated the comfortable carriage in which they traveled, Mr. Willcoxen redoubled his attentions to Miriam, carefully wrapping her cloak and furs about her, and letting down the leathern blinds and the damask hangings, to exclude the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... dispiritedly along a sandy wash which bottomed the canyon. Here the heat became a leaden weight and the men were panting like four-footed beasts running before hunters. Finally Travis sighted what he had been seeking, a flicker of movement on the wall well above. He flung up his hand, pulling his mount to a stand. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... round the little flotilla in a perfect hailstorm. The Chilian ensign in the stern of Douglas's launch was literally ripped from its staff, proving that, had the Bolivians but depressed their rifle muzzles a trifle more, every man in the steamer's well would have been hit by the leaden shower. Lieutenant Alcerrerez, who was sitting next to Douglas, emitted a curious little cough, turned half round, and fell forward over the lad's knees, while several men in the launch sprang convulsively to their feet, only to drop down again in a limp, motionless heap, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... life was at a big cantonment in Upper India, and he was then telling fortunes with the help of three leaden dice, a very dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of opium pills. He told better fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of whisky; but the things which he invented on the opium were quite worth the money. He was in reduced ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... like a beautiful statue? Is it denied to me to have feeling, to love and to hate, like everybody else? Is the Queen of France nothing but the sacrificial lamb which the dumb idol etiquette carries in its leaden arms, and crushes by slowly pressing it to itself? Tell me, Besenval; speak to me like an honorable and upright man, and remember that God is above us and hears ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the galling present and the dark future which had made so young and unsentimental a woman as Mary Wells think of suicide for a moment or two; and it now deprived her of her rest, and next day kept her thinking and brooding all the time her now leaden limbs were carrying her through ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... and hot, while the furniture exceeded his powers of description. The unpainted wash-stand seemed to poise itself uneasily upon its three remaining legs—the mirror had evidently been the resort of an army of self-admiring flies, who had left their marks upon its leaden surface until reflection was impossible—two hard and uncomfortable-looking chairs—and a bed, every feature of which was a sonorous protest against being slept upon—completed the provisions which had been made for his entertainment and comfort. Casting a dismal ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the slightest doubt that in formally registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... are the marshes, "a dark, flat wilderness", as Dickens has described it in Great Expectations, "intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it"; still farther away is the "low, leaden line" of the river, and the "distant, savage lair", from which the wind comes rushing, is the sea. It was in this churchyard that the conception of the story sprang into life, and there are actually not five but ten little stone lozenges in one row, with ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... closely to the ground. An interval of a minute, and they glanced over their tiny stockades to find a British soldier. "They are coming up the kopje!" shouted a burgher, and their rifles swept the hillside with bullets. More volleys came from below and, while the leaden tongues sang above and around them, the burghers turned and lay on their backs to refill the magazines of their rifles. Another interval, and the attack was renewed. "They are running!" screamed a youth exultingly, and burghers rose and fired ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... Norma donned her warmest wraps and set out for a walk over to Lanarth. It was a dull afternoon following on a morning of uncertain brightness; dark clouds, heavy with snow, hung sullenly along the horizon; and above, the sky was of a somber, leaden hue. The air felt chill and clinging, like that of a vault; and heaven above, and earth beneath betrayed a severity of mood infinitely depressing. Norma shivered in spite of her heavy furs, and hurried on, burying her hands ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... favourite doctrine of Utility glittering everywhere through his system, like a vein of rich, shining ore (that is not the nature of the material)—but it might be plausibly objected that he had struck the whole mass of fancy, prejudice, passion, sense, whim, with his petrific, leaden mace, that he had "bound volatile Hermes," and reduced the theory and practice of human life to a caput mortuum of reason, and dull, plodding, technical calculation. The gentleman is himself a capital logician; and he has been led by this circumstance to consider ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... his dish (as the proverb says), very uprightly, without spilling one drop of his humour. He is an orator and rhetorician, that delights in flowers and ornaments of his own devising to please himself and others that laugh at him. He is of a leaden, dull temper, that stands stiff, as it is bent, to all crooked lines, but never to the right. When he thinks to appear most graceful, he adorns himself most ill-favouredly, like an Indian that wears jewels in his lips and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... road became at every turn more picturesque. Instead of passing between swampy fields, it ran along a hollow, and the ground was on each side broken into deep holes with rugged edges; black leafless bushes stood out from the grey and yellow sand, while farther away in the background, against the