"Muddy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an hour after throwing away his crutch, he leaped a great ditch ten feet wide, and of undiscoverable muddy depth. I wonder if the old cripple would think me the lamer one now, thought Israel to himself, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... weight is sure to make the boat sink deeper in her nest!" declared Little Billie, leaning far over the side, as if to see how far down in her muddy ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... was sharp and bright in anything addressed to his reason, but he had no verbal memory, and he was therefore wading painfully through the catechism like a man in a deep-muddy road; with this difference, that the man carries too much clay with him, while ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... language, and have often been reproached on this score. But I have always found it possible, without using vulgar and exaggerated abuse, to express the contempt which, in common with every right-minded man, I feel for the grovelling herd of incompetent boobies, whose minds are as muddy as the Rowley Mile after a thunderstorm. Surefoot was always a favourite of mine. Two months ago I said, "if Surefoot can only face the starter for the Two Thousand firmly, he will probably get off well, and ought not to be far behind the first six at the finish. As to Le Nord, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... find that you won't get much of that," the mate, who was president of the mess, said, after listening to their anticipations of sport. "I have been on the west coast of Africa and know what it is poking about in muddy creeks in boats, tramping through the jungle, knee deep in mud, half the crew down with fever, and the rest worn out with work and heat. I can tell you it is not all fun, as you youngsters seem to ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... jagged, gray, angry, sprawling clouds, sending a freezing, thin drizzle of rain, as they passed, upon a man following a plow. The horses had a sullen and weary look, and their manes and tails streamed sidewise in the blast. The plowman clad in a ragged gray coat, with uncouth, muddy boots upon his feet, walked with his head inclined t ward the sleet, to shield his face from the cold and sting of it. The soil rolled away, black and sticky and with a dull sheen upon it. Nearby, a boy with tears on his cheeks was watching cattle, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... where the backwater runs down to the Potwell Mill. And there, after much parley and several feints, Uncle Jim made a desperate effort and struggled into clutch of the overhanging osiers on the island, and so got out of the water with the millstream between them. He emerged dripping and muddy and vindictive. "By Gaw!" he said. "I'll ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... a bad dream. It was cold and muddy, and the snow when it fell turned to mud so quickly that Guido believed they were one and the same. He did not dare to think of the place he know as home. And the sight of the colored advertisements of the steamship lines that hung in the windows of the Italian bankers hurt him as the sound ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... (then almost the city's edge, and which now is a girdle worn high about its gigantic middle) petered out into violently muddy and unmade streets and great patches of unimproved vacant lots that in winter were ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... it cool slightly before adding more arsenic. The secret of success is to work the arsenic in fast enough to keep the solution very hot—nearly but not quite at the boiling point. The result should be a clear solution, except for dirt. If the liquid persistently remains muddy or milky, it may be because the operation has been conducted so fast that much water has been boiled out and sodium arsenite is beginning to crystallize, so add another gallon of water and stir. If the solution does not then clear up, the caustic soda must have been ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... scanty rill of Siloah. The sublime Siloah is now a muddy rill; you descend by steps to the fountain which is its source, and which is covered with an arch. Here the blind man received his sight; and, singular enough, to this very day the healing reputation of its waters prevails, and summons to its brink ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... tidy young Tapir, Who went out to bring in the paper; And when he came back He made no muddy track, For he wiped his feet clean on ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... He was muddy and tired and his face was very white. "I know it's late," he said, apologetically, "and I'll go up to dress right ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... me to be the slightest objection to this arrangement, except that my boots were muddy, and my coat of the morning sort. But as it was quite impossible to go to Paris and back again in a quarter of an hour, and as a man may dine with perfect comfort to himself in a frock-coat, it did not occur to me to be particularly squeamish, or to decline an old friend's ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... escape. Then in a moment the situation was changed. The runaway wheel flashed into a mud puddle, veered and before his astonished eyes shed a rib or two and a clavicle from the swaying bundle, veered again and collided with his own wheel. In another instant, the right-hand gutter held two muddy bicycles, the greater