"Dampness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... winter were completed, the captain took measures to preserve the health of the crew. Every morning the men were ordered to air their berths, and carefully clean the interior walls, to get rid of the night's dampness. They received boiling tea or coffee, which are excellent cordials to use against the cold, morning and evening; then they were divided into hunting-parties, who should procure as much fresh nourishment as ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... The eyes were closed again and the harsh breathing went on cruelly, like waves falling back from a pebbled shore, and Henrietta felt the dampness of death on her lips. No, Aunt Caroline would not ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Smear, "that wherever that ere water has been it's left a dampness ahind it; the moistur' consekent upon such a dampness must be evaporated by ever-so-many applications of the warming-pan. The steam which a rises from this hoperation, combined with the extra hart required to hide them two black spots in the middle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... carefully selected feed must be given and the appetite must not be forced. Protect the animal well from cold and dampness. Internally, give linseed tea, boiled milk, boiled oatmeal gruel, or rice water. These protectives may carry the medicine. Tannopin in doses of 30 to 60 grains is good. Subnitrate of bismuth in doses of 1 to 2 drams may be given. Pulverized opium may be used, if the diarrhea is severe, in ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... walking by a great ocean, one day, still thinking of plans to dry away any unpleasant dampness, when he saw a Petrel sitting on a ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... his eyes, looked up at Spencer and Stetson. There was the sound of Polly's voice talking rapidly on the phone in the hall. He could feel Diana's cheek warm against his neck, the dampness of her tears. Slowly, deliberately, Orne winked at ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... made themselves, ready—as ready as they could in the best of their old-fashioned garments, which had hung on pegs, or been laid away in trunks, so long that the dampness and mouldy smell of the past was on them,—made themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, to go to church. They descended the staircase together,—gaunt, sallow Hepzibah, and pale, emaciated, age-stricken Clifford! They pulled open the front door, and stepped ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he awoke with a violent headache. The room felt close; a disagreeable dampness saturated the air, and made its way through the crevices of the windows. Low-spirited, uncomfortable, and cheerless as a drenched cock, he sat down on his dilapidated sofa, and began to recall his dream of the previous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke, and, rolling the logs in front of the shanty, had kindled a fire, which, getting the better of the dampness, soon cast a bright glow over all, shedding warmth and light even into the dingy stable, I consented to unsling my knapsack and accept the situation. The rain had ceased, and the sun shone out behind the woods. We had trout sufficient for present needs; and after my first meal in an ox-stall, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... sound was heard. Rosario had put the key into the invisible lock and was cautiously opening the door on the threshold of which they had been sitting. The faint odor of dampness, peculiar to rooms that have been long shut up, issued from the place, which was as dark as a tomb. Pepe Rey felt himself being guided by the hand, and his ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... occasionally on the ceilings; even this will not be necessary. You may make a holocaust of the contents of any room in the house, and, if the doors, finish, etc., happen to be of iron, as they may be, no one in the house will suspect your bonfire, until the heap of charcoal and ashes is found. Dampness and decay, unsavory odors and impure air, chilly bedrooms and cold floors, will be unknown. The ears in the walls will be stopped, there will be no settlement from shrinking timbers, no jelly-like trembling of the whole fabric when the master puts his foot down. Finally, the dear old house ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... thirty-six hours, while they went through their changes of brilliant colour, ending in deep blue. I contrived this method of preserving them by placing a dish of water below, within the covering bell glass, by means of which the dampness of the air prevented evaporation of the bubble. This dodge of mine vastly delighted Sir John, as it allowed him to watch the exquisite series of iridescent ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... most usual to date the employment of artillery. That day which witnessed the first efficient use of a weapon destined to revolutionize the art of war, also witnessed the most splendid achievements of the archers of England. The bowstrings of the French had become useless by the dampness of the weather, while those of the English, either on account of greater care or the different material of which they were made, were uninjured. The cloth-yard arrows of the English bowmen, directed with unerring skill, made terrible havoc ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... form, that were it not for a consciousness of guilt, with difficulty he would have recognised her whom he had once idolized. Gomez Arias thrilled as he gazed on the nocturnal visitor; in her pale features could be traced no sympathy with life; a clammy dampness bedewed her brows; a chilling apathy sat upon her countenance. One of her hands now mechanically fell on the feverish breast of Don Lope, and the cold, cold touch imparted a thrill ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... was also the bookbinder to the monastery in ordinary cases, for he is here directed to cover the volumes with tablets of wood, that the inside may be preserved from moisture, and the parchment from the injurious effects of dampness. The different orders of books were to be kept separate from one another, and conveniently arranged; not squeezed too tight, lest it should injure or confuse them, but so placed that they might be easily distinguished, and those who sought them might find them ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... trampled through the wheat, Through whole blue summer eves, on velvet grass. Dreaming, I feel the dampness at my feet; The breezes bathe my naked head ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... palm-fronds; and