leaden sky, there was a sombre fringe of thickly planted fir-trees. The daylight, dim at noon, had become dimmer as evening drew near; the grey sky darkened, and the tales of robbery and murder made my thoughts anything ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... cheerless as his mood. It had rained during the night and was still raining, or sleeting, and freezing as fast as it fell. The sky was a leaden grey; the drops that came down only went to thicken the sheet of ice that lay upon everything. No face of the outer world could be more unpromising than that which slowly greeted him, as the night withdrew her veil and the stealthy steps of the dawn said that no bright ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... rear of the shop on the long winter evenings; he who shared her crust of bread moistened with the sweat of her brow, and her love at once sublime and poor; he, that same man, after having abandoned her, finds her after a night of orgie, pale and leaden, forever lost, with hunger on her lips and prostitution in ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the sea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of gray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate about the decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the faces of bilious invalids. Captain MacWhirr noticed two ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... clearly. I wonder if I am insane?" She went with heavy, leaden steps back to her room. A pale, weary face looked at her from her glass. She began arranging her hair. Her fingers, with wills of their own, refused to obey her own command laid upon them. She sought wildly to delay, delay to the last fragment of the last second before yielding ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... dropped down over the world, a leaden shroud that was not the coming of twilight. Dan jerked about, his whip cracked out over the heads of the leaders and they broke into a quick trot. The shriek of the runners along the frozen snow cut through ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... heard a snap of shots, but they seemed very far away. And the leaden cold of the water crept farther up his body, turning the throb into a cramp. He tried not to cry out; for him there would ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... long break-up of winter, when the Teuton skies were leaden, and it was neither cold enough nor hot enough to stay comfortably in his room, owing to the Bucher economy of heat in this mid-season, it was pleasanter to be stirring about en ville, and, when weary of this, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... remember him as lying much on the sofa in those days, and liking to have his head "scratched" by the hour together, with a sharp-pointed comb, to relieve by external irritation the distressing sensation's, which he compared to those made, sometimes by a tightening ring, sometimes by a leaden cap, and sometimes (but this was in later life) by a dull boring instrument. Yet he was the centre of the family life, and of its merriment as well; and his strong social instincts and lively animal spirits made him full of animation and vivacity in society, although he was soon ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... after him myself now," he said, in a blithe tone that betrayed his conviction of success. So the sergeant saluted and left the room, his footsteps echoing down the passages like the leaden feet ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... stern face, who, despite the corrective of a blond wig with heavy curls, and that of the pacific green shade we have already mentioned, expressed on his large features, upon which the fury of study had produced a surface of leaden pallor, a snappish and quarrelsome disposition. Of this he had already given proof before entering the dining-room, where every one ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... forget. It was a holiday; everybody was away from home; and the boy found time hanging heavily upon his hands. In an aimless way he wandered, during the afternoon, into his father's library, and poked about among the shelves. 'I tried,' he says, 'to find some book with which to while away the leaden hours. Nothing attracting me, I turned over a basket of pamphlets and selected from among them a tract that looked interesting. I knew that it would have a story at the commencement and a moral at the close; but I promised myself that I would enjoy the story and leave the rest. It would be ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... the window and watched Droom with leaden eyes as he turned suddenly to resume charge of the packing. "We'll soon be through," he ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of both were fixed upon the poles which were set up on the scaffold, where they remained until past three in the afternoon, when they were taken down, and, with the two bodies, placed in leaden coffins ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the window of a particular room in Neville's Court, which was occupied by Byron during his residence at college. The adventurer after getting out of this window has to climb a perpendicular wall, sustaining himself by a frail leaden spout. He has then to traverse the sloping roof of a long range of buildings, by moving carefully on his hands and knees, at the imminent risk of being precipitated fifty feet into the court beneath. When the library is gained, a stone parapet has to be crossed, a bare glance at which sends ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... last farewell. Glaucon turned back to the wreck. The Solon had settled lower. Every wave washed across the waist. Nothing seemed to meet his gaze save the leaden sky, the leaden green water, the foam of the bounding storm-crests. He told himself the gods were good. Drowning was more merciful death than hemlock. Pelagos, the untainted sea, was a softer grave than the Barathrum. The memory ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... cold day with a leaden sky, and snow was shifting restlessly over