portion of a human skeleton, Phebe McAlister and the composer ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... fitted to the Judge's need: here was no butterfly, but a solid body, light withal, a wet, muddy, and dusty yellow dog, eminently kickable. The man was heavily built about the legs, and the vigor of what he did may have been additionally inspired by his recognition of the mongrel as Joe Louden's. The impact of his toe upon ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... be experienced within the streets of the town. Portions of the scenery, from these heights, are not unlike those in Derbyshire, about Matlock. There is plenty of rock, of shrubs, and of fern; while another Derwent, less turbid and muddy, meanders below. Thus much for a general, but hasty sketch of the town of Vire. My next shall give you some detail of the interior of a few of the houses, of which I may be said to have hitherto only ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... pity—almost of contempt. At their public meetings—which were held pretty often, for they had much more public than private business to attend to—they occupied a great share of their time in discussing questions which were so deep and muddy, that nobody but they ever saw to the bottom of them. Indeed, many very sensible geese, who made few pretensions to learning, have doubted whether they saw very clearly into these questions themselves. I, too, have my doubts ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... Against the muddy edge a rotten punt holding a pole swung deliberate from a stake. The men put the box in, then followed, and the elder, standing in the stern, took the pole and, pushing against the bank, drove the boat into deep water. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Fisher minor began to feel dreadfully compromised by his company. Rollitt's clothes were wet and muddy; his hands and face were dirty with his scramble along the tree; his air was morose and savage, and his stride was such that the junior had to trot a step or two every few yards to keep up. What would fellows think of him! ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... afterwards in a little house. Despatch after despatch until evening—and then, ordered to remain behind to direct others, and cheered by the sight of our most revered and most short-sighted staff-officer walking straight over a little bridge into a deep, muddy, and stinking ditch, I took refuge in the kitchen and experienced the discreeter pleasures of "the Force." The handmaidens brought coffee, and brushed me and washed me and talked to me. I was sorry when the time came for me to resume my ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... not an occasional fall in the mire, or an accidental rent or two during a game at "Hunt the Hare," but it was constant wilful destruction, which Nurse had to repair as best she might. No entreaties would induce Amelia to "take care" of anything. She walked obstinately on the muddy side of the road when Nurse pointed out the clean parts, kicking up the dirt with her feet; if she climbed a wall she never tried to free her dress if it had caught; on she rushed, and half a skirt might be left behind for any care she had in the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Went to Muddy Hole and Dogue Run. Took the dogs with me, but found nothing. Warner Washington and Mr. Thurston came in ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... be forded. Into it splash the gigs; our horses following willingly, for they are thirsty, poor beasts, and the cool spring water is inviting. The roads are, so far, favourable to our march; but we have arrived at a piece of ground where muddy puddles lie horse-leg deep. A bridle road invites, but the thoroughfare being intercepted by brushwood and overhanging branches, it is not easy to effect a passage. Our leader, Don Severiano, accordingly unsheathes the long machete, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... morning of the ninth, they came in view of the green line of the ancient canal. It was hours later that they staggered weakly over its wall of crumbling masonry, clambered down into the muddy, weed-grown channel, and drank thirstily ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... and hammams, and houses which at first sight look as though they are in decay. But when we got to know these houses better, we found that marble courts, inlaid chambers, arabesque ceilings, often lay behind the muddy exteriors. The city itself is divided into three districts: the Jewish in the southern part, the Moslem in the northern and western, and the Christian in the eastern. The Moslem quarter is clean, the Christian quarter dirty, and the Jewish simply filthy. I often had to gallop through the last-named ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... other. The rendezvous-de-chasse was, in the old days, and is to-day on rare occasions, at the Rond Point, to which a dozen magnificent forest roads lead from all directions, that from the town being paved with Belgian blocks, the dread of automobilists, but delightful to ride over in muddy weather. The Route de Connetable, so called, is well-nigh ideal of its kind. It launches forth opposite the chateau and at its entrance are two flanking stone lions. It is of a soft soil suitable for horseback riding, but entirely unsuited for wheeled traffic ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... his haversack, and was fumbling in it with unsteady hands. At last he found that which he sought. It was wrapped in a