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More "Miry" Quotes from Famous Books



... rained. Den de raincrow got up in a high tree an' he holler an' axed de Lord for rain. It rained till ebery little rack of cloud dat come ober brought a big shower of large drops. De fiel's wus so wet an' miry you could not go in 'em an' water wus standin' in de fiel's middle of ebery row, while de ditches in de fiel's looked like little rivers, dey wus so full of water. It begun to thunder agin in de southwest, right whar we call de 'Chub hole' of de sky, whar so much rain comes from ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... antagonist. Then he set his lips as he met the shock. Charnock struck him with his shoulder and forced him backwards by the weight of the bag. The mud slipped under his feet; he staggered and clawed at the bank, but his fingers found no hold. They plowed through the miry gravel, and falling face downwards, he rolled down ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... they set earnestly to work, and succeeded in removing the greater portion of the goods; when they made another attempt, happily with better success than previously; and brought the dray from its miry adherence to a position on the bank. It was then reladen with the goods; while the men, barely recovered from the chagrin caused by the misadventure, performed their work with a sullen moroseness, enlivening ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... the cross; and attested to be genuine by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem and others! He commanded a procession the following day; and the historian adds, that though the road between St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey was very deep and miry, the king kept his eyes constantly fixed on the phial. Two monks received it, and deposited the phial in the abbey, "which made all England shine with glory, dedicating it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... seemed to view, as one appraises the pattern of an unrolled carpet, every action of Jurgen's life: and she seemed, too, to wonder, without reproach or trouble, how men could be so foolish, and of their own accord become so miry. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... being a good Spaniard, along with the second lieutenant-poor Treenail-to Morillo's headquarters. We got an order to the officer commanding the nearest post on shore, to provide us with horses; but before reaching it, we had to walk, under a roasting sun, about two miles through miry roads, until we arrived at the barrier, where we found a detachment of artillery, but the commanding officer could only give us one poor broken-winded horse, and a jackass, on which we were to proceed to headquarters on the morrow; and here, under a thatched ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... in what it is easier to call large puddles than anything so poetic as small pools. A motor car sent by friends had halted beside the platform; I got into it with a not unusual vagueness about where I was going; and it wound its way up miry paths to a more rolling stretch of country with patches of cactus here and there. And then with a curious abruptness I became conscious that the whole huge desert had vanished, and I was in a new land. The dark red plains had rolled away like an enormous nightmare; and I found myself ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... helpful and sustaining, rather than clinging and dependent. She had a heart "at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize." From the depths of her soul she pitied Gregory and wished to help him out of a state which the psalmist with quaint force describes as "a horrible pit and the miry clay." ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... a horrid pit Where mourning long I lay, And from my bonds releas'd my feet, Deep bonds of miry clay. ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... spot, stretched out their gaunt arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard forms—some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud—presented groups that at once invoked ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... day, unbrightened by any sun. For almost a week there had been rain, and the roads were heavy and the lanes muddy and full of pools of miry water. ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... they came to an old broken gate, half open; it was the entrance to a narrow cartway, now unused, which descended windingly between high thick hedges. Ruts of a foot in depth, baked hard by summer, showed how miry the track must be ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... experiencing a mistake, they willingly returned to their respective duties. Thus when the rabble of Athens murmured at the exaction of the magistrates, Themistocles satisfied them with such another tale of the fox and the hedge-hog; the first whereof being stuck fast in a miry bog, the flies came swarming about him, and almost sucked out all his blood, the latter officiously offers his service to drive them away; no, says the fox, if these which are almost glutted be frighted off, there will come a new hungry set that will be ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... he has been an American soldier, and is an American citizen, they had cheerfully marched through heavy mire. So much had they given to so small a demand on their natural sentiment, he could not doubt they would with equal alacrity, and with the same firm step, march over a field miry with the blood of comrade and of foe, where opposing causes make to ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... alone, was seen and pursued by a party of savages. He retreated fighting, killed three Indians with his own hand, and probably would have regained his boat in safety, had he not accidentally plunged into a miry hole, from which he could not ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker

... was the firm reply. "He has taken my feet out of the miry clay and set them on firm ground, and I have promised him that they shall not go down into the pit again. But Andy! I must ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... wanted, for he had a plan for revenging himself on his upstart nephew. He drove on till he got to a place where there was a muddy and miry puddle beside the road. Then by a dexterous manoeuver, for he understood driving thoroughly, he managed to overturn the wagon, and Nicholas was thrown headlong into the puddle. Dick leaped out just at the right time, retaining his hold on ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.

... wife upon a miserable horse, lean and lank, which he had picked out for the purpose, and himself and his servant no better mounted; they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and ever when this horse of Katharine's stumbled, he would storm and swear at the poor jaded beast, who could scarce crawl under his burthen, as if he had been the most passionate ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the hill, we descended to a deep miry watercourse, full of bulrushes, then over another hill, from the heights of which we saw Suwarora's palace, lying down in the Uthungu valley, behind which again rose another hill of sandstone, faced on the top with a dyke of white quartz. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... to find an American novel a good deal like the now extinct American stage-coach whose passengers not only walked over bad pieces of road, but carried fence-rails on their shoulders to pry the vehicle out of the sloughs and miry places. It was partly the fault of the imperfect roads, no doubt, and it may be that our social ways have only just now settled into such a state as makes smooth going for the novelist; nevertheless, the old stage-coach was hard to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... And, stranger yet, at that very instant, too, there sprang from Lord Farquhart's window a figure strangely resembling Lord Farquhart himself, decked out in Lord Farquhart's riding clothes, that had been cast aside after the miry ride from London town, and tucked away in one corner of Lord Farquhart's room were the dark riding coat and breeches of the youth who had slumbered before the hearth of The ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... take your stand some winter's morning just before nine o'clock, where you can overlook a circle of some two or three miles' radius, the center being the Old Red School-house. You will see little figures picking their way along the miry roads, or ploughing through the deep drifts, cutting across the fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus and his cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... most," snarled Kemp, "but mostly lies! And why does he forget the miry lanes By Brainford with thick woods on either side, And the deep holes, where I could find no ease But skipped up to my waist?" A crackling laugh Broke from his lips which, if he had not worn The cap ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... the miry road, And spake no word to us, but had the look Of one whom other care constrains ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... and danced ahead of him like a will-o'-the-wisp, and was often lost entirely; while the tired boy, burdened with his cumbersome box, hastened after as best he might, stumbling and tumbling over stones and tough roots, splashing through miry places and running violently against tree-trunks, till just as he was ready to sink down in despair and let his unpleasant companion go where he would, he came suddenly upon the Funny Man resting upon the gate of ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... long and earnestly across the miry waste. Then she turned to her companion with a strange look ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... running up over the hills, giving their own names, with a sprinkling of the names of bear-flag heroes, not forgetting the usual Washington and Jackson, leaving in the centre a plaza, the cove in front to be filled in later. The streets were narrow, dusty in summer and miry in winter. Spanish-American streets are usually thirty-six feet wide. Winding trails led from the Presidio to the Mission, and from Mission and Presidio to the cove. This was the beginning of San Francisco, which a merciful providence has ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft

... lost, coats torn, boots burst and pantaloons dropped with magnificent miscellaneousness, and dozens of those who rose from the miry streets into which they had been thrown looked like the disembodied spirits of a mud bank. The snakes crawled on the sidewalk and into Broadway, where some of them died from injuries received, and others were dispatched ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... the soft, miry road. The one wheel seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the clay, and the others showed a ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... the gentle charities, that, like the face of Una, make sunshine in the shady place, are often found not far from rugged rage and black despair. Press on through glad and sombre scenery. Press upward in steep ways, miry and craggy, narrow and broad, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... of wet, miry road took us to the run of which the Colonel had spoken. Arrived there, we found the hound standing on the bank, wet to the ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... of walking to a farm which was about half a league distant by the road, but the distance could be reduced by half by going over a deep and miry ditch across which a narrow plank was thrown, and I always insisted upon going that way, in spite of the fright of the ladies who always trembled on the narrow bridge, although I never failed to cross the first, and to offer my hand ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... dim vista of the past, following the sound of the dead feet that wander so restlessly, stamping upon the impress that will not be stamped out. Rave on, wild wind, eternal voice of human misery; fall, dead footsteps, eternal echo of human memory; stamp, miry feet; stamp into forgetfulness that which will not ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... of course. Some good people will think I am either a fanatic or an artful schemer, while the clerical place-seekers, who love the flesh-pots of Egypt and have their eyes on the thrones of the Church and the world, will denounce my 'secularity' and tell me I am feeding the 'miry troughs' of the publican and sinner. No matter, if only God is pleased to vouchsafe 'signs following.' And one weary-faced lonely girl, grown fresh of countenance and happy of mien, or one bright little woman, snatched from the brink ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... neck somewhat east, making but slow way because the ground was so broken and rocky; and in another hour's space Sure-foot led down-hill due east to where the stony neck sank into another desolate miry heath still falling toward the east, but whose further side was walled by a rampart of crags cleft at their tops into marvellous-shapes, coal-black, ungrassed and unmossed. Thitherward the hound led straight, and Gold-mane ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... by nature a very light and cheerful heart; her spirit was as bright and cheery as her appearance. She picked up her courage very soon, stepped neatly through the miry, slippery streets, and presently reached her home. Mrs. Reed and the six grandchildren lived in a model lodging-house in a place called Sparrow Street, off Whitechapel Road. The house possessed all the new sanitary improvements, a good supply of water was laid on, the rooms were well ventilated, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... was generally obstructed by fallen trees, old logs, miry places, pointed rocks and entangled roots, which were not to be avoided. We were alternately on the ridge of a lofty mountain and in the depths of a valley. At best, our path was obscure and we needed guides to go before us. Night approaches, ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell

... When we look towards winter from the last borders of autumn, it seems as if we could not encounter it, and as if it never would go over. So does threatened trouble of any kind seem to us as we look forward upon its miry ways from the last borders of the pleasant greensward on which we have hitherto been walking. But not only do both run their course, but each has its own alleviations, its own pleasures; and very marvellously does the healthy mind fit itself to the new circumstances; ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch farmer—John Van Antwerp—and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... and along the miry, uneven ways, men stand in groups, their conversation all of the luck of "the toffs." But around the Office of the Gold League the crowd is greatest, and the cheers of the members are ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... the 30th of May, 1793, the streets of Paris were darkened with a dismal storm of low, scudding clouds, and chilling winds, and sleet and rain. Pools of water stood in the miry streets, and every aspect of nature was cheerless and desolate. But there was another storm raging in those streets, more terrible than any elemental warfare. In locust legions, the deformed, the haggard, the brutalized in form, in features, in mind, in heart—demoniac men, satanic ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... age which succeeded those ancient ones, and to know what its quality formerly was, and still is? Follow me, and you shall see. They are those concerning whom Daniel thus prophesied: 'A kingdom shall arise after those four in which iron shall be mixed with miry clay: they shall mingle themselves together by the seed of man: but they shall not cohere one with the other, as iron is not mixed with clay, Dan. ii. 41-43:'" and he said, "By the seed of man, whereby iron shall be mixed ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... guns from Philadelphia. A prize, taken from the enemy, put some fit and excellent pieces at the disposal of the Navy Department. To avoid the danger of capture by the enemy's cruisers, these were carted over the miry roads of New Jersey. Twenty heavy cannon were thus conveyed by the strength of horses. Carriages of the most approved model were constructed, and every thing done to bring her into prompt action, as an efficient ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... through great solitudes, where the trees upon the banks grew thick and close; and floatad in the stream; and held up shrivelled arms from out the river's depths; and slid down from the margin of the land, half growing, half decaying, in the miry water. On through the weary day and melancholy night; beneath the burning sun, and in the mist and vapour of the evening; on, until return appeared impossible, and restoration to their home a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... without any appeal, or permission to resort to another court of law. The witnesses in giving evidence wore their caps to show that they were free miners, and took the usual oath, touching the Book of the Four Gospels with a stick of holly, {149a} so as not to soil the Sacred Volume with their miry hands. These singular usages explain the observation of the Rev. H. Berkin that "the inhabitants are completely sui generis," and "their exact situation can scarcely be understood except by those on the spot," as likewise the sentiment which the Rev. H. C. H. Hawkins ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... of the reins, or by the tearing of some frightened thing through the canes that beset the low, miry bank, the horse sprang aside; then stood trembling with pricked ears. The white man stared at the stream; turned in his saddle and stared at the tree trunks, the patches of moonlight, and the impenetrable shadow that closed each vista. "The blazed trees!" ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... boat glided into miry pulpy water, where her course tended downwards, and where the earth-vault above darkened as it sank ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... inaccessible intrenchments. Thirty thousand English or Prussians[53] were sacrificed by their hands on that fatal day; and when it is considered, that this horrible carnage was the work of fifty thousand men[54], dying with fatigue and hunger, and striving in miry ground against an impregnable position and a hundred and thirty thousand fighting men, we cannot but be seized with sorrowful admiration, and decree to the vanquished ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... don't understand. What are you speaking about?" Evelyn told her of Sister Miry John's departure. "You cared for her a great ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... moving on towards Chalons was the only visible figure in the landscape. Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided. With an old sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of some wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard untrimmed; the cloak he carried over his shoulder, and the clothes he wore, sodden with wet; limping along in pain and difficulty; he looked as if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if the wail ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... hoped for a longer interview. "Stop as you come back, won't you?" she asked. "I'm goin' to pick you some of the handsomest poppies I ever raised. I got the seed from my sister-in-law's cousin, she that was 'Miry Gregg, and they do beat everything. They wilt so that it ain't no use to pick 'em now, unless you was calc'latin' to come home by the other road. There's nobody sick about here, is there?" to which the doctor returned a shake of the head and the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... youth. Like David Copperfield, he had known what it was to be a poor, neglected lad, set to rough, uncongenial work, with no more than a mechanic's surroundings and outlook, and having to fend for himself in the miry ways of the great city. Like David Copperfield, he had formed a very early acquaintance with debts and duns, and been initiated into the mysteries and sad expedients of shabby poverty. Like David Copperfield, he had been made free of ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... strange companions, To thee—so slender and chaste and cool— But a white star loses no glimmer of beauty In all the mud of a miry pool That holds the grace of its white reflection; Nothing could fleck thee, nothing could stain, Thou hast made a home for thy delicate beauty Where all things peaceful ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope

... re-enter Moscow it was necessary to cross the camp, or rather the several camps, of the army; and we wended our way over cold and miry ground, through fields where all was devastation and ruin. This camp presented a most singular aspect; and I experienced feelings of bitter melancholy as I saw our soldiers compelled to bivouac at ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... downpour. A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about the house-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed for losing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up, painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He moved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because of the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... slowly advancing, were within seventy miles of London. Though midwinter was approaching, the weather was fine; the way was pleasant; and the turf of Salisbury Plain seemed luxuriously smooth to men who had been toiling through the miry ruts of the Devonshire and Somersetshire highways. The route of the army lay close by Stonehenge; and regiment after regiment halted to examine that mysterious ruin, celebrated all over the Continent as the greatest wonder of our island. William entered Salisbury with the same military pomp which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... well," said Henry. "Had the boy grown up verily like my father, thou and he might have fallen out; or if not—why, you knights and nobles ride in miry bloody ways, and 'tis a wonder if even the best of you does not bring his harness home befouled and besmirched—not as shining bright as he took it out. Well, what didst thou with the poor lad? Cut him in ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he sold the saddle—said he wasn't going to risk HIS life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe—always HAD despised to ride on a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... making two crossings. At the point where the new trail led to the right we held a council of war to determine whether to keep to the old trail, and so save several days' travel, or to turn to the right and avoid the difficult crossing. The new trail was reported to be exceedingly miry, and that determined the matter—we concluded to make ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... itself which had turned, and which was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... heavy weight in the other scale—that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Hence, before his volumes are put within the reach of immature minds, there is need of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... Bladud made to, drive or entice them from this spot were entirely useless. They continued to wallow in their miry bed, until at length the calls of hunger induced them to seek the woods for food; but after they had eaten a hearty meal of acorns, they returned to the swamp, to the increasing surprise of Bladud. As for his part, having taken a supper of coarse black bread and roasted acorns, he sought shelter ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... to the more excellent things. If thou declinest to that which is worse, never expect any other to punish thee: thou hast put thyself in a miserable estate; as if by turns thou lookest down to the miry ground, and up to heaven, setting aside all outward causes, by the very law of sight thou seemest sometime to be in the dirt, and sometime present to the stars. But the common sort considereth not ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... was uttered as they followed their guide. Mrs Franklin lifted up her heart in silent praise for their preservation, and in prayer for present direction. Backward and forward swayed the lantern, just revealing snatches of hedge and miry path. At last the deep barking of a dog told that they were not far off from a dwelling: the next minute Mr Tankardew exclaimed, "Here we are;" and the light showed them that they were come to a little ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson

... to Toby's place, the main trail through the swamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm was situated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way—that is, a road built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Save in very wet weather this road ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... disgrace, which is the motive of other men. He too has been a captive, and the willing agent of his own captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him, and he has heard her voice; she has gently entreated him, and brought him out of the 'miry clay,' and purged away the mists of passion and the illusions of sense which envelope him; his soul has escaped from the influence of pleasures and pains, which are like nails fastening her to the body. To that prison-house she will not return; ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... through the languid atmosphere of a hot-house. She was arrayed characteristically in a short-skirted, tailor-made gown of a brown hue and bound with brown leather, and wore in addition a man's cap, dog-skin gloves, and heavy laced-up boots fit to tramp miry country roads. With her fresh complexion and red hair, and a large frame instinct with vitality, she looked aggressively healthy, and Lambert with his failing life felt quite a ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... great quantity of water flows from one into another, as into basins, and there are immense bulks of ever-flowing rivers under the earth, both of hot and cold water, and a great quantity of fire, and mighty rivers of fire, and many of liquid mire, some purer and some more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... their master's confidence or not is not certain, but just before midnight they plunged into a narrow, miry road that traversed wastes and low coppices; the plash of the horses' feet showed the tract to be marshy and full of pools. Her ladyship looked out across the dreary ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... has sunk into some mossy or miry place," said Michael, to a man near him, into whose face he could not look, "a cruel, cruel death to one like her! The earth on which my child walked has closed over her, and we ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is: The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... worketh still, In ways most wonderful. He drew me from the miry clay, He filled my cup quite full. And while my heart can speak ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham

... Learning, who stood watching Lubin and Nelly. "Why, the boy has twice sat down to rest on his bundle; and now, surely my spectacles must be at fault, can he be rolling his carpet up the hill, instead of carrying it on his shoulder! In a fine miry state it will be by the time that he ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... 'twas the ——," he said, rubbing a miry hand across the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse (p. 065) luck! Are ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... Hunting-lodges. The Gohrde at Hanover, for example, what a splendor there in comparison! But it serves Friedrich Wilhelm's simple purposes: there is game abundant in the scraggy woodlands, otter-pools, fish-pools, and miry thickets, of that old "Schenkenland" (belonged all once to the "SCHENKEN Family," till old King Friedrich bought it for his Prince); retinue sufficient find nooks for lodgment in the poor old Schloss so called; and Noltenius and Panzendorf drive out each once a week, in some light vehicle, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... she uttered this petition than she thought she heard a voice, and these were its words: "Say, 'O Lord, pluck me out of the fiery brands, and take my feet out of the miry pit, and make me stand on the everlasting rock; and, O Lord, save my soul.'" Tidy had heard a great many of her people tell about dreams and visions and voices, but she had never before had any such experiences. But this came to her ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... to-day. Among other discourses one Mr. Oudant, secretary to the late Princesse of Orange, did discourse of the convenience as to keeping the highways from being deep, by their horses, in Holland (and Flanders where the ground is as miry as ours is), going in their carts and, waggons as ours in coaches, wishing the same here as an expedient to make the ways better, and I think there is something in it, where there is breadth enough. Thence to my office, sent for to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... suits of clothes formed almost the sum total of his worldly wealth, that as he was accompanying the queen in one of her daily walks,—during which she was fond of giving audience, because she imagined that the open air produced a favorable effect on her complexion,—she arrived at a miry spot, and stood in perplexity how to pass. With an adroit presence of mind, the courtier pulled off his rich plush cloak and threw it on the ground to serve her for a footcloth. She accepted with pleasure an attention which flattered her, and it was afterwards quaintly said that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... rooted in. Born a poor farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at Fortune and brought her to her knees amidst a shower ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... the thought to that which I have elsewhere considered, that man's true treasure is in God. That great axiom of the religious consciousness, which pervades the whole of Scripture, is rapturously expressed in many a psalm, and never more assuredly than in that one which struggles up from the miry clay in which the Psalmist's 'steps had well-nigh slipped' and soars and sings thus: 'The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup; Thou maintainest my lot,' 'The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Hollanders came down the street to take part with their comrades, on whom we laid such load that they took to their heels, some being knocked down, and many having their pates pitifully broken, while others had to run through a miry ditch to escape us. The master of their admiral had occasioned this tumult, as he had gone from ship to ship, desiring the men to go armed on shore and kill all the English they could meet: and when some of our people were going on board the Dutch ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... which he gave, of his own drawing. The largest was on Lake Erie, the other on French Creek, fifteen miles apart, with a waggon road between them. The nearest and levellest way to them was now impassable, lying through large and miry savannas; they would have, therefore, to go by Venango, and it would take five or six sleeps (or days) of good travelling to reach the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... when they saw us charging down upon them. In a moment they sprang upon their ponies and dashed away. Had it not been for the creek, which lay between us and them, we would have got them before they could have mounted their horses; but as it was rather miry, we were unexpectedly delayed. The Indians fired some shots at us while we were crossing, but as soon as we got over we went for them in hot pursuit. A few of the redskins, not having time to mount, had started on foot toward the brush. One of these ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... a vision of social life in its most charming and refined forms, of quick-pulsed youth, of fair, impassioned faces invested with all the charm of poetry, framed in a marvelous setting of luxury or art; and, on the other hand, he saw a sombre picture, the miry verge beyond these faces, in which passion was extinct and nothing was left of the drama but the cords and pulleys and bare mechanism. Mme. de Beauseant's counsels, the words uttered in anger by the forsaken ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... weather the traveled roads are even worse than the unfrequented ones, for the ground is rendered more miry, and the bogs are more frequent. On a highroad near La Vega I arrived at a mudhole where an old man was being rescued by a passer-by from drowning in the liquid mud; I snapped a photograph of the scene ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... an hour Kent returned with the information that he had found the boat about half a mile up, but that Leslie was not in it. Both started, and, after stumbling over bushes loaded with water, and sinking into the miry shore, and wading in the river by turns, they came upon it, pulled high up on the bank. It was becoming lighter every moment, and as Kent knew that as soon as possible their trail would be followed, he was unwilling ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... then got possession of another of the balsas containing Pizarro's wardrobe; but, as the men who defended it raised loud cries for help, they reached the ears of Hernando Pizarro, who, with a small body of horse, had effected a landing some way farther down the shore. A broad tract of miry ground, overflowed at high water, lay between him and the party thus rudely assailed by the natives. The tide was out, and the bottom was soft and dangerous. With little regard to the danger, however, the bold cavalier spurred his horse into the slimy depths, and followed ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... and Spot ne'er whined But quickly caught the thief behind; He dragged him down in the mire and dirt, And tore his coat and tore his shirt, Then held him fast on the miry ground; The robber uttered not a sound, While his hands and feet the farmer bound, And tumbled ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... solitude and changeful beauty of their pathway was too perfect for her to mar it by any mournful forebodings. He walked beside her under the arched aisles of the pine-woods bareheaded, singing snatches of song as joyously as a school-boy, or waded off through marshy and miry places in quest of some rare plant which ought to be growing there, splashing back to her farther on in the winding road, scarcely less happy if he had not found it than if he had. How could she be troubled whilst her father was ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... wi' angry sugh; The shortening winter-day is near a close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The blackening trains o' craws to their repose: The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes— This night his weekly moil is at an end,— Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... long in thickets and in brakes Entangled, winds now this way and now that His devious course uncertain, seeking home; Or, having long in miry ways been foiled And sore discomfited, from slough to slough Plunging, and half despairing of escape, If chance at length he find a greensward smooth And faithful to the foot, his spirits rise, He chirrups brisk his ear-erecting steed, And winds ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... it like yesterday, Pierre," exclaimed Amelie, sparkling at the reminiscence; "I recollect how I wept and wrung my hands, tired out, hungry, and forlorn, with my dress in tatters, and one shoe left in a miry place! I recollect, moreover, that my protectors were in almost as bad a plight as myself, yet they chivalrously carried the little maiden by turns, or together made a queen's chair for me with their locked hands, until we all broke down together and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... sinned against the Saviour.' In this deep abyss of misery, THAT love which has heights and depths passing knowledge, laid under him the everlasting arms, and raised him from the horrible pit in miry clay, when no human powers could have reached his case. Dr. Cheever eloquently remarks, that 'it was through this valley of the shadow of death, overhung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blasphemy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... on a little knoll, around which was miry ground, making a cavalry charge difficult. The Indians numbered as many as we did. The safest plan was to dismount some of the men, leaving others to hold the horses, and proceed to the attack on foot. The rest of the men were to remain with their horses, and ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... hamlet a few miles from the town—so lonely that what are called lonely villages were teeming by comparison—there lived a man of curious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet. The way to his house was crooked and miry—even difficult in the present unpropitious season. One evening when it was raining so heavily that ivy and laurel resounded like distant musketry, and an out-door man could be excused for shrouding himself to his ears ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... rendered toilsome, and even dangerous, by the heavy rains of this season, and early snows that had already fallen on the mountains, which had changed the little rills into rushing torrents, and the low bottom-lands into deep and miry swamps. Much delayed by these and the like hinderances, Washington, upon reaching the banks of the Monongahela, deemed it best to send two of the backwoodsmen with the baggage in canoes down this river to its mouth, where, uniting its waters with those of the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... a horse's feet on the somewhat miry road, she 'wondered whether it was a gentleman's horse,' and finally concluded it was, for the impressions were too small to have been made by a 'great clumsy cart-horse'; and then she 'wondered ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... can stand on the river bank without shelter in a heavy storm of rain. There was no sign of abatement; therefore Nagendra, thinking it necessary to seek for shelter, set out to walk to the village, which was at some distance from the river, through miry paths. Presently the rain ceased, the wind abated slightly, but the sky was still thickly covered with clouds; therefore both wind and rain might be expected at night. Nagendra went ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... this night in the forest, and reach an Indian settlement about three o'clock the next evening, after walking one-third of the way through wet and miry ground. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... estate, and accounted solid and judicious beyond his years, he does, nevertheless, much lack the ease and ready wit with which the latter commendeth himself to my sweet kinswoman. We crossed about noon a broad stream near to the sea, very deep and miry, so that we wetted our hose and skirts somewhat; and soon, to our great joy, beheld the pleasant cleared fields and dwellings of the settlement, stretching along for a goodly distance; while, beyond all, the great ocean rolled, blue and cold, under an high easterly wind. Passing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... hae a turn at the crack noo," he said, coming forward to a part of the foul miry dungeon where a crowd of male and female prisoners were endeavouring to inhale a little fresh air through a crevice in the wall. "I'm fit to choke for want o' a breath ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... that they could not have broken out of that pasture, and that the river bank was impassable, because of high, thick bushes and miry mud in the open spaces. She had a fight with Blue over these latter places and demonstrated beyond doubt that they were miry, by getting him in to the knees in spite of his violent objections. They left deep tracks behind them when they got out. The calves had not ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... feats this single week Wad mak a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart out ow'r a dike, My horses in a miry, O! I wear my stockings white an' blue, My love's sae fierce an' fiery, O! I drill the land that I should pleugh, An' pleugh the drills entirely, O! O, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... order still further to increase the difficulty of forcing a passage, they conducted the water of the warm springs over the ground without the wall, in such a way as to make the surface continually wet and miry. The old wall had now fallen to ruins, but the miry ground remained. The place was solitary and desolate, and overgrown with a confused and wild vegetation. On one side the view extended far and wide over the sea, with the highlands of Euboea ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... but such a trouvaille would be impossible now as Kidd's treasure. And yet the mere taming of the neighborhood does not quite satisfy me as an explanation. Twenty years ago, on my way to bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of woodcock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few rods of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty cows. There was no growth of any kind to conceal them, and yet these ordinarily shy birds were almost as indifferent to my passing as common poultry would have been. ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell

... taunt, he seized Hseh P'an by the left leg, and dragging him several steps into a miry spot among the reeds, he rolled him about till he was covered with one mass of mud. "Do you now know what stuff I'm made ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... the way, and Harold trudged off to accomplish, as best he might, five Irish miles over miry highways and byways through the darkness of the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... happily ignorant that hot afternoon of the riot, as he followed the peaceful brook through its sheltered glen, and so came up again at last, after his rough handling, to friendly Swarthmoor, where young George Fell, escaped from his persecutors and the miry ditch, had arrived before him. 'And there they were, dressing the heads and hands of Friends and friendly people that were broken that day by the professors and hearers of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... exactly what I had done on that day long ago. I had half slid on a miry descent; it was still there; a little lower I had knocked off the top of a thistle; the thistles had not been discouraged, but were still growing. I recalled it because I had wondered why one knocks off the tops of ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... the more keenly alive and vigilant. It took him but a moment to decide what to do. Through the swamp he ran with a lightness and ability of which in calmer moments he would have been scarcely capable. The exigency of the occasion inspired him. Such leaps he took over miry places! so safely and swiftly be ran the length of an old mossy log! so nimbly he avoided the undergrowth! and so suddenly he arrived at last at the tree the rebel ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... of that man's own voice. I dare protest the man no thief, but in all things a madly honourable gentleman. My poor bruised, puzzled boy," said Melicent, with an odd mirthful tenderness, "how came you to be blundering about this miry world of ours! Only be very good for my sake and forget the bitterness; what does it matter ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... been used by the citizens of the county as a place for holding camp-meeting. I estimated its length at not far short of one mile and a half. The main passage is in general quite spacious, the roof elevated, and the floor tolerably level, but often wet and miry. For some distance beyond the entrance there is not much to attract attention; but as we proceed, at the far extremity the chambers are quite as picturesque as the most noted of the well-known Mammoth Cave. The ceilings, sides and floor are adorned with a multitude ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... sense, to corruption. They emerge for a brief season into the light of day, run their swift and fiery career of sin, and then disappear. Dante, in that wonderful Vision which embodies so much of true ethics and theology, represents the wrathful and gloomy class as sinking down under the miry waters and continuing to breathe in a convulsive, suffocating manner, sending up bubbles to the surface, that mark the place where they are drawing out their lingering existence.[4] Something like this, is the wretched life of a vicious population. As ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... Swamp about a quarter of a mile, and re-crossed with great difficulty by a cow-path."* (* "Jackson himself," writes Dr. McGuire, "accompanied by three or four members of his staff, of whom I was one, followed the cavalry across the Swamp. The ford was miry and deep, and impracticable for ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... her couch's foot Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could shoot Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears Had made a miry channel for ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... gust of wind arise, The brittle forest into atoms flies: The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends, And in a spangled show'r the prospect ends. Or, if a southern gale the region warm, And by degrees unbind the wintry charm, The traveller, a miry country sees, And journeys sad beneath the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... name will live forever in American annals, and whose monument is North Carolina's beautiful State capital, is said in the familiar story to have attracted the notice of Queen Elizabeth by spreading his scarlet cloak over a miry place for the queen to walk upon. He made rapid progress in the good graces of his sovereign, who was quick to discern the men who could be useful to her and to her kingdom. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half brother to Sir Walter, had perished on an expedition to found an English colony in America. A ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... our travellers think of the grand men of old who had built this mighty causeway six or seven centuries earlier. Their chief feeling, when they reached it, was one of relief; the change was so acceptable from the tangled and miry bypath through the forest. ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... to Cremona is rich and fertile, the roads deep and miry of course; very few of the Lombardy poplars, of which I expected to see so many: but Phaeton's sisters seem to have danced all away from the odoriferous banks of the Po, to the green sides of the Thames, I think; meantime here is no other timber ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... night—the driver, the guard, the corporal and I—all well muffled up and swathed about the throat against the northwest wind; and we carried but one inside passenger, though he snored enough for six. You could hear him above the chink of the swingle-bars and the drumming of our horses' hoofs on the miry road. What this inside fare was like I had no means of telling; for when the corporal and I overtook the coach at Torpoint Ferry he was already seated, and being served through the door with hot kidney pasty and hot brandy-and-water. He had travelled ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... some other planks were thrown off, and the horses of the third section refused to take the leap. At this time Lee came up, and every effort was made to replace the planks, but without success. The creek was too deep and miry to afford foot hold to those who attempted to raise them from ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... next day Sherman and McPherson moved their entire forces toward Jackson. The rain fell in torrents all the night before, and continued until about noon of that day making the roads at first slippery and then miry, notwithstanding, the troops marched in excellent order without straggling and in the best of spirits about fourteen miles, and engaged the enemy about 12 o'clock, M., near Jackson. McClernand occupied Clinton with one division, Mississippi Springs with another, Raymond with ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... was not in such scenes as these, or even in the deep and miry road, that Will Marks found the chief obstacles to his progress. There were kites and ravens feeding in the streets (the only scavengers the City kept), who, scenting what he carried, followed the cart or fluttered on its top, and croaked their knowledge of its burden ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... process of the ages, 'the Word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us.' He will never be 'the Bread of Life' unless He is 'the Bread that came down from heaven.' For humanity needs that the blue heavens that bend remote above should come down; and we cannot be lifted 'out of the horrible pit and the miry clay' unless a Hand from above be reached down into the depths of our degradation, and lift us from our lowness. Heaven must come to earth, if earth is to rise to heaven. The ladder must be let down from above, if ever from the lower levels men are to ascend thither where at ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... admiration, I attempted, as our caick approached the landing-place, to be the first to leap upon the quay, when, just as I was in the act of springing, my foot slipped, and I fell headlong into a miry stream. Such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... road was wet and miry, and discouraging enough. The soil was exceedingly rich, producing tropical plants in great profusion, in the midst of which were seen the neat bamboo cottages, with their industrious and cleanly-looking inhabitants. When they reached the foot of the mountain, they found it was impossible to ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... XV., on the west by the Avenue de Marigny, to the south by the road, to the north by the gardens of the Faubourg Saint-Honore. Never is this pretty variety of woman to be seen in the hyperborean regions of the Rue Saint-Denis, never in the Kamtschatka of miry, narrow, commercial streets, never anywhere in bad weather. These flowers of Paris, blooming only in Oriental weather, perfume the highways; and after five o'clock fold up like morning-glory flowers. The women you will see later, looking a little like them, are would-be ladies; while the fair ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac

... that the nearest priest in our part of the country lived a long distance away, and to get to him and his little thatched chapel one had to cross a swamp two miles wide in which one's horse would sink belly-deep in miry holes at least a dozen times before one could get through. In these circumstances the Gandara family could not go to the priest, but managed to persuade him to come to them, and as La Tapera was not considered a good ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... down. Dawn was breaking and Sim's wild eyes cleared. Here a press of cattle, dazed with fright, and the red and miry heather. Queer black things were curled and stretched athwart it. He noticed a dead man beside him, perhaps of his own slaying. It was a shabby fellow, in a jacket that gaped like Sim's. His face was thin and patient, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... male trio, too, that claimed some attention. They represented to the life merry, devil-may-care vagabonds, and so well did they act their parts that one would have supposed they had just been picked up on the miry highway outside. They deemed it, of course, strictly within their privileges to get drunk with all due speed,—an endeavor in which they admirably succeeded. From that hour on they became an unmitigated nuisance, not even atoned for by some humor or merry ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... consented to advance me a pound sterling on my watch, and without stopping to take breakfast, I plunged into the miry streets. I was at a loss what course to pursue. The fog of the previous evening had prevented my noticing any of the external features of the hotel in which I had dined with my Scotch acquaintance, and where my trunks, that contained all the money for my travels, and the introductory ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... near to a very miry Slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Dispond. Here they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the Burden that was on his back, began ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... and roundabout, through mud and brambles and swamps; over little brooks and through big miry ponds where they were nearly drowned,—roundabout and roundabout all night long. They wanted to rest, but she went so fast that they could not catch her to make her stand still. And they dared not lose sight of her big whiteness through the dark, for now ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown

... hence the forests, if this region was ever generally wooded, have been gradually swept away and devoured, until none remain. In fact, from the river bottoms of the lower Kansas to those of the San Joaquin and Sacramento, there is no swamp, though two or three miry meadows of inconsiderable size, near the South Pass, known as 'Ice Springs' and 'Pacific Springs,' are of a somewhat swampy character. Beside these, there is nothing approximating the natural meadows of New England, the fenny, oozy flats of nearly all inhabited countries. Bilious fevers find ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... content in living retired from the world in a cavern. I said: 'Why dost thou not come into the city, that thy heart might be relieved from a load of servitude?' He replied: 'In it there dwell some wonderful and angel-faced charmers, and where the path is miry, elephants may find it slippery.'—Having delivered this speech, we kissed each other's head and face, and took our leaves:—What profits it to kiss our mistress's cheek, and with the same breath to bid her adieu. Thou mightest say that ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... his festival dress; but his best stockings and buckled shoes were stained and splashed, as from much walking in miry ways. Also he came unsteadily, and his face was white as ashes. The ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... an insinuating cluck to the horses, while several passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily over the miry road. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... Lord fought against the Egyptians also with the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. The former made the soil miry, and the mire was heated to the boiling point by the latter, so that the hoofs of the horses dropped from their feet, and they could not budge ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... understood now that the houses might hold human beings, his brothers and his sisters, since some one roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle. Thus he emerged from the alien swarm amid which he had walked in solitude so many days. Above the dull and miry ways were the beauty of her gray-blue eyes and the glory of her golden hair. He felt as if a white dove had lighted on the town, yet he laughed at his own feelings; for what did he know of her? He had seen her twice, and her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... princes, gave ground on all sides, and were pursued with great slaughter by the victorious Normans. A few troops, however, of the vanquished had still the courage to turn upon their pursuers; and attacking them in deep and miry ground, obtained some revenge for the slaughter and dishonour of the day. But the appearance of the duke obliged them to seek their safety by flight; and darkness saved them from any farther pursuit ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... perhaps to this very moment,—there lingered in Richmond a memorial of those days, most peculiar and most instructive. Before the days of Secession, when the Northern traveller in Virginia, after traversing for weary leagues its miry ways, its desolate fields, and its flowery forests, rode at last into its metropolis,—now slowly expanded into a city of twenty-eight thousand inhabitants,—he was sure to be guided erelong to visit its stately Capitol, modelled by Jefferson, when French minister, from the Maison Carre. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... faces were laughing, though their mustaches dripped. Others grimaced at the spongy bread and flabby meat, or at the missiles which attacked their skin from all sides at every defect in their heavy and miry armor-plate. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... chance go by, for it would not take them two days out of their way, so I went to the fandak to see mules and men, and complete the bargain. There had been a heavy shower some days before, and the streets were more than usually miry, but in the fandak, whose owner had no marked taste for cleanliness, the accumulated dirt of all the rainy season had been stirred, with results I have no wish to record. A few donkeys in the last ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... Him, if only the rubbish is removed which chokes the springs of affection. There are different shades in love—the love of gratitude, where the rescued spirit sings the praise of Him who took it from the terrible pit and miry clay; the love of complacency, with which the holy soul admires Him who is fairer than the sons of men, and dwells with rapture on His majestic beauty and endearing goodness; the love of friendship, in which by constant intercourse a deep attachment arises between the confiding soul and ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... they gazed up at a great mass of apple blossoms in bloom, "Do you think there is anything in all that stuff about God anyway, Westcott?"—of a night when he had gone with some loose woman of the town and of the wet miry street that they had left behind them as she had closed the door—of that night at the party when he had seen Cardillac again—of the things that Maradick had said to him that night when young Stephen was ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering windmill. The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields. A brisk little woman passed us by. She was seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels upon the donkey's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dream, that just as they had ended this talk, they drew nigh to a very miry slough that was in the midst of the plain: and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... horses bore superb silken housings, and the very bits were gilt. [Note 2.] Ten strong men in the royal livery walked, five on each side of the char; and their office, which was to keep it upright in the miry tracks—roads they were not—was by no means ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... loud wi' angry sugh: The shortening winter-day is at its close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh, The black'ning ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... all and of the innocent blood shed. Then Nature herself intervened, and winter came down like a black curtain on the world, and the passes closed up behind the men and were filled with drifts of snow that covered the bones and the blood and the deep miry slides, marked with slipping tracks where struggling, gasping lives had gone out, and the river closed up behind the men and the ice thickened there daily, and the men were in the camps and there ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... All about them stood the dark and silent wilderness, through which they were to make their way for sixteen miles, to reach the Dead River. In this dreaded route there were four carrying places. The last was three miles long, a third of which was a miry spruce and cedar swamp. It took {24} five days of hardest toil to cut their way through the unbroken wilderness. Fortunately, the hunters shot four moose and caught plenty of ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... the secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes. His body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... the dazzling of the fireworks, the glittering of the flowers, the crash of the rockets, to the serenity of a lovely night—starlit, clear, and still. Alas! yes, this good girl preferred the black mud of the streets of the capital to the verdure of its flowery meadows; its pavements miry or tortuous, to the fresh and velvet moss of the paths in the woods, perfumed by violets; the suffocating dust at the City gates, or the Boulevards, to the waving of the golden ears of corn, enameled by the scarlet of the wild poppy and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... can reach the wicket-gate, they fall into a 'miry slough.' Who does not know the miry slough too? When a man begins for the first time to think seriously about himself, the first thing that rises before him is a consciousness of his miserable past life. Amendment seems to be desperate. He thinks ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... sparks from his lips by a hat skilfully flung. He picked it up miry and cleaned it, observing that his honour was pledged to this fellow. The hat he trampled into a muddy lump. Wilfrid found it impossible to ape his coolness. He swung about for an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... repulsive as ever, but he understood now that the houses might hold human beings, his brothers and his sisters, since some one roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle. Thus he emerged from the alien swarm amid which he had walked in solitude so many days. Above the dull and miry ways were the beauty of her gray-blue eyes and the glory of her golden hair. He felt as if a white dove had lighted on the town, yet he laughed at his own feelings; for what did he know of her? He had seen her twice, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... forts, differing in size, but on the same model, a plan of which he gave, of his own drawing. The largest was on Lake Erie, the other on French Creek, fifteen miles apart, with a waggon road between them. The nearest and levellest way to them was now impassable, lying through large and miry savannas; they would have, therefore, to go by Venango, and it would take five or six sleeps (or days) of good travelling to reach ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... the flowers, the crash of the rockets, to the serenity of a lovely night—starlit, clear, and still. Alas! yes, this good girl preferred the black mud of the streets of the capital to the verdure of its flowery meadows; its pavements miry or tortuous, to the fresh and velvet moss of the paths in the woods, perfumed by violets; the suffocating dust at the City gates, or the Boulevards, to the waving of the golden ears of corn, enameled by the scarlet of the wild poppy and the azure ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... fence would allow, turned back for a short distance, and then returned, keeping up the shrill noise all the while. The man's curiosity became excited, and as soon as he started to follow her, she went off in the direction of a miry place that had been left unguarded, and stopped upon its very brink. Hurrying on as fast as he could, the man found the colt lying dead, suffocated in the mud and water. The poor mare had unfortunately been unable to procure his help—though she tried her best—in time to ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... of peat and sand;—and is not distinguished for its beauty at all among royal Hunting-lodges. The Gohrde at Hanover, for example, what a splendor there in comparison! But it serves Friedrich Wilhelm's simple purposes: there is game abundant in the scraggy woodlands, otter-pools, fish-pools, and miry thickets, of that old "Schenkenland" (belonged all once to the "SCHENKEN Family," till old King Friedrich bought it for his Prince); retinue sufficient find nooks for lodgment in the poor old Schloss so called; and Noltenius and Panzendorf drive out each once a week, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... might trip his antagonist. Then he set his lips as he met the shock. Charnock struck him with his shoulder and forced him backwards by the weight of the bag. The mud slipped under his feet; he staggered and clawed at the bank, but his fingers found no hold. They plowed through the miry gravel, and falling face downwards, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... the thorny thickets and the miry 30 bogs and the fever-breeding marshes, to gather what evils he might. Soon he returned with an arm load—the poison of spiders, the venom of serpents, the miasmata of swamps, the juice of the deadly nightshade. All ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... night. His meaning glances! (I dare not give the meaning.) Such an influence as the eloquence of a revivalist preacher would suffice to divert the story into absolutely different channels, make him a white-soured hero, a man still pure, walking untainted and brave and helpful through miry ways. The appearance of some daintily gloved frockcoated gentleman with buttonhole and eyeglass complete, gallantly attendant in the rear of customers, served again to start visions of a simplicity essentially Cromwell-like, of sturdy plainness, of a strong, silent ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard forms—some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud—presented groups that at once invoked pity and aroused alarm: ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Like David Copperfield, he had known what it was to be a poor, neglected lad, set to rough, uncongenial work, with no more than a mechanic's surroundings and outlook, and having to fend for himself in the miry ways of the great city. Like David Copperfield, he had formed a very early acquaintance with debts and duns, and been initiated into the mysteries and sad expedients of shabby poverty. Like David Copperfield, he had been made free of the interior of a debtor's ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... a brief season into the light of day, run their swift and fiery career of sin, and then disappear. Dante, in that wonderful Vision which embodies so much of true ethics and theology, represents the wrathful and gloomy class as sinking down under the miry waters and continuing to breathe in a convulsive, suffocating manner, sending up bubbles to the surface, that mark the place where they are drawing out their lingering existence.[4] Something like this, is the wretched life ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... the common soul, even as he had found the common sky, his enemy. But all this does not affect the first great lines of the quarrel, which had begun before horsemen in Germanic uniform had waited vainly upon the road to Varennes or had failed upon the miry slope up to the windmill of Valmy. And that duel, on which depended all that our Europe has since become, had great Russia and gallant Spain and our own glorious island only as subordinates or seconds. That duel, ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... they happened to be written in the pouring rain, in a shaking stagecoach, or by the light of a lantern. They were also promptly handed in at the office, despite the fact that the stages sometimes broke down and left their passengers to plod on foot through the miry roads leading into London. These reports and newspaper articles soon attracted attention; and Dickens received an offer for a series of humorous sketches, which grew into the famous Pickwick Papers, and earned L20,000 ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... come over Mr. Wang; his proud, overbearing manner had changed, and he became a humble, devout follower of the lowly Nazarene. God used a dream to awaken this man's conscience—as is not uncommon in China. One night he dreamed he was struggling in a deep, miry pit; but try as he would he could find no way of escape. When about to give up in despair, he looked up and saw Mr. Goforth and another missionary on the bank above him, with their hands stretched out to save him. Again he sought for some other way ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth

... used by the citizens of the county as a place for holding camp-meeting. I estimated its length at not far short of one mile and a half. The main passage is in general quite spacious, the roof elevated, and the floor tolerably level, but often wet and miry. For some distance beyond the entrance there is not much to attract attention; but as we proceed, at the far extremity the chambers are quite as picturesque as the most noted of the well-known Mammoth ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... a longer interview. "Stop as you come back, won't you?" she asked. "I'm goin' to pick you some of the handsomest poppies I ever raised. I got the seed from my sister-in-law's cousin, she that was 'Miry Gregg, and they do beat everything. They wilt so that it ain't no use to pick 'em now, unless you was calc'latin' to come home by the other road. There's nobody sick about here, is there?" to which the doctor returned a shake of the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... we descended to a deep miry watercourse, full of bulrushes, then over another hill, from the heights of which we saw Suwarora's palace, lying down in the Uthungu valley, behind which again rose another hill of sandstone, faced on ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... to death in a way that one would weep to see; namely, by first passing thongs through their legs, and then tying them to the hoofs of savage bulls; then hounds set on them and dragged them into miry swamps. This deed took the edge off the valour of the Sclavs, and they obeyed the authority of the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... a great and holy man, who was content in living retired from the world in a cavern. I said: 'Why dost thou not come into the city, that thy heart might be relieved from a load of servitude?' He replied: 'In it there dwell some wonderful and angel-faced charmers, and where the path is miry, elephants may find it slippery.'—Having delivered this speech, we kissed each other's head and face, and took our leaves:—What profits it to kiss our mistress's cheek, and with the same breath to bid her adieu. Thou mightest say that ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... light parts don't differ in appearance from the rest, it is dangerous to cross. My father pointed out a dim outline on the horizon, and told me it was Swaylone's Island. Men sometimes go there, but none ever return. In the evening of the same day we found Broodviol standing in a deep, miry pit in the forest, surrounded on all sides by trees three hundred feet high. He was a big gnarled, rugged, wrinkled, sturdy old man. His age at that time was a hundred and twenty of our years, or nearly six hundred of yours. His body was trilateral: he ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... done, Colonel?' says he. 'I'm in the slough of despond, up to the very chin. A miry and slippery path ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... with the flattering accompaniment of a fair wind: it proved however too light to enable us to stem the stream, and we were obliged to resume the fatiguing operation of tracking; sometimes under cliffs so steep that the men could scarcely find a footing, and not unfrequently over spots rendered so miry by the small streams that trickled from above as to be almost impassable. In the course of the day we passed the scene of a very melancholy accident. Some years ago two families of Indians, induced by the flatness of a small beach which lay betwixt the cliff and the river, chose ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... heard the grating of the chain cables as they passed through the tiers into the lockers in the hold. It was plain enough that thirty-two hands had been found to man the capstan, for the anchor was certainly coming up from its miry bed. These sounds produced something like consternation among the mutineers, for they indicated at least a partial failure of the scheme in which they had trusted ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod and gain the honour? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenants, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, bemired,—before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step-over them in official pumps and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... this, there should be an effort to image a moor, a fen, a crag, or a torrent clearly. Then when the pupil sees the desolate, lonesome moor; the miry, almost impassable fen; the sharp, out-jutting crag which makes the ascent more forbidding and difficult; and the rushing, unbridged torrent which must be forded or breasted, even though it threatens destruction; it should be easy ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... a wall across the way, and put up gates there, which they strongly fortified. In order still further to increase the difficulty of forcing a passage, they conducted the water of the warm springs over the ground without the wall, in such a way as to make the surface continually wet and miry. The old wall had now fallen to ruins, but the miry ground remained. The place was solitary and desolate, and overgrown with a confused and wild vegetation. On one side the view extended far and wide ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... or Prussians[53] were sacrificed by their hands on that fatal day; and when it is considered, that this horrible carnage was the work of fifty thousand men[54], dying with fatigue and hunger, and striving in miry ground against an impregnable position and a hundred and thirty thousand fighting men, we cannot but be seized with sorrowful admiration, and decree to the vanquished ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... dwell among them, or be a partaker of their benefits, because I had sinned against the Saviour.' In this deep abyss of misery, THAT love which has heights and depths passing knowledge, laid under him the everlasting arms, and raised him from the horrible pit in miry clay, when no human powers could have reached his case. Dr. Cheever eloquently remarks, that 'it was through this valley of the shadow of death, overhung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blasphemy and lamentations; and passing amidst quagmires and pitfalls, close ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... enjoyment of the sweet solitude and changeful beauty of their pathway was too perfect for her to mar it by any mournful forebodings. He walked beside her under the arched aisles of the pine-woods bareheaded, singing snatches of song as joyously as a school-boy, or waded off through marshy and miry places in quest of some rare plant which ought to be growing there, splashing back to her farther on in the winding road, scarcely less happy if he had not found it than if he had. How could she be troubled whilst her father was treading ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... for he had but dreamed thus fearfully in the new-year's night. He was still young; but his sinful wanderings, they had been no dream; and he thanked God that he could yet turn from the miry ways of vice, and again choose the sunny path which leadeth unto the pure land of the ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... that paying the cost of experiencing a mistake, they willingly returned to their respective duties. Thus when the rabble of Athens murmured at the exaction of the magistrates, Themistocles satisfied them with such another tale of the fox and the hedge-hog; the first whereof being stuck fast in a miry bog, the flies came swarming about him, and almost sucked out all his blood, the latter officiously offers his service to drive them away; no, says the fox, if these which are almost glutted be frighted off, there will come a new hungry set that will be ten times more greedy and ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... call upon him with a dreary insistence—to call him far away, to address him personally, and to have a meaning that he failed to seize. It was thus, at least, in this nodding castle, in a cold, miry woodland, and so far from men and society, that the traffic on the Great North Road spoke to him in the intervals ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... flared up as though saturated with oil, their flickering blaze lighting up a weird scene; the gaunt, bare, white trees, ghosts of a departed forest, the miry ground strewn with eggs of all sizes, shapes and colors, and dead birds of many kinds, in amongst which writhed and twisted dirty-looking, repulsive water moccasins and brilliant yellow and black swamp snakes, while ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... than most," snarled Kemp, "but mostly lies! And why does he forget the miry lanes By Brainford with thick woods on either side, And the deep holes, where I could find no ease But skipped up to my waist?" A crackling laugh Broke from his lips which, if he had not worn The cap and bells, would scarce have roused the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... smile on his face, but with profound perturbations of the soul. For he saw himself sinking deeper and deeper into this miry difficulty, and how he was to extricate himself without dragging his friends down, was ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... else it was the tide itself which had turned, and which was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped to rescue a ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... hot-tempered, but the sight of some nondescript and miry creature sitting cross-legged amongst a lot of loose straw, and swinging itself to and fro like a bear in a cage, made him pause. Then this tramp stood up silently before him, one mass of mud and filth from head to foot. Smith, alone ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... was destined to carry, it became necessary to transport guns from Philadelphia. A prize, taken from the enemy, put some fit and excellent pieces at the disposal of the Navy Department. To avoid the danger of capture by the enemy's cruisers, these were carted over the miry roads of New Jersey. Twenty heavy cannon were thus conveyed by the strength of horses. Carriages of the most approved model were constructed, and every thing done to bring her into prompt action, as an efficient ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... determination they set earnestly to work, and succeeded in removing the greater portion of the goods; when they made another attempt, happily with better success than previously; and brought the dray from its miry adherence to a position on the bank. It was then reladen with the goods; while the men, barely recovered from the chagrin caused by the misadventure, performed their work with a sullen moroseness, enlivening ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... true; but remember that, taking the compositions of Young in general, they are but like bright stepping-stones over a miry road. Young froths and foams, and bubbles sometimes very vigorously; but we must not compare the noise made by your tea-kettle here with the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... the pole slipped from its insecure support into the miry mud, and Frank, instead of landing on the hummock for which he had aimed, lost his direction, and soused flat on his side with a loud "spa-lash," in the water and mud three feet to ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... Ellen, spite of miry ways And weather dark and dreary, Trudged every day to Edward's house, And made them all more ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... first find, two discouraged little porkers, hopelessly mired and grunting feebly when disturbed. They had no trouble in catching these, but holding their wet, miry little bodies was a different matter. They were slippery as eels. Chicken Little and Katy, who each had one, found them ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... proverb of despondency that he was and is. Only, that sunshiny morning he got over both the slough inside of him and outside of him, and was heard by Help and his family singing this song on the hither side of the slough: 'He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... morning just before nine o'clock, where you can overlook a circle of some two or three miles' radius, the center being the Old Red School-house. You will see little figures picking their way along the miry roads, or ploughing through the deep drifts, cutting across the fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus and his cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... better, thou needest no judge to reward thee: thou hast joined thyself to the more excellent things. If thou declinest to that which is worse, never expect any other to punish thee: thou hast put thyself in a miserable estate; as if by turns thou lookest down to the miry ground, and up to heaven, setting aside all outward causes, by the very law of sight thou seemest sometime to be in the dirt, and sometime present to the stars. But the common sort considereth not these things. What then? Shall we ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... snatched the golden branch from its ancient trunk and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on the shores of the dead, and was greeted by the mute baying of the threefold Cerberus. I ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... fancy. Even Rabelais has his poetic moments, as in the picture of Cupid self-disarmed before the industrious serenity of the Muses. A single lovely image, like Sterne's figure of the recording angel, reconciles us to many a miry page. But in Jacques le Fataliste, Diderot never raises his eye for an instant to the blue aether, his ear catches no harmony of awe, of hope, nor even of a noble despair. With a kind of clumsy jubilancy he holds us fast ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... generally obstructed by fallen trees, old logs, miry places, pointed rocks and entangled roots, which were not to be avoided. We were alternately on the ridge of a lofty mountain and in the depths of a valley. At best, our path was obscure and we needed guides to go before us. Night ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell

... nice in her person, and of purity in her mind and manners, did she know what miry wallowers the generality of men of our class are in themselves, and constantly trough and sty with, but would detest the thoughts of associating with such filthy sensualists, whose favourite taste ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... as they gazed up at a great mass of apple blossoms in bloom, "Do you think there is anything in all that stuff about God anyway, Westcott?"—of a night when he had gone with some loose woman of the town and of the wet miry street that they had left behind them as she had closed the door—of that night at the party when he had seen Cardillac again—of the things that Maradick had said to him that night when young Stephen was born—and so from that to his own life, his own birth, his father, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... a frog against water. As the people of the inn seemed incapable of showing sympathy, I went out to look at the town under a borrowed umbrella. It was certainly not much to look at, especially under circumstances of such acute depression. I walked or waded through a number of miry little streets where all manner of refuse was in a saturated or deliquescent state—cabbage-stumps and dead rats floating in the gutters, potato-peelings and bean-pods sticking to the mediaeval pitching—everything slippery, nasty, and abominable. There were old houses, as a matter of course; ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... securing at the post-office his treasured mail budget, was escorting his lady-love home through the muddy, ill-lighted streets of little Christchurch. A light of some sort was needed at an especially miry crossing. The devoted squire did not spread out his cloak, as did Sir Walter Raleigh. He had no cloak to spread. But he deftly made a torch of his unread English letters, and, bending down, lighted the way across the mud. His sacrifice, it is believed, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... bright path of genuine greatness seek, But, having found it, take a course oblique, Where glittering rainbows rise from far, to cheat Their wondering eyes, and tempt their eager feet; And lead them forward o'er forbidden ground, } Where pleasures still decrease, and pains abound, } Till in a miry lake, or whelming torrent, drown'd. } Thus form'd by art, a fancied meteor flies On glowing wings, and sails along the skies, Shoots to the stars with imitative blaze Of feeble splendor, rivalling their rays; With many a glittering ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... written on these countenances. "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Listen, they are singing; it is the fortieth Psalm: "He took me from the fearful pit and from the miry clay." What pathos they throw into the words, what joy overspreads their faces! They know themselves to be monuments of free grace and ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... be floundering through inky shadows, feeling a way through this miry chaos, when aloft, as far as the eye could see, the sky was lit. This phantom city of twinkling beacons gave one a sense of acute unreality, for it was an empty city, a city the work of which went on almost without ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... a wind and a tempest, as a load and burden. The devil, and sin, and the curse of the law, and death, are gotten upon the shoulders of this poor man, and are treading of him down, that he may sink into, and be swallowed up of his miry place. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and then they plunged into the worst roads that the South at any time offered to resist the progress of the Union armies. Narrow, tortuous, unworked substitutes for highways wound around and over steep, rocky hills, through miry creek bottoms, and over bridgeless streams, now so swollen as to be absolutely unfordable by less determined men, starting on a less ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... them. In a moment they sprang upon their ponies and dashed away. Had it not been for the creek, which lay between us and them, we would have got them before they could have mounted their horses; but as it was rather miry, we were unexpectedly delayed. The Indians fired some shots at us while we were crossing, but as soon as we got over we went for them in hot pursuit. A few of the redskins, not having time to mount, had started on foot toward the brush. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... been improved. But in spite of disorder and squalor, shaded with clouds, washed and wiped by rain and sea winds, it was triumphantly salubrious through all the seasons. And though the houses seemed to rest uneasily among the miry rocks and stumps, squirming at all angles as if they had been tossed and twisted by earthquake shocks, and showing but little more relation to one another than may be observed among moraine boulders, Wrangell was a tranquil place. I ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... after bidding a hasty adieu to his father, he crossed the country northward on foot and reached Liverpool, in the hope of finding work there. Failing in that, he set out for Manchester and reached it at dusk, very weary and very miry in consequence of the road being in such a wretched state of mud and ruts. He relates that, not knowing a person in the town, he went up to an apple-stall ostensibly to buy a pennyworth of apples, but really to ask the stall-keeper if he knew of any person in want of a hand. Was there ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... the lane; the lane likewise being full of deep holes, sometimes I skipt vp to the waste; but it is an old Prouerb, that it is a little comfort to the miserable to haue companions, and amidst this miry way I had some mirth by an ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp

... by the Ponte Molle two or three miles before. It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, and hurrying on between its worn-away and miry banks, had a promising aspect of desolation and ruin. The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the Carnival, did great violence to this promise. There were no great ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity, to be seen;—they all lie on ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... could I bear to walk for aye, With eyes to earthward prone, O'er trampled weeds and miry clay, And sand and flinty stone; Never the glorious view to greet Of hill and dale, and sky; To see that Nature's charms are sweet, Or feel that ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... the rebel line on the left flank. The rebel left was protected by field-works and a battery on the south side of Red Bud Creek. This creek was easily crossed in some places, but in others was a deep, miry pool from twenty to thirty yards wide and almost impassable. The creek was not visible from any part of our line when we began to move forward, and no one probably knew of it until its banks were reached. The division moved forward at the same ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... the Phaedrus he discusses in his most brilliant vein the problem of love. To the reader who has inherited the ethical ideal of Christianity, Plato's love will seem like the image in Nebuchadnezzar's vision,—the head of gold, the feet of miry clay. He has a toleration for some aspects of sensuality of which Paul said, "it is a shame even to speak;" and this tolerance, in the greatest of the classic philosophers, is the most pregnant suggestion ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... the lower order of females in Scotland. Upon a brisk sprightly chamber-maid entering my room one day at an inn in Glasgow, I heard a sound which resembled the pattering of some web-footed bird, when in the act of climbing up the miry side of a pond. I looked down upon the feet of this bonny lassie, and found that their only covering was procured from the mud of the high street—adieu! to the tender eulogies of the pastoral reed! I have never thought of a shepherdess ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... Loveth thee still, though thou hast gone astray. In truth's great court, vain has thy trial been, For no divorce could there be granted thee. The child you bore was bitter curse and shame, And not the child of thy husband, the North. It has led thee to miry paths, and raised The gall of despair to thy famished lips; It were better that such a ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... tempers our afflictions to us, of how tenderly he mixes in bright joys with the grey web of trouble and care that we call our life. Think of how he gives, who takes away. Out of the bottom of the miry clay I write this; and I look forward confidently; I have faith after all; I believe, I hope, I will not have it reft from me; there is something good behind it all, bitter and terrible as it seems. The infinite majesty (as it will be always in regard to us the bubbles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... large with my revenge, but I was not happy. While I was fathoming the miry depths of life, I only recognized the more keenly at all times the happiness of reciprocal affection; it was a shadow that I followed through all that befell me in my extravagance, and in my wildest moments. It was my misfortune to be deceived in my fairest beliefs, to be ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... a southerly direction through the town, we came to what should have been a harmless little drift, about two or three miles out. The recent rains had, however, transformed it into a formidable obstacle, and waggon after waggon stuck hopelessly in its miry embrace. The General, therefore, determined to halt on a rising slope on the far side, and as many waggons as possible were man-handled over the bog. Tents were pitched, but scarcely were they up when a furious storm burst overhead. In a minute everything and everybody was soused through ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... accident happened which attracted her attention towards him yet more strongly. The night had been rainy, and just where the young gentleman stood a small quantity of mud interrupted the Queen's passage. As she hesitated to pass on, the gallant, throwing his cloak from his shoulders, laid it on the miry spot, so as to ensure her stepping over it dry-shod. Elizabeth looked at the young man, who accompanied this act of devoted courtesy with a profound reverence, and a blush that overspread his whole countenance. The Queen was confused, and blushed in her turn, nodded her head, hastily passed on, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... bruised to a miry tomb Are ears that have greened but will never be gold, And flowers in the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... quay! Hark to the clamour in that miry road, Bounded and narrowed by yon vessel's load; The lumbering wealth she empties round the place, Package and parcel, hogshead, chest, and case; While the loud seaman and the angry hind, Mingling in business, bellow ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... take a pin or stick, though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch; I could not tell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh, how gingerly did I then go, in all I did or said! I found myself as on a miry bog that shook if I did but stir; and was as there left both by God and Christ, and the spirit, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... the first halt was called, but the rest was of short duration, for at ten the column was again plodding along through the miry roads in hourly dread lest the whole scheme should be spoilt, and the Boers suddenly arrest the course ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... to die where it lay? We talk about 'silly sheep.' Are there any of them so foolish as men and women listening to me now, who will not answer the Shepherd's voice when they hear it, with, 'Lord, here am I, come and help me out of this miry clay, and bring me back.' He is saying to each of you, 'Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?' May He not have to say at last of any of us, 'Ye would not come to Me, that ye might ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Raleigh. That bold and talented adventurer, whose name will live forever in American annals, and whose monument is North Carolina's beautiful State capital, is said in the familiar story to have attracted the notice of Queen Elizabeth by spreading his scarlet cloak over a miry place for the queen to walk upon. He made rapid progress in the good graces of his sovereign, who was quick to discern the men who could be useful to her and to her kingdom. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half brother to Sir Walter, had perished ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... for nearly an hour over a rough and miry river-bottom when the setter showed sudden excitement and began sniffing to the ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... Ground.—Swamps.—When you wish to take a wagon across a deep, miry, and reedy swamp, outspan and leg the cattle feed. Then cut faggots of reeds and strew them thickly over the line of intended passage. When plenty are laid down, drive the cattle backwards and forwards, and they will trample them in. Repeat the process ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... miles, we reached on the north a hunting camp of Minnetarees consisting of thirty lodges, and built in the usual form of earth and timber. Two miles and a quarter farther, comes in on the same side Miry creek, a small stream about ten yards wide, which, rising in some lakes near the Mouse river, passes through beautiful level fertile plains without timber in a direction nearly southwest; the banks near ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... not long before the Countess succeeded in bringing the two men together. The way had indeed been paved. If Lassalle's idealism had survived the experience of the Hatzfeldt law-suits, if he had yet to learn that the Fighter cannot pick his steps as cleanly and logically as the Thinker, those miry law-suits, waged unscrupulously on both sides, had prepared him to learn the lesson readily and to apply it unflinchingly. Without Force behind one, victory must be sought more circuitously. But to a man who represents no Force, how ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Fox river west, and Embarras and Raccoon through it. An equal proportion of timber and prairie, some excellent, other parts inferior,—and some bad, miry swamps, called "purgatories." ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... holm-oak, holly and beech for the most part, rises and dips twice before it climbs the final ascent to the crown above Altopascio. A cart-track runs through it, deeply rutted and always miry, on either hand of which glades are revealed of great beauty. Here, if the trees are remote, the grass grows lush and green. Hereabouts are the flowers, tall and plenty—foxgloves and mullein, such as we ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... course. Some good people will think I am either a fanatic or an artful schemer, while the clerical place-seekers, who love the flesh-pots of Egypt and have their eyes on the thrones of the Church and the world, will denounce my 'secularity' and tell me I am feeding the 'miry troughs' of the publican and sinner. No matter, if only God is pleased to vouchsafe 'signs following.' And one weary-faced lonely girl, grown fresh of countenance and happy of mien, or one bright little woman, snatched from the brink of perdition, will be a better fruit, of religion ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... did not dream of France And spend my nights in mortal dread On miry flats where whizz-bangs dance And star-shells hover o'er my head, And sometimes wake my anxious spouse By making shrill excited rows Because it seems a hundred "hows" Are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... Christian's path, and the means by which they can be surmounted. Suppose a traveller just entering a dreary wilderness. The path which leads through it is exceedingly narrow and difficult to be kept. On each side, it is beset with thorns, and briers, and miry pits. Would he not rejoice to find a book containing the experience of former travellers who had passed that way; in which every difficult spot is marked; all their contests with wild beasts and serpents, and all their falls described; and a beacon, or guide-board, set up, wherever a beaten ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... proceeding does not in the least surprise him, because it is of the kind that has always met him in every benevolent movement. When in the Parliament of England he was pleading for women in the collieries who were harnessed like beasts of burden, and made to draw heavy loads through miry and dark passages, and for children who were taken at three years old to labor where the sun never shines, he was met with determined and furious opposition and obloquy—accused of being a disorganizer, and of wishing to restore the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... which are only possible to the higher intelligence of humanity. It will be observed, too, that at this point what may be called pictorial description begins. Hitherto we have had merely a general impression of murky air and miry soil, sloping perhaps a little toward the centre, and intersected now and again by a stream. Now the City of Dis with minarets and towers rises in front of us, and, as we shall see in future cantos, from this time onwards ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... driving his cart along a deep miry lane, the wheels stuck so fast in the clay, that the horses could not draw them out. Upon this he fell a-bawling and praying to Hercules ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... and before the second, betaken himself to his prayers for his poor Alec Forbes, and entreated God Almighty to do for him what he could not do, though he would die for him—to rescue him from the fearful pit and the miry clay of moral pollution—if he had heard this, he would have said that it was a sad pity, but such prayers could not be answered, seeing he that prayed was himself in the gall of bitterness and the bond ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... when we have peeped again and again, through loss and suffering, at the dark background of life; when we have seen the dreariest corner of the lonely road, where the path grows steep and miry, and the light is veiled by scudding cloud and dripping rain, there begins to dawn upon us the sense of a beautiful and holy patience, the thought that these grey ashes of life, in which the glowing cinders sink, which once were bright with leaping flame, are ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... just as Rosanette did not avow how many lovers she had had, in order that he might have more respect for her—for there will always be found in the midst of the most intimate confidences restrictions, false shame, delicacy, and pity. You divine either in the other or in yourself precipices or miry paths which prevent you from penetrating any farther; moreover, you feel that you will not be understood. It is hard to express accurately the thing you mean, whatever it may be; and this is the reason why ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... was begun shortly before dawn in a dark and heavy mist. As the first glimmer of morning light appeared the snow began to fall, hiding with a white mantle the miry battle field, in which the British troops sank ankle deep as they struggled forward floundering here and there in old shell holes. The Germans had not recovered from the nerve-shattering bombardment that had preceded the attack when the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... darkness, while somewhat to my surprise Robert the Devil, or Devilish Bob, as those who had the care of him called the bay horse, played no antics on the outward journey, which was safely accomplished. So leaving him at the venerable "Swan," I hurried through the miry streets toward the church. They were thronged with pale-faced men and women who had sweated out their vigor in the glare of red furnace, dye-shop, and humming mill, but there was no lack of enthusiasm. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... remarks that passed between two agricultural women who from behind the hedge were watching the approach of the curate along a deep miry lane. Where they stood the meadow was high above the level of the lane, which was enclosed by steep banks thickly overgrown with bramble, briar, and thorn. The meadows each side naturally drained into the hollow, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... o'clock, a.m., having been detained for horses, and rolled along very much at my ease, compared to what the travelling on this route was seven years ago—I was going to say, on this road, but it would have been a misnomer, for there was nothing but a miry, muddy, track then: now, there is a fine, but too narrow, macadamized highway, turnpiked—that is to say, having real ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... not take them two days out of their way, so I went to the fandak to see mules and men, and complete the bargain. There had been a heavy shower some days before, and the streets were more than usually miry, but in the fandak, whose owner had no marked taste for cleanliness, the accumulated dirt of all the rainy season had been stirred, with results I have no wish to record. A few donkeys in the last stages of starvation had been sent in to gather strength by resting, one at least was too far gone ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... the retreat from the Island, it was effected without loss of men, and with but very little baggage. A few heavy cannon were left, not being moveable on account of the ground's being soft and miry through ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... took me from a fearful pit, And from the miry clay, And on a rock He set my feet, Establishing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... waves of the Propontis, and the glittering banks of Scutari. Giddy with enthusiasm, and intoxicated with admiration, I attempted, as our caick approached the landing-place, to be the first to leap upon the quay, when, just as I was in the act of springing, my foot slipped, and I fell headlong into a miry stream. Such was my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... swam in first-rate style, and struggled as best they could after him. It was an awkward bit, with bad taking-off and a villainous mud-bank for landing; and the water, thickened and swollen with recent rains, had made all the land that sloped to it miry and soft as sponge. It was the risk of life and limb to try it; but all who still viewed the hounds, catching Bertie's shout of warning, worked their horses up for it, and charged toward it as hotly as troops charge a square. Forest King was over ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... accident to the captain. From him I got the reports from the vedettes at the front, and after ordering a reconnoissance to be pushed well forward, turned back to inspect the infantry line of sentinels. These were generally found on the alert and well instructed, but as we went across ditches and miry fields we came suddenly upon one asleep in a fence corner where he had tried to make some shelter from the storm. When the horses halted beside him, he sprang up bewildered, and stood bolt upright, trying to look at us, evidently uncertain whether we were rebels, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... eyes. She seemed to view, as one appraises the pattern of an unrolled carpet, every action of Jurgen's life: and she seemed, too, to wonder, without reproach or trouble, how men could be so foolish, and of their own accord become so miry. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... the right nerve was touched. The true word of God's deliverance was brought home to Luther's understanding. He was penitent and in earnest, and needed only this great Gospel hope to lift him from the horrible pit and the miry clay. As a light from heaven it came to his soul, and there remained, a comfort and a joy. The glad conclusion flashed upon him, never more to be shaken, "If God, for Christ's sake, takes away our sins, then they are not taken away by any ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... large puddles than anything so poetic as small pools. A motor car sent by friends had halted beside the platform; I got into it with a not unusual vagueness about where I was going; and it wound its way up miry paths to a more rolling stretch of country with patches of cactus here and there. And then with a curious abruptness I became conscious that the whole huge desert had vanished, and I was in a new land. The dark red plains had rolled away like ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... Holborn (says Brayley) one of the great inlets to the city, was first paved, it being then described as a highway, so deep and miry, that many perils and hazards were thereby occasioned; and the King, at his own expense, is recorded to have employed two vessels, each of twenty tons burthen, for bringing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... purpose yestereve, I made it my hard duty to carry the evil tidings to the old baron, and humbly to remind him of his promise to take care for Herdegen's ransom. It was raining heavily, and a wet west wind whistled along the miry streets. It was weariful to wade through them, and when at last I reached the Im Hoff house Master Ulsenius called to me down the stairs: "Silence, Mistress Margery; there is worse weather in here ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and levelest way," answered the half-king, "is now impassable on account of many deep and miry savannas." ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... peak, sloping gradually low, and running off to a point apparently some forty or fifty miles below. Between this (now become the valley stream) and the foot of the mountains, we journeyed along a handsome sloping level, which frequent springs from the hills made occasionally miry, and halted to noon at a swampy spring, where there were good grass and abundant rushes. Here the river was forty feet wide, with a considerable current, and the valley a mile and a half in breadth; the soil being generally good, of a dark color, and apparently well adapted to cultivation. The day ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... Assembly, taking into consideration that Newport is the metropolitan town in this colony, and that all the courts of judicature within this colony are held there; and also, that it is the chief market town in the government; and that it hath very miry streets, especially that leading from the ferry, or landing place, up to the colony house, so that the members of the courts are very much discommoded therewith, and is a great hindrance to the transporting of provisions, &c., in and out of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... with the agility of a deer. Into one of these, the great swamp of Pocasset Neck, was Philip once driven with a band of his followers. The English did not dare to pursue him, fearing to venture into these dark and frightful recesses, where they might perish in fens and miry pits or be shot down by lurking foes. They therefore invested the entrance to the Neck, and began to build a fort with the thought of starving out the foe; but Philip and his warriors wafted themselves on a raft over an arm ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... into another, as into basins, and there are immense bulks of ever-flowing rivers under the earth, both of hot and cold water, and a great quantity of fire, and mighty rivers of fire, and many of liquid mire, some purer and some more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of them. But all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at Fortune and brought her to her knees ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... your moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is, The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... on the river bank without shelter in a heavy storm of rain. There was no sign of abatement; therefore Nagendra, thinking it necessary to seek for shelter, set out to walk to the village, which was at some distance from the river, through miry paths. Presently the rain ceased, the wind abated slightly, but the sky was still thickly covered with clouds; therefore both wind and rain might be expected at night. Nagendra went on, ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... for herself that they could not have broken out of that pasture, and that the river bank was impassable, because of high, thick bushes and miry mud in the open spaces. She had a fight with Blue over these latter places and demonstrated beyond doubt that they were miry, by getting him in to the knees in spite of his violent objections. They left deep tracks ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... it was necessary to cross the camp, or rather the several camps, of the army; and we wended our way over cold and miry ground, through fields where all was devastation and ruin. This camp presented a most singular aspect; and I experienced feelings of bitter melancholy as I saw our soldiers compelled to bivouac at the gates of a large and beautiful city of which they were the conquerors, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... never worked. There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgelling. It was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with a freight through miry lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnised and rueful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears at me as I drew near. I say he was somewhat solemnised ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... traveller in his journey: these pathways are flanked by wide and deep ditches, and almost rendered completely dark by lofty hedges on each side of them, the trees of which meet at top, and thus form an arch: hence they are rough and uneven in summer, besides being intolerably hot, and deep and miry in winter. To add to these inconveniences, the bed of a rivulet flowing along them frequently constitutes the only passage. Even when the traveller, after toiling along these dreadful pathways, comes near a town or village, he generally finds that the approach to it is practicable only by ascending ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes

... garment be on, uncovered; the secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes. His body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; for his drinking is but a scooping ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... mangled by animals and birds and severed of their heads,—are not succeeding in recognising them. Others, beholding their brothers, sires, sons, and husbands slain by foes, are, O destroyer of Madhu, striking their heads with their own hands. Miry with flesh and blood, the Earth has become impassable with arms still holding swords in their grasp, and with heads adorned with earrings. Beholding the field strewn with their brothers and sires, and sons, those faultless ladies, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... best known as the savage puma of more southern zones. But a hundred years ago it abounded throughout the Western wilderness, making its deeper dens in the caverns of mountain rocks, its lair in the impenetrable thickets of bramble and brakes of cane, or close to miry swamps and watery everglades; and no other region was so loved by it as the vast game park of the Indians, where reined a semi-tropical splendour and luxuriance of vegetation and where, protected from time immemorial by the Indian hunters themselves, all the other animals thatconstitute its ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... expression, through its services and their still transparent meaning, it rendered visible "the kingdom of God." It finally sets up an ideal world at the end of the present one, like a magnificent golden pavilion at the end of a miry morass.[1108] The saddened heart, athirst for tenderness and serenity, takes refuge in this divine and gentle world. Persecutors there, about to strike, are arrested by an invisible hand; wild beasts become docile; the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... so, and at the second belching, laying himself down on the ground, he cried, 'I am dead,' and remained motionless. Forthwith the Ulemas hastened to him, and bringing with them a coffin, placed him in it, saying, 'Let us carry him home.' On their way, coming to a miry place, they said, 'We will rest,' and began to talk together. The Cogia, forthwith raising his head from the coffin, said, 'If I were alive I would get out of this place as ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca

... grumbled that it would be too late now for them to do more than clean the lots of weeds this year. The farmers grumbled that it was always understood that no man should have more than one lot. The poor rector had led his flock into a miry place with a vengeance. People who cannot make up their minds breed trouble in other places besides country villages. However quiet and out of the way the place may be, there is always some quasi public topic, which ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... steep and miry, that we were forced to stop at Hartlebury, where we had a very neat inn, though it made ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... expression. "There is a delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... chapter of Genesis, and ability was given us to preach the Gospel of life and salvation. All hearts seemed touched, and our own overflowed with gratitude. We may in truth say, Our Heavenly Father has plucked our feet out of a horrible pit and out of the miry clay, and set them upon a rock, and put a new song into our mouth, even praise to his glorious name. On considering afterwards our situation, we could not but behold the hand of a gracious Providence which had led us to this spot; had we attempted to go by Corinth to Athens, we should [as ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... on this day in the jungle, close to a narrow ravine with a marshy bottom, through the oozy, miry contents of which the waters from the watershed of the Rungwa slowly trickled southward towards the Rikwa Plain. This was only one of many ravines, however, some of which were several hundred yards ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... creatures, basking along the miry edge of the river, helped his illustration. "Mr Marston, you have not been for the last month on the staff of the commander-in-chief of the allied armies, or you would not look so incredulous. Sir, man's senses may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... different track, beneath. Into a lake, the Stygian nam'd, expands The dismal stream, when it hath reach'd the foot Of the grey wither'd cliffs. Intent I stood To gaze, and in the marish sunk descried A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks Betok'ning rage. They with their hands alone Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet, Cutting each other piecemeal ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... sorts of hardships; and, finally, had become a vagrant. 'And had I not met with my benefactor, Paramon Semyonitch,' Punin commonly added (he never spoke of Baburin except in this way), 'I should have sunk into the miry abysses of poverty and vice.' Punin was fond of high-sounding expressions, and had a great propensity, if not for lying, for romancing and exaggeration; he admired everything, fell into ecstasies over everything.... And I, in imitation of him, began to exaggerate and be ecstatic, too. 'What ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... being no longer able to keep his seat, fell headlong into the miry street; the horse ran into a river, and rolled himself over several times, to the entire confusion and ruin of the inestimable pills and plasters; the doctor employed a good farrier, and after some time the horse came to himself again. The reader may very easily judge what glorious diversion this ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... distance from any town or market made it an inconvenient situation. My father was in no very affluent circumstances, and it was a sad necessity which he was put to, of having to go many miles to fetch any thing he wanted from the nearest village, which was full seven miles distant, through a sad miry way that at all times made it heavy walking, and after rain was almost impassable. But he had no horse or ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb









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