the ice. The wind was in the south-east, and as they entered the cabin ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... an avowed despotism, has at least the consolation to know that his sufferings bring down upon that despotism the execration of mankind; but he who is entrapped and entangled in the meshes of a crafty and corrupt system of jurisprudence; who is pursued imperceptibly by a law with leaden feet and iron jaws; who is not put upon his trial till the ear of the public has been poisoned, and its heart steeled against him,—falls, at last, without being cheered with a hope of seeing his tyrants ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... fraught with undue importance, and many impatient fellows, upon consulting their watches, were seen to hold the same up to their ear, as though to make sure the time-piece had not stopped, so leaden-footed did the minutes seem to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... great January snowfall was heralded by a leaden sky and a surly looking sunrise, and early in the forenoon down came the white flakes, thick and fast, whirling this way and that, until the valley and the surrounding hills lay pure and soft ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... and without enthusiasm they sat on the stairs and consumed the pancakes to the last crumb. Then, leaden-eyed and breathing hard, they took their empty plates and entered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... day, we drove in a brougham, with a famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly than any of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron; through suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, in which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan; by pond after pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed shoes flew up ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,—"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that winter; and from our hearts we prayed that all was well with them in that better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... up. Daisy was in despair, but Nan took it to the painter who as at work about the house, got him to paint it brick red, with staring black eyes, then she dressed it up with feathers, and scarlet flannel, and one of Ned's leaden hatchets; and in the character of an Indian chief, the late Poppydilla tomahawked all the other dolls, and caused the nursery to run red with imaginary gore. She gave away her new shoes to a beggar child, hoping to be allowed to ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Josephine; he said nothing about the terrible vicissitudes of the battle, a victory scarcely to be distinguished from a defeat; he kept silence about the cruel sufferings of his army which, without having eaten, had fought amid blinding snow beneath a leaden sky; he said no word about the regiments destroyed, one in particular, from colonel to drummers, all killed or wounded; he did not mention his own danger in the cemetery on the hill, where he had stood surrounded by his Guard, his last resource, anxiously watching the fight ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Leaden disappointment descended on Undine. She had felt almost sure of Moffatt's helping her, and for an instant she wondered if some long-smouldering jealousy had flamed up under its cold cinders. But ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... were round every town, Garden airs went sweetly up, heaven smiled down; Till under leaden hail with flaming breath, Graves and ashen harvest were the keep ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... the full Sou'west All heavy-winged with brine, Here lies above the folded crest The Channel's leaden line; And here the sea-fogs lap and cling, And here, each warning each, The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring Along ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... at it. In the leaden pipe that was fastened to the wall were two nuts, which could be turned by a small spanner, and between them was a brass cap, which fitted on to a circular outlet ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... project is no where explained, but might possibly be intended for conveying water, by means of machinery and leaden pipes, for the supply of some palace or city ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... presence hath dim lookes. Is it because they are in the armes of night, Which sets a leaden lustre in the eye? Or hath some accident occoasted [sic] them That troubles their aspect with melancholy? Is Navar well? is Ferdinando well? Is Pembrooke well? is Bellamira well? 0 where is Bellamira? tell me, Princes, For now my tongue hath strooke upon her ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... below. In this wind lay our hope, and scarcely less in the mists, for they might be the means of dispersing the haze. There went a rift, a patch of blue sky—and there a bit of green mountain! Then again all was leaden, damp, and cold. We seemed to have reached the Ultima Thule, to be the sole living creatures in some far-away corner of an earth gone back to chaos and mysterious twilight. Again a break, and again appeared a stretch of dark fir-covered mountain ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the reports. It made him restless to be lolling here outside of the storm when such a momentous affair was moving down the lake under the leaden pall of the city smoke. He asked questions eagerly, and finally got into discussion with old Boardman, one of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... if it were just ready to burst beautifully upon its world. So it is, still much depends on how the world is going to treat it. The flower blows, if sunshine greets and warms it. But let the sky be grey, sombre, leaden, and that flower cometh not to its full kingdom—cometh ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... over that leave-taking on the porch of the Wayside; so pathetic, so full of tenderness, even of despair, and yet with a slender ray of hope beneath the leaden cloud of