silk scarf that must have come from Cashmere to Moscow, and from Moscow in his haversack with pieces of horseflesh and muddy roots to Dantzig. With that awkwardness in giving and taking which belongs to his class, he held out to Desiree a little square "ikon" no bigger than a playing-card. It was of gold, set with diamonds, and the faces of the Virgin and Child were ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... personally deeply stricken and found it wanting, while the whisper of doubt has swelled the more readily as there are many to echo it. So Major John Wharton, D.S.O., M.C., having found war, contrary to his expectation of it as the most glorious manly sport in the world, a "muddy, mad, stinking, bloody business," loses the faith of his youth and says so, not with bravado but with regret. The Vicar, with dignity and restraint, but without much understanding and not without some hoary cliches; his wife, with venom (suggesting also incidentally sound argument for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... say a word, he was so ashamed. He just crept up the Lone Little Path to his home, dragging his tail, all wet and muddy, behind him, and dripping water ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess
... account-book to date; but there was a line to be drawn even in this trade. That dawn—if you could call the gray dark of a snowstorm dawn—he, wondrously adventurous, had gone shell-fish collecting, away out upon the freezing wet mud-ooze. He had got three mussels; a muddy face; muddier feet; nearly an eye pecked out by a mighty, great black-backed gull; three chivyings from herring-gulls; one nip from a crab who ought to have been dead; two winkles under big stones that took half-an-hour ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... arms went around his neck. An instant later, dazed, a little red, a moist spot on his cheek and a lingering fragrance clinging subtly like the touch of vanished arms, Hull watched her flying heels upon the muddy square. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... an old trooper, who doubtless was unwilling to treat us kindly lest we should take root in this territory. His answer was negative and evasive. The game keepers, afraid of our soldiers, had gone, the fishermen were insubordinate, the water muddy, etc. To all this, I said nothing, but I sent him ten grenadiers to be lodged and fed until ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... feet were unused to rough, hard roads, and, despite her will and brave efforts, she tripped and stumbled continually. In Bengal, in the hot dry weather, the country roads are difficult to traverse. The deep ruts of the rainy season dry up and the once muddy earth crumbles into thick heavy dust, into which the feet of the wayfarers sink. Fast travelling is difficult even for those who are used to journeying, so the poor young lady made little headway and was soon overtaken by her pursuers. They had not been long in discovering her flight and were soon ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... silenced its imperative echoes, it should have been Heyst's father, with his contemptuous, inflexible negation of all effort; but apparently he could not. There was in the son a lot of that first ancestor who, as soon as he could uplift his muddy frame from the celestial mould, started inspecting and naming the animals of that paradise which he ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... morning round, and pacing thoughtfully to and fro upon the veranda of his dwelling while waiting for his horse, saw a miserable looking object coming up the avenue: a man almost covered from head to foot with blood and mud; a white handkerchief, also both bloody and muddy, knotted around the right arm, which hung apparently useless at his side. The man reeled as he walked, either from intoxication or weakness ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... main ambulance is on the cricket ground. The battalion tents are pitched among the rocks or by the river side, where Kaffirs bathe more often and completely than you would otherwise suppose. The river water, by the way, is a muddy yellow now and leaves a deep deposit of Afric's golden sand in your glass or basin. The headquarters staff has seized upon two empty houses, and can dine in peace. The street is one yelling chaos of oxen in waggons and oxen loose, galloping horses, sheep, ammunition ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... spring floods are beneficial to the country, for the Mississippi is a very muddy river, and when it overflows it spreads this mud over the country, in much the same fashion that the Nile does, and with the same result of fertilizing ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the General to the little steamboats and to a blessed ignorance of times to be when at "Vicksburg and the Bends" this same waiter would bring his coffee made of corn-meal bran and muddy water, with which to wash down scant snacks of mule meat. The listless eye still roamed the arid page as the slave returned with the fragrant pot and cup, but now the sitter laid it by, lighted a cigar ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... east, south, stretched the level Nebraska plain of long rust-red grass that undulated constantly in the wind. To the west the ground was broken and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound along the turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely ambition enough to crawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few stunted cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot himself years ago. The ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Precluded, therefore, from advancing in a straight direction, he resolved to avoid the English military and endeavour to join his friends by making a circuit to the left, for which a beaten path, deviating from the main road in that direction, seemed to afford facilities. The path was muddy and the night dark and cold; but even these inconveniences were hardly felt amidst the apprehensions which falling into the hands of the King's forces reasonably excited in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... although some designs were still copied from earlier models. The white line begins to function with greater elasticity; tones and details beyond anything known previously in the medium appear with the force of innovation. The paper was still somewhat coarse and the cuts were often gray and muddy. But the audacity of the artist in venturing tonal subtleties ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... in this instance is true in all others, where progress is made. We are grasping opportunities and compelling adverse circumstances and forces to work together for our profit. Under the wise leadership of Booker T. Washington, we are finding our bearings and casting anchor in the dark and muddy waters of industrial conditions in which we were sent adrift without rudder, compass or means of existence less ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... private entrance to the preserves of a private individual. So what you really see is, on the one hand, islands of mangrove bushes, with their roots in the muddy water; on the other, Banana, a strip of sand and palm trees without a wharf, quay, landing stage, without a pier to which you could make fast anything larger than ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... is used to clear cloudy white wines; as also fresh slaked lime; and the size of a walnut of sugar of lead, with a table spoonful of sal enixum, is put to forty gallons of muddy wine, to clear it; and hence, as the sugar of lead is decomposed, and changed into an insoluble sulphat of lead, which falls to the bottom, the practice is not so dangerous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... Conservancy looked doubtfully alive against the bleak sky and the row of wretched-looking blue-slated houses, although, by the way, the latter were the backs of a sort of street of "villas" and not a slum; the road in front of the house was sooty and muddy at once, and in the air was that sense of dirty discomfort which one is never quit of in London. The morning was harsh, too, and though the wind was from the south-west it was as cold as a north wind; and yet amidst it all, I thought of the corner of the next bight ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... the streets were miserably muddy, but no rain fell as they walked towards the Iron Bridge. The little creature seemed so young in his eyes, that there were moments when he found himself thinking of her, if not speaking to her, as if she were ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... your faces to the south, and come to me in the street of many noises, which leads down to the muddy river. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of retreat no longer sounds in our hearts; the tocsin rings there instead. We are marching on; we are driving the barbarians back. Every inch of our motherland regained is sweet and precious to us. Three days ago I saw our King. He was as muddy and stained, Monsieur, as I am now. An officer who was with him wanted to remove the mud from his clothes. 'But no,' said the King, 'let it stay. If my own land clings thus to me, let it stay; it is better that it should ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... others it is dingier and greener. All are blotched, speckled, and streaked more or less with somewhat pale sepia markings; but in some the spots and specks are a darker brown and, as a rule, well defined, and there is very little streaking, while in others the brown is pale and muddy, the markings ill-defined, and nearly the whole surface of the egg is freckled over with smudgy streaks. Sometimes the markings are most numerous at the large end, sometimes at the small; no two eggs are exactly alike, and yet they have so strong a family resemblance ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... first were not very distinct, but ere long I came on a muddy place where they were deeply imprinted, and my anxiety was somewhat increased by observing that they were uncommonly large—the largest I had ever seen—and that, therefore, they had undoubtedly been made by one of those solitary ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be travelling alone—for reasons—on the northern frontier. I crossed the River Yaguaron into Brazilian territory, and for a whole day rode through a great marshy plain, where the reeds were dead and yellow, and the water shrunk into muddy pools. It was a place to make a man grow weary of life. When the sun was going down, and I began to despair of getting to the end of this desolation, I discovered a low hovel made of mud and thatched with rushes. It was about fifteen yards long, with only one ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... want you to stay after school, I want to speak to you a minute." Jem stayed, not knowing exactly what was coming. When the rest of the pupils had tumbled out of the school door, and disappeared along the muddy road, the teacher and Jem ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... and summer into fall. Quail piped in the logged-over lands and wild ducks whistled down through the timber and rested on the muddy bosom of the Skookum, but for the first time in forty years The Laird's setters remained in their kennels and his fowling pieces in their leather cases. To him the wonderful red and gold of the great Northern woods ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... free people, Selma. I'm a good democrat, but you must agree that the day-laborer in his muddy garb would not find himself at ease in a Fifth Avenue drawing-room. On that account shall we abolish ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... block the marriage by delay. If you gain time, the rest is easy, trust me. One day you'll fool them with a sudden illness, Causing delay; another day, ill omens: You've met a funeral, or broke a mirror, Or dreamed of muddy water. Best of all, They cannot marry you to anyone Without your saying yes. But now, methinks, They ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... time, to be worlds away from all this sedition and passion and fever. The little affairs of men which they thought so great seemed to me in that hour very little and wicked—like the scheming of naughty children, or the quarrels and spites of efts in a muddy pond. In that hour my whole heart grew sick at this miserable murderous pother in the midst of which my duty seemed to lie; and yearned instead to those things that are great indeed—the love of the maid who ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... whole surface of the body and extremities, quickly followed by a total subsidence of all the acute symptoms, leaving the patient free from pain and on the high road to convalescence. Under its influence the urine becomes copious, the muddy brickdust deposit disappears, and the normal specific gravity and action upon litmus paper is restored. The sudorific glands over the whole cutaneous surface receive a fresh stimulus, thus assisting to eliminate the materies morbi, ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... Corinthian portico which would do honour to Palladio, and by a Gothic college worthy to stand in the High Street of Oxford. In 1689, the city extended over about one tenth part of the space which it now covers, and was intersected by muddy streams, which have long been concealed by arches and buildings. A desolate marsh, in which the sportsman who pursued the waterfowl sank deep in water and mire at every step, covered the area now occupied by stately buildings, the palaces of great commercial societies. There ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to swell, and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shores, That now lie foul and muddy.' ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... And muddy clay, and none can drink thereof. Therefore, O citizens, I bid ye bow In awe to this command, Let no man live Uncurbed by law nor curbed by tyranny; Nor banish ye the monarchy of Awe Beyond the walls; untouched by fear divine, No man doth justice in the world of men. Therefore in purity ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... not set out with Amadis of Gaul in a forest or with Mr. Pickwick in a comic club. She set out with herself, with her own dingy clothes, and accidental ugliness, and flat, coarse, provincial household; and forcibly fused all such muddy materials into a spirited fairy-tale. If the first chapters on the home and school had not proved how heavy and hateful sanity can be, there would really be less point in the insanity of Mr. Rochester's wife—or the not much milder insanity of Mrs. Rochester's ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... hollow, nose under for the most part, and the air smelt wet and muddy, like that of an emptied aquarium. There was a second hill to climb; I saw that much: but the water came aboard and earned me aft till it jammed me against the wheel-house door, and before I could catch breath or clear my eyes again we were rolling to and fro in torn water, with the scuppers ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... etc., are manifested by a clear clean shade of red. When these feelings become tainted with selfishness, low motives, etc., the shade grows darker and duller. Love of low companionship, unclean sports, or selfish games, etc., produce an unpleasant muddy red shade. ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... gazing dejectedly at the store across the street. He knew that his master had gone to St. Johns and would go to Stacey. He had been told all about that, and had followed Shoop to the automobile stage, where it stood, sand-scarred, muddy, and ragged as to tires, in front of the post-office. Bondsman had watched the driver rope the lean mail bags to the running-board, crank up the sturdy old road warrior of the desert, and step in beside the supervisor. There had been no other passengers. And while Shoop had told Bondsman that he ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... so muddy as other parts of the river bed, and therefore it had been chosen as the best place for crossing. It was quite hard, except in the middle, where the mud and water together rose over their knees; and thus this ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... been gone but these few days, but each of them seemed like a month to look back upon as I rode under the shadow of the hills that I had last seen as a hopeless captive. It grew warm and soft as the midday sun shone on us, and the road was