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More "Slough" Quotes from Famous Books



... had passed through both and had emerged half cynical, half indifferent from the slough of an evil ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... was either the Lord or the Devil," he said. "Let us ask Him more earnestly to bring her out of the slough on ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... this action and recognized that his country could not emerge from the slough of revolution without American assistance, he was depressed at the condition of affairs, and in view of his physical feebleness felt himself unequal to the task of guiding the country through impending difficulties. He ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... briefly over the next few years. I continued to sink deeper and deeper into the slough. I knew all the drugstore clerks in New York by their first names, and they called me by mine. I no longer even had to specify the abomination I desired. I simply handed the man my ten cent check and said: "The usual, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... preacher himself live well, His predication will help never a dell, And I know well that thy living is nought: Thou art an apostate, if it were well sought. An homicide thou art, I know well enough, For myself knew where that thou slough A wench with thy dagger in a couch: And yet, as thou say'st in thy sermon, that no ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... weavers, and blacksmiths, and other plebeians, those seven hundred and forty churches, those very substantial fortresses in every province of the kingdom, were better facts than the Holy Inquisition to preserve a great nation from sinking into the slough of political extinction. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... think that it was to be her daily task to tend him and help to make him stronger in order that he might go away without delay. She only knew that every moment of the next few weeks was going to be full of a greater happiness than she had ever tasted. As we get deeper into the slough of life most of us learn to be thankful that the future is hidden—some of us recognise the wisdom and the mercy which decree that even the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... William Herschel, the greatest modern astronomer, died at Slough in England. Herschel was born in 1738 at Hanover. He was a musician of rare skill and a self-taught mathematician of great ability. In 1757, he deserted the band of Hanoverian Guards in which he played the oboe, although a mere boy, and fled to England, where he taught music and achieved success ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... me! Is it always to be thus with Israel? Are we to struggle out of one slough only to sink into another? But these doubts dishonor the Master. Let me be humbler in judging others, cheerfuller in looking out upon the future, more enkindling towards the young men who are growing up around me, and who may yet pass on ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... thus lives, in secret bless'd, Above him in the clouds doth rest An oak-wreath, verdant and sublime, Placed on his brow in after-time; While they are banish'd to the slough, Who ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... aid from his political opponents. Leading Republicans are to be consulted personally, and they are to be appealed to and asked patriotically to banish all party and "sectional" feelings from their minds, while discussing the best mode of helping "our neighbor" out of the Slough of Despond, so that she may be enabled to meet the demands we have upon her,—not in money, for that she has not, and we purpose giving her a round sum, but in land, of which she has a vast supply, and all of it susceptible of yielding good returns to servile industry. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... recover their composure; in order to appreciate the humour of the sally it was necessary to know that Miss Vincent had "come a cropper" at the last meet of the Long Island Hunt Club, and been extricated from a slough several ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... of the gipsies, but a much more showy-looking personage. Jerry was no longer a gentleman of "three outs"—the difficulty would now have been to say what he was "without." Snakelike he had cast his slough, and rejoiced in new and brilliant investiture. His were "speaking garments, speaking pockets too." His linen was of the finest, his hose of the smartest. Gay rings glittered on his fingers; a crystal snuff-box underwent graceful manipulation; a ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... tell us somewhat else, For sickerly, n'ere* clinking of your bells, *were it not for the That on your bridle hang on every side, By heaven's king, that for us alle died, I should ere this have fallen down for sleep, Although the slough had been never so deep; Then had your tale been all told in vain. For certainly, as these clerkes sayn, Where as a man may have no audience, Nought helpeth it to telle his sentence. And well I wot the substance is in me, If anything shall ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... on every hand, and in every line, were men fully as active and unprincipled as he. Nearly all of these men, and scores of competitors in his own sphere—dominant capitalists in their day—have become well-nigh lost in the records of time; their descendants are in the slough of poverty, genteel or otherwise. Those times were marked by the intensest commercial competition; business was a labyrinth of sharp tricks and low cunning; the man who managed to project his head far above the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... could not help fearing that his guide had made a mistake, and that he was leading him into dangerous country; but he did not wish to show any suspicion of his judgment, and made no remark. Again the horses rose up out of the slough across which they had been wading and enjoyed for a short time some hard ground; but they soon had to leave it, to wade on as before. On every side was heard the loud croaking of frogs; their heads poked up in all the shallower marshes, with the object, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... sinking in a slough Of sloth, and ease, and selfish greed; God surely sent this scourge to mould A ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham

... yesterday." An official report of Colonel Comly, commanding the Twenty-third Ohio, thus refers to Colonel Hayes, division commander: "He is everywhere exposing himself recklessly, as usual. He was the first one over the slough; he has been in advance of the line half the time since; his adjutant-general has been severely wounded; men are dropping all around him; but he rides through it all as if he ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... youth, the son of her old friend, would cast himself down to perish in the slough of dissipation, was a tragedy that wrung her heart with grief; and when at last she fell asleep it was with tears upon ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... infirmities." He could feel for those in the bonds of sin and despair, as bound with them. Hence his power as a preacher; hence the wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all the variety of spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had lain a month in the Slough of Despond, and had played, like him, the long melancholy bass of spiritual heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters: and had limped along his difficult ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... hung with long festoons of grape-vines,—where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless forms lean propped in wild disorder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... were opposed to its passage through their domains, and obliged Mr. Stephenson to survey by stealth or at the risk of a broken head. So great was this opposition, that the projectors were fain to lay out their road for four miles across a remarkable Slough of Despond, called Chat Moss, where a scientific civil-engineer testified before Parliament that he did not think it practicable to make a railway, or, if practicable, at not less cost than 270,000 for cutting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... out of our way, and that we were in very truth then travelling towards the town. We therefore hove-about and returned to Palanquillo, a village that we had passed through that very morning, leaving the hussar and his horse sticking fast in a slough. We arrived about nightfall, and as the village was almost entirely deserted, we were driven to take up our quarters in an old house, that seemed formerly to have been used as a distillery. Here we found a Spanish lieutenant and several soldiers quartered, all of them suffering ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... the Potts's; and not only did their two guests think so, but the whole country, far and wide around, entertained precisely the same opinion. It is not, therefore, surprising that two young men like Frank and Vernon should be well pleased with their quarters, or that, having so early gotten into the slough of love, they should daily continue to sink deeper into the mire. The young poet's lame leg, though not a very serious affair, was still sufficient to keep him for several days a close prisoner to the house; but if any one had asked him—no, we don't ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... Deep marked upon his royal brow; To paint him thus would greatly mar The monarch's beauty; as a slough Would mar the beauty of a lawn, Where queenly feet are wont to tread; Or like the cloud at early dawn, Which hides ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... circumstances, but I never heard about the bear and bull episode before. I seem to have sort of a dim notion that you were packing a deer home on your back and fell into a barranca with it and lost it in a mud slough, but perhaps I'm mistaken. You forgot to tell me the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... mud. Despatch-riders on motor-bikes travelled warily, with their feet dragging to save themselves from falling. Everything was splashed with filth and corruption; one marvelled at the cleanness of the sky. Trees were blasted, and seemed to be sinking out of sight in this war-created Slough of Despond. We came to the brow of a hill; in the valley was something that I recognised. The last time I had seen it was in an etching in a shop window in Newark, New Jersey. It was a town, from the midst of whose battered ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... Pacific Springs at a little after noon and stopped at the summit to dedicate the monument. Then we left the summit and drove twelve miles to the point called Oregon Slough, where we put up the ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... (California) describes the fall of a meteor in that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric stone falling in an obscure portion ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various

... you have ventured for the love of the country, form a sad quagmire. They are like John Bunyan's Slough of Despond, into which, as he observes, millions of cart-loads of good resolutions have been thrown, without perceptibly mending the way. From what you say, and from what I have heard from others, there ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough, half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... felled trees by ropes or chains attached to bullocks; they are not placed upon a waggon, so you may easily imagine the state the track was in, ploughed up by huge logs of timber dragged on the ground, and by the bullocks' hoofs besides. It was a mere slough with deep holes of mud in it, and we scrambled along its extreme edge, chiefly trusting to the trees on each side, which still lay as they had been felled, the men not considering them good enough to remove. At last we came to a clearing, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... with her crew of three and with two passengers, miners from San Andreas who were taking out about twenty thousand dollars in gold-dust. The crew let out the sails, the canvas bellied before the easy breeze, the schooner glided down the reed-lined slough whose smooth waters held her reflection like a mirror. Flocks of wild fowl rose before her ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... I went from Windsor to Slough to Doctor Herschel, where I saw the great telescope. It is forty feet long and five feet in diameter. The machinery is vast, but so ingenious that a single man can put it in motion with ease. There are also two smaller telescopes, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the perishable vehicle of the English school), like an envelope of goldbeaters' skin, so ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... narrates, "Lincoln was one day riding by a deep slough or pit in which, to his exceeding pain, he saw a pig struggling, and with such faint efforts that it was evident that he could not extricate himself. Lincoln looked at the pig and the mud that enveloped him, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... seemed a waste of horseflesh to comb a twenty-mile radius of mesa to get a cow and calf which might have been duplicated within a mile of the ranch. The Happy Family knew that Luck was wading chin deep in the slough of despond, and they decided that he kept them riding all day ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... to make Dinah feel herself dependent on him, kept her in a state of constant intoxication by incessant amusement. These circumstances hindered two persons so clever as these were from avoiding the slough into which they fell—that of a life in common, a piece of folly of which, unfortunately, many instances may be seen in Paris ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... position and the first shell from his guns shrieked its message of death across the island. The gunboats concentrated their fire on the main battery which was located on low ground, almost submerged by the high water and separated from the others by a wide slough. Their gun platforms were covered with water—the men in gray must work their pieces standing half-leg deep in mud and slush. Five iron-clad gunboats led the attack. Three of them were lashed together in midstream and one lay under the shelter of each shore. Their ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... a part of the man," he said. "Take it away by force and he will bleed to death; but if the time comes when he no longer needs it, he will either slough it or convert ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... yearly contribution of one dollar, he did nothing else but cavil and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time fascinating—an alluring combination to the sex which ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... interruptions, which jarred the harmony of his artistic life, he nevertheless met courteously any that were to him inevitable. Could he have written with the heart's blood of old Hepzibah if he had failed to put his own shoulder to the domestic wheel, on the plea that it was too deep in the slough of disaster to command his assistance? He did not dread besmirching his hands with any affairs sent ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... go off, he commanded three of his men to follow hard after him, giving them marks whereby they should know him. Immediately they came up with the captain, before whom was a great slough or stank in the way, out of which three Galloway men had just drawn their horses. They cried to the captain, What would they do now! He answered them, What was the fray—he saw but three men coming upon them; and then caused his horse jump the ditch, and faced about ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... not give him up. Perhaps you can do something for him. Little kindness he has known for very long. Give him the five shillings by all means; but next morning see you go out, and try what may be done to lift him out of the slough of despond, and to give him a chance for better days! I know that it may be all in vain; and that after years gradually darkening down you may some day, as you pass the police-office, find a crowd at the door, and learn that they have got the corpse of the poor ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... of the mocking and stone-flinging phase of free-thinking, knowing nothing of the deep yearnings any more than of the supreme wretchlessness of the human soul, which it kept imprisoned within the narrow limits of earth and time. At the outcome from the bloody slough of the French Revolution and from the chaos it caused in men's souls, it was the infidelity of Voltaire which remained at the bottom of the scepticism and moral disorder of the France of our day. The demon which torments her is even more ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... for myself and for you—for I, too, am proud. Your daughter shall be such as she ought to be; shall do what she ought to do; shall suffer what she ought to suffer. To-morrow all will know from what a slough you have rescued me; in seeing the repentant at the foot of the cross, they will, perhaps, pardon the past in consideration of my present humility. It would not be so, my dear father, if they saw me, as a few months ago, shining in the midst of the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... plunderers—certainly not a tempting proffer under the circumstances. And here also is a Priesthood beloved, reverenced, confided in by this peasantry, and loving them in return, who I think have done far less than they might and should have done to raise them out of the slough in which generation after generation are sinking deeper and deeper. I speak plainly on this point, for I feel strongly. The Catholic Priesthood of Ireland resist the education of the Peasantry under Protestant auspices and influences, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... go. The colloquy had not only done me no service, but had positively emboldened him—or so I seemed to perceive as the weeks went on—in his efforts to cast off his old slough and become a travesty of me, as he had been a travesty of my uncle. I am willing to believe that they caused him pain. A crust of habit so inveterate as his cannot be rent without throes, to the severity of which his facial contortions ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... pay, and lived rent free for a year. It was a rare chance for the reporter, and I did not miss it. The city as landlord in the Bend was fair game. The old houses came down at last, and for a twelvemonth, while a reform government sat at the City Hall, the three-acre lot lay, a veritable slough of despond filled with unutterable nastiness, festering in the sight of men. No amount of prodding seemed able to get it out of that, and all the while money given for the relief of the people was going to waste at the rate of a million dollars a year. The Small Parks Act of 1887 appropriated ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... the cave a deep bass voice replied: 'Elesi-a-ah!' while at the same moment the tench sprang from the cave, and, champing its jaws, wriggled and wriggled back to the slough." ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... I written, when the unexpected early return of my servant with your packet (your's and he meeting at Slough, and exchanging letters) obliged me to leave off to give its contents a reading.—Here, therefore, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... a messenger than as a cavalier, it was Gibbie's good hap rather than his good management, which, after he had gone astray not oftener than nine times, and given his garments a taste of the variation of each bog, brook, and slough, between Tillietudlem and Charnwood, placed him about daybreak before the gate of Major Bellenden's mansion, having completed a walk of ten miles (for the bittock, as usual, amounted to four) in little more than the same ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face. "Lead on!" he cried again. "Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough, and all for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... recall the memory of a former state of existence, suggested to them a notion that the garment had once been their own. Indeed, his whole appearance was then wonderfully second-hand. Now he had cast his slough. A most undeniable taglioni, with trimmings just bordering upon frogs, gave dignity to his demeanour and twofold amplitude to his chest. The horn eye-glass was exchanged for one of purest gold, the dingy high-lows for well-waxed Wellingtons, the Paisley fogle for the fabric of the China loom. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than one street in Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama, a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... are happy. I have brought some solace and light into your days, Eleanor? If I died to-morrow, or was lost from sight, you would look back and say: 'He gave me my dearest hours, my most treasured memories. He brought me from the slough of despond to the ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... crossing and recrossing the stream. Here and there were long, deep pools in the bed of the river, where rushes and lilies grew and huge mailed garfish swam slowly just beneath the surface of the water. Once my two companions stopped to pull a mired cow out of a slough, hauling with ropes from their saddle horns. In places there were half-dry pools, out of the regular current of the river, the water green and fetid. The trees were very tall and large. The streamers of pale gray moss ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... played, and the duke lost more. His mind was jaded. He floundered—he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... hearty roll of bassos from the kitchen, and did not doubt but that he was its target. He reined in his horse at the bare flower-beds and glowered back at the door. Then, with a mutter, ungrammatical but eloquent, he spurred on toward the lonely, supperless shack by the slough. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... troubles to that? One vision of unseen things, rushing in, made small all the things that are seen. The poor old cripple, deformed and diseased, whose days must have been long a burden to her, was going even now to drop the slough of her mortality and to take on her the robes of light and the life that is all glory. What if my own life were barren for a while; then comes the end! What if I must be alone in my journey; I may do the Master's work all the way. And this is His ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... this Slough of Despond, and having become convinced of God's love she told the good story to the sick in hospitals, to soldiers and sailors without number, and has done more for the good of Jack Tar afloat and ashore than perhaps ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross

... might brand with his own straight running-iron, as it were, writing over again the brand he wished to change; but this was clumsy and apt to be detected, for the new wound would slough and look suspicious. A piece of red-hot hay wire or telegraph wire was a better tool, for this could be twisted into the shape of almost any registered brand, and it would so cunningly connect the edges of both that the whole mark would seem to be one scar ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... from Stoke lies the village of Slough, rendered famous by the residence of the celebrated astronomer, Sir William Herschel, and a short way further, on a gentle slope continued the whole way from Stoke, stand the venerable towers of time-honored Eton, on the bank of the Thames, directly opposite, and looking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... he meant that the great numerical majority of the inhabitants bear this character, he spoke truly, inasmuch as the great numerical majority of the inhabitants are negroes, among the most depraved in the island. Kingston is like the slough of Despond, a place whither all the scum and filth of the negro population in the east end of the island do continually run, and make it a very sink of wickedness. But are the white families and the large number of thoroughly respectable ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Run away with the cozoners: for so soone as I came beyond Eaton, they threw me off, from behinde one of them, in a slough of myre; and set spurres, and away; like three ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Cold Spring Brook is a small brook about ten feet across, flowing through a miry slough, which is very soft and deep, and previous to the passage of the wagons, had, for about two hundred feet distance, been bridged in advance by a causeway of round or split logs of the poplar growth near by; between this and the crossing of Sauk ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... shaken the whites of 2 eggs; a solution of nitrate of silver, 10 grains to the ounce of water; sugar of lead or sulphate of zinc, 20 grains to an ounce of water; and so on. Or advertised gall cures may be applied. If a sitfest has developed, the dead hornlike slough must be cut out and the wound treated with antiseptics. There is no way we know of to make hair come in with natural color after a wound. The swelling on the colt's leg may he reduced by ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... about Slough, which is still the favourite cry of Lord Inverforth's critics, who have held their peace about the "dumps" since the publication of the White Paper describing ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... "When shall this slough of sense be cast, This dust of thoughts be laid at last, The man of flesh and soul be slain And ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... fled homeward, his will and hopes broken, and sank dejectedly into a slough of despondency. All his good intentions, all the inspiration of his endeavour, his very spiritual exaltation had terminated in a tragedy, as inexplicable as ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... the marvellous power of mere money, of the lucre which philosophers pretend to despise and men sell their souls for. His heart almost burst in its admiration for that extraordinary Nella, who by mere personal force had raised two men out of the deepest slough of despair to the blissful heights of hope and happiness. 'These Anglo-Saxons,' he said to ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... judged by present-day standards, for in a fourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut more than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull- whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... with less force through the chimney: working quietly. Away, away, on our iron steed through Ealing and Hanwell—across the viaduct over the River Brent, which runs to Brentford—past the pretty church and the dull lunatic asylum, and so on to Slough, which is passed in twenty-three minutes after quitting Paddington. Then we reach Taplow, and have just fifty-five miles to do within the hour. "Crimea" rushes across the Thames below Maidenhead, with a parting roar, but we shall meet the river again soon, and run alongside ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... morning we set off, with our luggage on pack mules. We crossed some rocky low hills, with scanty vegetation, and, after passing the cattle hacienda of San Jose, reached the plains of the same name, about two leagues in width, now dry and dusty, but in the wet season forming a great slough of water and tenacious mud, through which the mules have to ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... Northern Belle, a fine boat, one of my children was taken with croup. Dr. N——, a Universalist minister, got off at Dubuque and bought medicine for me. This saved the child, but he was sick all the way. We were stuck in Beef Slough for several days. I never left the cabin as my child needed me, but some time during the first day a boat from St. Paul was stuck there too, so near us that passengers passed from one boat to the other all ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... an old person of Slough, Who danced at the end of a bough; But they said, "If you sneeze, you might damage the trees, You imprudent old person ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... conceived another settlement in America, and for colonists he would have all these down-trodden and oppressed. He would gather, if he might, only those who when helped would help themselves—who when given opportunity would rise out of old slough and briar. He was personally open to the appeal of still another class of unfortunate men. He had seen upon the Continent the distress of the poor and humble Protestants in Catholic countries. Folk of this kind—from France, from Germany—had been going in a thin stream for years to the New World. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... share in it; the nature of trade requires it. It is an old Anglicism, 'Such a man drives a trade;' the allusion is to a carter, that with his voice, his hands, his whip, and his constant attendance, keeps the team always going, helps himself, lifts at the wheel in every slough, doubles his application upon every difficulty, and, in a word, to complete the simile, if he is not always with his horses, either the wagon is set in a hole, or the team stands still, or, which is worst of all, the load is spoiled by the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... half an hour we had left the tall matama and fields of water-melons, cucumbers, and manioc; and, crossing a reedy slough, were in an open forest of ebony and calabash. In its depths are deer in plentiful numbers, and at night it is visited by the hippopotami of the Kingani for the sake of its grass. In another hour we had emerged from ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... eldest son to citizenship. New York had only three years before abandoned property qualification for white men to vote and still demanded from negroes an estate of $250 for this inestimable privilege; so slowly did we slough off the inherited idea and ancient custom of being admitted to freemen's rights instead ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... further merriment as we rode down into the great basin. Before us, the horse and boot tracks showed plain in the soft slough where melted snow ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... Thereupon sad Youkahainen, In the deeps of desperation, And in earnest supplication, Thus addresses Wainamoinen: "O thou wise and worthy minstrel, Thou the only true, magician, Cease I pray thee thine enchantment,. Only turn away thy magic, Let me leave this slough of horror, Loose me from this stony prison, Free me from this killing torment, I will pay a golden ransom." Spake the ancient Wainamoinen: "What the ransom thou wilt give me If I cease from mine enchantment, If I turn away my magic, Lift thee from thy slough of horror, Loose ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... learn slowly, "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little." And I would caution my readers not to expect too much all at once. But I am fully convinced that as faith, trust, and naturalness grow, worry will cease, will slough off, like the dead skin of the serpent, and leave those once bound by it free from its malign influence. Who cannot see and feel that such a consummation is devoutly to be wished, worth working and earnestly ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... see this as I see it, sweetheart. I'm a man—primitive, if you like. I've done wild and evil things—plenty of them. What of that? I slough them off and trample them down. The heart of me ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... passed through a slough and a wilderness, and my inner man needeth refreshment; let us even partake of the savoury pies wherewith the provident care of thy father ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... for God's stimulus as the frozen roots wait the drawing near of God's sun. The soul looks ever unto the hills whence cometh its help. In the morning, at noon, and at night, man longs for a deliverer. God is the pledge of the soul's victory over the body. For men floundering in the slough of sin and despond these words, "Ye may, ye must be born again," are sweeter than angel songs falling from ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... drawn by a single horse or ox, and carried a load of from 800 to 1,000 pounds. These vehicles were admirably adapted to the country, which was in a perfectly natural state, without roads of any kind, except the trail worn by the carts. They could easily pass over a slough that would obstruct any other forms of wheeled carriage, and one man could drive four or five of them, each being hitched behind the other. They were readily constructed on the border, by the unskilled half-breeds, where iron was unobtainable. This ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... out a most valuable epoch of her life. At length the wily parson succeeded in getting to the stormy heart of this enraged and unhappy father, and portrayed in glowing colors the clearness of Miss Elizabeth's "effectual call" and "blessed hope," and managed to bridge over "that awful slough of Methodism" by descanting gravely upon some of the "mysterious leadings of sovereign grace." "And now, if our dear lamb of the Saviour can be rescued from those deluded people and carefully instructed in 'the doctrines of grace,' ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er

... Nelly!" saith Aunt Joyce, solemnly, yet with much tenderness. "And when thou comest into such a slough as that, may God have ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... inclined to condemn it. His rule has not been a perfect one, but it has been the best that France has known for fifty years, not only for the French themselves, but for foreign peoples. He has lifted France out of that slough in which she had floundered under both branches of the Bourbons, and he has done so without being guilty of any act of injustice toward other nations. The greatness of the France of Napoleon I. was unpleasingly associated with the idea of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... Christ—was a greater sin than all the sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than all the sins that had been committed by all God's redeemed ones. Was there ever a man in the world so capable of describing the miseries of Doubting Castle, or of the Slough of Despond, as poor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... double life he was leading. If it were possible to establish the death of the wastrel he was personating he would perhaps allow his "father" to live on in this new-found happiness; but if the real D.V.W. were alive some effort must be made to help him out of the slough—perhaps to bring him back. He would try to find out through ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... hoar-frost gathered at night by the light of the moon, and the ill-boding wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf, that was wont to change its appearance of a wild beast into {that of} a man. Nor is there wanting there the thin scaly slough of the Cinyphian water-snake,[37] and the liver of the long-lived stag;[38] to which, besides, she adds the bill and head of a crow that had sustained {an existence of} nine ages. When, with these and a thousand other things without a name, the barbarian {princess} ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... and here the shy and reticent schoolgirl with the mark of the churchly checkrein fresh upon her, was free to browse, for her cousin had no slightest notion of playing censor. Mrs. Baker thought that the sooner one was allowed to slough off the gaucheries of the Young Person, the better. She did not gauge the real and tumultuous depths of feeling concealed under the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... reverend father, and my good lord," replied that pink of courtesy; "I did but wait to cast my riding slough, and to transmew myself into some civil form ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... affairs, have increased greatly in the past decade. Consequently, the Government is larger than it was before the war, and its general operating costs are higher. We cannot shrink the Government to prewar dimensions unless we slough off these new responsibilities—and we cannot do that without paying an excessive price in terms of our national welfare. We can, however, enhance its operating efficiency through improved organization. I expect to make such improvements under the authority of the Reorganization ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... quite a change from the great steamer Tennessee to the little stern-wheel boat as it slowly puffed across the bay through Carquinez straits and up the slough, turning and winding along, sometimes being caught by a sharp turn in the stream and one or two stops on the sand bars if the water was too low. We did not sleep much because everything was so strange and small. We were always in fear of some accident. The hours dragged slowly until ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... charms, especially when they are old and picturesque, and smell of the Middle Ages; but to be kept a prisoner in one of them by rainy weather is apt to plunge a restless wanderer into the Slough of Despond. The chances are that the inn itself becomes at such times a slough, so that Bunyan's expression is then applicable in a real as well as in a figurative sense. There is a constant coming in and going out ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... Carquinez Straits, and Mare Island, thirty square miles; the area of Suisun Bay, to the confluence of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, is sixty-three square miles. The total bay area is therefore four hundred and eighty square miles; and there are hundreds of miles of slough, river, and creek. A yachtsman, starting from Alviso, at the southern end of the bay, may sail in one general direction one hundred and fifty-four miles to Sacramento, before turning. All of this, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... the poor soul," said the reeve, "else he will hardly get across that slough. He has ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... produced in him a discouragement, a self-depreciation, which kept the quality of his work down to the level of hopeless hackery. For yielding to this influence; for stooping, in his necessity, to the service of Bagley, who had wronged him; for failing to find a way out of the slough of mediocre production, poor pay, and company inferior to him in mind, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... the impression he was making on Cardigan. Again his faith in the psychology of the mind found its absolute verification. Cardigan, lifted unexpectedly out of the slough of despond by the very man whom he expected to condemn him, became from that moment, in the face of the mental reaction, almost hypersympathetic. When finally he left the room, Kent was inwardly rejoicing. For Cardigan ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... name be us amang, What is this? for Saint James!—I may not well gang. I trust I be the same. Ah! my neck has lain wrang Enough Mickle thank, since yester-even Now, by Saint Stephen! I was flayed with a sweven,—[140] My heart out of slough.[141] I thought Gill began to croak, and travail full sad, Well nigh at the first cock,—of a young lad, For to mend our flock: then be I never glad. To have two on my rock,—more than ever I had. Ah, my head! ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... suggested a strip of blue illusion,—and that could be got; but, alas! Kitty had no money, for the gloves were already bought. Pris heard the lamentations, and giving up fresh ribbons for herself, pulled her sister out of a slough of despond with two yards of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... Reckin, though, both on ye kin hitch on next load," drawled the driver, turning his horses into the slough of mud extending in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... present was the most wearying, has he counted on a restoration to that past felicity. The paradise lost is to be regained. How it is to be done the sages are not agreed. But they of old were unanimous that some divinity must lend his aid, that some god-sent guide is needed to rescue man from the slough of wretchedness in which he ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... events. If substantial independence of Parliament and the Ministry could be secured, he was willing to allow the King a vague or imaginary headship until in the course of years that excrescence should slough away. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... religions like that of Mithra, and by spasmodic attempts on the part of the old heathenism to interpret its mythology symbolically and to reform its moral practice; just as the growing power of the gospel in the fifteenth century led the Roman Church to slough off some of its abuses and to tolerate among its adherents reformers before the Reformation; so in India the new learning from the West and the missionary proclamation of the gospel have brought about a state of religious unrest which ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... their feet only enough space for the whitewashed frame buildings of Fort Brannon. But to the east, the paralleling bluffs lay at a distance, and broke their ridge-back far up the scarlet coulee; from where, southward, stretched a wide gap—ten broad and gently undulating miles—that ended at the slough-studded base of Medicine Mountain. Evan Lancaster, as he stood bareheaded under the unclouded sky, looked about him upon acres heavy with tangled grass and weeds; and pleased with the evident richness of the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... Harness galls first appear as flat, painful swellings. On raising the collar from the skin the inflamed area appears dry and the surrounding hair is wet with sweat. Later, the skin becomes hard and its outer layer, and sometimes the deeper layer as well, slough, or is rubbed off by friction of the harness. The surface then appears red and moist. Fluctuating swellings due to small collections of blood and lymph sometimes form. Sometimes, small areas on the face of the shoulder and that portion of the back pressed on by the saddle ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... off together, taking a favorite walk through the Presidio toward the Beach. From a hill-top they saw the Exposition buildings rising from what once had been a slough. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... home industry have always referred with satisfaction to the effect of the tariff of 1842 as an explicit and undeniable proof of the value of protection. It raised the country from a slough of despond to happiness, cheerfulness, confidence. It imparted to all sections a degree of prosperity which they had not known since the repeal of the tariff of 1828. The most suggestive proof of its strength and popularity was found in the contest of 1844 between Mr. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal—which is ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... bottle went. When Benedad for all his shelde Him slough, so that upon the felde His people goth ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... European wars curtailed the king's bounty the colonial authorities began to issue paper money; the issues were gradually increased; the paper soon depreciated, and in its closing years the colony fairly wallowed in the slough of ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... saw in my dream that just as they had come to an end of this talk, they drew near to a slough that was in the midst of the plain, and as they took no heed, they both fell in. The name of the slough was Despond. Here they lay for a time in the mud; and the load that Christian had on his back made him sink all ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... of it, my dear," begged Betty. The little happening—not so little, either, when one considers the possibility—had one good effect. It had raised Amy out of the slough of despond into which she had unwittingly strayed, or ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope

... Slade Thomas Slager John Slane Jean Louis Slarick Measer Slater Matthew Slaughter John Slee Thomas Slewman Samuel Slide Joseph Slight Josiah Slikes Christopher Sloakum Edward Sloan Timothy Sloan Andrew Sloeman Thomas Slough Ebenezer Slow Isaac Slowell William Slown Henry Sluddard Samuel Slyde Richard Slykes William Smack Joseph Small Robert Smallpiece John Smallwood (2) Peter Smart John Smight William Smiley Abraham Smith Alexander Smith Allan Smith Andrew Smith ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... too late, happily, to drag you out of this wretched slough into which you are sinking. Whatever the cost, that ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... with the sombrest hues; and, making this assume, under their pessimist delineation, blackest Tartarean aspect, would crown it with the exhibition of the Indian, as one sunken, at the instance of the white, in extremest depths of human sorrow; as plunged, engulphed, and detained in a horrible slough of degradation and misery. Such would, in short, have an era opened up, which should mark, at once, the exaltation of the white to a revolting height of infamy, proclaiming the high carnival of unblushing trickery and chicane; ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... into flame. Doubtless it served in its day, and in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now, Sir, in the power of the honorable member to give it dignity or decency, by attempting to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... winter some way and then, while he was sitting in the train one day coming home, he overheard two men talking about turtles going up. Must have been two hotel men. Anyway, that gave Sam an idea and he started right in wading through Petersen's slough for turtles. Why, he pulled up barrels of them, and would you believe it, they sold in the city for real money! Sam went crazy—about as crazy as Mary Hagley got over her luck. And then along came rheumatism ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... lines. He always grasped the plan and intention, and really seemed to be inside the mind of the contriver. He would say; "I think the theme is weak here—and you can't make a weak place strong by filling it with details, however good in themselves. That is like trying to mend the Slough of Despond with cartloads of texts. The thing is not to fall in, or, if you fall in, to get out." His three divisions of a subject were "what you say, what you wanted to say, what you ought to have wanted ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... certainly happy to her heart's core. Could it be that she had some hope, unrecognized by herself, that Owen Fitzgerald might now once more be welcomed at Desmond Court? that something might now be done to rescue him from that slough of despond? ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... settler, exhausted. They both fought the fierce blaze, and when hope of saving the home was gone, the constable, plunging through the fire, found Mrs. Young and the children standing in the water of a slough. He saw that they would be suffocated when the fire encircled it, and so he plunged and carried the children to the burnt ground, the mother following. From the settler's grateful letter to headquarters we make ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... which the earth Was seen before mankind had birth; Strange monsters basked them in the sun, Behemoth, armored glyptodon, And in the dawn's unpractised ray The transient dodo winged its way; Then, by degrees, through silt and slough, We reached Berlin—I don't know how. The good Professor's monotone Had turned me into senseless stone Instanter, but that near me sat Hypatia in her new spring hat, Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom Lighted the heavy-curtained room. Hypatia—ah, what lovely things Are ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... over the next few years. I continued to sink deeper and deeper into the slough. I knew all the drugstore clerks in New York by their first names, and they called me by mine. I no longer even had to specify the abomination I desired. I simply handed the man my ten cent check and said: "The usual, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... itself felt, even in the old days of successful achievement among men who were content to tread the beaten and commonplace highway toward riches. The spirit of the West gripped him in its great, enveloping hands, picked him out of the slough and set him down again, plump upon his two feet, high and dry, prodding him violently all the while with a spur that would not permit him to stop or to take a step backward, with the natural result ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... obtain among the millions of the plantation negroes of the South, are but little understood. By one who knows it, the Black Belt has been called the great Dismal Swamp, the vast black malarial slough of the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... much as "Thank you." She put the shawl round her mistress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden. She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... sin than all the sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than all the sins that had been committed by all God's redeemed ones. Was there ever a man in the world so capable of describing the miseries of Doubting Castle, or of the Slough of Despond, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the first sound of the words, we all think of some one unhappy soul we know just now, whom they suggest. Nobody is ever without at least one brother, sister, cousin, or friend on hand, who is struggling through this social slough of despond; and nobody ever will be, so long as the world goes on taking it for granted that the slough is a necessity, and that the road must go through it. Nature never meant any such thing. Now and then she blunders or gets thwarted of her intent, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... to overwhelm the accused with their votes.(2) Nor have I forgotten how Cleon treated me because of my comedy last year;(3) he dragged me before the Senate and there he uttered endless slanders against me; 'twas a tempest of abuse, a deluge of lies. Through what a slough of mud he dragged me! I almost perished. Permit me, therefore, before I speak, to dress in the manner most likely to ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes

... will not, however, abuse the advantage your quotation has given me, by overwhelming you with the refutation with which the victim Cassio replies to the tempter Iago. I only wish you to know, that there is one person at least sorry to see a youth of talents and expectations sink into the slough in which the inhabitants of this house are ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... changed the many-faceted beauty of New York, and Myra, gazing, had one glimpse across little green Battery Park up the deep twilit canon of Broadway, the city's spine. The young woman was moved to tears. She seemed to slough off at that moment the church of her youth, averring that New York was too big for a creed. It was the great human outworking; the organism of the mighty many. It seemed a miracle that all this splendor and wonder had been wrought by human ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... lay the Horsehoe slough, a crescent of glistening silver, over which wild ducks circled and skimmed and then sank into its clear waters, splashing riotously, as if they, too, were holding an "Old Boys' Reunion." It was the close season for wild fowl, and nobody ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... she is no meaner than a fay, Redeem'd from sleepy death, for beauty's sake, By old ordainment:—silent as she lay, Touched by a moonlight wand I saw her wake, And cut her leafy slough, and so forsake The verdant prison of her lily peers, That slept amidst the stars upon the lake— A breathing shape—restored to human fears, And new-born love and ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... entered and asked the man in the ticket-office where the next train went to. He uttered the pedantic reply, "Where do you want to go to?" And I uttered the profound and philosophical rejoinder, "Wherever the next train goes to." It seemed that it went to Slough; which may seem to be singular taste, even in a train. However, we went to Slough, and from there set out walking with even less notion of where we were going. And in that fashion we passed through the large and quiet ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... to damage the cricoarytenoid joint. The circuit is broken at the instant of withdrawal. Punctures should be made as nearly as possible perpendicular to the surface, so as to minimize the destruction of epithelium and thus lessen the reaction. A minute gray fibrous slough detaches itself in a few days. Cautery puncture should be repeated every two or three weeks, selecting a new location each time, until the desired result is obtained. Great caution, as mentioned ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... not very well carry it, and a sledge was substituted. Several times, during the journey through the forest, the sledge had to be halted while the underwood was cut away to permit of its passing; and once a slough had to be filled up with branches hewn from fir trees, and bundles of fern. These delays made it evening before the shore ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... account of the slowness of the heart's action. When the effect of the poison has become sufficient to entirely arrest the circulation in any part, the structures soon die. The disorder manifests itself as lameness in one or more limbs; swelling about the ankle which may result in only a small slough or the loss of a toe, but it may circumscribe the limb at any point below the knee or hock by an indented ring below which the tissues become dead. The indentation soon changes to a crack, which extends completely around the limb, forming ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... a wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told herself that she must keep her countenance, and ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... acquire independence, yet had never succeeded beyond the attainment of bare subsistence. During a brief gleam of hope, rather than of actual prosperity, he had added a wife and family to his cares, but the dawn was speedily overcast. Everything retrograded with him towards the verge of the miry Slough of Despond, which yawns for insolvent debtors; and after catching at each twig, and experiencing the protracted agony of feeling them one by one elude his grasp, he actually sunk into the miry pit whence he had been extricated by the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... word thereof: Change and progression from the glazed slough, Where life creeps and is blind, ascending up The jungled slopes for prey till spirits bow On Calvaries with crosses, take the cup Of martyrdom ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of heathenism to whom he spoke. But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like God's was the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... situation. De Foe painting mere everyday pots and pans is as dull as a modern blue-book; but when his pots and pans are the resource by which a human being struggles out of the most appalling conceivable 'slough of despond,' they become more poetical than the vessels from which the gods drink nectar in epic poems. Since he wrote, novelists have made many voyages of discovery, with varying success, though they have seldom had the fortune to touch upon so marvellous an island ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late and drunk is; The bleezin', curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... say a word about Slough, which is still the favourite cry of Lord Inverforth's critics, who have held their peace about the "dumps" since the publication of the White Paper describing the ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... but I never heard about the bear and bull episode before. I seem to have sort of a dim notion that you were packing a deer home on your back and fell into a barranca with it and lost it in a mud slough, but perhaps I'm mistaken. You forgot to tell me the facts, ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... not been poor myself I should not have had sympathy with other men who were in the slough and couldn't get out," he said, speaking as much to himself as ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... relatives shun him. He is ashamed to go abroad, and has no comfort at home. He becomes crabbed, morose, and querulous, losing all pleasure in life. He wants the passport to enjoyment and respect—money; he has only his debts, and these make him suspected, despised, and snubbed. He lives in the slough of despond. He feels degraded in others' eyes as well as in his own. He must submit to impertinent demands, which he can only put off by sham excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost the independent bearing of a man. He seeks to excite ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... party with shrill cries sprang to their feet; the low cart was filling with water. They had left the canon and were crossing a slough; no one had remembered that it would be high tide. The girls, without an instant's hesitation, whipped their gowns up round their necks; but their feet were wet and their skirts draggled. They made light of it, however, as they did ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... nobler heart than mine, and left it an easy, pleasant matter for you to be good; while, struggle as I may, I am constantly in danger of tumbling into some slough of iniquity, or setting up false gods for my soul to bow down to. Because it is so much more difficult for me to do right than for you, it is only just that my reward ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... tried to see me—in vain; for, I had separated myself entirely from all my former friends and acquaintances, burying the early associations of my previous life in the slough of the Bohemian-boon- companionship, into which I ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Jews have not fled a hundred leagues from this Slough of Despond. The answer is, because they were born there. Moreover, the taxation is light, and rent is moderate. Add that, when famine has been in the land, or the inundations of the Tiber have spread ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... general sickness, chilliness and some fever. The skin over the sore part is hot and painful. The several dead parts may run together until the entire mass separates in a slough. In favorable cases it proceeds to heal kindly, but in severe cases it may spread to the surrounding tissues and end fatally, sometimes by the absorption of putrid materials, or by the resulting weakness. It runs usually from two to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... adhesions that are taking place. Washed out the lower part and injected vasaline. A small spot, as large as a ten cent piece, has sloughed, making a hole into the pouch over the lower lumbar vertebra. Another spot immediately above this, and about the same size, looks as if it would slough. ...
— Report on Surgery to the Santa Clara County Medical Society • Joseph Bradford Cox

... found some human excrement and he thought "Well, my daughter-in-law told me to bring whatever I found" so he wrapped it up in leaves and took it home; and his daughter-in-law told him that he had done well and bade him hang up the packet at the back of the house. A few days later he found the slough of a snake and he took that home and his daughter-in-law told to tie a clod of earth to it to prevent its being blown away, and to throw it on to the roof ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... about in considerable numbers. "About ten o'clock at night," says Major Denny, "General Butler, who commanded the right wing, was desired to send out an intelligent officer and party to make discoveries. Captain Slough, with two subalterns and thirty men, I saw parade at General Butler's tent for this purpose, and heard the general give Captain Slough very particular verbal orders how to proceed." Slough afterwards testified before a committee of Congress, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... much faith, so much joy; and with a true fury of despair I continued, and have at last finished it. Alas! the need of gold held me too in its net. Believe me, no one ever has composed in this manner; my music, it seems to me, must be terrible; it is a slough of horrors ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... men who led the Republican party to its duty and its mission, who overcame the numbers of the opposition, who lifted their associates from the slough of prejudice and led them out of the darkness of tradition, let there be all honor and praise. They gave hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless, liberty to the downtrodden. They did more: they elevated the character and enlightened the conscience of the oppressing race. The ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them; and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity: she thus advises thee that sighs for thee. Remember ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... specially deep water-hole, and with ducked heads and bodies bent double (the Germans were only two hundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth for at least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner of the next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough of despond. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... immediately choked up by the ooze of the morass and the luxuriant parasitical growth of the forest—who dare hope for that? At present, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to hope! It is the great Slough of Despond of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... suffered for ideas, for principles, for abstractions. Powerful influences have been exerted, from the highest quarters, to bring her into subjection to material interests and unheroic maxims, to sap the chivalry and enthusiasm of her youth. But it is not too late, Let her slough this all off in her hour of trial! Let her cast off her disguises and her rags together, and stand forth in the garb and attitude of a hero! This work must be done. If the men of scholarship and accomplishments and wealth who have heretofore enjoyed prominence, do ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... come through, in the course of the past week. He could no more put into words the isolated spasms of ecstasy he had experienced—when nothing under the sun seemed impossible—than he could describe the slough of misery and uncertainty, which, on occasion, he had been forced to wade through. For the most part, he believed that the words of contempt Louise had spoken, came straight from her heart; but he had also known the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... terrors, others by a still small voice. Reader, our anxious inquiry should be, Have we entered in by Christ the gate? Are our fruits meet for repentance? Let no one vaunt of his experience, because he go well bedaubed with the dirt of the slough. Every soul that enters the gate is equally ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... else but cavil and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time fascinating—an alluring ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... point in this region of the Columbia was named Wappatoo Island by the explorers. This is a large extent of country lying between the Willamette and an arm of the Columbia which they called Wappatoo Inlet, but which is now known as Willamette Slough. It is twenty miles long and from five to ten miles wide. Here is an interesting description of the manner of gathering the roots of the wappatoo, of which we have heard so much in this region ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... then down to Napel[TR: Possibly Kapel] Slough on Dr. West's place. I wanted to rent but Dr. West wouldn't advance me anything unless he took a mortgage on my place; so I wouldn't stay there. I chartered a car and took my things back to Brinkley at a cost of ten dollars. I stayed around ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... the two drumsticks as well as the wings of the gobbler. Possibly he might many a time feel a queer little sensation creeping up and down his spinal column as memory carried him back again to that slough, where the treacherous black mud was slowly but ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... medium between valuable and worthless. How many over-worked, under-paid men have we known in New York, really gifted with this inexplicable knack at writing, who, well commanded and justly compensated, lifted high and dry out of the slough of poor-devilism in which their powers were obscured and impaired, could almost have made the fortune of a newspaper! Some of these Reporters of Genius are mere children in all the arts by which men prosper. A Journalist of Genius would know their value, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... fore-finger press the bowel into its proper place. Remember, if the above methods be observed, you cannot do the slightest injury to the bowel; and the sooner it be returned, the better it will be for the child; for if the bowel be allowed to remain long down, it may slough or mortify, and death may ensue. The nurse, every time he has a motion, must see that the bowel does not come down, and if it does, she ought instantly to return it. Moreover, the nurse should be careful not to allow the child to ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... (Lord Southend spoke a little lower), "she went straight from the Duchess of Slough's ball to the station, as she was, in a low gown and a scarlet opera cloak—met Edge, whose wife had only been dead three months—and went off with him. You know the rest of the story. It was a near run for young Harry Tristram! How is ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... an' six shillin' in my pocket an' a lot more hid in the bush. It's all yourn to the last round penny. I reckon it'll purty nigh bridge the slough. I want ye to be married respectable like a gentleman—slick duds, plenty o' cakes an' pies an' no slightin' the minister er ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... dear," said Phellion. "The dinner hour summons us; I think that, little by little, we have allowed this conversation to drift toward the miry slough of backbiting." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... Ben Cohen's body was more completely his than one might have imagined. Jenny could, and indeed did, slough off her disguise on Sundays or rare summer days; but Ben and that self which was apart from music—that wildly-beating heart, pulsing blood, flooding warmth, grateful as the watchman's fire in the fog-sodden yard, that little ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... population active, resistant, passing individual and social lives of the most contented and healthy sort. Would such men and women, liberated from our endless, unceasing struggle against mass prejudice and inertia, be deprived in any way of the stimulating zest of life? Would they sink into a slough ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... Mississippi and South Carolina. How, then, came it to pass that nearly the whole of the population of the South became Rebels in so short a time? Because they were under the dominion of their leading men, who took them from the right road, and conducted them into the slough of rebellion. Because they were encouraged so to act by the Northern Democracy as made rebellion inevitable. The Northern Democratic press and Northern Democratic orators held such language respecting "Southern rights" as induced even loyal Southrons to suppose that Slavery was to be openly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... came Hope, that most blessed and beneficent spirit that lifteth the fallen from the slough, that bindeth up the broken heart, that cheereth the sad and downcast and maketh the oft-defeated bold and courageous ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... manifest, and yet the directors of the company were so purblind as to order the removal of the apparatus, and it was not until two years later that the Great Western Railway Company adopted it on their line from Paddington to West Drayton, and subsequently to Slough. This was the first telegraph for public use, not merely in England, but the world. The charge for a message was only a shilling, nevertheless few persons availed themselves of the new invention, and it was not until its ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... 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 to sink ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... conical caubeen, his "sprig of shillelagh," or bludgeon the Donnybrook Fair hero who "shpinds half a-crown, Mates wid a frind An' (for love) knocks him down" is totally unknown in these regions. The men who by their ability and industry have lifted Ireland out of the slough, given her prosperity and comparative affluence, marched hand in hand with the English people, have only seen, with wonder, the rollicking Kelt, devoid of care, forethought, and responsibility, during their trips to the South and West—or wherever Home Rulers most do congregate. Strange ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... the London prentices were pugnacious, but as every one joined in the laugh against George, and he was, besides, stuck fast on a quaking tussock of grass, afraid to proceed or advance, he could not have his revenge. And when the slough was passed, and the slight rise leading to the copse of St. John's Wood was attained, behold, it was found to be in possession of the lower sort of lads, the black guard as they were called. They were of course quite as ready to fight with the prentices as the prentices were with them, and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... living it seems as if man had not yet lost all that part of his soul which longs for beauty: nay we cannot but hope that it is not yet dying. If we are not deceived in that hope, if the art of to-day has really come alive out of the slough of despond which we call the eighteenth century, it will surely grow and gather strength and draw to it other forms of intellect and hope that now scarcely know it; and then, whatever changes it may go through, it will at the last be victorious, and bring abundant content ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... gunner with one only pip. No doubt 'twas destined for some lofty soul Who in a deck-chair lolls, and marks the map And says, "Push here," while I and all my kind Scrabble and slaughter in the appointed slough. But I, presumptuous, wore it, till the gods Called for my laundry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... malevolent Being who delighted in interfering with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power. He was doing this—somehow—for her benefit. She saw neither the how nor the why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her. All the world was not limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet. There was ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... no longing was ever more firmly planted in the human heart, than that of discovering some short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the power of avoiding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various

... but to squeeze from them an extra drop of honey— like sheep-boys stuffing themselves with blackberries while the sheep are licking up flukes in every ditch? And now you wish to leave the poor man in the slough, whither your neglect and your example have betrayed him, and made his too apt scholarship the excuse for your own remorseless greed! As a Christian, I am ashamed of you all; as a Churchman, doubly ashamed of those prelates, hired ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... I found myself in rather an awkward predicament, owing to the said sides jumping out. In the very midst of a deep mud-hole out went the front board, and with the shock went the teamster (driver), who looked rather confounded at finding himself lodged just in the middle of a slough as bad as the "Slough of Despond." For my part, as I could do no good, I kept my seat, and patiently awaited the restoration to order. This was soon effected, and all went on well again till a jolt against a huge pine-tree gave such a jar to the ill-set ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... action and recognized that his country could not emerge from the slough of revolution without American assistance, he was depressed at the condition of affairs, and in view of his physical feebleness felt himself unequal to the task of guiding the country through impending difficulties. He therefore ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... from Windsor to Slough to Doctor Herschel, where I saw the great telescope. It is forty feet long and five feet in diameter. The machinery is vast, but so ingenious that a single man can put it in motion with ease. There are also two smaller telescopes, of which one is twenty-two feet ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... of the fugitive efforts alluded to was a prose work entitled Hand and Soul. More poem than story, this beautiful idyl may be briefly described as mainly illustrative of the struggles of the transition period through which, as through a slough, all true artists must pass who have been led to reflect deeply upon the aims and ends of their calling before they attain that goal of settled purpose in which they see it to be best to work from their ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... that all this blasphemy is not to be attributed to the author, but to the man whose spiritual development he intends to sketch. To which we reply that no man has a right to bring his hero through such a state without showing how he came out of the slough as carefully as how he came into it, especially when the said hero is set forth as a marvellously clever person; and the last scene, though full of beautiful womanly touches, and of a higher morality than the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... a place where, in order to cut off a long sweeping curve of the river with open water and bad shore ice, we went through a dry slough and had to drag those iron runners over gravel and stones, where sometimes it was all the three of us could do to move the sled a few feet at a time. Yet all along the banks were willows, and if we had only known then what we know now we would have cut down and split some ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... meanest situations in a well-ordered English household. Their resource is to take service with people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precarious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, through which, in their best estate, they do but pick ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... fighting, aspiring primitive vertebrates. How they would have wondered why God allowed such disagreeable, disturbing, unconventional creatures to exist, and thanked him that he had made the world for them, and heaven too, if there be such a place for mollusks. Their road led to the Slough of Contentment. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... quivered. The old influence was fast coming back. Already in his mind he was picturing himself telling Charlie all and with his help extricating himself from the slough into which he had sunk. How could he stand unmoved with that voice, familiar by many a memory of simple courageous goodness, again falling on his ear; and that appealing face, one so loved and delighted in, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... expression of his thoughts. He has lived in the Bible till its words have become his own. He has lived among its visions and voices of heaven till all sense of possible unreality has died away. He tells his tale with such a perfect naturalness that allegories become living things, that the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle are as real to us as places we see every day, that we know Mr. Legality and Mr. Worldly Wiseman as if we had met them in the street. It is in this amazing reality of impersonation that Bunyan's imaginative ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... sharpshooters had been detailed for the defence of Sandy Hook, and had excavated for themselves innumerable rifle-pits or caverns for the discomfiture of unhappy passengers! Up hill and down dale,—with merciless ruts and savage ridges,—now, a slough, to all appearance destitute of bottom, and, next, a treacherous stretch of sand, into which the wheels sink deeper and deeper at every revolution, as if the vehicle were France, and the road disorder,—such is a faint adumbration of the state of affairs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... his part, anxious to make Dinah feel herself dependent on him, kept her in a state of constant intoxication by incessant amusement. These circumstances hindered two persons so clever as these were from avoiding the slough into which they fell—that of a life in common, a piece of folly of which, unfortunately, many instances may be seen ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... national good. They work separately, or too much as individuals. It is only the leavening of these institutions with a large spirit of the national destiny that will lift Britain . . . out of its present material slough." (The Outlook, November 17, 1906.) These words are almost a paraphrase of Mr. Wells' indictment of ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... God and the Unseen, I think it is the thing of which the world is more in need than anything else. What has made the path of faith a steep one to tread is partly that it has got terribly encumbered with ecclesiastical traditions; it has been mended, like the Slough of Despond, with cartloads of texts and insecure definitions. And partly too the old simple undisturbed faith in the absolute truth and authority of the Bible has given way. It is admitted that the Bible contains a considerable admixture of the legendary ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the best possible thing for The Museion. It was also, he considered, the best possible thing for Rickman. His work on the review would give him the discipline he most needed, the discipline he had never had. To be brought into line with an august tradition; to be caught up out of the slough of modern journalism into a rarer atmosphere; to breathe the eternal spirit of great literature (a spirit which according to Jewdwine did not blow altogether where it listed); to have his too exuberant individuality chastened and controlled, would be for Rickman ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... of the world the United States stands to-day in an unenviable light. It is a false light. Since the days of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin our people have led in much of the march upward from the slough of weltering strife. Many a stumbling block to progress we have removed from the rugged pathway, but for fifteen years our government has refused to touch the barrier of national honor and vital interests. England and France have now laid this duty squarely at our door. "It is a social ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... fight the devil himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... brandy. The Bath coach was on the point of starting; he bribed his way on to the box and, seated in glory beside the driver, proclaimed aloud the downfall of the Corsican bandit and passed about the warm liquid joy. They clattered through Uxbridge, Slough, Maidenhead. Sleeping Reading was awakened by the great news. At Didcot one of the ostlers was so much overcome by patriotic emotions and the 1760 brandy that he found it impossible to do up the buckles of the harness. The night began ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... to be "careful and not captious," as you suggest, but more than all, I shall try not to run myself or my cause into the slough of political schemes or schemers. And I pray you, be prudent and conscientious, and do not surrender one iota of true principle or of our philosophy of reform ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... within his breast, when he unscathed beheld the hand of Gudrun. "Now must Herkia to the cauldron go, she who Gudrun had hoped to injure." No one has misery seen who saw not that, how the hand there of Herkia was burnt. They then the woman led to a foul slough.[92] So were Gudrun's ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... so fast as I would, by reason of this burden that is on my back. Now I saw in my dream, that, just as they had ended this talk, they drew 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 De spond.[13] Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... without any family, without friends, without hope, without any curiosity about anything, and he was seized with a feeling of misery and a wish to run away, to hide himself in Paris, in his cafe and his lethargy! All the thoughts, all the dreams, all the desires which are dormant in the slough of stagnating hearts had reawakened, brought to life by those rays of sunlight on ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... up-looking of her better nature; and her charity was unbounded. Shall we—reared and instructed in all righteous ways—shall we show less charity to the memory of one who in her latter days rose out of the slough into which circumstance—not vice—had plunged her? Shall we be less charitable than the bishop who honored her memory and his own character by recording her benevolence, her penitence, her exemplary end? The good bishop's testimony ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... I have gone right through that slough, and come out sheer on the other side. For sweeping the last lingering taint of it out of me, I have to thank, not sulphur and exorcisms, but your soldiers and their morning's work. Philosophy is superfluous in a world where ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... long delay, but, conscience-struck, becames confused as she proceeded; and when Ravenswood, coming to her assistance, endeavoured to render the explanation complete and satisfactory, he only involved himself in the same disorder, like one who, endeavouring to extricate his companion from a slough, entangles himself in the same tenacious swamp. It cannot be supposed that the confusion of the two youthful lovers escaped the observation of the subtle lawyer, accustomed, by habit and profession, to trace ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... it was even longer before she was sufficiently calm to comprehend me. Never did unhappy parents before experience greater bitterness of soul. I strove to comfort her, but she would not listen to my words; for oh, they were as the blind leading the blind; we both were struggling in the slough of despair—both were in the pit of dark, bewildering misery. We sometimes sat looking at each other, like criminals whose last hour is come; and even when our grief wore itself into a "calm sough," there ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... rigidity is, it is true, sufficiently elastic to sanction, at least tacitly, a slow process of evolution by which the Panchama castes—for there are many castes even amongst the "untouchables"—gradually shake off to some extent the slough of "uncleanness" and establish some sort of ill-defined relations even with Brahmanism. For whilst there is on the one hand a slowly ascending scale by which the Panchamas may ultimately hope to smuggle themselves in amongst the inferior Sudras, the lowest of the four "clean" ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... them at night. She ran to the cabin and got her quarter which she had hid. She put the quarter in her mouth. The white folks didn't allow the slaves to handle no money. The quarter got stuck in her throat, and she went on down to the slough and drowned herself rather than let them beat her, and mark her up. Then patrollers sure would get you and beat you up. If they couldn't catch you when you were running away from them, they would come on your master's place and get you and beat you. The master would allow them to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... his blind alley without the ballot as it is for some foolish fly, imprisoned on a window pane, to find its way to freedom through it. There is no escape for the fly until its restless activities discover the right direction, and, to change the figure, there is none for the Negro out of his slough of despond until he can lay hold of the ballot. Wanting the ballot no amount of education and wealth in the South and of agitation in the North will of themselves be able to make Southern Governments responsive to the needs and the rights ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke

... Tuscany sank lower and lower in the slough. To please the Pope, havoc was made of the Leopoldine laws—named after the son of Maria Theresa, the wise Grand Duke Leopold I.—laws by which a bridle was put on the power and extension of the Church. The prosecution and imprisonment of a Protestant couple who were accused of wishing to make proselytes, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... nothing of the fashion in which the British Navy lived up to its best traditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short of criminal that the English censor should have permitted the world to hold Great Britain in contempt for twenty-four hours and sink poor France in the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, and presumably does ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... lying in the bottom. Yellow Handkerchief took the tiller, issuing his orders in whispers; and from our position at the time, and from the alteration of the sail, which I could dimly make out above me as a blot against the stars, I knew the junk was being headed into the mouth of a small slough which emptied at that point into ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... should be drowned. I could only look into the imperturbable faces of our boatmen, and wonder where we were to spend the night. Finally, with a terrible whirl, which I felt at the time must be our last, they entered a white foaming slough (a branch of the river), and drew up on the bank. They announced to us then that we were to walk a mile through the woods, to a house. I think no white man, even the most surly of our drivers, would have asked us to do that,—in perfect blackness, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... contradictions of the Administration had no selfish object. His heart was wrenched by the humiliation into which the honor of the United States had been dragged. The greatest patriotic service which he could render was to lift it out of that slough, and he did. The best evidence that he was right lies in the fact that President Wilson, tardily, reluctantly, adopted, one by one, Roosevelt's demands. He rejected Preparedness, when it could have been attained with comparative leisure; he accepted it, when it had to be driven through ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... in this miserable hovel all my life. If you two girls, Laura and Edith, had made the matches you might, we should still be living on the avenue. But I certainly cannot permit you now to spoil every chance of getting out of this slough. You may not be able to do as well as you could have done, but if you are once called working-girls, what can ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... think that Sir Charles Dilke owed a great deal to the Liberal party, but we certainly think that the Liberal party owed a very great deal to Sir Charles Dilke. In the dark days of 1874, when the party was deeper in the slough of despond than it has ever been before or since in our time, it was from the initiative and courage of Sir Charles Dilke that salvation came. His work in organizing the Liberal forces, especially in the Metropolis, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... had transformed, so that from being things difficult to bear, she had built up with them her own character. Sorrow had increased her own power of sympathy; out of trials she had learnt patience; and failure and the gradual sinking of one she had loved into the bottomless slough of evil habit had but left her with an added dower of ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... overdone with work, bereft of conjugal consolations, and weary of a world in which he wandered alone, by the time he was two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began a great book ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... him towards the water to throw him to the bottom of the Loire; and Sardini began to defend himself, to shout, and to struggle, without being able, in spite of his dagger, to shake off this devil in long robes. Then he was quiet, falling into a slough under the feet of the advocate, whom he recognised through the mists of this diabolical combat, and by the light of the moon, his face splashed with the blood of his wife. The enraged advocate quitted the Italian, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... uncertainty about the graft retaining its vitality long enough to permit of its deriving the necessary nourishment from its new surroundings; in a certain number of cases the flap dies and is thrown off as a slough—moist or dry according to the presence or absence of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... through the chimney: working quietly. Away, away, on our iron steed through Ealing and Hanwell—across the viaduct over the River Brent, which runs to Brentford—past the pretty church and the dull lunatic asylum, and so on to Slough, which is passed in twenty-three minutes after quitting Paddington. Then we reach Taplow, and have just fifty-five miles to do within the hour. "Crimea" rushes across the Thames below Maidenhead, with a parting roar, but we shall meet the river again ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... young baron!—Well, but cheer you up, Mistress Margaret—If he has come up a caterpillar, like some of his countrymen, he may cast his slough like them, and come out a butterfly.—So I drink good-night, and sweet dreams to you, in another parting cup of sack; and you shall hear tidings of me within four-and- twenty hours. And, once more, I commend you to your pillow, my pearl of pearls, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... again distinguished himself, by firing into some ducks that he saw in a slough on the Missouri side. The negro had encouraged him to shoot and to his intense satisfaction, he accidentally killed one. He made the darkey row in and pick it up, and a few moments later, a gruff voice ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... enters, the river then taking the name of Yazoo; so that the works erected across the neck were said to be between the Tallahatchie and Yazoo, though the stream is one. The fort, which was called Pemberton, was built of cotton and earth; in front of it was a deep slough, and on its right flank the river was barricaded by a raft and the hull of the ocean steamer Star of the West, which, after drawing the first shots fired in the war, when the batteries in Charleston ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... divides the skull in two and extends down the thorax. Through this cross-shaped opening, the Anthrax suddenly appears, all moist with the humors of life's laboratory. She steadies herself upon her trembling legs, dries her wings and takes to flight, leaving at the window of the cell her nymphal slough, which keeps intact for a very long period. The sand-colored fly has five or six weeks before her, wherein to explore the clay nests amid the thyme and to take her small share of the joys of life. In July, we shall see ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... Sunny Bank diploma was a sure passport. When the girls worked they worked hard, and when playtime came it was enjoyed to the full. Naturally, with so many dispositions surrounding her, Miss Preston often in secret floundered in a "slough of despond," for that which could influence one girl for her good might prove a complete failure when brought to bear upon another. Never was the old adage, "What is one man's meat is another man's ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... ulcer. Proliferating and dying cells, and the fluid which exudes from an ulcerating surface and the debris of broken-down tissue is known as pus, and the process by which this is formed is known as suppuration. A mass of dead tissue in a soft part is termed a slough, while the same in bone is called a sequestrum. Such changes are especially liable to occur when the part becomes infected with microorganisms that have the property of destroying tissue and thus causing the production of pus. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... the cause for which he fought; he deserted the Southern people in the hour of need and joined their enemies. He was begged and implored not to persevere in his course, but he drifted on and on, and floundered deeper and deeper into the mire, until he landed fast in the slough where he sticks to-day. And what has he gained? Scorn, ostracism, odiurn, ill-will—worse than all, the contempt of the men who stood by him in the shower of death and destruction. Let Hesden Le Moyne ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... with scourges, by her task-master, the great tempter of souls, into slough after slough, from which, there was but one escape, and that lay through a rugged way, called REPENTANCE. But repentance, to her vision, was like a shoreless ocean, or a fierce deity to whose exacting nature she ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... said at the time," said the old man drily; "and it has long been a commonplace that that slough awaits State Socialism in the end, if it gets to the end, which as you know it did not with us. However it went further than this minimum and maximum business, which by the by we can now see was necessary. The government now found it imperative ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... distant from Stoke lies the village of Slough, rendered famous by the residence of the celebrated astronomer, Sir William Herschel, and a short way further, on a gentle slope continued the whole way from Stoke, stand the venerable towers of time-honored Eton, on the bank of the Thames, directly opposite, and looking up to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and stranger's-greeting to Lucy—is it Lucy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... never get into any proper relation to Jimville unless you could slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as a lizard does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... died, and now None passes there because the mist and the rain Out of the elms have turned the lane to slough And gloom, the name ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... while he was sitting in the train one day coming home, he overheard two men talking about turtles going up. Must have been two hotel men. Anyway, that gave Sam an idea and he started right in wading through Petersen's slough for turtles. Why, he pulled up barrels of them, and would you believe it, they sold in the city for real money! Sam went crazy—about as crazy as Mary Hagley got over her luck. And then along came rheumatism and knocked Sam flat, just ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... has been going on like this for thirty years or more; yet if there's roast pork on the table, and I say a word to put him off it, he's that hurt as never was. Why, I'm only too glad to see him enjoying his food if no harm comes of it; but it's dreary work seeing your husband in the Slough of Despond, especially when it's your business to drag him out again, and most especially when you particularly warned him ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... Have faith in yourself. Arouse faith in others. Think in the affirmative. Assert your hope and confidence. Root out every doubt. Help someone out of their slough of doubt and despondency. Believe in the world, in life, in growth, in possibilities. Let your faith be as big and bright as the sun. "Cast not away your confidence which hath great recompense of reward." "Dwell in ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft

... mind was keen and delicate, a pious, loving girl, attached singly to him, of angelic sweetness, and made more tender still by love, a love that was passionate in spite of marriage, like his for Beatrix. Perhaps the noblest men retain some clay in their constitutions; the slough still pleases them. If this be so, the least imperfect human being is the woman, in spite of her faults and her want of reason. Madame de Rochefide, it must be said, amid the circle of poetic pretensions which surrounded her, and in spite of her fall, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... down to Napel[TR: Possibly Kapel] Slough on Dr. West's place. I wanted to rent but Dr. West wouldn't advance me anything unless he took a mortgage on my place; so I wouldn't stay there. I chartered a car and took my things back to Brinkley at a cost of ten dollars. I stayed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... fifty it is quite done. Is it not so, Monsieur?"—this made with a little deferential wave of his hand. I noted the tribute to the staid painter, and nodded approvingly. He was evidently climbing up to my level. Perhaps this plank, slender as it was, might take him out of the slough and land him on ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... first day of summer; the oak leaves expand, the roses blow, butterflies are about, and I have spirits enough to write to you. We have had clouded skies this fortnight past, and roads like the Slough of Despond. Last Wednesday we were benighted on a dismal plain, apparently boundless. The moon cast a sickly gleam, and now and then a blue meteor glided along the morass which lay ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... attractive, and yet she felt as if she were emerging from deep waters in which she had been suffocating. Now there was pure air to breathe and there would always be God's sunlight to cheer one and bring blessed warmth. From the slough of despond she was being drawn into the glory ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... all day and almost every day; tents were water-logged and one moved about in a slough of sticky mud. We ate mud, we drank it in our tea, we slept in it, for our wardrobes had been left behind in Cairo. Harness-cleaning was another bugbear, but even that succumbed to the mud after a time; and as the weeks flew by and inspections, ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... and then over-praising him, finally proposes to give poor old Severn his due as a master by proxy. Imagine Sir William Herschel's pleasure when his beloved sister Caroline begins to receive her full deserts. And Tschaikowsky will slough his morbidness and improvise a Slavic Hallelujah Chorus when his unseen patroness comes into her own. It is true that the world has already given her memory two fingers and a perfunctory "thank ye." This was for putting ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... up in the second canal, the river rose several feet and was booming as we came out into it, and the strong current carried our boat against a drift on a small overflowed island, and came near sinking or capsizing it. Then the only way we could get off was down over a rough, shoaly slough, where she went like a bucking broncho. The next boat after us was manned by Alabamians, and they went over the lower rock dam that turned the water into the canal; being good swimmers, they got out, but lost ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott

... splashy, thick, heavy, dirty mud. Thousands of men and thousands of mules and horses are treading it to mortar. It is mixed with slops from the houses and straw from the stables. You are reminded of the Slough of Despond described by Bunyan in the Pilgrim's Progress,—a place for all the filth, sin, and slime of this world. Christian was mired there, and Pliable nearly lost his life. If Bunyan had seen Cairo, he might have made the picture still more graphic. There ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... have already suffered so much both for myself and for you—for I, too, am proud. Your daughter shall be such as she ought to be; shall do what she ought to do; shall suffer what she ought to suffer. To-morrow all will know from what a slough you have rescued me; in seeing the repentant at the foot of the cross, they will, perhaps, pardon the past in consideration of my present humility. It would not be so, my dear father, if they saw me, as a few months ago, shining in the midst of the splendors of your court. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... you don't have to, as they say in Maine. And I admit that all I saw was from a curtained auto as we swayed and bumped over broken roads, with an occasional interlude when Jeremy and I got out to lend our shoulders and help the Arab driver heave the car out of a slough. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... lying whimsies of a few sick children, encouraged by foolish parents, and drawn out by superstitious neighbours, were sufficient to set a country in a flame. If, instead of commissioners as deeply sunk in the slough of ignorance as the people they were sent amongst, there had been deputed a few men firm in courage and clear in understanding, how different would have been the result! Some of the poor children who were burned ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... driven, with scourges, by her task-master, the great tempter of souls, into slough after slough, from which, there was but one escape, and that lay through a rugged way, called REPENTANCE. But repentance, to her vision, was like a shoreless ocean, or a fierce deity to whose exacting nature ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... through which we are about to tramp and flounder for the rest of our existence, wandering farther and farther from the beauty and freshness and from the kindly gushing springs of clear gladness that made all around us green in our youth! One wanders and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise—to mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink a ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mr. Smooth-it-away, "is the famous Slough of Despond—a disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that it might so easily be converted ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... cigarette. I watched the first few puffs, awaiting a repartee. None came. I felt a qualm of apprehension. Was he already becoming de-Paragot-ised? I did not realise then what it means to a man to cast aside the slough of many years' decay, and take his stand clean before the world. He shivers, is liable to catch cold, like the tramp whose protective hide of filth is summarily removed in the workhouse bath. Nor did my dear lady realise ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... Straits, and Mare Island, thirty square miles; the area of Suisun Bay, to the confluence of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, is sixty-three square miles. The total bay area is therefore four hundred and eighty square miles; and there are hundreds of miles of slough, river, and creek. A yachtsman, starting from Alviso, at the southern end of the bay, may sail in one general direction one hundred and fifty-four miles to Sacramento, before turning. All of this, of course, in ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... the duke lost more. His mind was jaded. He floundered—he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... though in the slough; May dream of glory, strive for fame, Thirst for the prestige of a name. And shall these friends, that so invite The study of the erudite, Ever as he beholds them now Perish like sparks ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... and absorbed in his new possessions. It was good to sit down in his study, and spread his treasures out on the broad table, and gloat over them. A clump of damp moss rested quietly on his new sermon, "The Slough of Despond," but he took no note. He was looking for a place to put this curious little lizard in, and after anxious thought selected the gilt celluloid box, lined with pink satin, which the Mission Circle had given him on Christmas for his collars and cuffs. He felt, vaguely, ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... tiller, issuing his orders in whispers; and from our position at the time, and from the alteration of the sail, which I could dimly make out above me as a blot against the stars, I knew the junk was being headed into the mouth of a small slough which emptied at that ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... sink to the depths in which John B. Gough found himself at the age of twenty-five years. By sheer force of will he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of exceptional ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our heart's desire. Taylor has dropped the "London." It was indeed a dead weight. It had got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand, like Christian, with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... now?' called Pliable to his companion, as they both went over head and ears into the Slough of Despond. 'Truly,' said Christian, 'I do not know.'—No work of man is perfect, not even the all-but-perfect Pilgrim's Progress. Christian was bound to fall sooner or later into a slough filled ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... Upon many minds they produced more repulsion than attraction. Maurice earnestly protested that we were to believe in God, not in a theory about God, though the distinction, as Mr. Stephen says, is vague; he appealed to the inner light, to the conscience of mankind; he went back into the slough of Intuitionism. Carlyle cried aloud against materialistic views and logical machinery; he denounced 'the great steam-engine, Utilitarianism'; he was for the able despot and hero-worship against grinding competition and government by discussion. In theology the mystical ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... having now floundered through the Slough of Despond, passed through the Wicket Gate, climbed the Hill Difficulty, and got safe by the Lions, entered the Palace Beautiful, and was "had in to the family." In plain words, Bunyan united himself to the little Christian brotherhood at Bedford, of which the former loose-living ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... clanging ... that I ought to wait, say a week at least having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down your dogs—but not being exactly Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I did think I might go modestly on, ... [Greek: omoi], let me get out of this slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocation of ancles! Plainly, from waiting and turning my eyes away (not from you, but from you in your special capacity of being written-to, not spoken-to) when I ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... His name with joy and mighty shouts they bless; The rest allow his choice, and fortune praise, New vigor blushed through those looks of his; It seemed he now resumed his youthful days, Like to a snake whose slough new changed is, That shines like gold against the sunny rays: But Godfrey most approved his fortune high, And wished him ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... made a little map in my pocket-book of the various twists and turns of the road through that vast Slough of Despond, marking them from hour to hour as we followed its devious wanderings. On studying this at the end of that part of our journey I realised afresh how utterly impossible it would have been for us to thread that misty maze where a few ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... endeavours; he caught a glimpse of the glory that so penetrating an observer might reflect on his reign, ensured to him a pension of 300 guineas a year, and moreover a residence near Windsor Castle, first at Clay Hall and then at Slough. The visions of George III. were completely realized. We may confidently assert, relative to the little house and garden of Slough, that it is the spot of all the world where the greatest number of discoveries have been made. The name of that village will never perish; science will transmit it religiously ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... seemed absurd,—and all things, both in nature and art, took on a sombre colouring, and the majestic pageant of the world's progress appeared no more than a shadow too vain and futile to be worth while watching as it passed. Into a Slough of Despond, such as Solomon experienced when he wrote his famous "Ecclesiastes," Aubrey sank unconsciously, and,—to do him justice,—most unwillingly. His was naturally a bright, vivacious, healthy nature—but he was over- sensitively organised,—his nerves did not ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... his friends might, if they pleased, go as far as Slough,—he should go no farther than Hounslow; but that was no reason why he should not keep them company so far as their roads were the same. The answer is easy. Suppose you know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit a robbery at ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... the train at Slough, and a wave of freshness, with an odour of verdure and sap, blew into their faces. The dog leaped and barked, and Glory skipped along with it, breaking every moment into enthusiastic exclamations. There was hardly any wind, and the clouds, which were ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... kitchen, and did not doubt but that he was its target. He reined in his horse at the bare flower-beds and glowered back at the door. Then, with a mutter, ungrammatical but eloquent, he spurred on toward the lonely, supperless shack by the slough. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... a thought was soon kicked in disgrace from his noble and well-disciplined mind. He resolved, that, let it cost what it might in the shape of loss of time and trial of temper, he would leave no stone unturned, and spare no pains, to deliver his friend of yesterday from the slough into which he was plunging. How he might best work for this end occupied his thoughts as ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... of gangrenous sloughs, it much resembles the descriptions usually given of sloughing ulcers. A portion of the parts immediately subjacent to the ulcer loses its life; this rapidly separates; and, before or after a complete removal, a fresh slough is formed in the same manner. The sloughs are generally black, with ash-coloured edges. I have not been able to discern a change of colour, the production of vesicles, or any material tumefaction, as antecedent to the gangrene. There is generally, by this time, an ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... downtrodden masses of Spain, Mexico, and Russia revolted against the tyranny which had held them in the slough of medieval degradation, they likewise, in recent times, proved that they realized that their submission was as much caused by the Church, allied as it is with the state, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf, that was wont to change its appearance of a wild beast into {that of} a man. Nor is there wanting there the thin scaly slough of the Cinyphian water-snake,[37] and the liver of the long-lived stag;[38] to which, besides, she adds the bill and head of a crow that had sustained {an existence of} nine ages. When, with these and a thousand other things without a name, the barbarian ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... so much as "Thank you." She put the shawl round her mistress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden. She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction to ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... well, and knew that since Graham's impetuous outbreak he had been wavering sadly, and since Plume's parting visit had been plunged in a mental slough of doubt and distress. Once before his stubborn Scotch nature had had to strike its colors and surrender to his own subaltern, and now the same struggle was on again, for what Plume said, and said in presence of grim ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... there is nothing more frequent than that, after the first dawnings of a Christian life in a heart, there should come a period of overclouding; or that, as John Bunyan has taught us, when Christian has gone through the wicket-gate, he should fall very soon into the Slough of Despond. One looks round, and sees how many professing Christians there are who, perhaps, were nearer Jesus Christ on the day of their conversion than they have ever been since, and how many cases of arrested development there are amongst professing and real Christians; so that when for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... half relenting; and at that he raised the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face. 'Lead on!' he cried again. 'Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough, and all for a ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... bog-holes. For more than two hundred miles we walked in order to lighten the loads of our weakened animals, and when we reached Glenora we were both past-masters of the art of camping through a wilderness. No one could tell us anything about packing, bushing in a slough or managing ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... this slough of sense be cast, This dust of thoughts be laid at last, The man of flesh and soul be slain And the man of ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... she expresses her dislike of his tediousness, and her anxiety after his news: pretending to wave it off, he yet, in his gratification, coming on the top of his excitement with the importance of his fancied discovery, plunges immediately into a very slough of art, and ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... linings. These sloughed membranes give the stools of the typhoid fever patient their peculiar pea soup appearance. In a similar manner the lymphatic, venous and glandular structures which constitute the absorbent vessels of the intestines atrophy and slough away. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... would say you were Christian floundering in the Slough of Despond, and deeming yourself one ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... cling, to have a sticky pervasiveness. Try as he might he couldn't brush it off his mind. Nevertheless, it was on the very heels of this embittering experience that life plucked him up from his slough. One of the leveling public catastrophes came to Dickie's aid—not that he knew he was a dumb prayer for aid. He knew only that every day was harder to face than the last, that every night the stars up there through Sheila's skylight seemed to glimmer more ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... thatch of the sheds was all worn away, mossgrown, and bored by the sparrows. Those in which the cows were placed at calving time were mere dark holes. The floor of the yard was often soft, so that the hoofs of the cattle trod deep into it—a perfect slough in wet weather. The cows themselves were of a poor character, and in truth as poorly treated, for the hay was made badly—carelessly harvested, and the grass itself not of good quality—nor were the men always very humane, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... in consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts which have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty, and made off to some other province; while others surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... And with that roar, O Bharata, the son of Pandu inspired all creatures with fear. Beholding that dart upraised by king Yudhishthira the just, all creatures, as if with one accord, said, "Good be to Drona!" Hurled from the king's arms, that dart resembling a snake just freed from its slough, coursed towards Drona, illumining the welkin and all the directions cardinal and subsidiary, like a she-snake with fiery mouth. Beholding it coursing towards him impetuously, O king, Drona, that foremost of all persons acquainted with weapons invoked into existence the weapon ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... but attempts to find consolation for life's hardships and to secure happiness hereafter. Fortunately such selfish motives are transmuted in the search for larger ethical and spiritual conceptions. An enlarged insight into the possibilities of living tends to slough off selfishness and to make more habitual the occasional, and often involuntary, response to Christlike deeds and ideals. But so ingrained is our earthly nature that, in communities as in nations, periods alternate with periods, and the pendulum ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... my recent misery was the ecstasy which succeeded my liberation. The happy sense of relief imparted to me such a feeling of buoyancy that I was enabled to extricate myself from this 'slough of despond,' and I soon reached the swift current, when a few strokes landed me in security ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... 20 feet long, had fallen off and blocked up all passage except by one path made and mixed up by the feet of buffaloes and elephants. In places like this the leg goes into elephants' holes up to the thigh and it is grievous; three hours of this slough tired the strongest: a brown stream ran through the centre, waist deep, and washed off a little of the adhesive mud. Our path now lay through a river covered with tikatika, a living vegetable bridge made ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... cut without a deal of labour. This proverb is very true, as I know by my own experience, for I never took a short cut in my life, and I have taken many in my wanderings, without falling down, getting into a slough, or losing my way. On the present occasion I lost my way, and wandered about for nearly two hours amidst rocks, thickets, and precipices, without being able to find it. The temperance woman, however, spoke nothing but ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... as I reckon my salvation, I trow he would have told a sorry tale; For whether it be wine, or it be ale, That he hath drank, he speaketh through the nose, And sneezeth much, and he hath got the POSE, {19} And also hath given us business enow To keep him on his horse, out of the slough; He'll fall again, if he be driven to speak, And then, where are we, for a second week? Why, lifting up his heavy drunken corse! Tell on thy tale, and look we to his horse. Yet, Manciple, in faith thou art too nice Thus openly ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... soaked with rain, I left the slough, and gaining the highroad, pressed towards the city to meet the cavalcade. A rushing of people, and a confused cry, told me of its approach. "There he is!" Yes, there! in that open cart, surrounded by mounted police, and pressed on all sides ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... guests think so, but the whole country, far and wide around, entertained precisely the same opinion. It is not, therefore, surprising that two young men like Frank and Vernon should be well pleased with their quarters, or that, having so early gotten into the slough of love, they should daily continue to sink deeper into the mire. The young poet's lame leg, though not a very serious affair, was still sufficient to keep him for several days a close prisoner to the house; but if any one had asked ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... of patience is the cause of half my difficulties and defeats, and plunges me continually into the slough of distrust and rebellious questioning. I find it so hard to stand still, and let God do his will, and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... in a wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told herself that she must ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... and, making this assume, under their pessimist delineation, blackest Tartarean aspect, would crown it with the exhibition of the Indian, as one sunken, at the instance of the white, in extremest depths of human sorrow; as plunged, engulphed, and detained in a horrible slough of degradation and misery. Such would, in short, have an era opened up, which should mark, at once, the exaltation of the white to a revolting height of infamy, proclaiming the high carnival of unblushing trickery and chicane; and should signalize the whelming of the Indian in the noxious flood ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... while "it dragged the Church out of the slough it had fallen into," startled the ecclesiastical world, and was a prelude to the struggle between pope and emperor which, under St. Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII, culminated in the independent establishment of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... in the road was the direct result of a wire dispatched to a quiet little man named Phillips who had been given the task of making the way into London difficult. Mr. Phillips had not had very much time, but he had done his best. A series of telegraph poles had been cut down outside Staines, Slough, and at various points along the Portsmouth road. A huge furniture van with its wheels off obstructed the narrows at Brentford, and in one or two places wires had been drawn ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... feeling that these men were suffering on our account, and the realisation that every one of us has had his share in the responsibility for the whole, makes a load that one cannot, or should not, slough away ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... and Dick, were football players, and they knew how to take a fall, so were not harmed. Fortunately they had been tossed out on a grassy part of the pen, and away from the muddy slough where the porkers were ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... our plans a little: going to Portsmouth first, and to Slough on our return; we were to have gone by Slough, but the Prince of Denmark and the King going to Ascot took up all horses and beds, so we were obliged ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... wheat, was the first crop which the Partridge brothers put in. The total yield was seven bushels, obtained from around the edges of a slough! ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... friend Jerry Juniper; not, however, the Jerry of the gipsies, but a much more showy-looking personage. Jerry was no longer a gentleman of "three outs"—the difficulty would now have been to say what he was "without." Snakelike he had cast his slough, and rejoiced in new and brilliant investiture. His were "speaking garments, speaking pockets too." His linen was of the finest, his hose of the smartest. Gay rings glittered on his fingers; a crystal snuff-box underwent graceful manipulation; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... a rare chance for the reporter, and I did not miss it. The city as landlord in the Bend was fair game. The old houses came down at last, and for a twelvemonth, while a reform government sat at the City Hall, the three-acre lot lay, a veritable slough of despond filled with unutterable nastiness, festering in the sight of men. No amount of prodding seemed able to get it out of that, and all the while money given for the relief of the people was going to waste at the rate of a million ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... ludicrously thwarted by a triviality. Within twenty-four hours I realized the danger to our campaign. I sent Woodruff post-haste to the widow. He gave her convincing assurances that she and her children were to be lifted from the slough of poverty into which Granby's drunkenness had thrust them. And in return she wrote at his dictation and issued an apparently uninspired public statement, exonerating me from all blame for her husband's reverses, and saying that he had been acting strangely ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... reading, and continued at her task nearly ten minutes, when she was interrupted by the appearance in the quadrangular slough without of a large figure in the uniform ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... of the practical Christianity, so contagious in its fervour, which distinguished Mr. Kingsley, not less than his great gifts; of his eagerness "to help in lifting the great masses of the people out of the slough of ignorance and all its attendant suffering and vice"—an object peculiarly dear to the Queen and to the Prince, as had been consistently shown ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... territory half is slough, Half pine-tree forest: maples, scarlet oaks Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes With sand the summer through: but 'tis morass In winter up to Mantua's walls. There was, Some thirty years before this evening's coil, One spot reclaimed ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... is no meaner than a fay, Redeem'd from sleepy death, for beauty's sake, By old ordainment:—silent as she lay, Touched by a moonlight wand I saw her wake, And cut her leafy slough, and so forsake The verdant prison of her lily peers, That slept amidst the stars upon the lake— A breathing shape—restored to human fears, And new-born love and grief—self-conscious of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... the middle and at the end of words ia silent; as in caught, bought, fright, nigh, sigh; pronounced caut, baut, frite, ni, si. In the following exceptions, however, gh are pronounced as f:—cough, chough, clough, enough, laugh, rough, slough, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... able to have their loads of grain carried over this dreadful place for three or four cents a bushel was to the farmers of the Rock River and Fox River valleys—who, having hauled their wheat from forty to eighty miles to this Slough of Despond, frequently could get it no farther—a privilege which they soon began to appreciate. The road had all it could do, at once. It was a success. There was now no difficulty in getting the stock taken up, and before long it was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... ashamed to go abroad, and has no comfort at home. He becomes crabbed, morose, and querulous, losing all pleasure in life. He wants the passport to enjoyment and respect—money; he has only his debts, and these make him suspected, despised, and snubbed. He lives in the slough of despond. He feels degraded in others' eyes as well as in his own. He must submit to impertinent demands, which he can only put off by sham excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... pools in the bed of the river, where rushes and lilies grew and huge mailed garfish swam slowly just beneath the surface of the water. Once my two companions stopped to pull a mired cow out of a slough, hauling with ropes from their saddle horns. In places there were half-dry pools, out of the regular current of the river, the water green and fetid. The trees were very tall and large. The streamers of pale gray moss hung thickly from ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... long, stout cane, plunged into the slough. He was more anxious than he was willing to say, but at the same time he was hopeful. As the swamp was due, at least in large part, to the great rains, it must have firm ground somewhere, and he had noticed also in the thickening twilight that the bushes ahead seemed ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... at Fort Hall, where the Oregon emigration went north'ard, and swung south for Californy," was his way of concluding the narrative of that arduous journey. "And Bill Ping and me used to rope grizzlies out of the underbrush of Cache Slough in the Sacramento Valley." ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... III. and up to the date when it was abolished in 1847, Montem at Eton was a school holiday, an "event," as we should now say, of the London season. Of its origin nothing is known, but the ceremony of a procession in military costume "ad Montem" to a mound near Slough, now called Salt Hill, can be traced back to the sixteenth century. Visitors were offered salt by some of the boys, and in exchange gave money. The amount collected after payment of the expenses belonged to the captain ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... standards, for in a fourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut more than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull- whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet of water at low tide. Also this dock was sufficiently far up ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... What! they had been marching since morning with nothing to eat, they had summoned up all their energies to escape that deadly trap at Harancourt pass, only in the end to be landed in that slough of despond, with an insurmountable wall staring them in the face! It would be hours, perhaps, before it became the last comer's turn to cross, and everyone knew that even if the Prussians should not be enterprising enough ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... life; and what were earth's troubles to that? One vision of unseen things, rushing in, made small all the things that are seen. The poor old cripple, deformed and diseased, whose days must have been long a burden to her, was going even now to drop the slough of her mortality and to take on her the robes of light and the life that is all glory. What if my own life were barren for a while; then comes the end! What if I must be alone in my journey; I may do the Master's ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... middle of the day; with every one declaring that it had been a great treat. Larry kept the two drumsticks as well as the wings of the gobbler. Possibly he might many a time feel a queer little sensation creeping up and down his spinal column as memory carried him back again to that slough, where the treacherous black mud was slowly ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... The nightingale with feathers new she sings: The turtle to her mate hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs, The hart hath hung his old head on the pale, The buck in haste his winter coat he flings; The fishes float with new repaired scale, The adder all her slough away she lings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies small; The busy-bee her honey now she mings;* Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... he had come into the presence of this woman, who slept tranquilly beyond these panels of oak. He felt a glow on his cheeks, a quickening of his pulse. To what lengths would he not go for her sake? Sure of winning her love, yes, he would become great, rise purified from the slough of loose living. He had never killed a man dishonorably; he had won his duels by strength and dexterity alone. He had never taken an advantage of a weakling; for many a man had insulted him and still walked the earth, suffering only the slight inconvenience of a bandaged arm or a tender cheek, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... Miserable, utterly miserable. We have camped in the 'Slough of Despond.' The tempest rages with unabated violence. The temperature has gone to 33 deg.; everything in the tent is soaking. People returning from the outside look exactly as though they had been in a heavy shower ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... undergraduate life at New Haven was not all strewn with roses, but he was glad always to go back when requested and put his shoulder to the wheel. The request came usually at a time when Yale's football was in the slough of despond. He was known as ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... to vindicate the spirituality of man against the materialist, idealism tumbles into the slough of solipsism and needs to be fetched out by the doctrine of the Trinity, it fares much the same way in its attempted defence of free-will against necessity. That freedom from determination by the "not-self" which ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... many miles from the heart of an ugly city to the cabbage gardens that gave the maker of the seal his opportunity to call the city "urbs in horto." Somewhere between the two—that is to say, forninst th' gas-house and beyant Healey's slough and not far from the polis station—lives Martin Dooley, ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... in which ten minutes in the society of a man, who would have been adjudged by many most uninspiring, had transformed me. It seemed the mere sight of this simple bushman, in his 'bell-bottomed' Sunday trousers, had lifted me up from a slough of hopeless inertia to a plane upon which life was a master musician, and all my veins the strings from which he ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... houses in this filled-in territory, and to houses built along the line of some of the many streams which ran from the hills down to the bay, and which were filled in as the town grew—for instance, the Grand Opera House was built over the bed of St. Anne's Creek. A bog, slough and marsh, known as the Pipeville Slough, was the ground on which the City Hall was built, and which was originally a burying ground. Sand from the western shore had blown over and drifted into the marsh and hardened ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... is equally flat, but more articulate. I need not detain my reader with remarks upon him. The fact is, I am glad to have something, if not "a cart-load of wholesome instructions," to cast into this Slough of Despond, should it be only to see it vanish. The poem ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... of Pacific Springs at a little after noon and stopped at the summit to dedicate the monument. Then we left the summit and drove twelve miles to the point called Oregon Slough, where we put up the tent ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... camp were in a deplorable condition. They were merely tracks trodden down by our feet and carts, heavily rutted, uneven, and either a slough of mud and water, or a desert of dust, according to the weather. We persistently urged the German authorities to improve these roads, but they turned a deaf ear to all ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... cloisters; got permission from the Crowland monks, for twenty marks of silver, to drain as much as he could of the common marshes; and then shut out the Welland by strong dykes, built cottages, marked out gardens, and tilled fields, till 'out of slough and bogs accursed, he made a garden ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... had allowed his lawful wife to sink into an abyss of degradation. However bad she might be, the blame certainly rested with him as the stronger. If it was impossible to live with her now, he might, at any rate, have stretched out his hand long ago, and rescued her from the slough of despond ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... themselves, that he altogether abandoned the reins, and allowed himself to live such a life as is passed by some young men in London. His tastes and appetites were too high for this. He did not sink into a slough of despond. He did not become filthy and vicious, callous and bestial; but he departed very widely astray from those rules which governed him during his ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... deprecates, or makes concessions, or assents through good-nature, or goes abroad; who is not afraid of giving offense; "who answers you without supplication in his eye,"—in fact, who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of life. You may wrestle with this man, he says, or swim with him, or lodge in the same chamber with him, or eat at the same table, and yet he is a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... then taking the name of Yazoo; so that the works erected across the neck were said to be between the Tallahatchie and Yazoo, though the stream is one. The fort, which was called Pemberton, was built of cotton and earth; in front of it was a deep slough, and on its right flank the river was barricaded by a raft and the hull of the ocean steamer Star of the West, which, after drawing the first shots fired in the war, when the batteries in Charleston stopped her from reinforcing Fort Sumter in ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... on together, without looking whither they were going, and in the midst of the plain they fell into a very miry slough, which was called the Slough of Despond. Here they wallowed for a time, and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... consent that they direct the chase, bag the game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough. May I ask you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... did, Capting. Reckin, though, both on ye kin hitch on next load," drawled the driver, turning his horses into the slough of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... complete a labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal; therefore, I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest they get bemired in a slough of unintelligible learning, or have their brains knocked out by some of those hard Greek names which will be flying about in all directions. But should any of them be too indolent or chicken-hearted to accompany me in this ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... of Him and hallowed be the names of Him!) saw the weakness of man and the swiftness of his inclining to his enemy and leaving the truth, He appointed to him, of His mercy, repentance, that therewith he might arise from the slough[FN127] of inclination to disobedience and taking the arms and armour of repentance, overcame therewith his foe Iblis and his hosts and return to the Truth, wherein he was created. When Iblis saw that Allah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... to a place where, in order to cut off a long sweeping curve of the river with open water and bad shore ice, we went through a dry slough and had to drag those iron runners over gravel and stones, where sometimes it was all the three of us could do to move the sled a few feet at a time. Yet all along the banks were willows, and if we had only known then ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... or hor. 8.2, dipping to the south-east.) A clayey soil mixed with spangles of mica covered the rock, to the depth of three feet. Travellers suffer from the dust in winter, while in the rainy season the place is changed into a slough. On descending the table-land of Buenavista, about fifty toises to the south-east, an abundant spring, gushing from the gneiss, forms several cascades surrounded with thick vegetation. The path leading to the spring ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... from any other work ever written on Will Power. The culmination of over twenty years of research and study, it deals in simple language with the possibilities of every man—how you and everyone else may rise from the slough of mediocrity to the ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush

... how the appearance of characters will change, whilst the root that produces them remains the same. The Washington faction having waded through the slough of negociation, and whilst it amused France with professions of friendship contrived to injure her, immediately throws off the hypocrite, and assumes the swaggering air of a bravado. The party papers of that imbecile administration were on this occasion filled with paragraphs about Sovereignty. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... love are superfluities, intended only for the rich, who live at ease, and have no need to take thought for the morrow; or desperations—the last and reckless joy of the deeply wretched, who never hope to rise out of the slough ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... old person of Slough, Who danced at the end of a bough; But they said, "If you sneeze, you might damage the trees, You ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... the Yallabusha enters, the river then taking the name of Yazoo; so that the works erected across the neck were said to be between the Tallahatchie and Yazoo, though the stream is one. The fort, which was called Pemberton, was built of cotton and earth; in front of it was a deep slough, and on its right flank the river was barricaded by a raft and the hull of the ocean steamer Star of the West, which, after drawing the first shots fired in the war, when the batteries in Charleston stopped her from reinforcing Fort Sumter in January, 1861, had passed by some chance ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... fungous was nearly removed; the wound presented an appearance of slough over its surface.—The caustic was applied to ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom

... such parts of it as really bear flowers at all. For most races and nations during the most of their life are not progressive but simply stagnant, sometimes just managing to preserve their standard customs, sometimes slipping back to the slough. That is why history has nothing to say about them. The history of the world consists mostly in the memory of those ages, quite few in number, in which some part of the world has risen above itself and ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... shall this slough of sense be cast, This dust of thoughts be laid at last, The man of flesh and soul be slain And the man ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... I will understand. Your financial affairs are in desperate condition but the case is not hopeless. You are young and healthy but you lack a definite plan of life. If someone will throw you a line while you are floundering in this slough you will come out all right. Now what's this thing you are to do ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... you may readily conceive, was sunk in the Slough of Despond deeper than ever plummet sounded. Margaret thought this very nice of him; it was a delicate tribute to her that he ate nothing; and the fact that Hugh Van Orden and Petheridge Jukesbury—as she believed—acted in precisely the same way for precisely the same reason, merely ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... own children to take them away from the South, as he might have done, or to provide for them handsomely, as he perhaps meant to do,—I violated the traditions of my class and stepped from the beaten path to help the misbegotten son of my old friend out of the slough of despond, in which he had learned, in some strange way, that he was floundering. Ten years later, the ghost of my good deed returns to haunt me, and makes me doubt whether I have wrought more evil than good. I wonder," he mused, "if ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... "unwinding" would be the destiny of the person—a destiny determined, necessarily, by past action. This concept gives a new and more eloquent meaning to the phrase "Character is destiny." If we carry our thought no further, we are plunged into the slough of determinism—sheer fatality. But in each reincarnation, however predetermined every act and event, their reaction upon consciousness remains a matter of determination—is therefore self-determined. We may ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... personally, and they are to be appealed to and asked patriotically to banish all party and "sectional" feelings from their minds, while discussing the best mode of helping "our neighbor" out of the Slough of Despond, so that she may be enabled to meet the demands we have upon her,—not in money, for that she has not, and we purpose giving her a round sum, but in land, of which she has a vast supply, and all of it susceptible of yielding good returns to servile industry. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... to get it. And you know I could not have explained all this before him and you. You would have thrown up the stall in disgust." Would that he had! That was Mark's wish now,—his futile wish. In what a slough of despond had he come to wallow in consequence of his folly on that night at Gatherum Castle! He had then done a silly thing, and was he now to rue it by almost total ruin? He was sickened also with all these lies. His very soul was dismayed by the dirt through which he was forced to wade. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... moment, in a wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told herself ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... a circuit,—came by the old trail around the head of the slough. We haven't passed anybody, have we, Tony?" he asked of the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men —in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, —from the slough of despond and the desert. Half-dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee [72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short of criminal that the English censor should have permitted the world to hold Great Britain in contempt for twenty-four hours and sink poor France in the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, and ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... experience that 'the wages of sin is death.' As a rule, God does not interpose to pick a man out of the mud into which he has been plunged by his own faults and follies, until he has learned the lessons which he can find in plenty down in the slough, if he will only look for them! And the fact that some great calamity or some great joy affects a wide circle of people, does not make its having a special lesson and meaning for each of them at all doubtful. There is one of the great depths of all-moving ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... wild, unmeaning fables. It was woman, charming woman, that led unpolished man forth from the forests and the dens, and taught him to bend before thy shrine, humanity! See how the face of nature changes! Where late the slough mantled, or the serpent hissed among the briars and the reeds, all is pasture and fertility. The cottages arise. The shepherds assume the guise of gentleness and simplicity. They attire themselves with care, they braid the garland, and they tune the pipe. Wherefore do they braid the garland? Why ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... were earth's troubles to that? One vision of unseen things, rushing in, made small all the things that are seen. The poor old cripple, deformed and diseased, whose days must have been long a burden to her, was going even now to drop the slough of her mortality and to take on her the robes of light and the life that is all glory. What if my own life were barren for a while; then comes the end! What if I must be alone in my journey; I may do the Master's work all ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the wily parson succeeded in getting to the stormy heart of this enraged and unhappy father, and portrayed in glowing colors the clearness of Miss Elizabeth's "effectual call" and "blessed hope," and managed to bridge over "that awful slough of Methodism" by descanting gravely upon some of the "mysterious leadings of sovereign grace." "And now, if our dear lamb of the Saviour can be rescued from those deluded people and carefully instructed in 'the doctrines of ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er

... gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... still on her knees: "It is a common thing to say that suspense is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a man's neck to sink him in a slough of despondency. I never really believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate, a teacher, a preacher; that I shall have to go softly all my days, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... her when he had her. Heaven knows why it is; it isn't because of anything he's done or has, it's just because it's HIM, I suppose, but I know my chance is gone for good! THAT leaves me free to act for her; no one can accuse me of doing it for myself. And I swear she sha'n't go through that slough of despond again while I have breath ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... in his hands, as he clings desperately to the smooth white-oak trunk. A strange, wild strain, like a detached chord of a vesper melody, sounds above him! It is the whippoorwill—steadily, continuously, entrancingly the dulcet measure is taken up and echoed, until the slough of despond seems transformed into a varying diapason of melancholy minstrelsy. He dares not raise his head. It will vanish if he moves. He crouches, panting, almost exultant, in the sense of recovered faculties, or rather the suspension ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... with feathers new she sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... a feeling of general sickness, chilliness and some fever. The skin over the sore part is hot and painful. The several dead parts may run together until the entire mass separates in a slough. In favorable cases it proceeds to heal kindly, but in severe cases it may spread to the surrounding tissues and end fatally, sometimes by the absorption of putrid materials, or by the resulting weakness. It runs usually from ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... diploma was a sure passport. When the girls worked they worked hard, and when playtime came it was enjoyed to the full. Naturally, with so many dispositions surrounding her, Miss Preston often in secret floundered in a "slough of despond," for that which could influence one girl for her good might prove a complete failure when brought to bear upon another. Never was the old adage, "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," more ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... that she must get him somehow back into his slough of despond. His freedom paralyzed her. And he returned with a pathetic change ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... a load of from 800 to 1,000 pounds. These vehicles were admirably adapted to the country, which was in a perfectly natural state, without roads of any kind, except the trail worn by the carts. They could easily pass over a slough that would obstruct any other forms of wheeled carriage, and one man could drive four or five of them, each being hitched behind the other. They were readily constructed on the border, by the unskilled half-breeds, where iron was unobtainable. This trade, with an occasional ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... porch they also stopped, distributing alms. One of the beggars, with a red, cicatrized slough instead of a nose, approached Katiousha. She produced some coins from her handkerchief, gave them to him, and without the slightest expression of disgust, but, on the contrary, her eyes beaming with delight, kissed him three ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... hurtling into sight, huge, unbelievably swift, roaring upon its whistle, tore a great, gray-painted motor lorry, packed with khaki-clad infantrymen. It was going at a hideous speed, leaping its tons of weight insanely from rock ridge to traffic-churned slough in the road; there was only time to note its immensity and uproar and the ranked faces of the men swaying in their places, and it was by, and another was bounding into sight behind it. A hundred and odd of them, each with thirty men on board—three battalions ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... duke lost more. His mind was jaded. He floundered—he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that his ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... a child; but he did as she bid, and so came safely through, while McFarlane set to work to blaze a new route which should avoid the slough which was already a bottomless ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... public places, and to see for himself, if possible, whether Cuckoo's accusation against Valentine were true. That a frightful change had taken place in Julian's life, and that he was rapidly sinking in a slough of wholly inordinate dissipation was clear enough. But did Valentine, this new, strange Valentine, lead him, or merely go with him, or stand aloof smiling at him and letting him take his own way like a foolish boy? That question the doctor must decide for himself. He could ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... our purity to the Lord that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of heathenism to whom he spoke. But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like God's was the most natural thing in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... contribution of one dollar, he did nothing else but cavil and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... the camp were in a deplorable condition. They were merely tracks trodden down by our feet and carts, heavily rutted, uneven, and either a slough of mud and water, or a desert of dust, according to the weather. We persistently urged the German authorities to improve these roads, but they turned a deaf ear to all ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... original? For myself, I would above all things urge him to study how to reproduce, and not how to represent—to imitate no past perfection, but to create for himself another, as beautiful, wise, and true. I would say to him, "build not on old ground, profaned, polluted, trod into slough by filthy animals; but break new ground—virgin ground—ground that thought has never imagined or eye seen, and dig into our hearts a foundation, deep and broad as our humanity. Let it not be a temple formed of hands only, but built up of us—us of ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... in that cruelly false position in which I have already suffered so much both for myself and for you—for I, too, am proud. Your daughter shall be such as she ought to be; shall do what she ought to do; shall suffer what she ought to suffer. To-morrow all will know from what a slough you have rescued me; in seeing the repentant at the foot of the cross, they will, perhaps, pardon the past in consideration of my present humility. It would not be so, my dear father, if they saw me, as a few months ago, shining in the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... that the settler would fence off the hunter's game preserve into farms and cities. A rare glamour lay over the plains {58} that June, not the less rare because hope beckoned the travellers. The unfenced prairie billowed to the horizon a sea of green, diversified by the sky-blue waters of slough and lake, and decked with the hues of gorgeous flowers—the prairie rose, fragrant, tender, elusive, and fragile as the English primrose; the blood-red tiger-lily; the brown windflower with its corn-tassel; the heavy wax ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... season of drought and scarcity ask not the distressed dervish, saying: "How are you?" Unless on the condition that you apply a balm to his wound, and supply him with the means of subsistence:—The ass which thou seest stuck in the slough with his rider, compassionate from thy heart, otherwise do not go near him. Now that thou went and asked him how he fell, like a sturdy fellow bind up thy loins, and take ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... the bonds of sin and despair, as bound with them. Hence his power as a preacher; hence the wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all the variety of spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had lain a month in the Slough of Despond, and had played, like him, the long melancholy bass of spiritual heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters: and had limped along his difficult way upon the crutches of Ready-to-halt. Who better than himself could ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... enterprise; on every hand, and in every line, were men fully as active and unprincipled as he. Nearly all of these men, and scores of competitors in his own sphere—dominant capitalists in their day—have become well-nigh lost in the records of time; their descendants are in the slough of poverty, genteel or otherwise. Those times were marked by the intensest commercial competition; business was a labyrinth of sharp tricks and low cunning; the man who managed to project his head far above the rest not only had to practice the methods of ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... taking a favorite walk through the Presidio toward the Beach. From a hill-top they saw the Exposition buildings rising from what once had been a slough. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... could not help surmising what had been his condition the previous day. Indeed Stanton, with a contemptuous shrug, had the same as said on Sabbath evening, that his uncle had "dropped into the old slough." Although neither of the young men knew how great an impetus Ida had given her father towards such degradation, they both felt that if his wife and daughter had had the tact to detect and appreciate his better mood, produced by the morning ramble, they ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... Mantua territory half is slough, Half pine-tree forest: maples, scarlet oaks Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes With sand the summer through: but 'tis morass In winter up to Mantua's walls. There was, Some thirty years before this evening's coil, One spot reclaimed ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... its endeavour to vindicate the spirituality of man against the materialist, idealism tumbles into the slough of solipsism and needs to be fetched out by the doctrine of the Trinity, it fares much the same way in its attempted defence of free-will against necessity. That freedom from determination by the "not-self" which idealism vindicates, can belong only ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... back for many miles from the heart of an ugly city to the cabbage gardens that gave the maker of the seal his opportunity to call the city "urbs in horto." Somewhere between the two—that is to say, forninst th' gas-house and beyant Healey's slough and not far from the polis station—lives ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... earnings, though she insisted that Schumann was assured of one thousand thalers a year, and she could earn an equal sum with one concert a winter in Dresden, where prices were so high. But just then the prosperity of Schumann's paper began to slough off. It occurred to the lovers that they would prefer to live in Vienna, and that the Zeitschrift could prosper there. There were endless difficulties, a censorship to pacify, and many commercial schemes to arrange, but nothing must be left untried. The scheme was put under way. Meanwhile, as ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... was seized with an attack of gout in his stomach, which resisted all the powers of medicine, and proved fatal in less than a week. He died on the 30th of July, 1771, and was buried, according to his own desire, beside the remains of his mother at Stoke-Pogis, near Slough, in Buckinghamshire, in a beautiful sequestered village churchyard that is supposed to have furnished the scene of his elegy.[1] The literary habits and personal peculiarities of Gray are familiar to us ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... flounder for the rest of our existence, wandering farther and farther from the beauty and freshness and from the kindly gushing springs of clear gladness that made all around us green in our youth! One wanders and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise—to mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... but of her body and soul as well! And it is me, me whom you ask to be a party to this shameful transaction. Her dead father left her to my care, and I am to sell her to you, that her money may redeem our name from the slough into which you have flung it? Is innocence to be sacrificed that vice may ride abroad again? Look here," says the professor, his face deadly white, "you have come to the wrong man. I shall warn Miss Wynter ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... have been exerted, from the highest quarters, to bring her into subjection to material interests and unheroic maxims, to sap the chivalry and enthusiasm of her youth. But it is not too late, Let her slough this all off in her hour of trial! Let her cast off her disguises and her rags together, and stand forth in the garb and attitude of a hero! This work must be done. If the men of scholarship and accomplishments and wealth who have heretofore enjoyed prominence, do not feel themselves up ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... at Slough, and a wave of freshness, with an odour of verdure and sap, blew into their faces. The dog leaped and barked, and Glory skipped along with it, breaking every moment into enthusiastic exclamations. There was hardly any wind, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... that they direct the chase, bag the game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the slough. May I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... proved the up-looking of her better nature; and her charity was unbounded. Shall we—reared and instructed in all righteous ways—shall we show less charity to the memory of one who in her latter days rose out of the slough into which circumstance—not vice—had plunged her? Shall we be less charitable than the bishop who honored her memory and his own character by recording her benevolence, her penitence, her exemplary end? The good bishop's testimony renders ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... kept the two drumsticks as well as the wings of the gobbler. Possibly he might many a time feel a queer little sensation creeping up and down his spinal column as memory carried him back again to that slough, where the treacherous black mud was slowly but ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... speak. That night the major, calling at Captain Dade's, was concerned to hear that Mrs. Dade was not at home. "Gone over to the hospital with Mrs. Blake and the doctor," was the explanation, and these gentle-hearted women, it seems, were striving to do something to rouse the lad from the slough of despond which had engulfed him. That night "Pink" Marble, Hay's faithful book-keeper and clerk for many a year, a one-armed veteran of the civil war, calling, as was his invariable custom when ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... what treatment to use to cover all cases. It cannot be taught by correspondence, and, simple though it sounds to hear it, it cannot be learned by attendance at a few clinics. It is delicate in this sense, that if it is not rightly performed in the individual case the glands will slough. That means loss of time, loss of temper, and the waste of a perfectly good pair of young goat-glands. Another very important thing which his experiments have taught Dr. Brinkley is this: the glands on being removed ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before their time. Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes; the fiend of their own unholy desires and criminal designs! What they coveted, thou covetest; and if thou hadst the wings of a seraph thou couldst soar not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for knowledge, but petulant presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but the diseased longing for the unclean and muddied waters of corporeal pleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... her own accord—one unbetrothed to another, one desirous of thy grace!' Although she spoke in this strain, Salwa, however, O chief of the Bharatas, rejected that daughter of the ruler of Kasi, like a snake casting off his slough. Indeed, although that king was earnestly solicited with diverse expressions such as these, the lord of the Salwas still did not, O bull of the Bharata race, manifest any inclination for accepting the girl. Then the eldest daughter of the ruler of Kasi, filled with anger, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... only did their two guests think so, but the whole country, far and wide around, entertained precisely the same opinion. It is not, therefore, surprising that two young men like Frank and Vernon should be well pleased with their quarters, or that, having so early gotten into the slough of love, they should daily continue to sink deeper into the mire. The young poet's lame leg, though not a very serious affair, was still sufficient to keep him for several days a close prisoner to the house; ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... to amputate, it is important to avoid having bruised, torn, or separated tissues in the flaps, as these are liable to slough or to become the seat of infection. In this connection it should be borne in mind that the damage to soft tissues is always wider in extent than appears ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... children," established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he was positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband, who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never wholly cast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough to understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; and the tender solicitude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller, harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two together, Shelley showing ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... white, drawn face, and staring eyes, dumb with an agony of fear. Her life was bidding fair to be knit with his,— what Upas tree of horror was rooted in his very bones? The thought that her sweet purity was likely to be engulfed in a devil's slough in which he was swallowing was not to be endured. As I realised that the man was more than my match at the game which I was playing—in which such vital interests were at stake!—my hands itched to clutch him by the throat, and try ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... possibilities of organization and found himself possessed of unlimited political rights, should seek a speedy salvation in the ballot box. He took, by impulse, the partisan shortcut and soon found himself lost in the slough of party intrigue. On the other hand, it should not be concluded that these intermittent attempts to form labor parties were without political significance. The politician is usually blind to every need except the need of his party; and the one permanent need of his party is votes. A demand backed ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... could not help calling to mind Miss Edgeworth's admirable tale of Murad the Unlucky, and his friend the lucky Saladin. Like the former, Wheelwright seemed destined but to fall from one calamity into another, and effort to retrieve his affairs, did but plunge him deeper into the slough of misery. I could not but perceive, however, that as in the case of the persecuted Mussulman, the misfortunes of my poor friend had their origin in his own bad management, and to speak the honest truth, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... grape-vines,—where the air is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless forms lean propped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men— in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, from the slough of despond and the desert, Half dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee[72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit That ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... lay encamped, separated from the Indians by a slough. In the morning a deputation of Indians came to ask the meaning of the martial appearance of the whites when all they desired was a council. This suggestion of a council was quickly assented to, but the Indians approached ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... Suisun Bay, to the confluence of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, is sixty-three square miles. The total bay area is therefore four hundred and eighty square miles; and there are hundreds of miles of slough, river, and creek. A yachtsman, starting from Alviso, at the southern end of the bay, may sail in one general direction one hundred and fifty-four miles to Sacramento, before turning. All of this, of course, in ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... typical case of sniffles, with running at eyes and nose, and Bouvais laughed. "The only cold we have up here is when the lungs get touched by frost," he said, "and then you die—the following spring. Always then. The lungs slough away." And then he asked: ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... they got after her in the daytime. She had always outran them at night. She ran to the cabin and got her quarter which she had hid. She put the quarter in her mouth. The white folks didn't allow the slaves to handle no money. The quarter got stuck in her throat, and she went on down to the slough and drowned herself rather than let them beat her, and mark her up. Then patrollers sure would get you and beat you up. If they couldn't catch you when you were running away from them, they would come on your master's place and get you and beat you. The master ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... and treated with the utmost rigour of the law? WINSER, the cabman, who gave his false evidence so gaily in the Thirkettle Case, has been had up, and sentenced. Having dealt with WINSER, it is only a short step from WINSER to SLOUGH—but perhaps such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... is highly dramatic and picturesque. It is, to be sure, an allegory, but one of those allegories which seem inherent in the human mind and hence more natural than the most direct narrative. For all men life is indeed a journey, and the Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, Vanity Fair, and the Valley of Humiliation are places where in one sense or another every human soul has often struggled and suffered; so that every reader goes hand in ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... always grasped the plan and intention, and really seemed to be inside the mind of the contriver. He would say; "I think the theme is weak here—and you can't make a weak place strong by filling it with details, however good in themselves. That is like trying to mend the Slough of Despond with cartloads of texts. The thing is not to fall in, or, if you fall in, to get out." His three divisions of a subject were "what you say, what you wanted to say, what you ought to have wanted to say." Sometimes he would listen in silence, and then say: "I can't criticise ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... himself. For what, after all, was he here for save to let in light and combat evil, to bring home the sense of sin to the inhabitants of this place, convincing them of the hatefulness of the moral slough in which they so revoltingly wallowed. He must slay and spare not. He saw himself as David, squaring up to Goliath, as Christian fighting single-handed against the emissaries of Satan who essayed to defeat his pilgrimage. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... well,—very well," muttered Harley, when the door had closed upon the parson. "The viper and the viper's brood! So it was this man's son that I led from the dire Slough of Despond; and the son unconsciously imitates the father's gratitude and honour—Ha, ha!" Suddenly the bitter laugh was arrested; a flash of almost celestial joy darted through the warring elements of storm and darkness. If Helen returned Leonard's affection, Harley L'Estrange ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... suggested Hal, with a mischievous light in her eyes. "Well, then, dear Miss Walton, how fortunate for me that some one clever and briljant is willing to give me her friendship and help to lift me out of my slough ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... rode home beside Happy Jack and tried to lift him out of the slough of despond. But Happy refused to budge, mentally, an inch. He rode humped in the saddle like a calf in its first blizzard, and he was discouragingly unresponsive; except once, when Weary reminded him that the tableau would need no rehearsing ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... September 18th, and kept in vilest durance and imminent danger of being put to death till October 8th, when, after the capture of the Summer Palace, both the prisoners were released.] is safe. We have been very uneasy about him, and not without cause. The China war is a slough of despond: the further we advance the more we shall flounder, until we are half ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... back, back part of the limbs, and under the arms. Their presence is evidence of a depressed condition of vitality. These tumors vary in size from one-half an inch to six inches in diameter, and rapidly proceed to a gangrenous condition, a grayish slough being detached ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... Bournemouth, Bracknell Forest, Brighton and Hove, Bury, Calderdale, Darlington, Doncaster, Dudley, Gateshead, Halton, Hartlepool, Kirklees, Knowsley, Luton, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, North Tyneside, Oldham, Poole, Reading, Redcar and Cleveland, Rochdale, Rotherham, Sandwell, Sefton, Slough, Solihull, Southend-on-Sea, South Tyneside, St. Helens, Stockport, Stockton-on-Tees, Swindon, Tameside, Thurrock, Torbay, Trafford, Walsall, Warrington, Wigan, Wirral, Wolverhampton : counties: Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... with it; here, in spite of absence of all suppuration, the track may remain patent for many weeks. This may point to infection, but the tardiness in actual consolidation corresponds with what we are well acquainted with in the case of all aseptic wounds when a slough has to separate or become absorbed, and it is therefore only what might be reasonably expected when we remember that every such bullet track is lined by a thin layer of ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... a fine boat, one of my children was taken with croup. Dr. N——, a Universalist minister, got off at Dubuque and bought medicine for me. This saved the child, but he was sick all the way. We were stuck in Beef Slough for several days. I never left the cabin as my child needed me, but some time during the first day a boat from St. Paul was stuck there too, so near us that passengers passed from one boat to the other all day. It was only when I got to Hastings, where I had thought to meet my husband that I found ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... women, cities, landscapes. It is the simplest, the most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... of knowledge. Beholding, therefore, thyself with thy own self, cease to regard thy body as thyself and attain thou to omniscience. Cleansed of all sins, like unto a snake that has cast off its slough, one attains to high intelligence here and becomes free from every anxiety and the obligation of acquiring a new body (in a subsequent birth). Its current spreading in diverse directions, frightful is this river of life bearing the world onward in its course. The five senses are its ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... at us as we passed, and people crowded their windows to look. We crossed a slough upon a bridge of quaint and ancient architecture on the thither side of which were a grassy plaza and the stern lines of the church. The wedding bells broke forth in a furious joy and flung their notes to the distant hill ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... ethical or otherwise, can be attached to that bondage of manhood which was thrust upon the soul (or was it voluntarily assumed?)? This part of deity called individual soul certainly cannot be improved by its human conditions; and the question is not—"How soon can I pass through this slough of despond," but, "why was I thrust into it at all? Was it a mere sacred whim (tiruvileiadal) ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... common-room Christianity—belief in a dead God. There, I have never said it to anyone but you, but that is the slough we have to get out of. Don't think that I despair for us. We shall do it yet; but it will be sore work, stripping off the comfortable wine-party religion in which we are wrapped up—work for our ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... is of the genus bufo, he is by no means a buffo genius. He may be styled the solemn organist of the swamp; slough music being his specialty. Like other out-door performers on wind instruments, he is chiefly heard in pleasant weather, and during the summer his organ is without stops. Being a Democrat, he appreciates the dignity of labor, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

... international affairs, have increased greatly in the past decade. Consequently, the Government is larger than it was before the war, and its general operating costs are higher. We cannot shrink the Government to prewar dimensions unless we slough off these new responsibilities—and we cannot do that without paying an excessive price in terms of our national welfare. We can, however, enhance its operating efficiency through improved organization. I ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... feel myself justified in leaving our child longer in her hands, even tender as are his years. I shall take steps for having him removed. What further I shall do to vindicate myself, and extricate myself as far as may be possible from the slough of despond in which I have been submerged, she and you will learn in ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... country about Melbourne, and far inland, was boggy, the soil being volcanic, and abounding in mud which appears to have no bottom. The road to the mines was all the worse for having been ploughed up by bullock teams, and worked into a slough which proved the discouragement of mining parties. Some were even months in traversing the comparatively small distance across the country to the goal they sought. But the attraction of money, which is said to make ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... of cypress and groups of palmettos that dotted the prairie before him. A little to the north and extending into the Glades was a row of willows which Johnny visited and found that it marked the course of a slough that crossed the prairie and extended far out ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... went. Opinions differ as to swearing. One Captain strictly forbade it on board his lugger; but he, also continuing to get no fish, called out, 'Swear away, lads, and see what that'll do.' Perhaps he only meant as Menage's French Bishop did; who going one day to Court, his carriage stuck fast in a slough. The Coachman swore; the Bishop, putting his head out of the window, bid him not do that; the Coachman declared that unless he did, his horses would never get the carriage out of the mud. 'Well then, says the Bishop, just for ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... us from such a war! Let not the mad anger of such a people be aroused. And, gentlemen, if war comes it must be long and terrible. You will see both parties rise in their majesty at both ends of the line. They will slough off every other consideration and devote themselves, with terrible energy, to the work of death. Oh ye! who bring such a calamity as this upon this once happy country! Pause, gentlemen, before you do it, and think of the fearful accountability that ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... a steaming slough in which the mud and water were tepid and which grew rank with yellow reeds and thick grasses—grasses that were almost flesh-like, it seemed to me, as if swollen and about to burst from some dreadful disease, Perhaps your scientists can ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... at her task nearly ten minutes, when she was interrupted by the appearance in the quadrangular slough without of a large figure in the uniform of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... the knoll, it was found that the line crossed a slough,—or "slew," as the old man termed it,—which lay in a long, winding hollow of the hills. This morass was partly filled with stagnant water; and the old man ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... money. They had but one child, a son, afterwards Sir John Herschel, almost as great an astronomer as his father had been before him. In 1785, the family moved to Clay Hall, in Old Windsor, and in 1786 to Slough, where Herschel lived for the remainder of his long life. How completely his whole soul was bound up in his work is shown in the curious fact recorded for us by Carolina Herschel. The last night at Clay Hall was spent in sweeping the sky with the great glass ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... packs of straw, loomed up out of the darkness as we passed, until the last of the column was reached and the frieze of ghostly figures was swallowed up into the night. We drew a long breath, for we knew now from the colonel of the battalion whose men had delivered us from that Slough of Despond that we had been within 150 yards of the German lines. We had mistaken Richebourg l'Avoue ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... present-day standards, for in a fourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut more than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull- whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet of water at low tide. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... accomplish. He at one stroke freed himself from all distractions; his pupils and concerts, his whole connection at Bath, were immediately renounced; he accepted the King's offer with alacrity, and after one or two changes settled permanently at Slough, near Windsor. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... proceeded, and said: But when Christiana came up to the Slough of Despond, she began to be at a stand; for, said she, this is the place in which my dear husband had like to have been smothered with mud. She perceived, also, that notwithstanding the command of the King to make this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... system prevails do we find a code of political and social ethics which recognizes the rights and claims of the individual. The condition of woman is that of the basest slave, a slave to the caprice and tyranny of her master. Communism raises her from the slough of slavery, but subjects her to the level of prostitution. An inevitable sequence of polygamy is a decline of literature and science. The natural tendency of each system is to sensualism., The blood is diverted from its normal channels and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... judge, deems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our heart's desire. Taylor has dropped the "London." It was indeed a dead weight. It had got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand, like Christian, with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy,—is it Lucy, or Ruth?—that ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... the position by the light of a smoky lamp and over the ashes of a dead fire; counting possible votes, making unconvincing calculations based on supposition, wading hand-in-hand ever deeper into the Slough of Despond. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... learn to appreciate the liberty of law;—to know that license is the foe of freedom; and, though the sophistry of Passion in these books disgusted me, flowers of purest hue seemed to grow upon the dark and dirty ground. I thought she had cast aside the slough of her past life, and begun a new existence beneath the sun of a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... of the coffee men's discontent. Floundering about in a veritable slough of cereal slush, without secure foothold or a true sense of direction, coffee advertising went miserably astray when its writers began to assure the public that their brands were guiltless of the crimes charged in the cereal ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... true, quite true, his carelessness (but then he had been so worn out with watching), his fatal mistake, his heartless mistake (and yet he would almost have given his own life for his children) had brought him down to this slough of despond. There was no hope, the doctors never told him of any, and he knew he could not bear ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... Astronomy: it was he who first discovered the seventh primary planet, which he named, in honor of King George the Third, the Georgium Sidus. George the Third took him under his especial patronage, and constituted him his astronomer, with a handsome pension. He resided at Slough, near Windsor, where he ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... in very truth then travelling towards the town. We therefore hove-about and returned to Palanquillo, a village that we had passed through that very morning, leaving the hussar and his horse sticking fast in a slough. We arrived about nightfall, and as the village was almost entirely deserted, we were driven to take up our quarters in an old house, that seemed formerly to have been used as a distillery. Here we found a Spanish lieutenant and several soldiers quartered, all of them suffering more or less ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... of gneiss varies; it is either hor. 3.4, dipping to the north-west or hor. 8.2, dipping to the south-east.) A clayey soil mixed with spangles of mica covered the rock, to the depth of three feet. Travellers suffer from the dust in winter, while in the rainy season the place is changed into a slough. On descending the table-land of Buenavista, about fifty toises to the south-east, an abundant spring, gushing from the gneiss, forms several cascades surrounded with thick vegetation. The path leading to the spring is so steep that we could touch with our ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... their willingness to slough off even their children, in an adolescent impatience with any barrier to an immediate desire. So contrary is this to nature that regret follows closely their decision. The children, however, are laden with a burden put on ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... bed that night, listening to the snoring of the half-breeds on the floor, to the faint murmur of a wind that stirred the drooping boughs of the spruce, he reviewed his enthusiasms and his tenuous plans—and slipped so far into the slough of despond as to call himself a misguided fool for rearing so fine a structure of dreams upon so slender a foundation as this appointment to a mission in the outlying places. He blamed the Board of Missions. Obviously that august circle of middle-aged ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... a feeling of self-respect dawned upon me, I was not so altogether ignorant as I had thought myself, I had some available knowledge; and with that feeling came the determination to raise myself out of that slough of despond into which I had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... entered the city he found it situated in a slough. It was generally supposed that the ground upon which the city was built was a natural swamp, and when Palmer, among others, advocated the idea of raising the streets they were ridiculed. But subsequent tests proved that beneath the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... out of his slough of despond, and climbing the hills of hope again with something of his old gallant air. The rapidity of his convalescence was astonishing. By the end of July he was well enough to ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... under Breaden's charge; and he and Warri camped with them a few miles from the town whilst I completed preparations. Rain was falling at the time, the wet weather lasting nearly a fortnight; the whole country around Coolgardie was transformed from a sea of dust into a "Slough of Despond," and, seeing that five out of the nine camels were bulling, Breaden had anything but a pleasant time. Amongst camels, it is the male which comes on season, when, for a period of about six weeks annually, he is mad ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... Thou gentle, virtuous maid, as fair in soul As body, with a heart as white and pure As are thy snowy draperies! Like a dove, A pure, white dove with shining, outspread wings, Thou hoverest o'er this life, nor yet so much As dipp'st thy wing in this vile, noisome slough Wherein we wallow, struggling to get free, Each from himself. Send down one kindly beam From out thy shining heaven, to fall in pity Upon my bleeding breast, distraught with pain; And all those ugly scars that grief and hate And evil fortune e'er ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... have gone right through that slough, and come out sheer on the other side. For sweeping the last lingering taint of it out of me, I have to thank, not sulphur and exorcisms, but your soldiers and their morning's work. Philosophy is superfluous in a world where ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... it won't be that long before we have any good news," said Betty, trying to speak lightly. This would never do, she thought. They simply had to find some way out of this terrible slough of despondency before it mastered ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope

... has an argumentative prose-style and a distaste for highfalutin, and, where the unenlightened intellectualism of Macaulay and Leslie Stephen, and the incorrigible common sense of Johnson, might have pitched these eminent men into the slough of desperate absurdity, it often happens that Mr. Brock, whose less powerful mind is sweetened by a sense of ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... well-disciplined mind. He resolved, that, let it cost what it might in the shape of loss of time and trial of temper, he would leave no stone unturned, and spare no pains, to deliver his friend of yesterday from the slough into which he was plunging. How he might best work for this end occupied his thoughts ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... It cannot be taught by correspondence, and, simple though it sounds to hear it, it cannot be learned by attendance at a few clinics. It is delicate in this sense, that if it is not rightly performed in the individual case the glands will slough. That means loss of time, loss of temper, and the waste of a perfectly good pair of young goat-glands. Another very important thing which his experiments have taught Dr. Brinkley is this: the glands on being removed from the goat must immediately be placed in a salt ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... passion, already kindled into flame. Doubtless, it served in its day, and, in greater or less degree, the end designed by it. Having done that, it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a polluted and shameless press." And Mr Cooper observes—"Every honest man appears to admit that the press in America is fast getting to be intolerable. In escaping from the tyranny of foreign aristocrats, we have created ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... I watched the first few puffs, awaiting a repartee. None came. I felt a qualm of apprehension. Was he already becoming de-Paragot-ised? I did not realise then what it means to a man to cast aside the slough of many years' decay, and take his stand clean before the world. He shivers, is liable to catch cold, like the tramp whose protective hide of filth is summarily removed in the workhouse bath. Nor did my dear lady realise this. How could she, bright freed creature, hungering after the long withheld ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... it on board his lugger; but he, also continuing to get no fish, called out, 'Swear away, lads, and see what that'll do.' Perhaps he only meant as Menage's French Bishop did; who going one day to Court, his carriage stuck fast in a slough. The Coachman swore; the Bishop, putting his head out of the window, bid him not do that; the Coachman declared that unless he did, his horses would never get the carriage out of the mud. 'Well then, says the Bishop, just for ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... a bright, clear January day as they drove through handsome fields, then between white fences and glittering trees, toward Slough Farm. This property lay perhaps ten minutes' walk from Uefligen, was over a hundred acres in size and very fruitful, but not all in one piece; some fields and one grass-meadow lay at some distance. In wet years it might be swampy in spots, but that could ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... projects, and each project, being inspired by imperfect ideals, failed more or less, or changed its character from time to time. The first and third projects were at one time guided by the same hand; but the first project gradually cast off its colonizing slough, and resolved itself once more into discovery for discovery's sake; and the third project ceased to be a plan of campaign, and resolved itself into sober and peaceful schemes for settling in the land. Even the second project, which was unled, uninspired, unnational, and almost unconscious, and ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... complete degeneracy offered by the roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to associate with men who were standing just on the brink of human existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... returned to St. Paul's. This zealous man worked miracles both before and after his death. He used to be driven about in a cart, and one legend says that he often preached to the woodmen in the wild forests that lay to the north of London. On a certain day one of the cart-wheels came off in a slough. The worthy confessor was in a dilemma. The congregation under the oaks might have waited for ever, but the one wheel left was equal to the occasion, for it suddenly grew invested with special powers of balancing, and went ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... for a tub full of lye," (that is, washing water prepared with wood-ashes) "and a tub full of fresh milk, and as many whips as a boy can carry in his arms,—and have all these brought into your bed-chamber. Then, when the Lindworm tells you to shed a shift, do you bid him slough a skin. And when all his skins are off, you must dip the whips in the lye and whip him; next, you must wash him in the fresh milk; and, lastly, you must take him and hold him in your arms, if it's only ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen

... of these are successfully forded, though not without some difficulty; but we finally arrive at the parent slough, of which the others are but tributaries. This proves too deep for the sowars' horses to ford, and after surveying the yellow flood some minutes and searching up and down, the khan declares ruefully that we shall have to return to Beerjand. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... beings sink to the depths in which John B. Gough found himself at the age of twenty-five years. By sheer force of will he raised himself from the slough in which he wallowed, till he attained a position honored among men, and performed a service of ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... human race, or to such parts of it as really bear flowers at all. For most races and nations during the most of their life are not progressive but simply stagnant, sometimes just managing to preserve their standard customs, sometimes slipping back to the slough. That is why history has nothing to say about them. The history of the world consists mostly in the memory of those ages, quite few in number, in which some part of the world has risen above itself and burst into flower ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... my motter, as who should have learnt it more betterer? BUMBLE could hopen the heyes of them BOOTHSES, JOHN BURNSES, ancetterer. Snow? Is it me brings the snow, and the hice, and the peasoupy slushiness, Making the subbubs one slough? No! The Age is give over to gushiness. Parties as writes to the Papers is snivellers, yus, every one of 'em, Barring the few as cracks jokes, though I own as I can't see the fun of 'em. Look at "UCALEGON," now, him as writes to a cheap daily journal, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... departed, and the recollection that they have been here makes the solitude more complete. The woods in which they wandered are impassable, for the rain has been heavy, and the dry, baked clay of August has been turned into a slough a foot deep. The wind, what there is of it, is from the south-west, soft, sweet and damp; the sky is almost covered with bluish-grey clouds, which here and there give way and permit a dim, watery gleam to float slowly over the distant pastures. The grass for the most part is greyish-green, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... Gazette (California) describes the fall of a meteor in that vicinity, witnessed by Dr. Goodspeed, which fell in a slough and so heated the water as to kill the catfish that inhabited it. It lies in the pond, and looks as if a hundred feet wide. A much more marvellous story has been published of an engraved meteoric stone falling in an obscure portion of Georgia near Clayton ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various

... cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... them fast enough at battles of spurs and other encounters. Sudden riches beget insolence, tumults, civic broils. Internecine quarrels, horrible tumults stain the streets with blood, but education lifts the citizens more and more out of the original slough. They learn to tremble as little at priestcraft as at swordcraft, having acquired something of each. Gold in the end, unsanctioned by right divine, weighs up the other forces, supernatural as they are. And so, struggling along their appointed path, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... indemnified by dinner and rest, for the joltings of the day; but our driver, instead of taking the proper direction, lost himself in a series of inextricable cross roads, which terminated in a quagmire. In this slough of despond the unfortunate patache, from which we had descended, might have stuck for ever, but for the assistance of two shepherds, as wild in their attire, and as civil, as Don Quixote's friendly goatherds. By dint of their exertions and those of the floundering ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... narrow slope of a hillock, distant a couple of furlongs (21) or so from the sea, and a couple of miles (22) perhaps from Lechaeum. Their friends in Lechaeum, perceiving them, embarked in boats and sailed round until they were immediately under the hillock. And now, in the very slough of despair, being so sorely troubled as man after man dropped dead, and unable to strike a blow, to crown their distress they saw the enemy's heavy infantry advancing. Then they took to flight; some of them threw themselves into the sea; others—a mere handful—escaped with ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... Mother must have grieved to part with it. Surely uncle and aunt couldn't have known of these straits. Well, I'm at home now, and they need somebody to manage for them. Uncle always said I had a business head. God helping me, I'll pull my people out of the slough ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... Louis soon turned to Madame Dubarry—and a lower step was taken. The prestige and dignity of the Court suffered. "Vice," as Saint-Amand observes, "threw off all semblance of disguise" and yet, while the King slowly submerged his nature in a slough of corruption, and his associates made of the Court a carnival of immorality, there was still one figure in whom the traditional morals and manners were maintained—the Queen Marie Leczinska. She was the one pure and virtuous figure in the Court life. "Her domestic hearth," writes Saint-Amand, ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... the production of several popular Jewish histories. At that epoch the horizon of the world was extending under new geographical and intellectual discoveries. Israel, on the other hand, seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. Some of the men who had themselves been the victims of persecution saw that the only hope lay in rousing the historical consciousness of their brethren. History became the consolation of the exiles from Spain who found themselves pent up within the walls of the Ghettos, ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... Seps, whose bite both flesh and bone decays; The Amphisbaena with its double head, One on the neck, and one of tail instead; The horned Cerast[^e]s; and the Hammodyte, Whose sandy hue might balk the keenest sight; A feverish thirst betrays the Dipsas' sting; The Scyt[)a]la, its slough that casts in spring; The Natrix here the crystal streams pollutes; Swift thro' the air the venomed Javelin shoots; Here the Par[e]as, moving on its tail, Marks in the sand its progress by its trail; The speckled Cenchris ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... sorry at the double life he was leading. If it were possible to establish the death of the wastrel he was personating he would perhaps allow his "father" to live on in this new-found happiness; but if the real D.V.W. were alive some effort must be made to help him out of the slough—perhaps to bring him back. He would try to find out ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... Skinner Peter Skull (2) David Slac Benjamin Slade Thomas Slager John Slane Jean Louis Slarick Measer Slater Matthew Slaughter John Slee Thomas Slewman Samuel Slide Joseph Slight Josiah Slikes Christopher Sloakum Edward Sloan Timothy Sloan Andrew Sloeman Thomas Slough Ebenezer Slow Isaac Slowell William Slown Henry Sluddard Samuel Slyde Richard Slykes William Smack Joseph Small Robert Smallpiece John Smallwood (2) Peter Smart John Smight William Smiley Abraham Smith Alexander Smith Allan Smith Andrew Smith ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... severe sense of disappointment. The book is brilliant almost without a rival in its best passages, but these are comparatively few, and they are divided from one another by tracts of pathless desert. The narrative sometimes descends into a mere slough of barbarous names, a marish of fabulous genealogy, in which the lightest attention must take wings to be supported at all. For instance, the geographical and historical account of the Ten Tribes occupies a space equivalent to a modern octavo volume of at least four hundred pages, through which, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... the manner in which ten minutes in the society of a man, who would have been adjudged by many most uninspiring, had transformed me. It seemed the mere sight of this simple bushman, in his 'bell-bottomed' Sunday trousers, had lifted me up from a slough of hopeless inertia to a plane upon which life was a master musician, and all my veins the strings from which he drew ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... examinations. A Sunny Bank diploma was a sure passport. When the girls worked they worked hard, and when playtime came it was enjoyed to the full. Naturally, with so many dispositions surrounding her, Miss Preston often in secret floundered in a "slough of despond," for that which could influence one girl for her good might prove a complete failure when brought to bear upon another. Never was the old adage, "What is one man's meat is another man's ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... blessed, by referring all our purity to the Lord that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of heathenism to whom he spoke. But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like God's was the most natural thing in the world. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... glancing round its mildewed walls, comfortless and bare, the neglected, weed-grown garden, Sibyll had shuddered in dismay. Had her ambition fallen again into its old abject state? Were all her hopes to restore her ancestral fortunes, to vindicate her dear father's fame, shrunk into this slough of actual poverty,—the butterfly's wings folded back into the chrysalis shroud of torpor? The vast disparity between herself and Hastings had not struck her so forcibly at the court; here, at home, the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Gjatz, he had found the slough of Czarewo-Zaimcze without a bridge, and completely encumbered with carriages. He had dragged them out of the marsh in sight of the enemy, and so near to them that their fires lighted his labours, and the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... yelping for Hardy's aid. He sprang down and unyoked them and over they scrambled and were gone, ringing like fire-bells. Outside the fence, both right and left, the ground was miry, yet for us it was best to struggle round through the bushy slough; which we had barely done when with sudden curses Hardy spurred forward. The younger dogs were off on a separate chase of their own. For at the river-bank the four negroes had divided by ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... of mild champagne, one after the other, as quickly as I could, but it did not quench my thirst. I was feverish and would have given anything in the world for something to interest me suddenly and have absorbed me and lifted me out of that slough in which my heart and my brain were being engulfed, as if in a quicksand. I did not venture to avow to myself what was making me so dejected, what was torturing me and driving me mad with grief, or to scrutinize the muddy bottom of my present thoughts sincerely ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... anything he's done or has, it's just because it's HIM, I suppose, but I know my chance is gone for good! THAT leaves me free to act for her; no one can accuse me of doing it for myself. And I swear she sha'n't go through that slough of despond again while I have breath in ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... Christ, his holy name be us amang, What is this? for Saint James!—I may not well gang. I trust I be the same. Ah! my neck has lain wrang Enough Mickle thank, since yester-even Now, by Saint Stephen! I was flayed with a sweven,—[140] My heart out of slough.[141] I thought Gill began to croak, and travail full sad, Well nigh at the first cock,—of a young lad, For to mend our flock: then be I never glad. To have two on my rock,—more than ever I had. Ah, my head! A house full of young tharmes,[142] The devil knock out their harnes![143] Woe ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... observe, how the appearance of characters will change, whilst the root that produces them remains the same. The Washington faction having waded through the slough of negociation, and whilst it amused France with professions of friendship contrived to injure her, immediately throws off the hypocrite, and assumes the swaggering air of a bravado. The party papers ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... walk. scald, a poet. mall, a mallet. sew'er (so'er), one who sews. slough (sluf), a snake's skin. sew'er (su'er), a drain. slough, a miry place. court'e sy, civility. wear, a dam in a river. courte'sy, a slight bow. wear, waste. slav'er, a slave ship. min'ute (min'it), sixty seconds. slav'er, spittle. mi nute', very small. i'ron y ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... Dr. Holland narrates, "Lincoln was one day riding by a deep slough or pit in which, to his exceeding pain, he saw a pig struggling, and with such faint efforts that it was evident that he could not extricate himself. Lincoln looked at the pig and the mud that enveloped him, and then looked ruefully at some new clothes in ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... night the major, calling at Captain Dade's, was concerned to hear that Mrs. Dade was not at home. "Gone over to the hospital with Mrs. Blake and the doctor," was the explanation, and these gentle-hearted women, it seems, were striving to do something to rouse the lad from the slough of despond which had engulfed him. That night "Pink" Marble, Hay's faithful book-keeper and clerk for many a year, a one-armed veteran of the civil war, calling, as was his invariable custom when the trader was absent, to leave the keys of ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... daughter-in-law told me to bring whatever I found" so he wrapped it up in leaves and took it home; and his daughter-in-law told him that he had done well and bade him hang up the packet at the back of the house. A few days later he found the slough of a snake and he took that home and his daughter-in-law told to tie a clod of earth to it to prevent its being blown away, and to throw it on to the roof ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... steadily on. The sand was hard enough and offered sufficient resistance to the broad hoof of a horse, but if one stood still for a minute or so, it began gradually to silt up and bury it. It was a horrible place. When at noon that devil's slough resolved itself into a comparatively narrow strip, and Dorothy saw that they could easily have left it, she began to understand their reason for keeping on such dangerous ground—they did not wish to leave any tracks behind them. In all truth there was ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... opening it out, we found, to our great astonishment, that it contained a printed pamphlet. We were all curious to see what sort of a pamphlet such a person would read; what it could contain that he seemed to have had such a care about. For the slough in which it was rolled was fine chamois leather; what colour it had been could not be known. But the pamphlet was wrapped so close together, and so damp, rotten, and yellow that it seemed one solid piece. We all concluded from some words that we could make out that it was ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... who had so confidently expected her to win it, and her own thoughts were too painful to be left alone with. If Hinpoha had been wandering in the Desert of Waiting for the past few months, Migwan was sunk deep in the Slough of Despond. She was at the age when death seemed preferable to defeat, and she wished miserably that she would fall ill of some mortal disease, and never have to face the world again with failure written on her forehead. "Oh, why," she wailed in anguish of spirit, as has many an older and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions ... accepts the lesson with calmness ... is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms ... perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house ... perceives that it waits a little while in the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... was easy to be saved, while Bunyan, a greater humorist, could be saved only in following a path that skirted madness, and 'as by fire.' To Bunyan, Walton would have seemed a figure like his own Ignorance; a pilgrim who never stuck in the Slough of Despond, nor met Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow, nor was captive in Doubting Castle, nor stoned in Vanity Fair. And of Bunyan, Walton would have said that he was among those Nonconformists who 'might be sincere, well-meaning men, whose indiscreet zeal might be so like charity, ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... garbage, lingers the trace of beauty; and there, surely, though sepulchred in the caverns of vice, dwells something that was once innocence, and not unredeemable. But whence is the friendly word to come, whence the guardian hand that might lift them from the slough. They live accursed by even charity, shunned by philanthropy, and shut from the Christian world like a tribe of lepers whose touch is contagion and whose breath is pestilence. In the glittering halls of fashion, the ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... gathered at night by the light of the moon, and the ill-boding wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf, that was wont to change its appearance of a wild beast into {that of} a man. Nor is there wanting there the thin scaly slough of the Cinyphian water-snake,[37] and the liver of the long-lived stag;[38] to which, besides, she adds the bill and head of a crow that had sustained {an existence of} nine ages. When, with these and a thousand other things without a name, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... undertaken and it almost looked as if the flood would beat him. The trench from which they dug the soil they needed filled with water, the spades got slippery with rain and mud, and the horses sank in the trampled slough. Kit, however, had made his plans while he looked for help and had forgotten nothing that he might want. Hammers, drills, and a can of powder had been brought, and now and then a dull report rolled across the dale and heavy stones crashed ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... boots, &c., were all wet through; while water, dripping from the tent poles and door, lay on the floor, soaked the sleeping-bags, and made the situation inconceivably miserable. In the midst of this slough, however, Keohane had the spirit to make up a rhyme, which is worth quoting mainly, if not solely, because of the conditions under ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... more humble and scrupulous spirits often undergo fearful misery before they can attain to such security of their own faith as they believe essential. Indeed, this state of wretchedness is almost deemed a necessary stage in the Christian life, like the Slough of Despond in the Pilgrim's Progress; and with such a temperament as David Brainerd's, the horrors of the struggle for hope were dreadful and lasted for months, before an almost physical perception of light, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the advantage your quotation has given me, by overwhelming you with the refutation with which the victim Cassio replies to the tempter Iago. I only wish you to know, that there is one person at least sorry to see a youth of talents and expectations sink into the slough in which the inhabitants of this house ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... she had taken Peter at his word and married him? What about Peter's career? Was there any way by which Peter's poverty for one would be comfort for two? Was there any reason why Peter, with his splendid ability, should settle down to the hack-work of general practice, the very slough out of which he had so ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... once an individual feels he is responsible to himself for undue physical indulgences—for laws of natural life set at naught, and spiritual impulses disregarded—he will try to emerge from the slough of evil, and he will learn with startling rapidity to value all joys of the senses less and less. There can be no high order of morality without this sense of responsibility, for when a man feels he is moulding his own character, forming, as it were, fresh links in the chain of endurance, ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... exertion he was undergoing from the mere weight of his useless baggage. He said he preferred it; he considered that he was not properly equipped without that enormous sack—big as that which the "Pilgrim's Progress" man shuffled off when he scrambled out on the right side of the Slough of Despond. I think he regarded the trip to the river—though we drove comfortably to it, and drove home again the same evening—as a serious expedition into unknown wilds, and was buoyed up throughout with the fancy that he ranked with the eminent explorers ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... The country about Melbourne, and far inland, was boggy, the soil being volcanic, and abounding in mud which appears to have no bottom. The road to the mines was all the worse for having been ploughed up by bullock teams, and worked into a slough which proved the discouragement of mining parties. Some were even months in traversing the comparatively small distance across the country to the goal they sought. But the attraction of money, which is said to make the ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... and south, the early American road was a veritable Slough of Despond. Watery pits were to be encountered wherein horses were drowned and loads sank from sight. Frequently traffic was stopped for hours by wagons which had broken down and blocked the way. Thirteen wagons ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... everyday life, and reproduce what he had been brought up amidst in his native county, or had noticed in his tinker's wanderings. "Born and bred," writes Kingsley, "in the monotonous Midland, he had no natural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country houses, he saw about him." The Slough of Despond, with its treacherous quagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a wayfarer might heedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half drowned in mire; Byepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile and footpath ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... the first place, take this for your motto at the commencement of your journey, that the difference of going just right, or a little wrong, will be the difference of finding yourself in good quarters, or in a miserable bog or slough, at the end of it. Of the whole number educated in the Groton stores for some years before and after myself, no one else, to my knowledge, escaped the bog or slough; and my escape I trace to the simple fact of my having put a restraint ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... She seemed indeed like the very spirit of mischief, and, walking briskly in the room, had soon involved me in a kind of quarrel over nothing and (at the least) with nothing intended on my side. I was like Christian in the slough—the more I tried to clamber out upon the side, the deeper I became involved; until at last I heard her declare, with a great deal of passion, that she would take that answer at the hands of none, and I must down upon my knees ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the time," said the old man drily; "and it has long been a commonplace that that slough awaits State Socialism in the end, if it gets to the end, which as you know it did not with us. However it went further than this minimum and maximum business, which by the by we can now see was necessary. The government now found it imperative on them to meet ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... Mulciber consumed; and the figure of Hercules remained, not to be recognized; nor did he have anything derived from the form of his mother, and he only retained the traces of {immortal} Jupiter. And as when a serpent revived, by throwing off old age with his slough, is wont to be instinct with fresh life, and to glisten in his new-made scales; so, when the Tirynthian {hero} has put off his mortal limbs, he flourishes in his more aethereal part, and begins to appear more majestic, and to become venerable in his august dignity. Him the omnipotent ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... in an Iowa slough! Yes, but more than that. This is the first sign of the resurrection which we call spring. When the pilgrims to the Eleusinian mysteries were ridiculed because of the commonplace nature of their ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... spunkies [bog-, goblins] Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is: The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkies Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... I have brought some solace and light into your days, Eleanor? If I died to-morrow, or was lost from sight, you would look back and say: 'He gave me my dearest hours, my most treasured memories. He brought me from the slough of despond to ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... compromise on a basis of three-fifths of the flow to the Mormons and two-fifths to the Mexicans, and in 1886 a degree of stability was secured by formation of the St. Johns Irrigation Company. A large dam, six miles south of St. Johns, created what was called the Slough reservoir. However, this dam was washed out in 1903, after years of drought. Then were several years of discouragement and ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and stranger's-greeting to Lucy—is it Lucy or Ruth?—that gathers wise sayings ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... extraordinary causes results are due. It is strange, for instance, to find that the luck of the thirteen began right back at the time when Jan, motoring back from Uzhitze down the valley of the Morava, coming fastish round a corner, plumped right up to the axle in a slough of clinging wet sandy mud. The car almost shrugged its shoulders as it settled down, and would have said, if cars could speak, "Well, what are you going to do about that, eh?" It was about the 264th mud hole in which Jan's ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... if, under similar circumstances, honeyed words would have been uttered by you? If you had suffered such treatment, and not only you but your children, who were bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, do you not think you would protest? If you were being dragged down into the slough of poverty, disgrace, and wretchedness, and you knew that he who was thus dragging you down could, if he were a true husband and father, place you in a position of comfort and respectability, but who was devouring from you and your children food that you had earned by the most menial drudgery—by ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... I have led them astray. By jingo, there's not a pond or a slough within five miles of the place but they can tell the ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith

... problem of the victuals is solved. When I compare the larval slough sticking to the Scolia's cocoons with the Cetonia-larvae or, better, with the skin cast by these larvae, under cover of the cocoon, at the moment of the nymphal transformation, I establish an absolute identity. The Two-banded Scolia rations each of her ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... "Scrape, hobble, slough, quagmire, hot water, hornet's nest; sea-, peck of troubles: pretty kettle of fish; pickle, stew, imbroglio mess, ado; false position; set fast, stand; dead,-lock,-set; fix, horns of a dilemma, cul de sac; hitch; stumbling block, ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... had been a great treat. Larry kept the two drumsticks as well as the wings of the gobbler. Possibly he might many a time feel a queer little sensation creeping up and down his spinal column as memory carried him back again to that slough, where the treacherous black mud was slowly but surely ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... written, when the unexpected early return of my servant with your packet (your's and he meeting at Slough, and exchanging letters) obliged me to leave off to give its contents a reading.—Here, therefore, I ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... and scarcity ask not the distressed dervish, saying: "How are you?" Unless on the condition that you apply a balm to his wound, and supply him with the means of subsistence:—The ass which thou seest stuck in the slough with his rider, compassionate from thy heart, otherwise do not go near him. Now that thou went and asked him how he fell, like a sturdy fellow bind up thy loins, and take his ass ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... of the scene which grips and moves us. Our attention is centred on Thaddeus's struggle to take his wife's misdeed upon himself; and his failure cannot be described as a peripety, seeing that it sinks him only one degree lower in the slough of despair. Like the scene in Mrs. Dane's Defence, this is practically a piece of judicial drama—a hard-fought cross-examination. But as there is no reversal of fortune for the character in whom we are chiefly interested, it scarcely ranks ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... your account of him last year to me, he seemed a bit of a coxcomb, personally. Poor fellow! to be sure, he had had a long seasoning of adversity, which is not so hard to bear as t'other thing. I hope that this won't throw him back into the 'slough of Despond.' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... his straw-colored hair, so scanty, ill-grown and disheveled, looked less like the stubble it so much resembled. It was almost as though a latent, unsuspected strength were rousing within him, lifting him from the slough of despair by which he was so nearly submerged. It was as though the presence of his twins had drawn from him an acknowledgment of his duty, a sense which was so strongly and incongruously developed in his otherwise uncertain character, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... joy and mighty shouts they bless; The rest allow his choice, and fortune praise, New vigor blushed through those looks of his; It seemed he now resumed his youthful days, Like to a snake whose slough new changed is, That shines like gold against the sunny rays: But Godfrey most approved his fortune high, And wished him ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... valuable an interpolation that would have been! What was it that made this man to set out so long ago for the Celestial City? What was it that so stoutly determined him to leave off all his old companions and turn his back on the sweet refreshments of his youth? How did he do at the Slough of Despond? Did he come that way? What about the Wicket Gate, and the House Beautiful, and the Interpreter's House, and the Delectable Mountains? What men, and especially what women, did he meet ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... turns out. I've got your letters, and if you give me any pertness I'll send them to your father. I presume you grew weary of the amusement and dropped it, didn't you? Well, you dropped Linton with it into a Slough of Despond. He was in earnest: in love, really. As true as I live, he's dying for you; breaking his heart at your fickleness: not figuratively, but actually. Though Hareton has made him a standing jest for six weeks, and I have used more serious measures, and attempted to frighten him out of ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... and those slowly moving boats of hushed heroes creeping across the waters to where the mighty Quebec hills gloomed hugely out. The other is of that quiet church-yard in England, at Stoke Pogis, near Slough, where pilgrims from many parts of the world still wander through the pleasant Buckinghamshire fields to stand where Gray conceived ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... any proper relation to Jimville unless you could slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as a lizard does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee sense of humor into an anticipation ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... Lewis' pistol rang true. The fellow rolled to earth mortally wounded; but Lewis felt the whiz of a bullet past his own head. Having captured more horses than they had lost, the white men at once mounted and rode for their lives through river and slough, sixty miles without halt; for the Minnetarees would assuredly rally a larger band of warriors to their aid. A pause of an hour to refresh the horses and a wilder ride by moonlight put forty more miles between Captain ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... hundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth for at least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner of the next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough of despond. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... 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 his way with pleasure and with ease; So I, designing other ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... his old age abandoned to die, in the swamps, by his timid companions, He prayed to the Virgin on high, and she led him forth from the forest; For angels she sent him as men —in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, —from the slough of despond and the desert. Half-dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktomee [72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... run ahead of my story. When we fell to playing, after breakfast, on the second day away from the caves, Lop-Ear led me a chase through the trees and down to the river. We came out upon it where a large slough entered from the blueberry swamp. The mouth of this slough was wide, while the slough itself was practically without a current. In the dead water, just inside its mouth, lay a tangled mass of tree trunks. Some of these, what of the wear and tear of freshets and of being ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... old friend Jerry Juniper; not, however, the Jerry of the gipsies, but a much more showy-looking personage. Jerry was no longer a gentleman of "three outs"—the difficulty would now have been to say what he was "without." Snakelike he had cast his slough, and rejoiced in new and brilliant investiture. His were "speaking garments, speaking pockets too." His linen was of the finest, his hose of the smartest. Gay rings glittered on his fingers; a crystal snuff-box underwent graceful manipulation; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... had been much rain, for on the prairie there was always too much rain or else too little. It was either drought or flood. Dark swarms of wild ducks were in all the ponds; V-shaped flocks of geese and brants screamed overhead, and down in the slough cranes danced a ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... problem, if by education we mean the development of the whole humanity, not merely of some arbitrarily chosen part of it. How to feed the imagination with wholesome food, and teach it to despise French novels, and that sugared slough of sentimental poetry, in comparison with which the old fairy-tales and ballads were manful and rational; how to counteract the tendency to shallowed and conceited sciolism, engendered by hearing popular lectures on all manner of subjects, which can only be really learnt by stern methodic study; ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... degrees, overdone with work, bereft of conjugal consolations, and weary of a world in which he wandered alone, by the time he was two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... felt certain was lurking somewhere, but that the Prince seemed to feel so certain of his consent; and he feared by thus fulfilling an idly expressed prophecy to plunge the unhappy man still deeper in his slough of superstition. One thing was certain, the Abbe told himself with a smile—nothing on earth or from heaven or hell—if the two latter absurdities existed—could make him believe in the devil. No, not even if the devil should come and take him by the hand, and all the hosts of heaven ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... lived up to its best traditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short of criminal that the English censor should have permitted the world to hold Great Britain in contempt for twenty-four hours and sink poor France in the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, and presumably does not ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... why; running to stations, inquiries, messages, and no baggage. Meanwhile we have not even a clean collar, nothing but very soiled traveling dresses; while Lady Mary Labouchere writes that her carriage will wait for us at Slough Station this afternoon, and we must be off at two. What's to be done? Luckily I did not carry all my dresses to Dunrobin; so I, of all the party, have a dress that can be worn. We go out and buy collars and handkerchiefs, and two o'clock beholds ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... father, and my good lord," replied that pink of courtesy; "I did but wait to cast my riding slough, and to transmew myself into some civil form meeter ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... Before the gate stood Pyrrhus, threat'ning loud, With glitt'ring arms conspicuous in the crowd. So shines, renew'd in youth, the crested snake, Who slept the winter in a thorny brake, And, casting off his slough when spring returns, Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns; Restor'd with poisonous herbs, his ardent sides Reflect the sun; and rais'd on spires he rides; High o'er the grass, hissing he rolls along, And brandishes by fits his ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... commence the upward career of the race, whose earthly goal is the state of primeval perfection; whose heavenly it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Then in that bright Millennium, whose radiance streams through the advancing ages, shall man cast off the slough of ignorance and sin, and rise like the painted butterfly, on the wings of faith, into the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... obtain a position elsewhere. Surely, Ella, you are too true a Southern girl to have given your heart unsought, unasked to your knowledge till last night. Your very pride should rescue you from such a slough as this." ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... late, happily, to drag you out of this wretched slough into which you are sinking. Whatever the cost, that shall ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... was saying" (Lord Southend spoke a little lower), "she went straight from the Duchess of Slough's ball to the station, as she was, in a low gown and a scarlet opera cloak—met Edge, whose wife had only been dead three months—and went off with him. You know the rest of the story. It was a near run for young Harry Tristram! How is the ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... without friends, without hope, without any curiosity about anything, and he was seized with a feeling of misery and a wish to run away, to hide himself in Paris, in his cafe and his lethargy! All the thoughts, all the dreams, all the desires which are dormant in the slough of stagnating hearts had reawakened, brought to life by those rays of sunlight ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... try to be "careful and not captious," as you suggest, but more than all, I shall try not to run myself or my cause into the slough of political schemes or schemers. And I pray you, be prudent and conscientious, and do not surrender one iota of true principle or of our philosophy of reform to aid ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... shirt; Lilacs drenched, Laburnums pallid; Spirits quenched, Souls squalid; Tennis "off," Icy breeze; Croak, cough, Wheeze, sneeze; Cramped cricket, Arctic squall; Drenched wicket, Soaked ball; Park a puddle. Row a slough; Muck, muddle, Slush, snow; Hay-fever (No hay!) Spoilt beaver, Shoes asplay; Lilies flopping, Washed-out roses; Eaves dropping, Red noses; Pools, splashes, Spouts, spirts; Swollen sashes. Gutters, squirts; Limp curls, Splashed hose; Pretty girls, Damp shows; Piled grates, Cold ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various

... the great numerical majority of the inhabitants bear this character, he spoke truly, inasmuch as the great numerical majority of the inhabitants are negroes, among the most depraved in the island. Kingston is like the slough of Despond, a place whither all the scum and filth of the negro population in the east end of the island do continually run, and make it a very sink of wickedness. But are the white families and the large number of thoroughly respectable colored families to be confounded with this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength? our opprobrium for their glory? and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... miles distant from Stoke lies the village of Slough, rendered famous by the residence of the celebrated astronomer, Sir William Herschel, and a short way further, on a gentle slope continued the whole way from Stoke, stand the venerable towers of time-honored Eton, on the bank of the Thames, directly opposite, and looking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... said Phellion. "The dinner hour summons us; I think that, little by little, we have allowed this conversation to drift toward the miry slough of backbiting." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... heart or conscience, who had allowed his lawful wife to sink into an abyss of degradation. However bad she might be, the blame certainly rested with him as the stronger. If it was impossible to live with her now, he might, at any rate, have stretched out his hand long ago, and rescued her from the slough of despond ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... in my dream, that just as they had ended their 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 ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... to lose, as February was nearly over. I took a steerage passage to San Francisco, resolving that I would mend my fortunes. It is so easy to drift. I was already in the social slough, a hobo and an outcast. I saw that as long as I remained friendless and unknown nothing but degraded toil was open to me. Surely I could climb up, but was it worth while? A snug farm in the Northwest awaited me. I would work my way back there, and arrive decently clad. Then none ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... act, but living yet in spirit, and influencing the commonplace facts to which they have yielded the field, permeating the everyday routine with the ennobling power of lofty desires, and keeping the wayworn traveller from sinking into the slough of materialism or the quicksands of utter weariness. The man who in his youth dreamed of elevating his kind by a noble employment of the gifts of genius, may find that genius apparently useless, a hindrance even to prosperity, but he can nevertheless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... which you have ventured for the love of the country, form a sad quagmire. They are like John Bunyan's Slough of Despond, into which, as he observes, millions of cart-loads of good resolutions have been thrown, without perceptibly mending the way. From what you say, and from what I have heard from others, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... mighty works, passed away without handing on a legacy of health to succeeding time! But if a sinner is turned from the error of his ways, if salvation comes to a nature destined for immortality, and lifts it from the slough of sin to the light of God, the results must be greater ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... live on Schumann's earnings, though she insisted that Schumann was assured of one thousand thalers a year, and she could earn an equal sum with one concert a winter in Dresden, where prices were so high. But just then the prosperity of Schumann's paper began to slough off. It occurred to the lovers that they would prefer to live in Vienna, and that the Zeitschrift could prosper there. There were endless difficulties, a censorship to pacify, and many commercial schemes to arrange, but nothing must be left untried. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... himself because the pain whipped him. She was wondering how to explain a little accident to the Melancolia. At any rate, if this man really desired the solace of her company— and certainly he would relapse into his original slough if she withdrew it—he would not be more than just a ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... hope it won't be that long before we have any good news," said Betty, trying to speak lightly. This would never do, she thought. They simply had to find some way out of this terrible slough of despondency ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope

... their present. The visible world is visible only to a few, the moral world is a closed book to nearly all. I was full of France, and France had to be got rid of, or pushed out of sight before I could understand England; I was like a snake striving to slough its skin. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... her mother spent in studying and discussing the latest fashion-plates, but the elaborate descriptions of expensive costumes plunged the girl into another state of bewilderment and slough of despond. She heartily regretted having accepted the invitation. She began to dread the party as an execution—to shrink from exhibiting herself to Christian with the fine ladies and gentlemen who would form the company at Mrs. Van Pelt's. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hopes from them afterward. They will be dissipated, lost in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence." ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... how valuable an interpolation that would have been! What was it that made this man to set out so long ago for the Celestial City? What was it that so stoutly determined him to leave off all his old companions and turn his back on the sweet refreshments of his youth? How did he do at the Slough of Despond? Did he come that way? What about the Wicket Gate, and the House Beautiful, and the Interpreter's House, and the Delectable Mountains? What men, and especially what women, did he meet and converse with on his way? What were his fortunes, and what his misfortunes? How much did he ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... gone when the current began to run strong. It hardly seemed advisable to travel with it after dark. We might pass the ranch, or be carried against a rock-bound coast, or find difficulty in landing and be overwhelmed by the tidal bore. So when darkness fell we camped pulling our boat out in a little slough to prevent it from being carried away. Evidently we were too near the headwaters for a tidal bore, for at eleven P.M. the waters turned and came back as quietly as ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... (2) Richard Skinner Peter Skull (2) David Slac Benjamin Slade Thomas Slager John Slane Jean Louis Slarick Measer Slater Matthew Slaughter John Slee Thomas Slewman Samuel Slide Joseph Slight Josiah Slikes Christopher Sloakum Edward Sloan Timothy Sloan Andrew Sloeman Thomas Slough Ebenezer Slow Isaac Slowell William Slown Henry Sluddard Samuel Slyde Richard Slykes William Smack Joseph Small Robert Smallpiece John Smallwood (2) Peter Smart John Smight William Smiley Abraham Smith Alexander Smith Allan Smith ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... miners: he recognized merit when he saw it. From that morning a feeling of self-respect dawned upon me, I was not so altogether ignorant as I had thought myself, I had some available knowledge; and with that feeling came the determination to raise myself out of that slough of despond into which I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... might be their portion ere the night was done. They saw the corn that was their winter store to save their offspring from famine poured out like ditch-water. They saw oats and wheat flung down to be trodden into a slough of mud and filth. They saw the walnut presses in their kitchens broken open, and their old heirlooms of silver, centuries old, borne away as booty. They saw the oak cupboards in their wives' bed-chambers ransacked, and the homespun linen and the quaint bits of plate that had formed ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... oats," and "having his fling," or "driven to the bad," because once an individual feels he is responsible to himself for undue physical indulgences—for laws of natural life set at naught, and spiritual impulses disregarded—he will try to emerge from the slough of evil, and he will learn with startling rapidity to value all joys of the senses less and less. There can be no high order of morality without this sense of responsibility, for when a man feels he is moulding his own character, forming, as it ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... of the same sort is displayed in the logical department of Huxley's Physical Basis of Life; where, after trying to persuade us to put our feet on the ladder which leads in the reverse direction from Jacob's, and to descend with him into the slough of materialism, and affirming that "our thoughts are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena;" he goes on to say, that he does not believe in materialism. And he tries to vindicate himself by asserting that "we ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... cannot be compared with another's, there being no medium between valuable and worthless. How many over-worked, under-paid men have we known in New York, really gifted with this inexplicable knack at writing, who, well commanded and justly compensated, lifted high and dry out of the slough of poor-devilism in which their powers were obscured and impaired, could almost have made the fortune of a newspaper! Some of these Reporters of Genius are mere children in all the arts by which men prosper. A Journalist of Genius would know their value, understand their case, take care ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... watched the first few puffs, awaiting a repartee. None came. I felt a qualm of apprehension. Was he already becoming de-Paragot-ised? I did not realise then what it means to a man to cast aside the slough of many years' decay, and take his stand clean before the world. He shivers, is liable to catch cold, like the tramp whose protective hide of filth is summarily removed in the workhouse bath. Nor did my dear lady realise this. How could she, bright ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not answer "immoral," let the morality of the principle of utility ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... the simple yet lucid and modest account that he gave of his repeated endeavours; he caught a glimpse of the glory that so penetrating an observer might reflect on his reign, ensured to him a pension of 300 guineas a year, and moreover a residence near Windsor Castle, first at Clay Hall and then at Slough. The visions of George III. were completely realized. We may confidently assert, relative to the little house and garden of Slough, that it is the spot of all the world where the greatest number of discoveries have been made. The name of that village will never perish; science will ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... even his straw-colored hair, so scanty, ill-grown and disheveled, looked less like the stubble it so much resembled. It was almost as though a latent, unsuspected strength were rousing within him, lifting him from the slough of despair by which he was so nearly submerged. It was as though the presence of his twins had drawn from him an acknowledgment of his duty, a sense which was so strongly and incongruously developed in his otherwise uncertain character, and demanded of him a sacrifice of all personal ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... sitting in the train one day coming home, he overheard two men talking about turtles going up. Must have been two hotel men. Anyway, that gave Sam an idea and he started right in wading through Petersen's slough for turtles. Why, he pulled up barrels of them, and would you believe it, they sold in the city for real money! Sam went crazy—about as crazy as Mary Hagley got over her luck. And then along came rheumatism ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... made itself felt, even in the old days of successful achievement among men who were content to tread the beaten and commonplace highway toward riches. The spirit of the West gripped him in its great, enveloping hands, picked him out of the slough and set him down again, plump upon his two feet, high and dry, prodding him violently all the while with a spur that would not permit him to stop or to take a step backward, with the natural result that he moved forward—slowly, dazedly at first, and then ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... at express speed through Slough, Didcot, and other small stations. It was within a mile of London, when my thoughts suddenly drifted. Why had Sir Roland not sent James direct to Windsor to meet Dick, instead of wasting time by sending ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... the temperature. The town had been on fire; in a blaze. But at night it had come on to rain in torrents, and all night long it had rained without cessation. We had a pair of very strong horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than a couple of miles an hour, through one unbroken slough of black mud and water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now the coach sank down in it almost to the windows. The air resounded in all directions with the loud chirping ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... depth of winter—the cross-roads on which they moved were in the most frightful condition, insomuch that had not the zealous Mayor of Barbonne collected 500 horses, and come to their assistance, they must have been forced to leave all their artillery in a slough near that town; yet this determined band marched nearly forty miles ere they halted with the dark. Next morning they proceeded with equal alacrity, and at length debouched on the road by which Blucher's army was advancing, at Champaubert. Alsusieff ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... fourteen-hour working day John Cardigan and his men could not cut more than twenty thousand feet of lumber. Nevertheless, when Cardigan looked at his mill, his great heart would swell with pride. Built on tidewater and at the mouth of a large slough in the waters of which he stored the logs his woods-crew cut and peeled for the bull- whackers to haul with ox-teams down a mile-long skid-road, vessels could come to Cardigan's mill dock to load and lie safely in twenty feet of water at low tide. Also this dock was sufficiently far up the bay ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... portion, and where he rules supreme, and for ever to aspire to a realm from which he is shut out. He is convinced that with the help of a woman he may redeem himself—and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough of his own sensuality. He becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the pleasure whose slave he is ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... with this emergency, a catechism one would need an hour to satisfy. And all attempts would be futile to make them understand that, while they plagued him with futile questions, a murderer and spy and thief was making good his escape, being afforded ample opportunity to slough all traces of his recent work and resume unchallenged his place ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... he, David Carrigan, was the chosen one to consummate its desire. Yet in spite of that he felt upon him the strange unrest of a greater adventure than the quest for Black Roger. It was like an impending thing that could not be seen, urging him, rousing his faculties from the slough into which they had fallen because of his wound and sickness. It was, after all, the most vital of all things, a matter of his own life. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had tried to kill him deliberately, with malice and intent. That she had saved him afterward only added ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... muttered Harley, when the door had closed upon the parson. "The viper and the viper's brood! So it was this man's son that I led from the dire Slough of Despond; and the son unconsciously imitates the father's gratitude and honour—Ha, ha!" Suddenly the bitter laugh was arrested; a flash of almost celestial joy darted through the warring elements of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... portion of the enemy, and commenced a heavy fire upon them, which was returned. General Dodge's squadron and the United States' troops, soon came into the action, and with General Henry's men, rushed upon the Indians, killing all in the way, except a few who succeeded in swimming a slough of the Mississippi, about a hundred and fifty yards wide. During this time the brigades of Alexander and Posey, in marching down the bank of the river, fell in with another party of Indians, and killed or routed the whole of them. When the Indians were ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. HENRY ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... surveyor, and has caused much professional animosity. Old men with one foot in the grave, in this year 1895, are still accusing each other of embezzling acres of it; the devil of Discord, and Mercury the god of thieves, encamped upon it; the Port Albert Company fell into its Slough of Despond, which in the Court of Equity was known as "Kemmis v. Orr," and there all ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers- up of wavering feet. When these impediments were passed, heather and slough followed. Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned round to look at the view below them. The scene of the moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... the Jerry of the gipsies, but a much more showy-looking personage. Jerry was no longer a gentleman of "three outs"—the difficulty would now have been to say what he was "without." Snakelike he had cast his slough, and rejoiced in new and brilliant investiture. His were "speaking garments, speaking pockets too." His linen was of the finest, his hose of the smartest. Gay rings glittered on his fingers; a crystal snuff-box underwent graceful manipulation; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... kind of muddy twilight through which we are about to tramp and flounder for the rest of our existence, wandering farther and farther from the beauty and freshness and from the kindly gushing springs of clear gladness that made all around us green in our youth! One wanders and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise—to mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... but dry bread before my poor children for their dinner." These children were two sons, whose education their mother entirely undertook, until, after old Madame Reyer's death in 1837, she succeeded to an inheritance, which lifted the little family out of the slough of poverty, and enabled her to provide ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... precarious footing. He could not regain his balance, he could not even for an instant stand upright on it. But from its support he leapt on convulsively, and, as a pike, flung from above, wounded him in the shoulder, he fell his length in the slough—but forward, with his outstretched hands resting on soil of a harder nature. They sank, it is true, to the elbow, but he dragged his body forward on them, and forward, and freeing one by a last effort of strength—he could not ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... wood-ashes) "and a tub full of fresh milk, and as many whips as a boy can carry in his arms,—and have all these brought into your bed-chamber. Then, when the Lindworm tells you to shed a shift, do you bid him slough a skin. And when all his skins are off, you must dip the whips in the lye and whip him; next, you must wash him in the fresh milk; and, lastly, you must take him and hold him in your arms, if ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen

... matter, and discover the fraud he felt certain was lurking somewhere, but that the Prince seemed to feel so certain of his consent; and he feared by thus fulfilling an idly expressed prophecy to plunge the unhappy man still deeper in his slough of superstition. One thing was certain, the Abbe told himself with a smile—nothing on earth or from heaven or hell—if the two latter absurdities existed—could make him believe in the devil. No, not even ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... as Dr. Brown enthusiastically styles him, was christened on November 30th, 1628. He was born in a cottage, long fallen, and hard by was a marshy place, "a veritable slough of despond." Bunyan may have had it in mind when he wrote of the slough where Christian had so much trouble. He was not a travelled man: all his knowledge of people and places he found at his doors. He had some schooling, "according to the rate ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... stamped as authoritative.[13] On Whit-Sunday 1782, William and Caroline Herschel played and sang in public for the last time in St. Margaret's Chapel, Bath; in August of the same year the household was moved to Datchet, near Windsor, and on April 3, 1786, to Slough. Here happiness and honours crowded on the fortunate discoverer. In 1788 he married Mary, only child of James Baldwin, a merchant of the city of London, and widow of Mr. John Pitt—a lady whose domestic virtues were enhanced by ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... personages among his friends, from Madame de Stael to Alexander Baring of the famous London banking house. Unlike many native Americans he did not need to learn the ways of European courts, because he was to the manner born: he had no provincial habits which he must slough off or conceal. Also he knew himself and the happy qualities with which Nature had endowed him—patience, philosophic composure, unfailing good humor. All these qualities were to be laid under heavy requisition in the work ahead ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... the circumstances, but I never heard about the bear and bull episode before. I seem to have sort of a dim notion that you were packing a deer home on your back and fell into a barranca with it and lost it in a mud slough, but perhaps I'm mistaken. You forgot to tell me the facts, ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... elder daughter, was engaged to a man in England who had spent twelve months in the house to learn German, and their marriage was to take place at the end of the year. But the young man wrote that his father, an india-rubber merchant who lived in Slough, did not approve of the union, and Fraulein Thekla was often in tears. Sometimes she and her mother might be seen, with stern eyes and determined mouths, looking over the letters of the reluctant lover. Thekla painted in water ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... the spirits of light; the Asuras are the spirits of darkness. Therewith is indissolubly connected the idea that sin and darkness are of the same nature. So one reads that when the sun rises it frees itself 'from darkness, from sin,' as a snake from its slough (ib. II. 3. I. 6). And in another passage it is said that darkness and illusion were given to the Asuras as their portion by the Father-god (ib. II. 4. 2. 5). With this may be compared also the frequent grouping of The Asuras or Rakshas with darkness (e.g., ib. III. 8. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... heart than mine, and left it an easy, pleasant matter for you to be good; while, struggle as I may, I am constantly in danger of tumbling into some slough of iniquity, or setting up false gods for my soul to bow down to. Because it is so much more difficult for me to do right than for you, it is only just that my reward should be ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... other people out of their troubles was not helping the Days out of their particular Slough of Despond. So many difficulties seemed reaching out to clutch at Janice and Daddy! The girl thought it was like walking through a briar-patch. Every step ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... this region of the Columbia was named Wappatoo Island by the explorers. This is a large extent of country lying between the Willamette and an arm of the Columbia which they called Wappatoo Inlet, but which is now known as Willamette Slough. It is twenty miles long and from five to ten miles wide. Here is an interesting description of the manner of gathering the roots of the wappatoo, of which we have heard so much in this ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder that he ventured to address such wide, absolute commandments to the handful of people just dragged from the very slough and filth of heathenism to whom he spoke. But he had dwelt with Christ, and they had Christ in their hearts. So for him to command and for them to obey, and to aim after even so wide and wonderful an attainment as perfecting like God's was the most natural thing in the world. 'Be ye holy as He that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... interest that she was surprised when the meal was finished. Afterward, she and Mrs. Hastings talked with the housekeeper for a while, and an hour had slipped away when Wyllard suggested that he should show her the slough ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... he wanted when he threw himself on Sanskrit was history, human history, world-history, and with an unerring grasp he laid hold of Vedic literature and Buddhist literature, as the two stepping-stones in the slough of Indian literature. He died young, and has left a few arches only of the building he wished to rear. But his spirit lived on in his pupils and his friends, and few would deny that the first impulse, directly or indirectly, to all that ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... spurned from your door, was none other than a fairy prince, who will this very day lift you from the slough of grovelling poverty to the realms of affluence and ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient

... firm, who is unmoved, who never laughs, or apologizes, or deprecates, or makes concessions, or assents through good-nature, or goes abroad; who is not afraid of giving offense; "who answers you without supplication in his eye,"—in fact, who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of life. You may wrestle with this man, he says, or swim with him, or lodge in the same chamber with him, or eat at the same table, and yet he is a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. He is a sheer precipice, is this man, and not to be trifled ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... anyhow a bit of a comfort to her. And then I remembered how she belonged to me, how she had been given to me by her own father to cherish and care for. And so I plucked up courage to intrude upon her while she was still wallowing in her Slough of Despair. And I didn't pester her with preliminaries. We're past that stage, you and I, Muriel. I simply came to her because it seemed absurd to wait any longer. And I just asked her humble-like to fix a day when we would get up very early, and bribe the padre and sweet Lady ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... blood is well up; and he will take to his book, if you will give him a schoolmaster. What is he, indeed, but the rough block of English character? Hew him out of the quarry of ignorance; dig him out of the slough of everlasting labor; chisel him, and polish him; and he will come out whatever you please. What is the stuff of which your armies have been chiefly made, but this English peasant? Who won your Cressys, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... was sinking in a slough Of sloth, and ease, and selfish greed; God surely sent this scourge to mould ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham

... of air was in motion except such as was stirred by the wings of the grasshoppers or was blown from the hot nostrils of the harassed cattle. They passed through the cornfield, over a stubblefield beyond, through a slough, another stubblefield, and on to the open prairie of another section of "Railroad land." The boy and girl made no further attempt to guide them. A cow, with the tickling feet of half a dozen of these devils of torment on the end of a bare, wet nose, was in no state of mind to be argued with, ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... alone at ghost-haunted Klin, where every corner of house and garden spoke to him of his mother. How pitilessly was he dragged through depths of grief and solitude and hopeless longing; till he stumbled, half fainting, deep in the slough of despair! Hopeless and heart-sick, forgetting, and, he believed, forgotten by, every living joy, he fought his battle of temperament hand to hand, imagining every contest lost. Nothing of his past, his present or his future, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal; therefore, I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest they get bemired in a slough of unintelligible learning, or have their brains knocked out by some of those hard Greek names which will be flying about in all directions. But should any of them be too indolent or chicken-hearted to accompany me in this perilous undertaking, they had better take a short cut round, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... of applause, she returned to her corner, leaving more than one of us with streaming eyes, and hearts beating with gratitude. She had taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the slough of difficulty turning the whole tide in our favor. I have never in my life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish spirit of the day, and turned the sneers and jeers of an excited crowd into notes of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... man's reluctance to accept new things, he carefully specified the location and size for each molding on his gun, protesting all the while the futility of such ornaments. Not until the last half of the next century were the experts well enough versed in metallurgy and interior ballistics to slough ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... your head on my heart, felt your cheek touch mine. Then and there I made a covenant with my soul; and no other man's arms shall ever enfold you. Ah, my Rosa Alba! I could dig your grave with my own hands, sooner than see that thief claim you. I am a proud man, and you have dragged me through the slough of humiliation, but to-day, as I bid you good-bye, I realize how one felt, who looking at the bust of him she loved supremely, said with her last breath: 'Voila mon univers, mon espoir, et mes dieux!' How soon we meet again depends solely on your future course. You know the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... defeat yet," were his words when he spoke at last. She listened, still on her knees: "It is a common thing to say that suspense is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a man's neck to sink him in a slough of despondency. I never really believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate, a teacher, a preacher; that ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... egotist. The second was a Parisienne, externally refined—at heart, corrupt—without a creed, without a principle, without an affection: having penetrated the outward crust of decorum in this character, you found a slough beneath. She had a wonderful passion for presents; and, in this point, the third teacher—a person otherwise characterless and insignificant—closely resembled her. This last-named had also one other distinctive property—that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... her whole character seemed to change with a change of fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She was like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears again with the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its happiest age. She was playful, full of confidence, kindness and sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin

... of general sickness, chilliness and some fever. The skin over the sore part is hot and painful. The several dead parts may run together until the entire mass separates in a slough. In favorable cases it proceeds to heal kindly, but in severe cases it may spread to the surrounding tissues and end fatally, sometimes by the absorption of putrid materials, or by the resulting weakness. It runs usually from two to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... before them fast enough at battles of spurs and other encounters. Sudden riches beget insolence, tumults, civic broils. Internecine quarrels, horrible tumults stain the streets with blood, but education lifts the citizens more and more out of the original slough. They learn to tremble as little at priestcraft as at swordcraft, having acquired something of each. Gold in the end, unsanctioned by right divine, weighs up the other forces, supernatural as they are. And so, struggling ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... while he was thus employed—it was Sunday, in August of 19—, when the Egyptian Exhibition was attracting great crowds of visitors—and sitting, as was his habit, on a bench on the centre platform of Slough Station, he noticed an Indian pacing up and down the platform, who every now and then stopped and regarded him with peculiar interest, hesitating as though he wished to speak to him. Presently the Indian came and sat down on the same bench, and after having ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... wretched slough of helplessness, Dorothy found her conviction wavering. Could it really be possible that he was speaking the truth; that he did not know? But with the dreadful thought came also the realization that she must not let him fathom her mind. She told herself that she must ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold, glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous line of slough; when the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and thither, but getting no farther toward any goal at the falling tide or the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... things for which he is best known were results of those accidents that happen only to the indefatigable enthusiast. Such was the discovery of Uranus, which led to funds being provided for constructing his 40-feet telescope, after which, in 1786, he settled at Slough. In the same way, while trying to detect the annual parallax of the stars, he failed in that quest, but discovered binary systems of stars revolving in ellipses round each other; just as Bradley's attack on stellar parallax failed, but ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... a distinct plant from the Self Heal, or Sanicle, and belongs to the labiate order of herbs. It grows commonly in waste places about England, and bears pink flowers, being sometimes called Slough heal. This is incorrect, as the surgical term "slough" was not used until long after the Prunella and the Sanicle became named Self-heal. Each of these was applied as a vulnerary, not to sloughing sores, but to fresh ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... propositions are distinctly materialistic: nay, that whoever commits himself to them will be temporarily landed in 'gross materialism.' Not the less, however, does he, mingling consolation with admonition, recommend us to plunge boldly into the materialistic slough, promising to point out a way of escape from it, and insisting, indeed, that through it lies the only path ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... anaesthetic, is only shirking that duty and avoiding that effort to which the higher life calls us, and the sluggard who sleeps more than the tired nerves need is allowing himself to sink deeper and deeper into a slough of despond. He forgets his toil in sleep, but it is only by active, conscious effort when awake that his work may be lifted to the higher plane where the brain is active, where work ceases to be mechanical and a burden, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... under the driving power of an American general manager. The new administration decided that it, too, would look to the United States for a chief executive of the ruthless efficiency and modern methods which the crisis demanded. They found him in the man who had pulled the Wabash out of a similar slough of despond. Mr Hays was not quite forty when, in 1895, he was appointed general manager of the Grand Trunk. He had risen rapidly since the days when, a boy of seventeen, he had entered the office of the Atlantic and Pacific. At twenty-nine he had been secretary to the general manager, and ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... affection and kindliness as a ripe pear, and the voice that proceeded from her ever-smiling lips was a hoarse and dove-like coo of love. Ellen at first started a little aghast at this gigantic fleshliness, this general slough and slump of outline, this insistency of repellent curves, and then the old woman spoke and thrust out a great, soft hand, and the heart of the child overleaped her artistic sense and her reason, and she thought old ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... under the wagon. The workers were occupied at a little distance, in replacing boxes, beds, and some household trumpery, which had been taken out of the wagon, to enable them to effect its release from the slough in which it had cast one of its wheels, and broken its axle, and the restoration of which had made their supper so late in the night. The heavier difficulties of their labor had been got over, and with limbs warmed and chafed by the extra exercise they had undergone, the whites had thrown ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... chicken! We didn't have anything for supper but coffee and rolls and eggs. He's certainly bringing good things in his wake. How delicious that chicken does smell! Let's take it as a good omen, Alec, a forerunner of better days. He'll surely get you out of your slough of despond." ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... everlasting life; and what were earth's troubles to that? One vision of unseen things, rushing in, made small all the things that are seen. The poor old cripple, deformed and diseased, whose days must have been long a burden to her, was going even now to drop the slough of her mortality and to take on her the robes of light and the life that is all glory. What if my own life were barren for a while; then comes the end! What if I must be alone in my journey; I may do the Master's work ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... continues to extend, parts behind the tip cease to be effective because, as soil particles in direct contact with these tips and hairs dry out, the older roots thicken and develop a bark, while most of the absorbent hairs slough off. This rotation from being actively foraging tissue to becoming more passive conductive and supportive tissue is probably a survival adaptation, because the slow capillary movement of soil moisture fails to replace what the plant used as fast as the plant might like. The plant is far ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon

... is a part of the man," he said. "Take it away by force and he will bleed to death; but if the time comes when he no longer needs it, he will either slough it or convert it into ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... cross-shaped opening, the Anthrax suddenly appears, all moist with the humors of life's laboratory. She steadies herself upon her trembling legs, dries her wings and takes to flight, leaving at the window of the cell her nymphal slough, which keeps intact for a very long period. The sand-colored fly has five or six weeks before her, wherein to explore the clay nests amid the thyme and to take her small share of the joys of life. In July, we shall see her once more, busy this time with the entrance ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... be saved, while Bunyan, a greater humorist, could be saved only in following a path that skirted madness, and 'as by fire.' To Bunyan, Walton would have seemed a figure like his own Ignorance; a pilgrim who never stuck in the Slough of Despond, nor met Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow, nor was captive in Doubting Castle, nor stoned in Vanity Fair. And of Bunyan, Walton would have said that he was among those Nonconformists who 'might be sincere, well-meaning ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... there in the marshes all summer. The negro would fish and Ben would carry him scraps of other food. Then, by and by, it leaked out. Some wood-choppers went on a hunt for the fugitive, and chased him to what was called "Bird Slough." There trying to cross a drift ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... [despondingly.] — That's the truth, surely; and we'd have a right to be gone, if it's a long way itself, as I've heard them say, where you do have to be walking with a slough of wet on the one side and a slough of wet on the other, and you going a stony path with a north wind blowing behind. [They ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge

... regulated. Allow not thyself to be led away by pleasures; shun, like the plague, the foolish familiarities thou seest between some men and women; harmless enough at first, but which by insidious degrees corrupt the heart, and thence lead it to negligence, and then into the vile slough of vice. Credit me, the greatest safeguard to female chastity is sobriety of demeanour. I beseech and direct that thou often call to mind the friendship which was betwixt us; but I do not wish thee to mourn for me too much—an injunction which, so far as it is in my power, I lay on all ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... waiting for Tautuk and Amuk Toolik at the edge of a slough where willows grew deep and green and the crested billows of sedge-cotton stood knee-high. The faces of the herdsmen were sweating. Thereafter Alan walked with them, until in that hour when the sun had sunk to its lowest plane they came to the first ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... masticated; and after the perforation has been much increased by eating salt or spice, or after other copious secretions; as after drunkenness, cathartics, or fever fits, the mucus of the mouth becomes viscid, and in small quantity, from the increased absorption, adhering to the tongue like a white slough. In the diabaetes, where the thirst is very great, this slough adheres more pertinaciously, and becomes black or brown, being coloured after a few days by our aliment or drink. The inspissated mucus on the tongue of those, who sleep with their mouths open, is sometimes reddened as if mixed with blood, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... nearly four months. Alas! how terrible are the reflections which these few weeks suggest! Now borne aloft upon the billows of hope, sparkling in the fitful brightness of a feverish sun, and then plunged into the slough of despair, his proud, dark soul disclaiming all human participation in a misery exaggerated by his own unbending pride. Let us not talk of denying sympathy to persons who create their own miseries; they endure agonies ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... and the mine which hew away and blow up the hard rock. But what can be done against an amorphous mass which gives like a jelly, collapses under the least pressure, and retains no imprint of it? All thought and energy and everything disappeared in the slough. When a stone fell there were hardly more than a few ripples quivering on the surface of the gulf: the monster opened and shut its maw, and there was left no trace of what ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... pages I have described my Pilgrim's Progress from the Slough of Despond, commonly known as Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un (then located at Germaine) through the mysteries of Noyon, Gre and Paris to the Porte de Triage de La Ferte Mace, Orne. With the end of my first day as a certified inhabitant of the latter ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... the second canal, the river rose several feet and was booming as we came out into it, and the strong current carried our boat against a drift on a small overflowed island, and came near sinking or capsizing it. Then the only way we could get off was down over a rough, shoaly slough, where she went like a bucking broncho. The next boat after us was manned by Alabamians, and they went over the lower rock dam that turned the water into the canal; being good swimmers, they got out, ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott

... Brannon. But to the east, the paralleling bluffs lay at a distance, and broke their ridge-back far up the scarlet coulee; from where, southward, stretched a wide gap—ten broad and gently undulating miles—that ended at the slough-studded base of Medicine Mountain. Evan Lancaster, as he stood bareheaded under the unclouded sky, looked about him upon acres heavy with tangled grass and weeds; and pleased with the evident richness of the untouched ground, and with the sheltered ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... of hys lignye/ he wolde not marye ner Ioyne to gyder the two that were born attones/ but gaf vnto caym her that was born wyth Abel/ And to Abel her that was born with caym/ And thus began thenuye that caym had ayenst abel/ For his wyf was fayrer than cayms wyf And for this cause he slough abel with the chekebone of a beste/ & at that tyme was neuer no maner of yron blody of mannes blood/ And abel was y'e first martier in tholde testament/ And this caym dide many other euyl thinges whiche I leue/ ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... De Montaigne, "you have certainly made the most of an argument, which, if granted, would consign government to fools and knaves, and plunge the communities of mankind into the Slough of Despond. But a very commonplace view of the question might suffice to shake your system. Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... from such a war! Let not the mad anger of such a people be aroused. And, gentlemen, if war comes it must be long and terrible. You will see both parties rise in their majesty at both ends of the line. They will slough off every other consideration and devote themselves, with terrible energy, to the work of death. Oh ye! who bring such a calamity as this upon this once happy country! Pause, gentlemen, before you do it, and think of the fearful accountability that awaits you in time ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... before and after his death. He used to be driven about in a cart, and one legend says that he often preached to the woodmen in the wild forests that lay to the north of London. On a certain day one of the cart-wheels came off in a slough. The worthy confessor was in a dilemma. The congregation under the oaks might have waited for ever, but the one wheel left was equal to the occasion, for it suddenly grew invested with special powers of balancing, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... by following the doctrines of Lao Tz[)u]. By and by, this One came to be regarded as a fixed point of dazzling luminosity in remote ether, around which circled for ever and ever, in the supremest glory of motion, the souls of those who had left the slough of humanity behind them. These transcendental notions were entirely corrupted at a very early date by the introduction of belief in an elixir of life, and later still by the practice of alchemistic experiments. Opposed by Buddhism, which next laid a claim for a share in the profits of popular ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... betrayed the cause for which he fought; he deserted the Southern people in the hour of need and joined their enemies. He was begged and implored not to persevere in his course, but he drifted on and on, and floundered deeper and deeper into the mire, until he landed fast in the slough where he sticks to-day. And what has he gained? Scorn, ostracism, odiurn, ill-will—worse than all, the contempt of the men who stood by him in the shower of death and destruction. Let Hesden Le Moyne take ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... at war with fortune. His hopefulness was inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith, whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting lady whom he married,[39] ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... believe we shall triumph. But whether we triumph or no, our life itself is a victory, for it is a life lived in the spirit. To shatter material bonds that we may bind closer the bonds of the soul, to slough dead husks that we may liberate living forms, to abolish institutions that we may evoke energies, to put off the material and put on the spiritual body, that, whether we fight with the tongue or the sword, is the inspiration of our movement, that, and ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... of the lynx, the backbone of the hyena, and the marrow of a stag that had dieted on serpents, the sinews of the remora, and the eyes of a dragon, the eggs of the eagle, the flying serpent of Arabia, the viper that guards the pearl in the Red Sea, the slough of the hooded snake, and the ashes that remain when the phoenix has been consumed. To these she adds all venom that has a name, the foliage of herbs over which she has sung her charms, and on which she had voided ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... should find these rambles dull, but that their utter lack of interest amuses me. I will be honest with the reader, though, and any Master Pliable is free to forsake me at this point; for I cannot promise to be really livelier than my walk. There is a Slough of Despond in full view, and not a Delectable Mountain to be seen, unless you choose so to call the high lands about Waltham, which we shall behold dark blue against the western sky presently. As I ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... a great arc of the foul fen, between the dry bank and the slough, with eyes turned on those who guzzle the mire. We came at length to the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... "is the famous Slough of Despond—a disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that it might so easily ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fugitive efforts alluded to was a prose work entitled Hand and Soul. More poem than story, this beautiful idyl may be briefly described as mainly illustrative of the struggles of the transition period through which, as through a slough, all true artists must pass who have been led to reflect deeply upon the aims and ends of their calling before they attain that goal of settled purpose in which they see it to be best to work from their own heart simply, without regard for the spectres that would draw them ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... under the necessity of knocking some over, when the rest soon jumped off. However, F—- and myself declared we would go right into the quadrangle of the Castle, so we went into the middle of the road and formed a line. Soon a rocket (the signal that the Queen was at Slough) was let off, and then some Life Guards came galloping along, and one of them ran almost over me, and actually trod on F—-'s toe, which put him into dreadful pain for some time. Then came the Queen's carriage, and I thought college would have tumbled ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not, however, abuse the advantage your quotation has given me, by overwhelming you with the refutation with which the victim Cassio replies to the tempter Iago. I only wish you to know, that there is one person at least sorry to see a youth of talents and expectations sink into the slough in which the inhabitants of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... not meant for such an one as I, A plain rough gunner with one only pip. No doubt 'twas destined for some lofty soul Who in a deck-chair lolls, and marks the map And says, "Push here," while I and all my kind Scrabble and slaughter in the appointed slough. But I, presumptuous, wore it, till the gods Called for my laundry with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... fooled him with his wit; he laid little plots to turn his mustache and guitar into ridicule; he seduced him into a hunt with the buckhounds (though Castleton himself had not hunted before since he was thirty), and drew him, spluttering German oaths, out of the slough of a ditch; he made him the laughter of the clubs; he put him fairly out of fashion,—and all with such suavity, and politeness, and bland sense of superiority, that it was the finest piece of high comedy you ever beheld. The poor prince, who had been coxcomb enough to lay a bet with a Frenchman ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... poverty and shame; panting from the hour of his birth for the very breath of life; working from the days of his infancy for daily bread; striving from the years of his boyhood for knowledge; struggling by the most marvelous series of persevering effort out of the slough of infamy into which he had been cast, to his present height of honor! Scarcely twenty-one years old and already recognized not only as the most gifted and promising young member of the bar, but as a rising ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... country is to be likened to their position in China, where the contempt of men denied them souls, or to that among savage tribes, where they are treated as beasts of burden. But because we are not wallowing in the Slough of Despond, it does not follow that we are sitting in the House Beautiful. The traveller who has climbed to the mer de glace at Chamouni, and sees the valley wide outstretched far below him, sees also far ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... in which I have already suffered so much both for myself and for you—for I, too, am proud. Your daughter shall be such as she ought to be; shall do what she ought to do; shall suffer what she ought to suffer. To-morrow all will know from what a slough you have rescued me; in seeing the repentant at the foot of the cross, they will, perhaps, pardon the past in consideration of my present humility. It would not be so, my dear father, if they saw me, as a few ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... these colonizers had their special projects, and each project, being inspired by imperfect ideals, failed more or less, or changed its character from time to time. The first and third projects were at one time guided by the same hand; but the first project gradually cast off its colonizing slough, and resolved itself once more into discovery for discovery's sake; and the third project ceased to be a plan of campaign, and resolved itself into sober and peaceful schemes for settling in the land. Even ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... cozeners: for so soon as I came beyond Eton, they threw me off, from behind one of them, in a slough of mire; and set spurs and away, like three ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them; and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put thyself into the trick of singularity: she thus advises thee that sighs for thee. Remember ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... the course of a half-dried slough where buffalo tracks were visible. Some two miles from camp, the out-runners returned with word that the herds were browsing a short distance ahead, and that the marsh-bed widened to a banked ravine. The buffalo could not have been found in a better place; for there was a fine ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... numbering some sixteen hundred, set out for Fort Union. At Apache Pass, or Pigeon's Ranch, they were met by a Colorado regiment, with what regulars and militia could be found, all under command of Colonel John P. Slough (afterwards chief justice of the Territory), and were defeated, their wagons, ammunition, and all their stores having been destroyed by a party of Union troops under Captain W. H. Lewis, Fifth United States Infantry, and Captain A. B. Cary, of the ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis

... best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Xtian with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and every thing that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... to slough off even their children, in an adolescent impatience with any barrier to an immediate desire. So contrary is this to nature that regret follows closely their decision. The children, however, are laden with ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... as I shall think always, that we might have lived innocently and happily in New England, forgetting and forgotten by the rabble we left behind us, having shaken off the slough of an unhappy life, beginning the world again, under new names, in a new climate and country. It was a guilty dream to entertain, perhaps; but I shall dream it often enough in a strange land, among strange faces and strange manners—shall ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... your pardon, reverend father, and my good lord," replied that pink of courtesy; "I did but wait to cast my riding slough, and to transmew myself into some civil form meeter for this ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... were in the dreadful slough from which he had been lifted, soon began stirring in his heart, and he sought, by various methods, to influence and save them. After working for several months, with only partial success, it became evident, that for sure and permanent work, there must ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... because I wish to remain an honorable man. In the seventeenth century it was a proverbial expression, 'As corrupt as a priest,' and this might be said to-day. I marry, therefore, because I wish to get out of the Ultramontane slough."—Galignani's Messenger, September 19, 1874. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Germans were only two hundred yards on the other side of the parapet) walked on dry earth for at least ten paces. The officer's laughter was loud at the corner of the next traverse, when there was an abrupt descent into a slough of despond. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... asked, "is there any chance of my discarding this and getting out to-morrow?" He touched the handkerchief round his eyes. "It doesn't matter about the head bandages, but the eyes—can't I slough the wraps to-morrow? I feel scarcely any ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a good memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre's slough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his heel; but the tear that trembles in the corner of his eye ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... would have been thrown away upon the melodramatic subjects which Verdi had hitherto affected. Much of his music is really graceful and refined, but his efforts to avoid vulgarity occasionally land him in the slough of sentimentality. Nevertheless, the pathos which characterises some of the scenes has kept 'La Traviata' alive, though the opera is chiefly employed now as a means of allowing a popular prima donna to display her ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... the opening of this line in 1906 the Great Western branch from Maidenhead to Oxford was the only line serving High Wycombe and Prince's Risborough, from which there are branches to Watlington and Aylesbury. The main line of this company crosses the extreme south of the county by Slough and Taplow. The Grand Junction Canal, reaching the valley of the Ouse by way of the Ouzel valley from the south, has branches to Aylesbury and to Buckingham. Except the Thames none of the rivers in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... most, and he, David Carrigan, was the chosen one to consummate its desire. Yet in spite of that he felt upon him the strange unrest of a greater adventure than the quest for Black Roger. It was like an impending thing that could not be seen, urging him, rousing his faculties from the slough into which they had fallen because of his wound and sickness. It was, after all, the most vital of all things, a matter of his own life. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had tried to kill him deliberately, with malice and intent. That she had saved him afterward only ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... matter dies, as a slough in the throat, or the mortified part of a carbuncle, if it be kept moist and warm, as during its abhesion to a living body, it will soon putrify. This, and the origin of contagion from putrid animal substances, seem to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... in two and extends down the thorax. Through this cross-shaped opening, the Anthrax suddenly appears, all moist with the humors of life's laboratory. She steadies herself upon her trembling legs, dries her wings and takes to flight, leaving at the window of the cell her nymphal slough, which keeps intact for a very long period. The sand-colored fly has five or six weeks before her, wherein to explore the clay nests amid the thyme and to take her small share of the joys of life. In July, we shall see her once more, busy this time with the entrance into the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... retire like the elephants of the jungle to some distant spot and shuffle off the mortal coil in the midst of Salisbury Plain or (for so I still picture it despite the ravages of a rude commercialism) the vast solitude of Slough? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... the burden of an empty belly, Made the sweet weight of five and fifty pounds? Us, who wore bearskins in the burning tropics And marched bareheaded through the snows of Russia, Who trotted casually from Spain to Austria? Us who, to free our travel-weary legs, Like carrots from the slough of miry roads, Often with both hands had to lug them out? Us, who, not having jujubes for our coughs, Took day-long foot-baths in the freezing Danube? Who just had leisure when some officer Came riding up, and gayly cried "To arms! The enemy is on us! Drive him back!" To eat a slice ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... a hill, and I proposed to walk down there and let the boat go ahead of us. So Joseph and I got out and struck through a willow swamp along a dim path, and by and by came out on the steep bank of a slough or inlet or something, and we followed that bank forever and ever trying to get around the head of that slough. Finally I noticed a twig standing up in the water, and by George it had a distinct and even vigorous quiver to it! I don't know when I have felt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... here, now, pal! You promised to take me to the States," the adventurer demurred. "You wouldn't slough me at this gravel-pit, after you promised?" He was ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... cabin below them. He glanced at Billy Louise, guessed from her somber face that the villainous mood still held her, and sighed a little. He was not deeply concerned by her mood. He understood her too well to descend into any slough of despondence because she was cross. Then he remembered the reason she had given—the reason he had not believed at the time. They were ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... zeal in the cause, and her raw uncivilised hordes continued to issue forth under the banners of the cross in numbers apparently undiminished, when the enthusiasm had long been on the wane in other countries. They were sunk at that time in a deeper slough of barbarism than the livelier nations around them, and took, in consequence, a longer period to free themselves from their prejudices. In fact the second Crusade drew its chief supplies of men from that quarter, where alone the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... led the Republican party to its duty and its mission, who overcame the numbers of the opposition, who lifted their associates from the slough of prejudice and led them out of the darkness of tradition, let there be all honor and praise. They gave hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless, liberty to the downtrodden. They did more: they elevated the character and enlightened the conscience of the oppressing race. The struggle is ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... aside all anxiety on the score of money. They had but one child, a son, afterwards Sir John Herschel, almost as great an astronomer as his father had been before him. In 1785, the family moved to Clay Hall, in Old Windsor, and in 1786 to Slough, where Herschel lived for the remainder of his long life. How completely his whole soul was bound up in his work is shown in the curious fact recorded for us by Carolina Herschel. The last night at Clay Hall was spent in sweeping the sky with the great glass till daylight; ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... lend a hand in the writing of a few playlets. Becoming convinced of the irresponsible mendacity of the dramatic profession, I gave up the stage, too, vowing never to write except on commission, and sank entirely into the slough of journalism (glad enough to get there), inter alia editing a comic paper (not Grimaldi, but Ariel) with a heavy heart. At last the long apathy wore off, and I resolved to cultivate literature again in my scraps of time. It is a mere accident that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... range "atmosphere." To the Happy Family it seemed a waste of horseflesh to comb a twenty-mile radius of mesa to get a cow and calf which might have been duplicated within a mile of the ranch. The Happy Family knew that Luck was wading chin deep in the slough of despond, and they decided that he kept them riding all day ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... Perhaps you can do something for him. Little kindness he has known for very long. Give him the five shillings by all means; but next morning see you go out, and try what may be done to lift him out of the slough of despond, and to give him a chance for better days! I know that it may be all in vain; and that after years gradually darkening down you may some day, as you pass the police-office, find a crowd at the door, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... think of what there is in life for a man, did he not have Hamlet's doubt to face, I think perhaps we would all be better off for no knowledge of that subjective war. Man has too much to do to lift himself out of the still clinging primordial slough to dally with subjectiveness. We should be acting, aggressive, strident in the strength of the ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... acquired in 1879 by the Corporation of the city of London, and preserved for public use. This tract, the remnant of an ancient forest, the more beautiful because of the undulating character of the land, lies west of the road between Slough and Beaconsfield, and 2 m. north of Burnham Beeches station on the Great Western railway. The poet Thomas Gray, who stayed frequently at Stoke Poges in the vicinity, is enthusiastic concerning the beauty of the Beeches ina letter to Horace Walpole in 1737. Near the township ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... youth, the crested snake, Who slept the winter in a thorny brake; And, casting off his slough when spring returns, Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns: Restored with pois'nous herbs, his ardent sides Reflect the sun, and raised on spires he rides; High o'er the grass hissing he rolls along, And brandishes by fits ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... hope, without any curiosity about anything, and he was seized with a feeling of misery and a wish to run away, to hide himself in Paris, in his cafe and his lethargy! All the thoughts, all the dreams, all the desires which are dormant in the slough of stagnating hearts had reawakened, brought to life by those rays of sunlight ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Tell, "the floodgates of revolution have been opened. From this day they will stalk through the land burning to ashes the slough of oppression which our tyrant Governor has erected in our midst. I have only to add that this is the proudest moment of my ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse

... slough of inadequacy for several years, however, before the people were sufficiently impressed with the necessity of a federal government. When, finally, through the adroit maneuver of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the Constitutional Convention was called in ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... about the cooking. Then I carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and full of rushes—and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap's whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... time," said the old man drily; "and it has long been a commonplace that that slough awaits State Socialism in the end, if it gets to the end, which as you know it did not with us. However it went further than this minimum and maximum business, which by the by we can now see was necessary. The government now found it imperative on them to meet the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless forms lean propped in wild ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... rail. Instead of the slow, solitary, pensive pilgrimage which John Bunyan describes, we travel in fashionable company, and in the most agreeable manner. A certain Mr Smooth-it-away has eclipsed the triumphs of Brunel. He has thrown a viaduct over the Slough of Despond; he has tunnelled the hill Difficulty, and raised an admirable causeway across the valley of Humiliation. The wicket gate, so inconveniently narrow, has been converted into a commodious station-house; and whereas it will be remembered there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... the whole camp, and the outlying guards reported bands of savages skulking about in considerable numbers. "About ten o'clock at night," says Major Denny, "General Butler, who commanded the right wing, was desired to send out an intelligent officer and party to make discoveries. Captain Slough, with two subalterns and thirty men, I saw parade at General Butler's tent for this purpose, and heard the general give Captain Slough very particular verbal orders how to proceed." Slough afterwards testified before a committee of Congress, that ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... like turtles all a-sleepin' in the sand," the old man croaked in rusty accents. "A few was sharp awake and they fought pretty whilst the rest rallied, but they got drove with their backs to the swamp and a deep slough. Then the sloop turned her guns on 'em and they ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... grasp of death. He was worn to the bone either by famine or distemper; his face was overshadowed with hair and filth; his eyes were sunk, glazed, and distorted; his nostrils dilated; his lips covered with a black slough; and his complexion faded into a pale clay-colour, tending to a yellow hue. In a word, the extremity of indigence, squalor, and distress could not be more ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... body" being that of a body composed of very fine atoms (like those of Lucretius' "anima"), which inhabits the earthly body of the Christian like a kernel within its husk, and will one day (at the resurrection) slough off its muddy vesture of decay, and thenceforth exist in a form which can defy the ravages of time. Of the two views, Matthew Arnold's is much the truer, even though it should be proved that St. Paul sometimes pictures the "spiritual body" in ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... calmness of the older man who has fewer years to taste it in. He could not ask the boy to consider, to make no hasty judgment. Whatever lay behind the words, it was something of a grave consequence. And Dick himself led the way out of the slough where they ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... and attentive to his notes; and lo! the venerable old man crying, "What is this, ye laggard spirits? What negligence, what stay is this? Run to the mountain to strip off the slough that lets not God ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... stands before the portal, bright With steel, his head and bust secured in mail, Like to a serpent, issued into light, Having cast off his slough, diseased and stale: Who more than ever joying in his might, Renewed in youth, and proud of polished scale, Darts his three tongues, fire flashing from his eyes; While every frighted ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... have their loads of grain carried over this dreadful place for three or four cents a bushel was to the farmers of the Rock River and Fox River valleys—who, having hauled their wheat from forty to eighty miles to this Slough of Despond, frequently could get it no farther—a privilege which they soon began to appreciate. The road had all it could do, at once. It was a success. There was now no difficulty in getting the stock taken up, and before long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... but not yet was the soul to be out of prison, the pilgrim to be freed from the Slough of Despond. Once more ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... with rain, I left the slough, and gaining the highroad, pressed towards the city to meet the cavalcade. A rushing of people, and a confused cry, told me of its approach. "There he is!" Yes, there! in that open cart, surrounded ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... or conscience, who had allowed his lawful wife to sink into an abyss of degradation. However bad she might be, the blame certainly rested with him as the stronger. If it was impossible to live with her now, he might, at any rate, have stretched out his hand long ago, and rescued her from the slough of despond into which she ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... in which are shaken the whites of 2 eggs; a solution of nitrate of silver, 10 grains to the ounce of water; sugar of lead or sulphate of zinc, 20 grains to an ounce of water; and so on. Or advertised gall cures may be applied. If a sitfest has developed, the dead hornlike slough must be cut out and the wound treated with antiseptics. There is no way we know of to make hair come in with natural color after a wound. The swelling on the colt's leg may he reduced by rubbing ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... his face in his hands, as he clings desperately to the smooth white-oak trunk. A strange, wild strain, like a detached chord of a vesper melody, sounds above him! It is the whippoorwill—steadily, continuously, entrancingly the dulcet measure is taken up and echoed, until the slough of despond seems transformed into a varying diapason of melancholy minstrelsy. He dares not raise his head. It will vanish if he moves. He crouches, panting, almost exultant, in the sense of recovered faculties, or rather the suspension of numbing ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... animal, supposed to be a cow, found two feet below the surface, in digging for the Great Western Railway, near Slough. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... appearance, Van Berg could not help surmising what had been his condition the previous day. Indeed Stanton, with a contemptuous shrug, had the same as said on Sabbath evening, that his uncle had "dropped into the old slough." Although neither of the young men knew how great an impetus Ida had given her father towards such degradation, they both felt that if his wife and daughter had had the tact to detect and appreciate his better ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... reporter, and I did not miss it. The city as landlord in the Bend was fair game. The old houses came down at last, and for a twelvemonth, while a reform government sat at the City Hall, the three-acre lot lay, a veritable slough of despond filled with unutterable nastiness, festering in the sight of men. No amount of prodding seemed able to get it out of that, and all the while money given for the relief of the people was going to waste at the rate of a million dollars a year. The Small Parks Act ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... worthless. The whole life there bore the impress of the slipshod habits engendered by slavery, and it seemed a civilization rotting before ripeness. The city was certainly, at that time, the most wretched capital in Christendom. Pennsylvania Avenue was a sort of Slough of Despond,—with ruts and mud- holes from the unfinished Capitol, at one end, to the unfinished Treasury building, at the other, and bounded on both sides with cheap brick tenements. The extensive new residence ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... Day, August 28, 1844.—The Commissioners of Police having issued orders that several officers of the detective force shall be stationed at Paddington to watch the movements of suspicious persons, going by the down train, and give notice by the electric telegraph to the Slough station of the number of such suspected persons, and dress, their names (if known), also the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... but Hinduism again obtained supremacy, and drove its rival from the field. For centuries, Hinduism under the form of devotion to Shiva Mahadeo, the Great God, as they delight to call him, has had full sway. Is his dominion to last for ever? Are the people to be for ever in the slough of idolatry and superstition? We cannot believe that they are, until we abandon all trust in Him who rightly claims all human hearts, and whose grace is sufficient to enforce these claims. We know not when, we know not how, but we do know that even in Benares, as all the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... east, the paralleling bluffs lay at a distance, and broke their ridge-back far up the scarlet coulee; from where, southward, stretched a wide gap—ten broad and gently undulating miles—that ended at the slough-studded base of Medicine Mountain. Evan Lancaster, as he stood bareheaded under the unclouded sky, looked about him upon acres heavy with tangled grass and weeds; and pleased with the evident richness of the untouched ground, and with the sheltered situation of the claim on the bend, swore ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... His mother's death—that wanton stupidity on the part of fate—and the shock it had somehow caused him, had first drawn him out of the slough of a cheap and facile pleasure on which he now looked back with contempt. Afterwards, his two years of travel, and the joys at once virile and pure they had brought with them, joys of adventure, bodily endurance, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... precept, here a little, there a little." And I would caution my readers not to expect too much all at once. But I am fully convinced that as faith, trust, and naturalness grow, worry will cease, will slough off, like the dead skin of the serpent, and leave those once bound by it free from its malign influence. Who cannot see and feel that such a consummation is devoutly to be wished, worth working and earnestly ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... literature without a severe sense of disappointment. The book is brilliant almost without a rival in its best passages, but these are comparatively few, and they are divided from one another by tracts of pathless desert. The narrative sometimes descends into a mere slough of barbarous names, a marish of fabulous genealogy, in which the lightest attention must take wings to be supported at all. For instance, the geographical and historical account of the Ten Tribes occupies a space equivalent to a modern octavo volume of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... "It is a common thing to say that suspense is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a man's neck to sink him in a slough of despondency. I never really believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate, a teacher, a preacher; that I shall have to go softly all my days, and take ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... was compromise on a basis of three-fifths of the flow to the Mormons and two-fifths to the Mexicans, and in 1886 a degree of stability was secured by formation of the St. Johns Irrigation Company. A large dam, six miles south of St. Johns, created what was called the Slough reservoir. However, this dam was washed out in 1903, after years of drought. Then were several years of discouragement ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... is no hope. We are doomed to remain in this horrible land until we die. The bog! The frightful bog! I have searched its shores for a place to cross until I have entirely circled the hideous country. Easily enough we entered; but the rains have come since and now no living man could pass that slough of slimy mud and hungry reptiles. Have I not tried it! And the beasts that roam this accursed land. They hunt me by ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... nightingale with feathers new she sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... tell you, if you wish. But you don't have to, as they say in Maine. And I admit that all I saw was from a curtained auto as we swayed and bumped over broken roads, with an occasional interlude when Jeremy and I got out to lend our shoulders and help the Arab driver heave the car out of a slough. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... route, upon which the ravages of the Normans are clearly indicated in Domesday Book,[5] to a position on the north of London, thus gradually severing its communications with the rest of England, so that neither men nor convoys of provisions could enter its walls. Placing camps at Slough, Edmonton, and Tottenham, William himself remained some distance to the rear of these last with the main body of the army, and it seems probable that the actual surrender of London took place at or near Little Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire,[6] some four miles ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... deep down in the slough of its eternal despond, a few lorn and desolate-looking men stood on the platform. There they were once more, as if it were but yesterday, with their hands deep down in their pockets; the wistful, curious glance in their eyes, and the melancholy slouch in their shoulders. They ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... Richard Stafford, and with them ix^{c} persones, Englisshe and Normaunes. And the nyght folowyng, fast by the towne, in ij milles, were iij^{c} Britons loggid; and the seid knyghts with a certeyn mayny went out and brent the milles, and slough of the Britons bitwene iij and iiij score. And afterward Arthur and his men maden another assaute, and there losten vij^{xx} and oon standardes and getens, and viij^{xx} men of cote armes and legge harneis; and Arthur was sore hurt in the ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... every case, factory workers themselves, but had by various circumstances, native talent, industry, and energy, or favouring fortune—more likely by all together—managed to raise themselves out of the slough of despond in which their fellows were overwhelmed. One, I remember, a Mr. Doherty, a very small bookseller, to whom we were specially recommended by Lord Shaftesbury. He was an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... idea, fortuitousness of opportunity, made it possible for some people to right their matrimonial and social infelicities; whereas for others, because of dullness of wit, thickness of comprehension, poverty, and lack of charm, there was no escape from the slough of their despond. They were compelled by some devilish accident of birth or lack of force or resourcefulness to stew in their own juice of wretchedness, or to shuffle off this mortal coil—which under other circumstances had such glittering possibilities—via ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... restrained the passions he had seen burning in the prisoner's eyes when the desperate man spoke the words which had seemed to doom his father to death. The sheriff felt that he might have saved this fiery spirit from the slough of slavery; that he might have sent him to the free North, and given him there, or in some other land, an opportunity to turn to usefulness and honorable pursuits the talents that had run to crime, perhaps to madness; he might, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... reticent schoolgirl with the mark of the churchly checkrein fresh upon her, was free to browse, for her cousin had no slightest notion of playing censor. Mrs. Baker thought that the sooner one was allowed to slough off the gaucheries of the Young Person, the better. She did not gauge the real and tumultuous depths of feeling concealed under the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... armistice were weary and apprehensive—weary of the war, weary of politics, weary of the worn-out framework of existence, and filled with a vague, nameless apprehension of the unknown. They feared that in the chaotic slough into which they had fallen they had not yet touched bottom. None the less, with the exception of fervent Catholics and a number of earnest sectarians, there were few genuine ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... boys, at the proper moment, gave orders to fire upon the advancing enemy. The volley checked them, although they returned the compliment, and shot one of our party through the leg. Frank McCarthy then sang out, "Boys, make a break for the slough yonder, and we can have the bank ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... with the cozeners: for so soon as I came beyond Eton, they threw me off, from behind one of them, in a slough of mire; and set spurs and away, like three German devils, ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... simple yet lucid and modest account that he gave of his repeated endeavours; he caught a glimpse of the glory that so penetrating an observer might reflect on his reign, ensured to him a pension of 300 guineas a year, and moreover a residence near Windsor Castle, first at Clay Hall and then at Slough. The visions of George III. were completely realized. We may confidently assert, relative to the little house and garden of Slough, that it is the spot of all the world where the greatest number of discoveries have been made. The name of that village will never perish; science will transmit it ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... disgraceful in themselves, that he altogether abandoned the reins, and allowed himself to live such a life as is passed by some young men in London. His tastes and appetites were too high for this. He did not sink into a slough of despond. He did not become filthy and vicious, callous and bestial; but he departed very widely astray from those rules which governed him during his first ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... world was sinking in a slough Of sloth, and ease, and selfish greed; God surely sent this scourge to mould A ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham

... Pliable to his companion, as they both went over head and ears into the Slough of Despond. 'Truly,' said Christian, 'I do not know.'—No work of man is perfect, not even the all-but-perfect Pilgrim's Progress. Christian was bound to fall sooner or later into a slough filled with his own despondency about himself, his past guilt, his present sinfulness, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... Nullus perturbet, aut impediat canem trassantem, aut homines trassantes cum ipso, ad sequendum latrones.—Regiam Majestatem, Lib. 4tus, Cap. 32. And, so late as 1616, there was an order from the king's commissioners of the northern counties, that a certain number of slough-hounds should be maintained in every district of Cumberland, bordering upon Scotland. They were of great value, being sometimes sold for a hundred crowns. Exposition of Bleau's Atlas, voce Nithsdale. The breed of this sagacious animal, which could trace the human footstep ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... not occur to the humanitarians at the moment: people do not reflect deeply when they are in the first happiness of escape from an intolerably oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim they could not see the wicket gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the castle of Giant Despair; but they saw the shining light at the end of the path, and so started gaily ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... country, but the vast level extent of soil is a series of open plains and low bush of thorny mimosa: there is no drainage upon this perfect level; thus, during the rainy season, the soakage actually melts the soil, and forms deep holes throughout the country, which then becomes an impracticable slough, bearing grass and jungle. Upon this fertile tract of land, cotton might be cultivated to a large extent, and sent to Berber, via Atbara, from Gozerajup, during the season of flood. At the present time, the growth ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... perhaps in the fuller sense he finished it only with the Dutchman. He made mistakes, and thanks largely to them, so mastered his own personal art that he was prepared to take another and a vaster leap—from the Dutchman to Tannhaeuser. He cast the slough of the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... nature of trade requires it. It is an old Anglicism, 'Such a man drives a trade;' the allusion is to a carter, that with his voice, his hands, his whip, and his constant attendance, keeps the team always going, helps himself, lifts at the wheel in every slough, doubles his application upon every difficulty, and, in a word, to complete the simile, if he is not always with his horses, either the wagon is set in a hole, or the team stands still, or, which is worst of all, the load is ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... philosopher should look into a mirror. He is not always concerned with the contemplation of his own likeness, he contemplates also the causes which produce that likeness. Is Epicurus right when he asserts that images proceed forth from us, as it were a kind of slough that continually streams from our bodies? These images when they strike anything smooth and solid are reflected by the shock and reversed in such wise as to give back an image turned to face its original. Or should we accept ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... three heads, and was buried up to the neck, completing the resemblance! Well, some day I'll give you all a hoist, old fellow, and then you'll be immortalised for having developed the President of the Royal Academy out of his slough of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... one which required all Giles's skill as a chauffeur. Another time, trying a short cut across some fields, the car ran into soft earth and refused to stir. Her occupants got down and tried with their united efforts to push her out of her "slough of despond", but with no effect. Giles kept starting the engine, but the wheels, instead of gripping, simply turned round and round, and sank deeper into the soil. They were obliged to go to a farm for help, and have planks fixed under the wheels ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood, Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side falling head, His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump, And has not yet look'd ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... laggard spirits? What negligence, what standing still is this? Run to the mountain to strip off the slough That lets not God be manifest ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... my story. When we fell to playing, after breakfast, on the second day away from the caves, Lop-Ear led me a chase through the trees and down to the river. We came out upon it where a large slough entered from the blueberry swamp. The mouth of this slough was wide, while the slough itself was practically without a current. In the dead water, just inside its mouth, lay a tangled mass of tree trunks. Some of these, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... all these schemes and methods to which I have already referred for helping humanity out of the slough, and making men happier, is that they underestimate the fact of sin. If a man comes to them and says, 'I have broken God's law. What am I to do? I have a power within me that impels me now to evil. How am I to get ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... about two hours I hear the tramp of horses in the distance. Now the team is made ready, the two extra horses are attached in front, the coachman takes his place on the box, and with united strength our animals drag the heavy vehicle up out of the slough. We roll and jolt on again with lumps of wet clay dropping and splashing ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... Chuzzlewit is defective, character and description constituting the chief part of its strength. But what it lost as a story by the American episode it gained in the other direction; young Martin, by happy use of a bitter experience, casting off his slough of selfishness in the poisonous swamp of Eden. Dickens often confessed, however, the difficulty it had been to him to have to deal with this gap in the main course of his narrative; and I will give an instance from a letter he wrote to me when engaged upon the number in which Jonas brings ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... about the whimsies of such a half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our heart's desire. Taylor has dropped the "London." It was indeed a dead weight. It had got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand, like Christian, with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy,—is it Lucy, or Ruth?—that ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... two, into as complete a labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal; therefore, I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest they get bemired in a slough of unintelligible learning, or have their brains knocked out by some of those hard Greek names which will be flying about in all directions. But should any of them be too indolent or chicken-hearted to accompany me in this perilous undertaking, they had better take a short cut round, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... he insisted. "It matters a lot. The point is that it isn't you at all. Some day you'll slough it the way a butterfly does ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... snake-slough and an eight-ribbed turtle were found. The short, sandy neck of the eastern knob is a playground for 'parson-crows' and scavengers (turkey-buzzards); hawks, kites, and fish-eagles, white and black, while the adjacent reefs ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... beginning to come on, we came to an almost impassable slough in the trail, where a small stream descended into a little flat marsh and morass. This had been used as a camping-place by others, and we decided to camp, because to travel, even in the twilight, was dangerous to ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... disgrace from his noble and well-disciplined mind. He resolved, that, let it cost what it might in the shape of loss of time and trial of temper, he would leave no stone unturned, and spare no pains, to deliver his friend of yesterday from the slough into which he was plunging. How he might best work for this end occupied his thoughts as he walked ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... prentices were pugnacious, but as every one joined in the laugh against George, and he was, besides, stuck fast on a quaking tussock of grass, afraid to proceed or advance, he could not have his revenge. And when the slough was passed, and the slight rise leading to the copse of Saint John's Wood was attained, behold, it was found to be in possession of the lower sort of lads, the black guard as they were called. They were of course quite as ready to fight with ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... anterior flap; this is quite unnecessary, increases bagging and delays union. It can be required only in cases where the heel flap has been destroyed or lessened by disease, or by operators in whose hands the heel flaps occasionally slough. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... production of several popular Jewish histories. At that epoch the horizon of the world was extending under new geographical and intellectual discoveries. Israel, on the other hand, seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. Some of the men who had themselves been the victims of persecution saw that the only hope lay in rousing the historical consciousness of their brethren. History became the consolation of the exiles from Spain who found themselves ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... it. If I took her home with me and kept her in luxurious idleness for the rest of her days, as I could very well afford to do, I should only have dragged her down from the dignity of her own honest exertions into the slough of self-indulgence in which I find myself, and made bad worse. She should have more and I should have less; but how to arrive at that? Isolated efforts seem to be abortive—yet—" she stopped the carriage, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... trabajo," there is no short cut without a deal of labour. This proverb is very true, as I know by my own experience, for I never took a short cut in my life, and I have taken many in my wanderings, without falling down, getting into a slough, or losing my way. On the present occasion I lost my way, and wandered about for nearly two hours amidst rocks, thickets, and precipices, without being able to find it. The temperance woman, however, spoke nothing but the truth when she said I should see some ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... her own name) proved the up-looking of her better nature; and her charity was unbounded. Shall we—reared and instructed in all righteous ways—shall we show less charity to the memory of one who in her latter days rose out of the slough into which circumstance—not vice—had plunged her? Shall we be less charitable than the bishop who honored her memory and his own character by recording her benevolence, her penitence, her exemplary end? The good bishop's testimony ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... we have to have ready a Theme to send off to Harvard. Of course, every Thursday morning We, with one accord, begin to make excuses. Well, the Dread Day rolls around to-morrow, and consequently I am deep in the Slough of Despond. My only consolation is that our Geniuses can't write regularly, but then the mood to write never possesses me.... This week, in writing a comparison between Hamlet and Antonio, I did succeed in jotting down something, but unfortunately I found that ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... entertained precisely the same opinion. It is not, therefore, surprising that two young men like Frank and Vernon should be well pleased with their quarters, or that, having so early gotten into the slough of love, they should daily continue to sink deeper into the mire. The young poet's lame leg, though not a very serious affair, was still sufficient to keep him for several days a close prisoner to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... have always referred with satisfaction to the effect of the tariff of 1842 as an explicit and undeniable proof of the value of protection. It raised the country from a slough of despond to happiness, cheerfulness, confidence. It imparted to all sections a degree of prosperity which they had not known since the repeal of the tariff of 1828. The most suggestive proof of its strength and popularity ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... household. Their resource is to take service with people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precarious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, through which, in their best estate, they do but pick ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Palud, and likely to be soon indemnified by dinner and rest, for the joltings of the day; but our driver, instead of taking the proper direction, lost himself in a series of inextricable cross roads, which terminated in a quagmire. In this slough of despond the unfortunate patache, from which we had descended, might have stuck for ever, but for the assistance of two shepherds, as wild in their attire, and as civil, as Don Quixote's friendly goatherds. By dint of their exertions and ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... man. "He pays-back what money he had won at gambling," says the story;—he does not think any gain of that kind could be really his. It is very interesting, very natural, this "conversion," as they well name it; this awakening of a great true soul from the worldly slough, to see into the awful truth of things;—to see that Time and its shows all rested on Eternity, and this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven or of Hell! Oliver's life at St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true and devout ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... captives, and hanging there unrusted in the fine air and sunshine of the country for over four hundred years, one's heart beats in sympathy with the pride of the Spaniards in their Catholic Kings. But Toledo, alas! is dead; the centre of light and learning is mouldering in the very slough of ignorance, and Christianity compares badly enough with the ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... desperate draw on me under the name A.Z., and I will understand. Your financial affairs are in desperate condition but the case is not hopeless. You are young and healthy but you lack a definite plan of life. If someone will throw you a line while you are floundering in this slough you will come out all right. Now what's this thing you are to do after ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... place, take this for your motto at the commencement of your journey, that the difference of going just right, or a little wrong, will be the difference of finding yourself in good quarters, or in a miserable bog or slough, at the end of it. Of the whole number educated in the Groton stores for some years before and after myself, no one else, to my knowledge, escaped the bog or slough; and my escape I trace to the simple fact of my having put a restraint upon my appetite. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... "For," said he, "I am passionately fond of trees. Trees and fair lawns, if you consider of it rightly, are the ornaments of nature, as palaces and fine approaches——" And here he stumbled into a patch of slough and nearly fell. The girl had hard work not to laugh, but at heart she was lost in admiration for one who talked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 to sink ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... famous astronomer. He was the son of a German musician, and in early life followed his father's profession, which he afterwards abandoned for the study of astronomy. He received much encouragement from George III., was knighted in 1816, and died at Slough, near Windsor, in 1822. His monster telescope, mentioned in the text, was completed in 1787, and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... to be saved, while Bunyan, a greater humorist, could be saved only in following a path that skirted madness, and 'as by fire.' To Bunyan, Walton would have seemed a figure like his own Ignorance; a pilgrim who never stuck in the Slough of Despond, nor met Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow, nor was captive in Doubting Castle, nor stoned in Vanity Fair. And of Bunyan, Walton would have said that he was among those Nonconformists who 'might be sincere, well-meaning men, whose indiscreet ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... discovered the seventh primary planet, which he named, in honor of King George the Third, the Georgium Sidus. George the Third took him under his especial patronage, and constituted him his astronomer, with a handsome pension. He resided at Slough, near Windsor, where he died, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... was noon, and his dinner hour. He and his old collie dog, General, were taking their leisure on the slope of Red Willow slough, while the horses, relieved of their bits and traces, were nibbling at the succulent roots of the grass over which ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... some of the most characteristic of the artist's designs are to be found in his illustrations to the "Waverley Novels." In one of these he shows us the illustrious Dominie at the moment, when reaching over to gather a water-lily, he falls souse into the Slough of Lochend, in which he forthwith became bogged up to the middle, his plight drawing from him of course his favourite ejaculation of amazement. By the assistance of some women the luckless Dominie was extracted from his position, justifying the remark of one of his assistants, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... like this for thirty years or more; yet if there's roast pork on the table, and I say a word to put him off it, he's that hurt as never was. Why, I'm only too glad to see him enjoying his food if no harm comes of it; but it's dreary work seeing your husband in the Slough of Despond, especially when it's your business to drag him out again, and most especially when you particularly warned him ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister's memory, in one hour I received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own nature, in a service of love—yes, slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench, from which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she advanced, bleating clamorously, until he followed her and rescued ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... efforts alluded to was a prose work entitled Hand and Soul. More poem than story, this beautiful idyl may be briefly described as mainly illustrative of the struggles of the transition period through which, as through a slough, all true artists must pass who have been led to reflect deeply upon the aims and ends of their calling before they attain that goal of settled purpose in which they see it to be best to work from their own ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... my iron word. When the buffoon-witted Ning rises from his congenial slough this shall be his lot: for sixty thousand ages he shall fail to find the path of his return, but shall, instead, thread an aimless flight among the frozen ambits of the outer stars, carrying a tormenting rain of fire at his tail. And Leou, the Whisperer," added ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... it; the nature of trade requires it. It is an old Anglicism, 'Such a man drives a trade;' the allusion is to a carter, that with his voice, his hands, his whip, and his constant attendance, keeps the team always going, helps himself, lifts at the wheel in every slough, doubles his application upon every difficulty, and, in a word, to complete the simile, if he is not always with his horses, either the wagon is set in a hole, or the team stands still, or, which is worst of all, the load is spoiled ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... of the victuals is solved. When I compare the larval slough sticking to the Scolia's cocoons with the Cetonia-larvae or, better, with the skin cast by these larvae, under cover of the cocoon, at the moment of the nymphal transformation, I establish an absolute identity. The Two-banded Scolia rations each of her eggs with a Cetonia-grub. ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... as the many dull would meanly scorn and the few wise nobly envy. For him love comes like a mighty wind of fire and burns his heart clean. He may have been stained and spotted in the slough of life, but when the woman comes ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... friends might, if they pleased, go as far as Slough,—he should go no farther than Hounslow; but that was no reason why he should not keep them company so far as their roads were the same. The answer is easy. Suppose you know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit a robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... ill-boding wings of a screech owl,[36] together with its flesh; and the entrails of an ambiguous wolf, that was wont to change its appearance of a wild beast into {that of} a man. Nor is there wanting there the thin scaly slough of the Cinyphian water-snake,[37] and the liver of the long-lived stag;[38] to which, besides, she adds the bill and head of a crow that had sustained {an existence of} nine ages. When, with these and a thousand other things without a name, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... noiselessly, Despoils itself to clothe fair limbs, and be In its true worth alone by death divined. Would I might die for my dear lord to find Raiment in my outworn mortality; That, changing like the snake, I might be free To cast the slough wherein I dwell confined! Nay, were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays, Woven and wrought into a vestment fair, Around yon breast so beauteous in such bliss! All through the day thou'd have me! Would I were The ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... unfair word don't exist. When we animals never drink only just enough to satisfy thirst, never eat except when we have genuine appetites, never indulge in any sort of debauch, and never strain excess till we sink into the slough of satiety, shall "animalism" be a word to designate all that men and women dare to do? "Animalism!" You ought to blush for such a libel on our innocent and reasonable lives when you regard your own! You ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... be "careful and not captious," as you suggest, but more than all, I shall try not to run myself or my cause into the slough of political schemes or schemers. And I pray you, be prudent and conscientious, and do not surrender one iota of true principle or of our philosophy of reform ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... intentions in the matter, and have done my best to gain them news of him. I did not believe in the reformation of one who had shown himself to be of such evil spirit; but God is all-powerful, and might have led him out from the slough into which he ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... primeval perfection; whose heavenly it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive. Then in that bright Millennium, whose radiance streams through the advancing ages, shall man cast off the slough of ignorance and sin, and rise like the painted butterfly, on the wings of faith, into the serene ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... to mind Miss Edgeworth's admirable tale of Murad the Unlucky, and his friend the lucky Saladin. Like the former, Wheelwright seemed destined but to fall from one calamity into another, and effort to retrieve his affairs, did but plunge him deeper into the slough of misery. I could not but perceive, however, that as in the case of the persecuted Mussulman, the misfortunes of my poor friend had their origin in his own bad management, and to speak the honest truth, of common sense. The wound in his hand, indeed, might perhaps be accounted an ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... was but a question of economy. Broadway was a slough of mud and slush, and neither she nor Bianchi had the price of a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... except a temporary one laid over a slough in the path, Mr. Evans' engine moved this great weight with ease from the southeast corner of Ninth and Market streets, in the city of Philadelphia, one and a half miles, to the River Schuylkill. There the machine was launched into the river, and the land wheels being taken off ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... as "Thank you." She put the shawl round her mistress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden. She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction to get out ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... collar, and half strangle him, dragging him towards the water to throw him to the bottom of the Loire; and Sardini began to defend himself, to shout, and to struggle, without being able, in spite of his dagger, to shake off this devil in long robes. Then he was quiet, falling into a slough under the feet of the advocate, whom he recognised through the mists of this diabolical combat, and by the light of the moon, his face splashed with the blood of his wife. The enraged advocate quitted the Italian, believing him to be dead, and also because ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... One vision of unseen things, rushing in, made small all the things that are seen. The poor old cripple, deformed and diseased, whose days must have been long a burden to her, was going even now to drop the slough of her mortality and to take on her the robes of light and the life that is all glory. What if my own life were barren for a while; then comes the end! What if I must be alone in my journey; I may do the Master's work all the way. And this is His work; to set the captive free; light to the ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... you a nobler heart than mine, and left it an easy, pleasant matter for you to be good; while, struggle as I may, I am constantly in danger of tumbling into some slough of iniquity, or setting up false gods for my soul to bow down to. Because it is so much more difficult for me to do right than for you, it is only just that my ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... were in the most frightful condition, insomuch that had not the zealous Mayor of Barbonne collected 500 horses, and come to their assistance, they must have been forced to leave all their artillery in a slough near that town; yet this determined band marched nearly forty miles ere they halted with the dark. Next morning they proceeded with equal alacrity, and at length debouched on the road by which Blucher's army was advancing, at Champaubert. Alsusieff and the central division were passing, when ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... parted and I turned up Monkey Hill. I had made unexpected progress with Trumbull that night. He had never talked to me so freely before and somehow he had let me come nearer to hun than I had ever hoped to be. His company had lifted me out of the slough a little and my mind was on a better footing as I neared ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... snail's pace; you may not have been with him on that occasion when, in his eagerness to be in time for the 'Flying Dutchman,' he arrives at Paddington an hour before it starts, and is put into the parliamentary train which is shunted at Slough to let the 'Dutchman' pass; but when you come to travel with him you know what 'nerves' are to your cost. On the other hand, this is the easiest kind of travelling companion to get rid of; for you have only to feign a sore throat, with feverish symptoms, and off he flies on the wings ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... at one time, that he was going to spoil it all by making love to me, after the manner of young Bud Dyruff, from the Cowen Ranch, who, because I waded bare-kneed into a warm little slough-end when the horses were having their noonday meal, assumed that I could be persuaded to wade with equal celerity into indiscriminate affection. That rudimentary and ingenuous youth, in fact, became more and more offensive in his approaches, until finally I turned on him. "Are you trying ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... the wood, and, plunging across a perfect slough of deep mud, crawled on to the verandah of the Rampur forest-house, where we sat anxiously watching the hillside until we saw our faithful ponies safely ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... mistake, had put himself outside the sympathies of this comfortable circle. Miss Hitchcock was looking into the flowers in front of her, evidently searching for some remark that would lead the dinner out of this uncomfortable slough, when Brome Porter ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... we had left the tall matama and fields of water-melons, cucumbers, and manioc; and, crossing a reedy slough, were in an open forest of ebony and calabash. In its depths are deer in plentiful numbers, and at night it is visited by the hippopotami of the Kingani for the sake of its grass. In another hour we had emerged from the woods, and were looking down upon the broad valley of the Kingani, and a ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... under such an accumulation of injustice and obloquy? Where shall any mass of men be found with power of character and mind sufficient to bear up against such a weight of prejudice? Why, if one individual rarely gifted by heaven were to raise himself out of such a slough of despond, he would be a miracle; and what would be his reward? Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights?—would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors?—would any of you give your daughter to his son, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... becomes congested and effusion takes place into the tissues. This effusion coagulates and a hard, brawny mass is formed which softens towards the centre. If nothing is done the softened area increases in size, the skin over it becomes thinned, loses its vitality (mortifies) and a small "slough'' is formed. When the slough gives way the pus escapes and, tension being relieved, pain ceases. A local necrosis or death of tissue takes place at that part of the inflammatory swelling farthest from the healthy circulation. When the attack of septic inflammation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... told a sorry tale; For whether it be wine, or it be ale, That he hath drank, he speaketh through the nose, And sneezeth much, and he hath got the POSE, {19} And also hath given us business enow To keep him on his horse, out of the slough; He'll fall again, if he be driven to speak, And then, where are we, for a second week? Why, lifting up his heavy drunken corse! Tell on thy tale, and look we to his horse. Yet, Manciple, in faith thou art too nice Thus openly to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... between his shoulders like a top falling. His sense of beauty is all that is left of him, and that seems over ripe, like a fruit left too long in the sun. Materialism is the artist's curse. Their heads are in the clouds and their feet are in the slough.—Pah!" ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... dust by the war into common anonymity. I do not remember any picture of the war more curious, and, as it were, uncanny than the first sight of Zossen as our motor came lurching down the muddy road from Berlin—that huge, forgotten eddy, that slough of idle, aimless human beings against the gray March sky, milling slowly round and ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... effort on the part of seafaring men to cultivate a self-respect, and elevate themselves in the scale of society; a line of conduct which is calculated to thrust them contemptuously back, and plunge them deeper in the slough from which, perhaps, they ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... passport. When the girls worked they worked hard, and when playtime came it was enjoyed to the full. Naturally, with so many dispositions surrounding her, Miss Preston often in secret floundered in a "slough of despond," for that which could influence one girl for her good might prove a complete failure when brought to bear upon another. Never was the old adage, "What is one man's meat is another man's poison," more ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... the girl more closely to himself because the pain whipped him. She was wondering how to explain a little accident to the Melancolia. At any rate, if this man really desired the solace of her company— and certainly he would relapse into his original slough if she withdrew it—he would not be more than just ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... day; with every one declaring that it had been a great treat. Larry kept the two drumsticks as well as the wings of the gobbler. Possibly he might many a time feel a queer little sensation creeping up and down his spinal column as memory carried him back again to that slough, where the treacherous black mud was slowly but surely sucking ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... hours' reading he closed the book comforted, and restored to his better self. He fell on his knees and thanked God for this crowning mercy. From his heart went forth a hymn of praise for the first time in long weeks. The words of the Man of Sorrows had lifted him above the slough. The marvel of it! How could he ever thank Him enough? His whole life should now be devoted to setting forth the wonders of His grace. When he arose he felt at peace with himself and full of goodwill to every one. He could even think of Mrs. Hooper calmly—with ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... as a pikestaff to the very door. Only take tent of the bridge at the slough, two miles beyant; for there's a broken balk that ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... of the fine arguments in favour of the reasoning power of animals flies from the light of investigation and founders in the slough of error! I admire your simple faith, you masters who take seriously the statements of chance-met observers, richer in imagination than in veracity; I admire your credulous zeal, when, without criticism, you build up ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... death of the tissues follows; not only of the skin but of the flesh and bones in the worst cases. It is impossible to tell by the appearance of the skin what the extent of the destruction may be until the dead parts slough away after a week or ten days. The skin is of a uniform white color in some cases, or may be of a yellow, brown, gray, or black hue, and is comparatively insensitive at first. Pus ("matter") begins to form around the dead part in a few days, and the dead tissue comes away later, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... must then ask for a tub full of lye," (that is, washing water prepared with wood-ashes) "and a tub full of fresh milk, and as many whips as a boy can carry in his arms,—and have all these brought into your bed-chamber. Then, when the Lindworm tells you to shed a shift, do you bid him slough a skin. And when all his skins are off, you must dip the whips in the lye and whip him; next, you must wash him in the fresh milk; and, lastly, you must take him and hold him in your arms, if it's only ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen

... that, unless detected and punished, a man's first deed of blood is rarely his last: it draws others after him by a fatal fascination. Like the images which the Epicureans supposed all visible objects to slough off and shed into the air around them, such phantoms and images of guilt float about a great crime, enter into the mind of the spectator and of the hearer, and there, upon slight occasion, turn to actual repetitions of the original deed. The one preventive is to ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... salmon boat got up its spritsail and headed down the bay toward the marshes off San Rafael. I ran up the jib and followed with the Reindeer. San Rafael, where we were to turn our catch over to the authorities, communicated with the bay by way of a long and tortuous slough, or marshland creek, which could be navigated only when the tide was in. Slack water had come, and, as the ebb was commencing, there was need for hurry if we cared to escape waiting half a day for the ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... that in the vast tundra regions of Northern Siberia the frozen soil had dissolved into a bottomless slough, from whose depths uprose prehistoric mammoths, their long hair matted with mud, and their curved tusks of ivory gleaming like trumpets over the field of their resurrection. The dispatch concluded with a heart-rending account of the loss of a large party of ivory hunters, who, having ventured ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... little plots to turn his mustache and guitar into ridicule; he seduced him into a hunt with the buckhounds (though Castleton himself had not hunted before since he was thirty), and drew him, spluttering German oaths, out of the slough of a ditch; he made him the laughter of the clubs; he put him fairly out of fashion,—and all with such suavity, and politeness, and bland sense of superiority, that it was the finest piece of high comedy you ever beheld. The poor prince, who had been coxcomb ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... most transparent of allegories. Unlike the Faery Queene, the story of Pilgrim's Progress has no reason for existing apart from its inner meaning, and yet its reality is so vivid that children read of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death with the same belief with which they read of Crusoe's cave or ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... through this Slough of Despond, he was called to Washington by his patent lawyer. Not having enough money to pay the cost of such a journey, he borrowed the price of a return ticket from Sanders and arranged to stay with a friend in Washington, to save a hotel bill that ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... their feet dragging to save themselves from falling. Everything was splashed with filth and corruption; one marvelled at the cleanness of the sky. Trees were blasted, and seemed to be sinking out of sight in this war-created Slough of Despond. We came to the brow of a hill; in the valley was something that I recognised. The last time I had seen it was in an etching in a shop window in Newark, New Jersey. It was a town, from the midst of whose battered ruins a splintered tower ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas. When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... to be destroyed by flame, Mulciber consumed; and the figure of Hercules remained, not to be recognized; nor did he have anything derived from the form of his mother, and he only retained the traces of {immortal} Jupiter. And as when a serpent revived, by throwing off old age with his slough, is wont to be instinct with fresh life, and to glisten in his new-made scales; so, when the Tirynthian {hero} has put off his mortal limbs, he flourishes in his more aethereal part, and begins to appear ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... why the Jews have not fled a hundred leagues from this Slough of Despond. The answer is, because they were born there. Moreover, the taxation is light, and rent is moderate. Add that, when famine has been in the land, or the inundations of the Tiber have spread ruin and devastation around, the scornful charity ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect. And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... grew more distinct, her attention was attracted by the white sail of a small boat lazily threading the sinuous channel of the slough. It might be Poindexter arriving by the more direct route from the steamboat that occasionally laid off the ancient embarcadero of the Los Cuervos Rancho. But even while watching it her quick ear caught the sound of galloping hoofs behind her. She turned quickly and saw she was followed ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... What was to be done now? The journey of discovery must be given up. She forgot to think about where the water came from, in the more pressing question, "What will Aunt Fortune say?"—and the quick wish came that she had her mother to go to. However, she got out of the slough, and wiping her shoes as well as she could on the grass, she hastened ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... renew'd in youth, the crested snake, Who slept the winter in a thorny brake; And, casting off his slough when spring returns, Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns: Restored with pois'nous herbs, his ardent sides Reflect the sun, and raised on spires he rides; High o'er the grass hissing he rolls along, And brandishes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... been a minute before they could recover their composure; in order to appreciate the humour of the sally it was necessary to know that Miss Vincent had "come a cropper" at the last meet of the Long Island Hunt Club, and been extricated from a slough several feet deep. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... except that the preacher himself live well, His predication will help never a dell, And I know well that thy living is nought: Thou art an apostate, if it were well sought. An homicide thou art, I know well enough, For myself knew where that thou slough A wench with thy dagger in a couch: And yet, as thou say'st in thy sermon, that no man ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... said the man in black, "but let it once obtain emancipation, and it will cast its slough, put on its fine clothes, and make converts by thousands. 'What a fine church,' they'll say; 'with what authority it speaks—no doubts, no hesitation, no sticking at trifles.' What a contrast to the sleepy English Church! they'll go over to it by millions, till it preponderates ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... city he found it situated in a slough. It was generally supposed that the ground upon which the city was built was a natural swamp, and when Palmer, among others, advocated the idea of raising the streets they were ridiculed. But subsequent tests proved ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... at the time," said the old man drily; "and it has long been a commonplace that that slough awaits State Socialism in the end, if it gets to the end, which as you know it did not with us. However it went further than this minimum and maximum business, which by the by we can now see was necessary. The government now found it imperative ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal—which is ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... Mrs. Woodford, "he would say you were Christian floundering in the Slough of Despond, and deeming yourself one of its efts ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the famous Slough of Despond—a disgrace to all the neighborhood; and the greater that it might so easily ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... though, both on ye kin hitch on next load," drawled the driver, turning his horses into the slough of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... in her sense of humor. It had saved her from many dangers, from none more insidious than that lurking in five years' experience as a successful author. It had rescued her from the slough of despond when unappreciative publishers rejected her most ambitious attempts; it had come to her aid also when a southern admirer whose intentions were better than his rhetoric, sent her a manuscript ode constructed in her honor. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... course, regarding William's experience in Canada. His letters were all of his inner life. He said much regarding his spiritual condition, of his grievous lapses of faith, of his days on the Delectable Mountains and of his descents into the Slough of Despond, but very little of the hills and valleys of his adopted country. Once, shortly after his arrival, he had stated that he was living in a shanty where the bush came right up to the door. Margaret had had some misgivings, but Cousin Griselda had explained ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... midnight. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed in the blithe air, and uplifted ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... delicacy of treatment which would have been thrown away upon the melodramatic subjects which Verdi had hitherto affected. Much of his music is really graceful and refined, but his efforts to avoid vulgarity occasionally land him in the slough of sentimentality. Nevertheless, the pathos which characterises some of the scenes has kept 'La Traviata' alive, though the opera is chiefly employed now as a means of allowing a popular prima donna to display her ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... and his associates and followers, who usually inflicted an adequate penalty, either in person or property, or both. The creagh is yet remembered in which he swept one hundred and fifty cows from Monteith in one drove; and how he placed the laird of Ballybught naked in a slough, for having threatened to send for a party of the Highland Watch to ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... stands firm, who is unmoved, who never laughs, or apologizes, or deprecates, or makes concessions, or assents through good-nature, or goes abroad; who is not afraid of giving offense; "who answers you without supplication in his eye,"—in fact, who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of life. You may wrestle with this man, he says, or swim with him, or lodge in the same chamber with him, or eat at the same table, and yet he is a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. He is a sheer precipice, is this man, and not to ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... collision, and very broken up, and one exploded engine; even the fields and cuttings on either hand of the line had a rather populous look, as if people, when trains and vehicles failed, had set to trudging westward in caravans and streams. When I came to a long tunnel near Slough, I saw round the foot of the arch an extraordinary quantity of wooden debris, and as I went very slowly through, was alarmed by the continuous bumping of the train, which, I knew, was passing ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... me," he confided to his friend Bob Wilson one evening as during his transit through a particularly dismal slough of despond they in company were busily engaged in blazing the trail with empty bottles; "One such as I, a man of thirty and of good health, without a dollar or the prospect of a dollar, an income or the prospect of an income, a home or the prospect of a home, following a cold scent like ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... Sir Philip Braunch, Sir Nichol Burdet, and Sir Richard Stafford, and with them ix^{c} persones, Englisshe and Normaunes. And the nyght folowyng, fast by the towne, in ij milles, were iij^{c} Britons loggid; and the seid knyghts with a certeyn mayny went out and brent the milles, and slough of the Britons bitwene iij and iiij score. And afterward Arthur and his men maden another assaute, and there losten vij^{xx} and oon standardes and getens, and viij^{xx} men of cote armes and legge harneis; and ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... bed or the means of satisfying the most natural wants. Her husband, who was brought into the workhouse, begged to have his wife released from this imprisonment, whereupon he received twenty-four hours imprisonment, with bread and water, as the penalty of his insolence. In the workhouse at Slough, near Windsor, a man lay dying in September, 1844. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight; and hastening to the workhouse, was refused admission. She was not permitted to see her husband until ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... a change from the great steamer Tennessee to the little stern-wheel boat as it slowly puffed across the bay through Carquinez straits and up the slough, turning and winding along, sometimes being caught by a sharp turn in the stream and one or two stops on the sand bars if the water was too low. We did not sleep much because everything was so strange and small. We were always in fear of some accident. The hours dragged slowly ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... the calmness of the older man who has fewer years to taste it in. He could not ask the boy to consider, to make no hasty judgment. Whatever lay behind the words, it was something of a grave consequence. And Dick himself led the way out of the slough where they were ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... weapons, and instantly Lewis' pistol rang true. The fellow rolled to earth mortally wounded; but Lewis felt the whiz of a bullet past his own head. Having captured more horses than they had lost, the white men at once mounted and rode for their lives through river and slough, sixty miles without halt; for the Minnetarees would assuredly rally a larger band of warriors to their aid. A pause of an hour to refresh the horses and a wilder ride by moonlight put forty more miles between Captain ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... Hayward died, and now None passes there because the mist and the rain Out of the elms have turned the lane to slough And gloom, the name ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... chapter or two, into as complete a labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal; therefore, I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest they get bemired in a slough of unintelligible learning, or have their brains knocked out by some of those hard Greek names which will be flying about in all directions. But should any of them be too indolent or chicken-hearted ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... learnt it more betterer? BUMBLE could hopen the heyes of them BOOTHSES, JOHN BURNSES, ancetterer. Snow? Is it me brings the snow, and the hice, and the peasoupy slushiness, Making the subbubs one slough? No! The Age is give over to gushiness. Parties as writes to the Papers is snivellers, yus, every one of 'em, Barring the few as cracks jokes, though I own as I can't see the fun of 'em. Look at "UCALEGON," now, him ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... have seen it when the tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold, glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous line of slough; when the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and thither, but getting no farther toward any goal at the falling tide or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the glossy ducks ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... children, the sucking babes, were hardened and desperate heretics. He affirmed that no man without Heaven's especial warrant should attempt their conversion lest while he lent his hand to draw them from the slough he should himself be ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... your eyes to your true interest, I think I could have made something of you. My wealth and my influence should not have been spared in placing you in a station worthy of my sister. Every one, however, must take his own way,—though it lead him into a slough or ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... surprise. At that time I had no staff officer who could be trusted with that duty. In the woods, at a short distance below the clearing, I found a depression, dry at the time, but which at high water became a slough or bayou. I placed the men in the hollow, gave them their instructions and ordered them to remain there until they were properly relieved. These troops, with the gunboats, ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... blasphemy is not to be attributed to the author, but to the man whose spiritual development he intends to sketch. To which we reply that no man has a right to bring his hero through such a state without showing how he came out of the slough as carefully as how he came into it, especially when the said hero is set forth as a marvellously clever person; and the last scene, though full of beautiful womanly touches, and of a higher morality ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... Powerful influences have been exerted, from the highest quarters, to bring her into subjection to material interests and unheroic maxims, to sap the chivalry and enthusiasm of her youth. But it is not too late, Let her slough this all off in her hour of trial! Let her cast off her disguises and her rags together, and stand forth in the garb and attitude of a hero! This work must be done. If the men of scholarship and accomplishments ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... luggage on pack mules. We crossed some rocky low hills, with scanty vegetation, and, after passing the cattle hacienda of San Jose, reached the plains of the same name, about two leagues in width, now dry and dusty, but in the wet season forming a great slough of water and tenacious mud, through which the mules have to ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... name with joy and mighty shouts they bless; The rest allow his choice, and fortune praise, New vigor blushed through those looks of his; It seemed he now resumed his youthful days, Like to a snake whose slough new changed is, That shines like gold against the sunny rays: But Godfrey most approved his fortune high, And wished ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... despair reigned. What! they had been marching since morning with nothing to eat, they had summoned up all their energies to escape that deadly trap at Harancourt pass, only in the end to be landed in that slough of despond, with an insurmountable wall staring them in the face! It would be hours, perhaps, before it became the last comer's turn to cross, and everyone knew that even if the Prussians should not be enterprising enough to continue their pursuit in the darkness they would be there with the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... laid on the lash and a string of oaths at the same time; the wind blew, and the rain came down in torrents. More than once on that awful march did we lend a helping hand to get the horses out of some 'slough of Despond.' Over the mountains and through the woods we went, at the rate of about two miles an hour. Many gave out and lay down by the wayside; and when at last morning dawned, a more pitiable set of beings never were seen upon earth. The ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... greenhouse a cabinet of perfumes?"—his clergymen, his ladies, and his tasks, he is not only constantly amusing himself, but carrying on a secret battle, with all the terrors of Hell. He is, indeed, a pilgrim who struggles out of one slough of despond only to fall waist-deep into another. This strange creature who passed so much of his time writing such things as Verses written at Bath on Finding the Heel of a Shoe, Ode to Apollo ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... logical, but—but—to be frank with you—I hate to hear you going through them and wasting your acuteness. I suspect it was in an evil hour that I came out to-day and met you; my hopes were almost in my grasp; and now here are you plunging me into a slough of despond with your demonstrations; truth is undiscoverable, if the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... as the equivalent of a "duty" hog; and other tribute of similar kind. The "ould masther," whose bailiffs looked sharply after "duty" of all descriptions, himself dispensed the indiscriminate hospitality already described, and "masther" and man floundered in the slough of debt and poverty together, making light of occasional hardship. All this feudal fellowship has gone with the old chieftains, whom the people profess to admire, and compare regretfully with the new men who expect to pay and be paid. But I am reminded ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... species of Snipe was found situated in a slight depression at the base of a small hillock near the border of a prairie slough near Evanston, Illinois, and was made of grass stems and blades. The color of the eggs in this instance was a deep grayish white, three of which were marked with spots of dark brown, and the fourth ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... the messenger directly; whom I propose to meet in person at Slough; either to proceed onward to London with a joyful heart, or to return back to M. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... longing was ever more firmly planted in the human heart, than that of discovering some short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... activity could grapple with. So it was that the very spirit which, under the earlier conditions, made for good now made for evil. To stand by and applaud the efforts of the individual who was perhaps slowly sinking deeper and deeper into a miry slough of degradation began to seem an even diabolical attitude. The maxim of laissez-faire, which had once stood for the whole unfettered action of natural activities in life, began to be viewed with horror and contempt. It was realized that there must be an intelligent ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... constituting the chief part of its strength. But what it lost as a story by the American episode it gained in the other direction; young Martin, by happy use of a bitter experience, casting off his slough of selfishness in the poisonous swamp of Eden. Dickens often confessed, however, the difficulty it had been to him to have to deal with this gap in the main course of his narrative; and I will give an instance from a letter he wrote to me when engaged upon the number in which Jonas brings his ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... gold-seeker in Australia was beset with difficulties. The country about Melbourne, and far inland, was boggy, the soil being volcanic, and abounding in mud which appears to have no bottom. The road to the mines was all the worse for having been ploughed up by bullock teams, and worked into a slough which proved the discouragement of mining parties. Some were even months in traversing the comparatively small distance across the country to the goal they sought. But the attraction of money, which is ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... the big slough to-morrow," said Mr. Kincaid, more as an audible thought than as a remark ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... leaned forward and began to talk to the girl in low-voiced Ojibway, comforting her with many assurances, as one would comfort a child. After a time she ceased trembling and looked up. But her glance made no account of the steady, old man who had so gently led her from her slough of despond, but rested on the straight, indignant back of the glorious youth who had cast her into it. And Sam Bolton, knowing the ways of a maid, merely sighed, ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... see you are cutting the last piece of ground from beneath your feet—letting yourself sink at once into a slough of despond?" ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... of summer; the oak leaves expand, the roses blow, butterflies are about, and I have spirits enough to write to you. We have had clouded skies this fortnight past, and roads like the Slough of Despond. Last Wednesday we were benighted on a dismal plain, apparently boundless. The moon cast a sickly gleam, and now and then a blue meteor glided along the morass ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... sloughs, it much resembles the descriptions usually given of sloughing ulcers. A portion of the parts immediately subjacent to the ulcer loses its life; this rapidly separates; and, before or after a complete removal, a fresh slough is formed in the same manner. The sloughs are generally black, with ash-coloured edges. I have not been able to discern a change of colour, the production of vesicles, or any material tumefaction, as antecedent to the gangrene. There is generally, by this time, an increased heat in the parts; with ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... undertaking was abandoned. The fact is, Goldsmith was now thinking of another method of replenishing his purse. The Vicar of Wakefield had brought him little but reputation; the Good-natured Man had brought him L500. It was to the stage that he now looked for assistance out of the financial slough in which he was plunged. He was engaged in writing a comedy; and that comedy was She ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... a single jack-rabbit (the latter falling to Bob's gun), nothing was met to tempt powder for some time. Then they reached a large "slough" that in early spring would be a small lake, though now it was filled with long blue grass and wild lavender. Here the boys paused ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... British Navy lived up to its best traditions in that Battle of Jutland, it seems nothing short of criminal that the English censor should have permitted the world to hold Great Britain in contempt for twenty-four hours and sink poor France in the slough of despond. However, he is used to abuse, and presumably does not ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... of wellnigh complete degeneracy offered by the roister-doistering slough brethren of the Vale of Tears gave Herr Carovius a new lease on life. He had a really affable tendency to associate with men who were standing just on the brink of human existence. He always drank a great deal of liqueur. The brand he preferred above all others was ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... to utter any of those pious commonplaces by which she might have attempted to bring him to a better frame of mind. She had tact enough to divine that he was best left to himself—left to struggle out of this grovelling state by some effort of his own, rather than to be dragged from the slough of despond ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... languor of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She must find some way out of the slough into which she had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. But she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... there sprang up a great pity. The hand of parental authority might have restrained the passions he had seen burning in the prisoner's eyes when the desperate man spoke the words which had seemed to doom his father to death. The sheriff felt that he might have saved this fiery spirit from the slough of slavery; that he might have sent him to the free North, and given him there, or in some other land, an opportunity to turn to usefulness and honorable pursuits the talents that had run to crime, perhaps to madness; he might, still less, have ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... and his eye upon a child of five years old, whose rambles led him into a hundred awkward situations. Twice was the Dominie chased by a cross-grained cow, once he fell into the brook crossing at the stepping-stones, and another time was bogged up to the middle in the slough of Lochend, in attempting to gather a water-lily for the young Laird. It was the opinion of the village matrons who relieved Sampson on the latter occasion, 'that the Laird might as weel trust the care o' his bairn to a potatoe bogle'; but ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... you at Slough; and Lady Betty herself, and one of the Miss Montagues, with proper equipages, will be at Reading to receive you; and carry you directly to the seat of the former: for I have expressly stipulated, that the wretch himself shall not come into your presence till your nuptials are to be solemnized, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... that plant roots adsorb water and water-soluble nutrients only through the tiny hairs and actively growing tips near the very end of the root. The ability for any new root to absorb nutrition only lasts a short time, then the hairs slough off and the root develops a sort of hard bark. If root system growth slows or stops, the plant's ability to obtain nourishment is greatly reduced. Roots cannot make oxygen out of carbon dioxide as do the leaves. That's why it is ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... singly diverse kinds of misery both in this and the next world. All men, attached to children and wives and kinsmen and relatives, sink in the miry sea of grief like wild elephants, when destitute of strength, sinking in a miry slough. Indeed, O lord, upon loss of wealth or son or kinsmen or relatives, man suffers great distress, which resembles as regards its power of burning, a forest conflagration. All this, viz., joy and grief, existence and non-existence, is dependent ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... cavil and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the masses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time fascinating—an alluring ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... huge, unbelievably swift, roaring upon its whistle, tore a great, gray-painted motor lorry, packed with khaki-clad infantrymen. It was going at a hideous speed, leaping its tons of weight insanely from rock ridge to traffic-churned slough in the road; there was only time to note its immensity and uproar and the ranked faces of the men swaying in their places, and it was by, and another was bounding into sight behind it. A hundred ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... old, ugly or handsome, the girl is right; she has sense and judgment, she has tripped you over into the slough of self-interest and lets you know it," cried Honor. "She deserves an answer, a sincere and loyal and frank answer, and, above all, the honest expression of your thought. Examine yourself! sound your heart and purge it of its meannesses. What ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... down the river to the dredging work—Carlson insists I must advise him—and then up in to Sacramento, running over the Teal Slough land on the way, to see Wing ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London









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