then, on the great leaves of the Regia, which defy simile, we perceived the first feathered folk of this single tropical glimpse—spur-winged jacanas, whose rich rufus and cool lemon-yellow no dampness could deaden. With them were gallinules and small green herons, and across the pink mist of lotos blossoms just beyond, three egrets drew three lines of purest white—and vanished. It was not at all real, this onrush of bird and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... which the two antagonists are raging against each other. I have seen troops who had held out in the fire for days and weeks, to whom in exposed positions food could hardly be brought, on whose bodies the clothes were not dry, who, yet reeking with dirt and dampness, had the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... it is raining. If the sun gets gay and tries the bluff of being friendly, a heavy giant of a cloud rises promptly up from behind a mountain and puts him out of business. Still, why moan over the dampness? It makes the hills look like great green plush sofa-cushions and ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... great surge of the underground river with all of the rather thick-skinned unsensitiveness to shoulder-to-shoulder contact which the Subway engenders. Swaying from straps in a locked train, which tore like a shriek through a tube whose sides sweated dampness, they talked in voices trained to ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... time had a desire to live. The ocean was a wonderful color, all pearly gray with little flecks of pink on top of every wave. The sun was setting in a mist. The wind had died down and there was a delicious dampness in the air ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... dampness of night fled from before the rays of the morning sun it revealed a cooler, calmer crowd ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... fresh off the ocean, charged with the saline dampness of the element. As the air fell upon the distended and balanced sails, the ship bowed to the welcome guest; and then, rising gracefully from its low inclination, the breeze was heard singing, through the maze of rigging, the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... ornaments for the front of the altar are seen in many churches of Manila. Indeed when those who have done this are considered attentively they have made the expense once for all; for by means of the silver, hangings which soon are destroyed and damaged by the dampness in these islands, are done away with, But the silver, when somewhat tarnished, regains its former luster, and even more, by cleaning it. The work of the Society may be extolled in all Espana. All this appears good, so that when the foreigners return to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... persons, for example, in a small attic without ventilation of any kind. Some were in very low-studded rooms, with no ventilation save from windows, causing bad draughts and much sickness, and others in basements where dampness was added to cold ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... this now determined the Bob Whites to take refuge in the alder thicket, in whose deep seclusion they soon regained tranquillity of spirits. The dampness of the situation, however, proving most unfavorable to their brood, they anxiously awaited the time when the departure of the reapers would restore quiet and enable them to return to their haunts. At length ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... old they may be given wheat, cracked corn, etc., but not whole corn until they are five months old. Keep the coops dry and clean, and the turkeys out of the dew and rain until they are fully feathered, and have thrown out the red. Dampness and filth will kill young turkeys as surely as a dose of poison. For the first few days confine the poults to the limits of the coop and safety run; then, if all appear strong and well, give the mother hen and her brood liberty on pleasant days ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... distance from the house runs a pleasing brook, by a red rock, out of which has been hewn a very agreeable and commodious summer-house, at less expence, as Lord Auchinleck told me, than would have been required to build a room of the same dimensions. The rock seems to have no more dampness than any other wall. Such opportunities of variety it is judicious not ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of that below. The state of this deck may be said, indeed, to have constituted the chief source of our anxiety, and to have occupied by far the greatest share of our attention at this period. Whenever any dampness appeared, or, what more frequently happened, any accumulation of ice had taken place during the preceding night, the necessary means were immediately adopted for removing it; in the former case usually by rubbing the wood with cloths, and then directing the warm airpipe ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... stream of air blew outward from the corridor and through the cell, bringing with it that peculiar odour which belongs to all large and old buildings inhabited by religious communities. It is made up of the cold exhalations from stone walls and paved floors in which there is always some dampness, of the acrid smell of the heavy, leathern, wadded curtains which shut off the main drafts of air, as the swinging doors do in a mine, of a faint but perceptible suggestion of incense which penetrates the whole building from the church or the chapel, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... and went ashore to sleep after the work was finished; the Barang was the epitome of malodorous discomfort after her submersion, and even the crew preferred to coil up on deck rather than risk the dampness and possible intruding river life of the forecastle. Little looked at the departing canoe with humorous envy in his face, for he had not yet reached the point in sea-hardness where he preferred an uncomfortable bunk on board the ship to ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... him and waited—waited until my legs were cramped, waited until the dampness from the moss struck through the heavy soles of my tenderfoot shoes and chilled my feet; waited until my arm was so numb that it felt like a piece of lead—then, in spite of the danger of incurring Big Pete's displeasure and ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... my old friend, I grow prosy, and you tire; Fill the glasses while I bend To prod up the failing fire. . . . You are restless:—I presume There's a dampness in the room.