muddy underfoot with the chill water that had filled all the brooks again, but I hardly noticed the change, so eager was I to be back. Glad enough I was when we saw the village and the mighty earthworks above it, and yet more glad when the guards at the gate ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... prosy and practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, muddy ditches, and unattractive detail work, and look at the result of careful and thorough labor. As the years come and go with their changing seasons, your drained fields are ever your friends, always cheering you with a bountiful harvest, always answering to every ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... long for the chance to try his fortune there. For the traveller on his first visit a great surprise is in store; with a name such as this one pictures in advance a place of quays on a sluggish river, fairly wide and very muddy, opening to the sea, with the conventional loungers, tarry and fishy scents and a fringe of lodging houses. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Here is no evidence of the sea at all, and although West Bay, the real "quay" of Bridport, is less ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... been there," I said. "I have clambered up Monte Solaro and drunk vero Capri—muddy ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... raising the amrita, Vrihaspati of Angira's race sat on the shores of the Ocean for performing the rite of Puruscharana. When he took up a little water for the purpose of the initial achamana, the water seemed to him to be very muddy. At this Vrihaspati became angry and cursed the Ocean, saying,—'Since thou continuest to be so dirty regardless of the fact of my having come to thee for touching thee, since thou hast not become clear ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... that he had left me there so long by myself, forgetting that I hadn't wanted him to come at all; and he told me that he had had a hard time getting on shore, because they found the banks very low and muddy, and when he had landed he was on the wrong side of a hedge, and had to walk a good ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... for a second specimen; afterward we were relieved of all necessity to molest the strange, out-of-date creatures. It was a surprise to us to find them habitually frequenting the open marsh. They were always on muddy ground, and in the papyrus-swamp we found them in several inches of water. The stomach is thick-walled, like a gizzard; the stomachs of those we shot contained adult and larval ants, chiefly termites, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... detachment of the ——th regiment succeeded last week in taking possession of an island in the river, nearly half an acre in extent; it has, however, since been deemed advisable to relinquish this important conquest, owing to the muddy nature of the soil, into which several of our brave fellows sank to the middle, and were with difficulty extricated. A gallant affair took place a few days ago between two English men-of-war's boats and a Chinese market junk, which was taken after a resolute defence on the part of the Chinaman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... muddy stoop and strode among them, cuffing this one and that of those malcontents who ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... decades, and we are together on a moonlight night, taking a short cut through the fields from the farm of Craigiebuckle. Buxom were Craigiebuckle's "dochters," and Jamie was Janet's accepted suitor. It was a muddy road through damp grass, and we picked our way silently over its ruts and pools. "I'm thinkin'," Jamie said at last, a little wistfully, "that I micht hae been as weel wi' Chirsty." Chirsty was Janet's ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... Ottawa flows here,' said Mr. Holt, glancing at the stream with a sort of home affection—'our clear emerald Ottawa, fresh from the virgin wilderness; and it hasn't quite mingled with its muddy neighbour yet, no more than we Westerns can comfortably mingle with the habitans and their old-world practices down here. You see, Wynn, the St. Lawrence has been running over a bed of marl for miles before it reaches Lake ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... with square stones, which had sunk, in places, and made hollows, which were filled with muddy water. Lean cats scuttled about here and there, and ran away, if anybody came near them, as if they expected to have stones thrown at them, and then, when the danger seemed past, they rummaged in the ash-barrels for scraps of meat or fish ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... fetch the straw and made them a priedieu. Then, looking at his muddy saint and doubtless afraid of bringing discredit on his business, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... stopped just in time, not fifteen feet from where the two had fallen, was a deep, saucer-like depression in the ground. In its center, where the ground was soft, and muddy, was a writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... wounded. These last called piteously for water, and gazed with longing eyes at the limitless expanse of the lake, so near at hand and yet so hopelessly remote. By sunset the well-diggers were in moist earth, before nine o'clock the wounded were eagerly quaffing a muddy liquid that gave them new life, and by midnight two feet of water stood in ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... called because in this