anxiety. To Hawthorne it must have seemed even more discouraging than to his wife and children, though none of them could have suspected that the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... resumed at last. "But I am literally in despair at losing Roderick Hudson. His visits in the evening, for the past year, have kept me alive. They have given a silver tip to leaden days. I don't say he is of a more useful metal than other people, but he is of a different one. Of course, however, that I shall miss him sadly is not a reason for his not going to seek his fortune. Men must work ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... dropped to his side like leaden weights. "So long," he said dully, as the other took his place in the sled. Then he ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... an hour or so I watched my leaden soldiers go, With different uniforms and drills, Among the bed-clothes, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... trod the air, there was another who pressed the earth with leaden feet and carried a heart of lead. Halfman read Evander's happiness with hostile eyes; he read, too, very clearly, Brilliana's content in Evander's company, and he raged at it. He had grown so used to himself as Brilliana's ally that he had come to dream mad dreams which were none the less sweet because ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... immediate division from what we love makes the things within us reach the dearest, we put out our hands for them, as violently-parted lovers do, though the soul in days to come would know a craving, and imagination flap a leaden wing, if we ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... morrow I went on my way, still through as fair a country as is to be found in all South England, through Storrington, and so by way of Parham Park, with its noble Elizabethan house and little church with the last leaden font in Sussex, a work of the fourteenth century, to Amberley in the meads of the Arun, a dear and ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... saw a horseman near him clap his hand to his forehead and plunge headlong to the earth: horses reared and snorted, some fell with ugly, red blotches on their breasts and throats; the clangour and the thuds came faster—faster; for now the clay and leaden bullets of the slingers fell in showers, like hailstones, and it was good armour that ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... put it before Providence to cleanse itself of this thing, or suffer the consequence that we now and for ever quit our worship, lose our faith in it and our secret respect. She heard Marko's tale confirmed, whispers of leaden import, physicians' rumours, and she doubted. She clung insanely to her incredulity. Laughter had been slain, but not her belief in the invincibility of Alvan; she could not imagine him overthrown in a conflict—and by a hand that she had taken and twisted in her woman's hand subduingly! He, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... canvas was entirely released, and Faith silently held it up before the eyes of the dying man, upon whose face had come a dull, leaden blankness, and whose eyes were painful to watch as they struggled to pierce the film which was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... emotions, or they could be impervious as a stone wall. Now they were deep and innocent as a girl's, now they rollicked with the buoyant youth in them. Comrades might see them bubbling with fun, and the next moment enemies find them opague as a leaden sky. Not the least wonder of them was that they looked out from under long lashes, soft enough for any maiden, at a world they appraised with the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... philosophers, heathen though they were, laughed, with just contempt, at such men and their prayers, and asked—Do you suppose that any God, if he be worth calling a God, will answer such a request as that? Nay, in our own times, have not the brigands of Naples been in the habit of carrying a leaden image of St Januarius in their hats, and praying to it to protect them in their trade of robbery and murder? I leave you to guess what answer good St Januarius, and much more He who made St Januarius, and all heaven and earth, was likely ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... shudder. She could not, like her mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes, in cleaning pots and pans, or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in a spotless kitchen. What would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that had tortured her became a dull, leaden pain, like that she had known at another time—how long ago—when the suffering caused by Ditmar's deception had dulled, when she had sat in the train on her way back to Hampton from Boston, after seeing Lise. The pain would throb again, unsupportably, and she would wake, and this time ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... feet thick. The military discipline of the Continent made a warship a floating barrack; the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed with drilled troops like marching engines of destruction, dealing leaden death from arquebus and musquetoun. The little ships of Cabot, Willoughby and William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at most a hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them more than ten to one. What could England do against the landing of such an army? An English ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... accomplices began with Count Giovanni Arrivabene of Mantua, who had no connection with the society, but was charged with having heard from Pellico that he was a member. Pellico and his companions were still lying untried in the horrible Venetian prisons, called, from their leaden roofs, the 'Piombi,' when the events of 1821 gave rise to a wholesale batch of new arrests. As soon as they knew of a movement in Piedmont, the Lombard patriots prepared to co-operate in it; that they were actually able to do nothing, was because ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the forward guns of the German craft belched forth a salvo of leaden hail that followed the path of the searchlight's rays directly upon the eyes of the Monitor. With unerring aim the German gunners had found their mark. A sharp crash; a roar as the water above ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... stayed, he fled, he turned again, Until at last unmarked, unviewed, unseen, When Dudon had Almansor newly slain, Within his side he sheathed his weapon keen, Down fell the worthy on the dusty plain, And lifted up his feeble eyes uneath, Opprest with leaden sleep, of iron death. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 195 Or when the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... is. It goes to the ship—to the Pool. He and Mary Connynge are only just ahead of us. You may hear the wheels. Do you not hear them?" She spoke with leaden voice, and ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and his class. Visions of West Virginia and Colorado rose before his mind. He heard again the whistle of the "Bull Moose Death Special" as it sped on its swift errand of barbarism up Cabin Creek, hurling its sprays of leaden death among the slaves of this man ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... of the poop, a sweep of deck that careened till the lee rail dipped, and green seas lolloped aboard and swirled, foam-flecked, aft. He saw the long jib-boom, now stabbing the leaden sky, now plunging into the depths. He saw the pyramid of bellying canvas on the foremast, the great foresail, the topsails, and the bare ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... he, "where nobody invited ye, you must just stay," added he, "and abide by the consequences. This is an affair of honour, you take, don't ye? and if ye venture to stir one foot from the spot, och then, ma bouchal," said he, "by the poker of St Patrick, but whisk through ye goes one of these leaden playthings, as sure as ye ever spoiled a coat, or cabbaged broadcloth! Ye have now come out, ye observe,—hark ye," said he, "and are art and part in the business; and if one, or both, of the principals be killed, poor devils," said ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... saints must recollect cases in which the saint performs even miracles on behalf of the condemned. Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same feeling which prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to carry a leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard. In an old French fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was always careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before going out to murder and steal; and found the practice ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... effort of will to enable him to answer the questions of inquiring friends; and when at length aroused to exercise his colloquial powers, he performed the task in so original a manner that it never failed to upset the gravity of the interrogator. When he raised his large, prominent, leaden-coloured eyes from the ground, and looked the inquirer steadily in the face, the effect was irresistible; the laugh would come—do your best ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... who now leaned carelessly against the wall in front of Monsieur de Maulincour, like some fantastic idea drawn by an artist on the back of a canvas the front of which is turned to the wall. This tall, spare man, whose leaden visage expressed some deep but chilling thought, dried up all pity in the hearts of those who looked at him by the scowling look and the sarcastic attitude which announced an intention of treating every man as an equal. His face was of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... through the gates into the narrow streets leading to the monastery gateway. Year after year wealth poured into the Cathedral coffers, and pilgrims went away lighter in spirits and in purse, but each carrying with them the little leaden bottle in which the infinitely diluted blood of the martyr mixed with water ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze, And cups o'erflow with wine; Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine. Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love, While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights Sleep's leaden ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... take off all his clothes, piece by piece, even to his shirt, and dress the dead man in them. Even his leaden earring, which he had worn for many years, was put in the ear of the corpse. After this was done, Morten took a spade and gave the head of the corpse two crashing blows, one over the nose, the other on the temple. The body was ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... glimmering with dull, melancholy rays through my dungeon, permitted my distinguishing all its horrors: It was separated from the Cavern by a low and irregular Wall of Stone: A large Chasm was left open in it which formed the entrance, for door there was none. A leaden Crucifix was in front of my straw Couch. A tattered rug lay near me, as did also a Chaplet of Beads; and not far from me stood a pitcher of water, and a wicker Basket containing a small loaf, and a bottle of oil to ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... him. Bettys then asked leave to smoke, which was granted; and he took out his tobacco, with something else which he threw into the fire. Cory saw this movement, and snatched it out, with a handful of coals. It was a small leaden box, about an eighth of an inch in thickness, containing a paper, written in cypher, which the men could not read. It was afterwards found to be a despatch to the British commander at New York, with an order upon the Mayor of that city for thirty pounds, if the despatch ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... stood a gaunt, white-faced young lady resolutely engaged in making up by extravagance of gesture for the deficiencies of an exhausted voice. "There," said one of my companions, "that is the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith." Upon