— Much of warmth our nature begs, With rheumatics in our ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... paused for a moment in the doorway before going to the barn he drew with delight the taste of the dampness into his mouth and the odour of the moist earth into his nostrils. The world had taken on a new and appealing beauty, and yet the colourless landscape was touched with a sadness which he had never seen in external things ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... were piled old cans and bottles and half-filled paper bags. On a what-not in the corner a faded bunch of pink paper roses drooped over a cracked vase. The wallpaper, its ugly pattern mercifully faded, was fantastically streaked from the dampness, in one corner the ceiling plaster had fallen and newspapers had been tacked over the laths to keep ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... "The dampness won't do any damage, Bucky. That's the best place on the island, to my thinking; but, of course, if you don't ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the three children were seated on the wide settle, with a cheery log fire, to make them forget the outside dampness. Quick, the fidgety little fox-terrier, sat by the hearth, watching a possible mouse hole; and Mr. Wolf, the tawny St. Bernard, chose the rug as a comfortable place for finishing ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... to speak, have rallied round and done their bit. The air should have been soft and clear and scented: there should have been an afterglow of sunset in the sky to light him on his way. Instead, the air was full of that peculiar smell of hopeless dampness which comes at the end of a wet English day. The sky was leaden. The rain hissed down in a steady flow, whispering of mud and desolation, making a dreary morass of the lane through which he tramped. A curious sense of foreboding came upon George. It ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... moved by four windlasses, and sometimes by two; each required thirty-two men: it was raised and lowered by screws, to remove the balls and put them on the other side. When the road was even, the machine moved 60 feet in the hour. The mechanic, although continually ill from the dampness of the air, was still indefatigable in regulating the arrangements; and in six weeks the whole arrived at the river. It was embarked, and safely landed. Carburi then placed the mass in the square of St. Peter's, to the honor of Peter, Falconet, Carburi, and of Catherine, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... as though her long period of mourning ended when Peter Junior, pallid in his blue uniform, his hair darkened and matted with the dampness caused by weakness and pain, was borne in between the white columns of his father's house. When the news reached him that his son was lying wounded in a southern hospital, the Elder had, for the first time in many, many years, followed an impulse without ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... He was there endeavouring to recruit his health, which has suffered a good deal. He complained of the damp of the climate, while admitting its many charms, and seemed to think that he owed to the dampness a very bad cold by which he was afflicted. Soon afterwards his wife joined us. They were both at Sarawak when the last troubles took place, and must have had a bad time of it. The Chinese behaved well to them; indeed ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... her way across the fields, sometimes above the fog, sometimes below it, not much perplexed by its presence except when the track was so indefinite that it ceased to be a guide to the next stile. The dampness was such that innumerable earthworms lay in couples across the path till, startled even by her light tread, they withdrew suddenly into their holes. She kept clear of all trees. Why was that? There was no danger of lightning on such a morning as this. But though the roads were ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... in character, the kind of blackness in comparison with which the blackest night seems luminous. Then there was the peculiar quality of the air, so different from anything above ground, that the words chill, and dampness, had no special relation to it. In the strange, tomb-like silence, his own breath, his own movements, waked a ghostly, whispering echo which was extremely weird and suggestive. Mr. Fetherbee was enchanted. He felt that he was getting down into the mysterious ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... to chivalrous tasks. Little courtesies feed nobler reverences. No man can despise smaller duties and do the larger duties well. Our strength is sapped by small disobediences. Our discourtesies to one another impair our worship of God. The neglect of the "pointing" of a house may lead to dampness and fatal disease. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... shaded by dense foliage. The dampness of the leaves tends to attract malaria. Trees growing a little distance from the house, however, obstruct the transmission of unhealthy vapors arising beyond them. Malaria generally lurks near the surface of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... all the corners, examining everything, emboldened by the fact that no one paid the slightest attention to her. The walls behind the huge canvas decorations were dirty, with their plaster broken off, and covered with sticky dampness. The floors, the moldings, the shabby furniture and decorations, that seemed to her like beggarly rags, were thick with dust and filth. The odor of mastic, cosmetics, and burnt hair, floating over the ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... thick, and the November air was chill, as we walked back to the homestead. I was sorry that there should be that creeping dampness in the atmosphere that night. It seemed out of harmony with the new warmth in my heart. I pressed my darling's little hand closer to my breast, and had no more consciousness of any impediments to my future bliss than of the ground on which I ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... usually a very slow kind of burning. It is the dye that is oxidized (burned), not the cloth. Most dyes will combine with the oxygen in the air if they are exposed to the sunlight. The dampness quickens the action. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... must have been fully ten degrees. One becomes uncomfortably warm while walking in the sunshine, but upon crossing into the shade he is quickly chilled by the frostiness of the still, dry atmosphere and a realizing sense of dampness beneath his feet. "Only dogs and Americans walk on the sunny side," say the Mexicans. To this we can only answer by commending the discretion of both men and beasts. In the early evening, as soon as the sun sets, the natives begin to wrap up their throats and ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... one could prevent it, the soldiers began to shoot their arrows at the great statue, which they used as a target, and in a few hours the work of sixteen years was utterly destroyed. It is sadder still to tell the fate of Leonardo's fresco, the greatest picture perhaps that ever was painted. Dampness lurked in the wall and began to dim and blur the colours. The careless monks cut a door through the very centre of the picture, and, later on, when Napoleon's soldiers entered Milan, they used the refectory as a stable, and amused themselves by throwing stones at what ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... floor is uneven, unit may easily be made level by inserting shims under the 4 shipping lugs. These lugs also keep the jacket 1/2" off the floor, protecting it from wet floors and dampness. ...
— Installation and Operation Instructions For Custom Mark III CP Series Oil Fired Unit • Anonymous
... no drum to keep them in step with its melancholy throbbing. Two by two, heads down, laden with intrenching tools in addition to their regular equipment, grumbling as the car forced them off the road into the mud that bordered it, swathed beyond recognition against the cold and dampness, in the twilight those lines of shambling men looked ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... set out at top speed to catch a ghost, but the ghost had caught Richard Brant. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he was sure it meant something. He shivered, as much from reaction as the dampness. Maybe time ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... ordinary telegraphic practice. An operator notices that his instrument is not working well, and he suspects that at some point in his circuit there is a defective contact. A little dirt, or oxide, or dampness, has come in between two metallic surfaces; to be sure, they still touch each other, but not in the firm and perfect way demanded for his work. Accordingly he sends a powerful current abruptly into the line, which clears its path thoroughly, brushes aside dirt, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... not now be sick any more," he said. "In case of danger I can get into my cave. But at all other times I will live in my bower." He had use still for his cave. He could use it to store some things in. But he had to be careful about the dampness in wet weather. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... had been stacked along a stick set in two crotches, and covered with a mat to keep the dampness off. Annawan's feet, and his son's head, opposite, almost touched ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... youth about the shunned house was merely that people died there in alarmingly great numbers. That, I was told, was why the original owners had moved out some twenty years after building the place. It was plainly unhealthy, perhaps because of the dampness and fungous growths in the cellar, the general sickish smell, the drafts of the hallways, or the quality of the well and pump water. These things were bad enough, and these were all that gained belief among the persons whom I knew. Only the notebooks of my antiquarian uncle, Doctor ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... declining years by some ruinous noble, whose extravagance forbade his posterity to live in it, for it had that peculiarly forlorn air which belongs to a thing decayed without being worn out. We entered its coolness and dampness, and wandered up the wide marble staircase, past the vacant niches of departed statuary, and came on the third floor to a grand portal which was closed against us by a barrier of lumber. But this could ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... wore on, and so did we. By and by, the sun came out through the fog and clouds, and began to make it hot for us. The dampness of the earth made this an easy job. The sun got higher and hotter every minute. The way that close, sultry heat did roast us was pitiful. We would have "larded the lean earth as we walked along," except that hard bones and muscles of gaunt men didn't yield any "lard" ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... one of the guards who had remained in the chamber and had been kept awake by a toothache, brought on by the dampness of the atmosphere, "my lord has had a very restless night and two or three times, while dreaming, he called ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the sun is very great; and for even one week's work, or when a ship is going to be launched, it is necessary to erect a shelter for the workmen. This is made in a short time, with poles, bamboo, and palm-leaves. In the shipyards there is much waste; and, as the wood rots from dampness here, the soldiers take it at night to use in their houses, and relieve their misery. This cannot be called a theft, as it is done by menials who came hither at your Majesty's expense and are engaged ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... some noise, for he turned quietly toward me, saw I was awake, and nodded. The moonlight was sparkling on the hard stony landscape, and a thin dampness came out ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... Mercury, as is known, is always turned from the sun and is in a condition of perpetual night. In this perpetual darkness and dampness, where many rivers flow into warm black swamps, the vampires have bred for centuries. Conditions were ideal for their growth, and so through the ages they evolved into the monsters we have ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Bengal tigers, spotted panthers of the Cape, bears of Siberia and foxes of Norway, but all these elegant furs that were strewn in profusion, one over another, had been eaten by moths and worms and rotted by the dampness until they scarcely held together. The divan was that upon which the Baron d' Epinay had reclined, and the chibougues, with jasmine tubes and amber mouthpieces, that he had seen, prepared so that there was no need to smoke the same pipe twice, were still ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... say exactly how much farther I tramped that evening. When one is stumbling along at night through an exceedingly ill-kept wood in a state of hunger, dampness, and exhaustion, one's judgment of distance is apt to lose some of its finer accuracy. I imagine, however, that I must have covered at least three more miles before my desire to lie down and sleep became too poignant to be any ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... day Brother Kline moved back home. He says: Anna much improved in health. The season at the Springs has been quite pleasant, with the exception of atmospheric dampness from the abundance of rain we ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... the cloister and the aisle; and if his heart saddens at the endless repetition of the one heavenward gaze, at least no merchant traffics in what he loves. There, where his pictures have been born, mouldering in the dampness of the wall, blackening in the smoke of the altar, amidst a silence broken only by prayer, they may 'gently' and 'surely' die." He asks himself, as he again subsides into mournful resignation, whether the applause of men may not be neutralized at its ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the door, stepped inside, removed his hat and coat and shook the dampness from them. As he handed them to the checker, he looked casually around. Dorrine was nowhere in sight, but he hadn't expected her to be. There would be no point in their meeting physically; it might even be ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... roaring night; his tent was bellied in by the force of the wind, and the raindrops beat upon it with the force of buckshot. Through the entrance slit, through the open stovepipe hole, the gale poured, bringing dampness with it and rendering the interior as draughty as a corn-crib. Rolling himself more tightly in his blankets, Linton addressed the darkness through ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... few necessary seconds, pushed disarranged dark hair out of his eyes and felt the clammy dampness on his forehead, and wished silently to himself that opportunists like Cain were kept where they belonged—on the Slam-Bang Run out of Callisto. That's where the money was. That's where a Warrant like ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... great state of Oregon. Here, as in many places on the Pacific coast, people should be web-footed during the rainy season to escape the drowning, and iron clad during the dry season to escape the merciless peltings of the clouds of shot-like dust. The dampness in this valley, hemmed in by the now dripping, then brook covered mountains, is far from pleasant, and covers many of the buildings with unsightly mosses. In Washington and Oregon those who survive the climatic trials are a strong, energetic race, rapidly building ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... last evening in the theatre, and although, owing either to the change of climate, or to the dampness of the house, I have been obliged to keep my room since the day of the bull-fight, and to decline a pleasant dinner at the English Minister's, I thought it advisable to make my appearance there. Having discarded the costume of the light- headed Poblamanas, I adopted that of a virtuous Roman ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... already wear flannel waistcoats, let it be winter or summer, I should recommend him immediately to do so: if it be winter, I should advise him also to take to flannel drawers. The feet must be carefully attended to; they ought to be kept both warm and dry, the slightest dampness of either shoes or stockings should cause them to be immediately changed. If a boy, he ought to wear double-breasted waistcoats; ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... curiosity at the earthen walls. Here and there, as in the catacombs at Kief, were niches in the walls; and in some places coffins were standing. Sometimes they came across human bones which had become softened with the dampness and were crumbling into dust. It was evident that pious folk had taken refuge here from the storms, sorrows, and seductions of the world. It was extremely damp in some places; indeed there was water under their feet at intervals. Andrii was forced to halt frequently ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... provoked by the dampness of the situation, was answered by a groan, which, instead of being solid, was very hollow; and, as he peered vivaciously forward behind his extended lantern, there advanced from a far corner—O, woeful man! O, thrice unhappy ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... air turned to a cool dampness, and the forest odors gave place to the smell of stale dynamite smoke, suggestive of burning rubber. A cloud of steam came from McTeague's mouth; underneath, the water swashed and rippled around the car-wheels, while the light from the miner's ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... care of tools during vacation, they should be smeared with vaseline, which is cheap, and put away out of the dampness. The planes should be taken apart and each part smeared. To clean them again for use, then becomes an easy matter. The best method of removing rust and tarnish is to polish the tools on a power buffing wheel on which has been rubbed some ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... of fire, climbing the mountain toward him, had encountered a marshy stretch; where, in normal weather, water stood inches deep. Despite the drought, there was still enough moisture to stay the advance of the red line until the dampness could be turned to dust and tindery vegetation. And, in the meanwhile, after the custom of its kind, the fire had sought to spread to either side. Stopped at the granite-outcrop to the right, it had rolled faster through the herbage to ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... continual roaring of the cataract—the dismal moaning of the gale through the trees—the pattering of the rain, and the profound darkness, affected my spirits to a degree which nothing had ever before produced. Wet, half famished, and chilled to the heart with the dampness of the place, and nearly wild with the pain I endured, I fairly cowered down to the earth under this multiplication of hardships, and abandoned myself to frightful anticipations of evil; and my companion, whose spirit at last was ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... grass-grown path. The dogs, wagging their tails and looking at their masters, ran on both sides of them. Myriads of gnats hovered in the air and pursued the hunters, covering their backs, eyes, and hands. The air was fragrant with the grass and with the dampness of the forest. Olenin continually looked round at the ox-cart in which Maryanka sat urging on the ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... it possible to hint of a delicate female, living in good society, that she ate and drank too much, and that a hot supper of lobsters profusely enjoyed at the Rectory was the reason of an