quarter dwelt the imperial hatmakers, who prepared "blockheads" for shaping their wares. "St. Nicholas Louse's Misery" is, probably, a corruption of two somewhat similar words meaning Muddy Hill. "St. Nicholas on Chickens' Legs" belonged to the poulterers, and was so named because it was raised from the ground on supports resembling stilts. "St. Nicholas of the Interpreters" is in the quarter where the Court interpreters lived, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... steep and muddy climb, through uninviting back ways, they were out upon the moor. An apology for a moor in David's eyes! For the hills which surround the valley of the Irwell, in which Wakely lies, are, for the most part, green and rolling ground, heatherless and cragless. Still, from the top they looked ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mist and night enveloped them in a close, damp veil. They turned silently to the right, passing the narrow mouth of Currant Alley, and Quince Street beyond. The bricks became precarious, and gave place to a walk of boards; the corners about a broad, muddy way were built up; but farther on the dwellings were scattered—lighted windows showed dimly behind bare catalpas, iron fences enclosed orderly patches between sodden ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... prompt steps, in conjunction with moor men, to drag horse and vehicle out of the mud and mire. Fortunately, the mailbags were uninjured, and the postmaster of Clevedon, who had set out on a search, had them conveyed back to his office. Dazed contractor Dawes, the muddy mail cart, and horse coated with mud from head to hoofs, were got back into the town at about 11 a.m. It would seem that the contractor fell asleep and tumbled from his box into the road, and that his horse wandered on, grazing from side to side of the road, till eventually ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... cold December afternoon Peter stood, books in hand, and surveyed that aggravating knocker from his stand on the sidewalk. He was painfully conscious that his feet were muddy, and his chubby fingers certainly needed soap and water; it was Friday, and Pompey, one of the black servants, had evidently been scrubbing the front steps. Therefore Peter debated whether it would be wiser to ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... distance, consequently they marched quicker than I did. On reaching the bank I found them in a consternation. "Oh, master!" said my faithful Alila, "it is not possible to pass; so we must spend some days here." I cast my eyes on the torrent, which was rolling between steep rocks, in a yellow, muddy stream: it had all the appearance of a cascade, and was carrying down the trunks of trees and branches broken off during the storm. My Indians had already come to a decision, and were arranging a spot for a fit bivouac; but I did not wish to give ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... hole, and before he could stop the cowardly guide found himself over the brink and struggling in the muddy water. His cries for help were piercing, but as Mr. Bell and the boys were busy, and as they knew that the Mexican was in no actual peril, they left him there ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... friends, by Charles I., when they were embarking for New England, if indeed the thing really happened. Everybody used to think so, and the historians even said so, but now they begin to doubt: it is an age of doubt. This questionably memorable expanse of muddy water was crowded, the morning I saw it, with barges resting in the iridescent slime of the Southwark shoals, and with various craft of steam and sail in the tide which danced in the sun and wind along the shore we were leaving. It is tradition, if not history, that just in front of the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... compared with the rushing fountain that wells up when a boy's heart is struck with the heavenly rod. If you would taste love, drink of the pure stream that youth pours out at your feet. Do not wait till it has become a muddy river before you stoop ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... lies in the mouth, or rather at the eastern end of the mouth, of a long and wide depression among the hills, through which a sluggish river wins its muddy consummation. This river once went far along the sea-brink, without entering (like a child who is afraid to bathe), as the Adur does at Shoreham, and as many other rivers do. And in those days the mouth and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... By the muddy roadside stood a new log cabin, one story high—the store; clustered in the neighborhood were ten or twelve more cabins, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... absolutely necessary that this be known of us; for if the understanding be muddy as to this, it is impossible that such should be sound in the faith; also in temptation, that man will be at a loss that looketh for a righteousness for justification in himself, when it is to be found nowhere but in Jesus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... day broke, a cold gray mist seeming to blot out everything except the sheet of water, which was of a muddy and yellow color, and rolled along with giddy swiftness, gathering everything in its course. In some places the trees had their roots under water, and their branches, still dry, gave shelter to whole ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... There, you see we've managed to pass without so much as getting our boots dirty! But to come by the street is terribly muddy! (Stop and wipe their boots on the straw. FIRST GIRL looks at the straw and sees ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... far from the place where our meeting had been held I passed a side street then in embryo, for it had only one or two houses situated in their gardens and a rather large and muddy sluit of water running down one side at the edge of the footpath. Save for two people this street was empty, but that pair attracted my attention. They were a white man, in whom I recognized the stout and half-intoxicated individual who had ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... hold in the muddy bed of the harbor in front of the port of Blacherne, before a small boat put off from the strange ship, manned by sailors clad in flowing white trousers, short sleeveless jackets, and red turbans of a style remarkable for amplitude. An officer, probably the sailing-master, went with them, and he, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the nation the muddy flood of French emigrants, poured forth by the Great Revolution—a set of men, speaking generally, whose vices contaminated ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... 1804, about mid-day, the emperor was hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau, and went towards Croix St. Herem at the moment when the Pope's carriage just reached that spot. The carriage stopped, and "the holy father stepped out in his white dress; as the road was muddy he could not soil his silk stockings by stepping on the ground." He got out, however, whilst the emperor, leaping from his horse, advanced to him and embraced him. The meeting had been skilfully arranged ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the midnight storm, By Heaven's just vengeance changed in mind and form. 215 —Prone to the earth He bends his brow superb, Crops the young floret and the bladed herb; Lolls his red tongue, and from the reedy side Of slow Euphrates laps the muddy tide. Long eagle-plumes his arching neck invest, 220 Steal round his arms, and clasp his sharpen'd breast; Dark brinded hairs in bristling ranks, behind, Rise o'er his back, and rustle in the wind, Clothe his lank sides, his shrivel'd limbs surround, And human hands with talons ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Nicaragua, in Central America, the imprints of human feet have been found, deeply buried over twenty feet below the present surface of the soil, under repeated deposits of volcanic rock. These impressions must have been made in soft muddy soil which was then covered by some geological convulsion occurring long ages ago. Even more striking discoveries have been made along the Pacific coast of South America. Near the mouth of the Esmeraldas river in Ecuador, over a stretch of some sixty miles, the surface soil of ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... explain why along the rising coast of the western side of South America, no extensive formations with recent or tertiary remains can anywhere be found, though the supply of sediment must for ages have been great, from the enormous degradation of the coast-rocks and from muddy streams entering the sea. The explanation, no doubt, is, that the littoral and sub-littoral deposits are continually worn away, as soon as they are brought up by the slow and gradual rising of the land within the grinding action ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... those nearest to us took to flight, the beautiful flamingoes rising in the air with their long legs stretched out behind them. One thought, however, occupied our minds. How to get to the water, for we feared that we should find muddy banks, which might prove impassable. Aboh's quick eye, however, detected a small inlet into which a rivulet fell. He led us down to a hard, gravelly bank, where the water ran as clear as that ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... this great ocean, that on the Asiatic coast, even at a considerable distance from land, (as much as thirty degrees west from Japan,) the water is always muddy; it is made so, partly by the great numbers of small Crustacea, Zoophytes, and Mollusca, partly by the impurities of the whales and dolphins, which latter especially, as well as many other kinds of fish, are very ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... not be strictly true, but it well illustrates that there is always a lower depth in misfortune, and—that Western roads are often somewhat muddy.] ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... of. When our servants offered any of the coin which they call yperpera [1], they rubbed it with their fingers, and smelt it, to see whether it were copper. All the food they supplied us with was sour, and filthy cows milk; and the water was so foul and muddy, by reason of their numerous horses, that we could not drink it. If it had not been for the grace of God, and the biscuit we brought with us, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... vessel had docked a blustering Italian came among the emigrants and tagged a few dozen of them, including Antonio, with large blue labels, and then led them in a long, straggling line across the gangplank and marched them through the muddy streets to the railroad train. Here they huddled in a dirty car filled with smoke and were whirled with frightful speed for hours through a flat and smiling country. The noise, the smoke and the unaccustomed motion made Antonio ill again, and when the train stopped at ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train |