which a person near us, whom I judged from his air of leaden laziness to be a British working man, blurted out, "Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith! Mad Agnes! That's the name her sanguinary friends give her—Mad Agnes!" At that moment the eye of the panting oratress caught mine for an instant, and you and I ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden chest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... overhead, and more shut out the light of heaven; and he knew the Fountain of Oblivion was not far off. Even then the sound of falling waters was mingling with the roar of the pines above him; and ere long he came to a river, moving in solemn majesty through the forest, and falling with a dull, leaden sound into a motionless stagnant lake, above which the branches of the forest met and mingled, forming perpetual night. This was the Fountain of Oblivion. Upon its brink the Student paused, and gazed into the dark waters with a steadfast look. They were limpid ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... month of deadly rain wore on. The Plains had become a vast and fetid swamp, the atmosphere a weltering, steamy heat, charged with fever, leaden with despair. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... certain dullness of perception in other directions.[48] We cannot help feeling that the material of his nature was essentially prose, which, in his inspired moments, he had the power of transmuting, but which, whenever the inspiration failed or was factitious, remained obstinately leaden. The normal condition of many poets would seem to approach that temperature to which Wordsworth's mind could be raised only by the white heat of profoundly inward passion. And in proportion to the intensity needful to make his nature thoroughly aglow is the very high quality of his best verses. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... coin formerly used in Australia and Tasmania. Its history is given in the quotations. In England the word formerly meant a heavy leaden counter; hence the expression, "I don't care a dump." See ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... experiments, and it is thought he might have been living to this day, if he had not unluckily been killed in the Wars of the Roses; for you know no recipe for long life would be proof against an old English arrow, or a leaden bullet from one of ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... certainly odd. The base, or step, is probably of the late fourteenth, or of the fifteenth century. Originally there was not a hole in the bottom to let the water drain away, but one in the side. There is no trace of any leaden lining to the font-bowl. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... therefore, to go out of himself, and sympathise with the sordid sorrows of the poor, and their bottomless egotism in contact with the well-to-do. He brooded on his own love, and his own unhappiness, and his own father's cruelty. His nights were sleepless and his days leaden. He tried hard to read for his first class, but for once even ambition failed: it ended in flinging books away in despair. He wandered about dreaming and moping for some change, and bitterly regretting his excessive delicacy, which had tied his own hands and brought ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... left the boat, they two. Not a foot had printed the deep layer of snow that covered the wharf. It had fallen thick during the night. Just then it was not snowing; the clouds seemed to have taken a recess, for they hung threatening yet; one uniform leaden canopy was over ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the strength of the tides the rowers made slow progress, and it was not till the late afternoon of the seventeenth day that Leif approached Ironbeard with a proud head and spoke a word. The King nodded, and Leif took his stand in the prow with the lead in his hand. The sea mirroring the mist was leaden dull, but the old pilot ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... stare that had greeted him on his first appearance and which now pressed on him from the rear and sides, he felt himself shoot up, inch by inch, into a horrible conspicuousness, whilst his feet grew flat and leaden, and his hands were too swollen to squeeze into ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Sea, December 16th. It has been a wonderful stormy day today; as an officer said: "a typical North Sea winter day"—a leaden sky, roaring wind, smothers of rain, great black-green waves all flecked and blotched in white, big sea birds and little gulls dipping down the wave valleys and soaring up the wave mountains, and the ship taking the most foolish and impossible angles. It was ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... mile away, but that honest "Long Tom" sent its leaden missiles whistling about their ears, and kicking up the dust around their ponies' heels, until, after a few defiant shouts and such insulting and contemptuous gestures as they could think of, the two had ducked suddenly out of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... watching! The hours moved, oh, so leaden-paced and slow! Every day the poor girl waited for the coming of the post-man; and every day, with a pang at her heart, and tear-dimmed eyes, she saw him pass the door. "Edward has been detained; he will come yet, I'm sure," a fond inner voice whispered; "perhaps he has sent no letter, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... hard rowing we came alongside the strange sail in an hour. Three leaden figures, motionless as the unwieldly bark they manned, gazed curiously upon our approaching boat. Our Belgian friend hailed, but hailed in vain. They looked but spoke not. Again he spoke, and at length a monotonous "yaw" proclaimed that they were ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... was still visible against the leaden background of the sky. From the village came the creaking noise of the hauling of water, and the cocks crew as if the weather were ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