indisposition which Miss Crawley herself persisted was solely attributable to the dampness of the weather? The attack was so sharp that Matilda—as his Reverence expressed it—was very nearly "off the hooks"; all the family were in a fever of expectation regarding the will, and Rawdon Crawley was making sure of at least forty thousand pounds before ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and down for an hour or more, slapping my hands against my sides to keep them warm—for it was so cold I ached and felt a nausea—I was glad to see Gabord enter with a soldier carrying wood and shavings. I do not think I could much longer have borne the chilling air—a dampness, too, had risen from the floor, which had been washed that morning—for my clothes were very light in texture and much worn. I had had but the one suit since I entered the dungeon, for my other suit, which was by no means smart, had been taken from me when I was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... inside, and the other is in the Monastery of St. Pedro de Cardea, where it is hung up by two chains on the left of the dome; on the right, and opposite to this coffer, is the banner of the Cid, but the colour thereof cannot now be known, for length of time and the dampness of the Church have clean consumed it. In the middle is his shield hanging against the wall, covered with skin, but now so changed that no blazonry or device is to be seen. In the Sacristy there are the keys of the coffer, a great round chest of sattn wood, the setting ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... Ireland, which was to civilise the world, must—so far as he was concerned—remain a glorious dream. The fact of the matter was, Mrs. Milligan did not like it. She had tried vegetarianism; it did not suit her health; moreover, she objected to living in Ireland, on account of the dampness of the climate. Sadly, reluctantly, Mrs. Milligan's husband had to forgo his noble project. In consequence, he would have no need henceforth of a secretary, and Sherwood must consider their business ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... the midst of its range! Why does it not double or quadruple its numbers? We know that it can perfectly well withstand a little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier districts. In this case we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the power of increasing in numbers, we should have to give it some advantage over its competitors, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... to the time of poor Winterborne's death, and related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears as she asked him if he thought ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... age had now settled upon it; all over it bore melancholy sears of the masoned-up pockets that had once trenched it in various directions. Some parts of it were slightly mildewed from dampness; on one side several of the buttons were gone, and others were broken or cracked; while, alas! my many mad endeavours to rub it black on the decks had now imparted to the whole garment an exceedingly untidy appearance. Such as it was, with all ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... and that most dastardly part of warfare, the firing upon pickets from ambush, was of nightly occurrence. Manson's beat that night was over a low hill covered with scrub oak, and across part of a narrow valley, through which wound a small, marsh-bordered stream. The night was sultry, and the dampness of the swamp formed in a shallow strata of fog, filling this valley, but not rising above the level of the uplands. To add to the weirdness of his surroundings, the thin crescent of a new moon threw a faint light over all and outlined the winding ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... the better," said Alessandro, "so it have no dampness. Shall I make the bed, Senora?" he asked, "and will the Senora permit that I make it on the veranda? I was just asking Juan Can if he thought I might be so bold as to ask you to let me bring Senor Felipe into the outer air. With us, it is thought death to be shut up in walls, as he has been ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... straggled here and there, while a heap of moistened plaster was lying in a corner. On the shelves, formerly occupied by fruit and vegetables, were scattered some casts from the antique, covered with a tracery of cinder-like dust which had gradually collected there. A wash-house kind of dampness, a stale smell of moist clay, rose from the floor. And the wretchedness of this sculptor's studio and the dirt attendant upon the profession were made still more conspicuous by the wan light that filtered through the shop windows besmeared ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of her father, Mouret, a hatter at Marseilles. The Rue des Petites-Maries was black and dismal, and the house, with its vat of steaming water ready to the hand of the hatter, exhaled a rank odor of dampness, even in fine weather. She also saw her mother, who was ever an invalid, and who kissed her with pale lips, without speaking. No gleam of the sun penetrated into her little room. Hard work went on around her; only by dint of toil ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... she? And it would do YOU good to come too, and shake the limp dampness out o' you," returned Brooks, as he quietly remounted his horse and ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... gestures, as if twelve centuries had not passed over them, and they were nightmares only dreamed last night, and rooted in a sick man's memory. For those gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of life or end of days. No fever touches them; no dampness of the wind and rain loosens their firm cement. They stare with senseless faces in bitter mockery of men who live and die and moulder away beneath. Their poor old guardian told us it was a weary life. He has ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... full at Clifton that summer, for the new building was not completed, and every available point was taken, from narrow, contracted No. 94 in the upper hall down to more spacious No. 8 on the lower floor, where the dampness, and noise, and mold, and smell of coal and cooking, and lower bathrooms were. "A very, very quiet place, with only a few invalids too weak and languid, and too much absorbed in themselves and their 'complaints' to note or care ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... of antediluvian monsters, but are made more profitable by being quarried into millstones. There is something here that brings part of Wales to the remembrance of the few who have seen those dreary slate-villages—dark, damp, but naked, for moss and weeds do not thrive on this dampness as they do on the decay of other stones—which dot the moorland of Wales. The fences are slate; the gateposts are slate; the stiles are of slate; the very "sticks" up which the climbing roses are ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... used as a temporary filling, or as a matter of economy. It may be rendered impervious to air and dampness, but it corrodes in most mouths, unless it comes in contact with food in chewing, and then it rapidly wears away; it does not become hard by packing or under pressure, and that it forms a kind of a union with the tooth is ridiculous." (Dr. J. D. ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... Humblethwaite did not lie among the lakes,—was, indeed, full ten miles to the north of Keswick; but it was so placed that it enjoyed the beauty and the luxury of mountains and rivers, without the roughness of unmanageable rocks, or the sterility and dampness of moorland. Of rocky fragments, indeed, peeping out through the close turf, and here and there coming forth boldly so as to break the park into little depths, with now and again a real ravine, there were plenty. And there ran right across the park, passing so near the Hall as to ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... occupied in repairing to some extent the ravages of the brief storm. A length of the corral had succumbed to the flood, many valuable tools in the blacksmith shop were in danger of rust from the dampness, and Arthur and his wife had been completely washed out. All three men worked hard setting things to rights. The twilight caught them before their work ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... from habit; but James was obliged to assist him to dismount. Mr. Uxbridge waited a moment at the door, and so there was quite a little sensation, which spread its ripples till Aunt Eliza was reached. She sent for William, whose only excuse was "dampness." ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... mornin', and ye must feel it more, bein' in a strange place. I've always thought a strange place was damper, airly in the mornin', than a place ye're used ter; and there's nothin' like whiskey with a little bitters to get out dampness." ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... reminiscently down toward the right; the boards of it made a stifled creak as he stepped across them. He himself was a little unsteady. The window gave on impenetrable fog. Hastings threw up the sash and peered out into the dampness; he heard the sound of unseen boats groping their ways through the distance; the water lapped ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and olive-trees in bloom, and even vines, but of flowers or grass there was not a trace; the trees, however, stood green and fresh, in spite of the heat of the atmosphere and the total lack of rain. This luxuriance may partly be owing to the coolness and dampness which reigns during the night in tropical countries, quickening and renewing the whole face ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... have gathered, their city have built; Where Hunger and Vice, like twin beasts of prey, Have hunted their victims to gloom and despair; Raise the rich, dainty dress, and the fine broidered skirt, Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt, Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, Half-starved, and half-naked, lie crouched from the cold. See those skeleton limbs, and those frost-bitten feet, All bleeding ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... just like folks!" she said, holding it off and looking at it in high derision. "Look at that thing, Miss Gibbie, peart as the first crocus and proud as cuffy when the weather was good, and at the first touch of dampness or discouragement flop it goes, and no more spirit than a convict in court! It certainly is strange how many things in nature is like human beings. Now this here rooster and this here duck"—she smoothed the breast and ran her fingers down the feathers—"just ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... moral teachings would be ridiculed or find no listeners. And, finally, who was ever made healthier? In the bad air generated among so many breaths in confined apartments, the high nervous excitement that usually prevails among the company, and the exposure to cold or dampness to which their unprepared systems are often subjected in returning home, Death has marked many a victim for his own; while, at the best, lassitude and depression are sure to follow, from which it will ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... one pound of alum to three pints of water should be poured into all the cracks. Insect-powder and borax are also effective. Absolute cleanliness and freedom from dampness are necessary, if the house is to be kept ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... will be destroyed by constant contact with impurity and defilement,—and coarseness of manners, habits, and tastes, will become inevitable. You cannot rear a kindly nature, sensitive against evil, careful of proprieties, and desirous of moral and intellectual improvement, amidst the darkness, dampness, disorder, and discomfort which unhappily characterize so large a portion of the dwellings of the poor in our large towns; and until we can, by some means or other, improve their domestic accommodation, their low moral and social condition ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... you think you have found something. Three pauls a month, the subscription is; and for seven, we get a 'Galignani,' or are promised to get it. We pay for our villa ten scudi the month, so that altogether it is not ruinous. The air is as fresh as English air, without English dampness and transition; yes, and we have English lanes with bowery tops of trees, and brambles and blackberries, and not a wall anywhere, except the walls of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... ordinary person. Our little home is not as bad in the summer time. We can have the windows and doors open, but now in this cold winter we must all live in one room, a very small room, where there is a stove. The dampness penetrates right through the walls and the wind comes through the holes in the window panes. Sundays are the hardest days for me. Then Kate, queen of the kitchen, is here, and she delights in cooking all sorts of things ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... remedy is the camphor ball, to be obtained of all chemists. Powdered hemlock bark put into a piece of muslin and sprinkled on the chaps is highly recommended. Or, wash with oatmeal, and afterwards rub the hands over with dry oatmeal, so as to remove all dampness. It is a good thing to rub the hands and lips with glycerine before going to bed at night. A good oil is made by simmering: Sweet oil, one pint; Venice turpentine, three ounces; lard, half a pound; beeswax, three ounces. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... dear, only I'm afraid I couldn't stay very long on account of the dampness,' observed Lavinia, cheerfully, as she put a hoe-handle under her feet and wiped the blue mould from a ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... heard by this time what had happened at the Somasco mill. Still, he was hungry and weary, and stopped a moment when he caught a blink of light between the trees. The bush behind him was very black and still, the dampness of the dew was on his dusty garments, and he shivered a little in the faint cold breeze that came down from the snow. Then more lights twinkled into brightness, a cheerful murmur of voices and a burst ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... After a short excursion from Edinburgh into the Appin country, where he made inquiries on the spot into the traditions concerning the murder of Campbell of Glenure, his three resting-places in Scotland during this summer were Stobo Manse near Peebles, Lochearnhead, and Kingussie. At Stobo the dampness of the season and the place quickly threw him again into a very low state of health, from which three subsequent weeks of brilliant sunshine in Speyside did but little to restore him. In spite of this renewed breakdown, when autumn came he would not face the idea of returning for a third season ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, so called. Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... custom of the expropriation of the widow in the evening of her days, when honour and abundance should attend her more than ever; but her condemnation of this wrong forgot itself when so many of the consequences looked right—barring a little dampness: which was the fate sooner or later of most of her unfavourable judgments of English institutions. Iniquities in such a country somehow always made pictures; and there had been dower-houses in the novels, mainly of fashionable life, on which her later childhood was fed. The iniquity did not as a ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of a bird awoke her. She recognized at once the sweet, shrill notes of a blackbird. Day was breaking. She began to shake, for she was chilled to the bone. The dampness of the night had made her clothes as wet as though she had ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... simply moving restlessly about among the animals. As we stand under the elder-bushes we can look down among the sheep, for they have not the wild animal's sense of smell, or else the presence of man disturbs them not. One of the flock gives an almost human cough, as if protesting against the dampness of ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of outfall for drains. Dampness of cellar walls. Use of tar or asphalt. Dry masonry for cellar walls. Damp courses. The cellar floor. Cellar ventilation. The old-fashioned privy. Cow stables. Use ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... off to sleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of water on his face; this is followed by another drop; in an instant a stream is established. He moves his head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when he feels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand outside, he finds a puddle of water soaking through his blanket. By this time, somebody inquires if it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has a stream of water under him; another says it is coming into his ear. The roof appears to be a discriminating ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... should be put away for the night, even, without first removing all steel pins, as the least dampness may cause rust spots. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... for Versailles. More than one figurine lifts its delicate head from a block of rough stone behind it; more than one fantastic flower is merely indicated by chiselled touches on the abandoned stone, though dampness has since laid its blossoms of mouldy greenery upon it. On the facade, side by side with the tracery of one window, another window presents its masses of jagged stone carved only by the hand of time. Here, to the least artistic and the least trained eye, is ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... be sprinkled with small colonies of canons and friars, and in these religious hostels the young monks from the surrounding abbeys were educated. Mr. A.H. Thompson, in his Cambridge and its Colleges, suggests that the unhealthy dampness of the fens would have made it very desirable that the less robust of the youths who were training for the cloistered life in the abbeys of East Anglia should be transferred to the drier and healthier town, where the learning of France was ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... museum. An Italian boy in the dress of his country, a model, was standing in front of a picture which represented a sunlight effect on a Roman landscape. The boy held his head stretched out. Amid the immobility of the indifferent attendants, and in the dampness and drabness of a London day, this Italian boy radiated light. He was deaf to everything around him, full of secret sunlight, and his hands were almost clasped. He was praying to ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... use for the purpose of removing to a greater distance from my prison, was, in its whole duration, something less than three hours. When I rose from my seat, I was weak with hunger and fatigue, and, which was worse, I seemed, between the dampness of the preceding day and the sharp, clear frost of the night, to have lost the command of my limbs. I stood up and shook myself; I leaned against the side of the hill, impelling in different directions the muscles of the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... medium of Tenerife or Thebes. Lastly, when phthisis was determined to be a disease of debility, of anaemia, of organic exhaustion, and of defective nutrition, cases fitted for Madeira were greatly limited. Here instruments deceive us as to humidity. The exceeding dampness is shown by the rusting of iron and the tarnishing of steel almost as effectually as upon the West African coast. Yet Mr. Vivian's observations, assuming 100 to be saturation, made Torquay 76 and Funchal 73. [Footnote: Others make the mean ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton |
