"Nondescript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guests having no idea to what sex this nondescript animal really belonged, the conversation after dinner happened to turn on the manly exercise of fencing. Heated by a subject to him so interesting, the Chevalier, forgetful of the respect due to his assumed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... they are, such my present tale is, A nondescript and ever-varying rhyme, A versified Aurora Borealis, Which flashes o'er a waste and icy clime. When we know what all are, we must bewail us, But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime To laugh at all things—for I wish to know What, after all, are ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the unloading ramp and descended to the ground. He was the only passenger. He had barely reached a firm footing when objects followed him. His own ship bag—a gift from the ambassador—and then parcels, bales, boxes, and such nondescript items of freight as needed special designation. Rolls of wire. Long strings of plastic objects, strung like beads on shipping cords. Plexiskins of fluid which might be anything from wine to fuel oil in less than bulk-cargo ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... it since. Not that I have been reduced to eat dog. I have fed on the emblematical animal, which, in the language of the volatile Gauls, is called la vache enragee; I have lived on ancient salt junk, I know the taste of shark, of trepang, of snake, of nondescript dishes containing things without a name—but of the Lithuanian village dog—never! I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is not I, but my granduncle Nicholas, of the Polish landed gentry, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... railway train, by a parvenu of colossal wealth, in great haste to enjoy himself. Although there was no sign of a woman's dress about the table, no bit of light and airy material to enliven the scene, it was by no means monotonous, thanks to the incongruity, the nondescript character of the guests, gathered together from all ranks of society, specimens of mankind culled from every race in France, in Europe, in the whole world, from top to bottom of the social scale. First of all, the master of the house, a sort of giant—sunburned, swarthy, with his head between ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... nondescript animal; singing from some unknown region, his voice possesses no natural character, but its tones are forced, strained, and artificial. Our tenors and counter-tenors—a sort of musical hermaphrodite, almost peculiar to this country, and scarcely recognized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... water near an island. In a moment the river was alive with nondescript craft, worked by amphibious creatures, half naked, swarthy, and grim, who rent the air with shrill, wild jargon as they scrambled toward us. In the distance were several hulks of Siamese men-of-war, seemingly as old as the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... spite of his melodramatic speeches and his strong personal resemblance to Danny Man in the "Colleen Nawn," is, Chiltern says, really one of the gentlest and most docile of men, straightway abandoned the nondescript hat and sacrificed his inclinations and principles to the extent of buying what he calls "a top hat." But he has not taken kindly to it, and never will. It is always getting in his way, under his feet or between his knees, and he is apparently driven to observe ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... the way; and as he pushed open the green-baize doors, which worked on springs, he saw they had entered one of those nondescript shops, so numerous in certain parts of New York, where a person can obtain any kind of alcoholic drink, a cigar, a lunch, a "square meal," or ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... shaded by plane trees and set out as a restaurant garden, with rude tables and benches, filled with good-humoured thirsty folk; on one side a weather-beaten wooden chalet, having the proud title of Restaurant du Rhone, served apparently but to house the supply of drinks which nondescript men and sturdy bare-headed maidens carried incessantly on trays to the waiting tables. On the dusty midway space—the garden boasted no blade of grass—couples danced to the strains of a wheezing hurdy-gurdy played by a white bearded ancient who at ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... striking river will still afford great sport for many generations. There are long stretches which are never touched except by a stray Indian or Chinaman with a grasshopper or bit of salmon roe on a string tied to a long willow pole. Some years ago a nondescript individual who said he was a Cherokee half-breed turned up at Savona's Ferry and earned a living by fishing. Every day he caught more fish than he could carry, though he never revealed his secret. Some believed ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... tall and thin, with a long, lean face under a mop of black hair that was badly in need of trimming. His near-sighted eyes blinked from behind the round lenses of a pair of rubber-rimmed spectacles and his rather nondescript clothes seemed on the point ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... now, it seemed, cut off upon both sides: behind me the murderers, before me this lurking nondescript. And immediately I began to prefer the dangers that I knew to those I knew not. Silver himself appeared less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned on my heel, and, looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shaven upper lip, and a voluminous red "Newgate-frill" framing his face—exactly the type of face one associates with the Deacon of a Calvinistic-Methodist Chapel; there was the mother, a very grim-looking female; and the son, a nondescript hobbledehoy with goggle-eyes. It appeared that after their passports had been inspected on landing, the goggle-eyed boy had laid his down somewhere and had lost it. No hotel would take him in without a passport, but these people were so obviously ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... trees and bamboo form dense shade. Stalks of corn at the rear of the dwelling reach almost to the roof ridge and a portion of the front yard is enclosed for a chicken yard. Stepping gingerly around the amazing number of nondescript articles scattered about the small veranda, the visitor rapped several times on the front door, but received no response. A neighbor said the old woman might be found at her son's store, but she was finally located at ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... a French cit, when that nondescript animal condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts—he talks about the opera—likes to know artists and authors—and, though living up five or six pairs of stairs in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... our black sheep. Look where he stands. As he grows weary, he grasps the straps on either side to steady him. His attitude is a cunningly devised mode of tormenting his fellow-passengers. Either elbow of our nondescript just reaches the hat of your opposite neighbor or yourself. With each jolt of the stage, by a little dexterity of movement, or want of it, he can knock the hats over the eyes of two persons at a time, and by a little shifting of his position he can frequently ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... miles in the country. There is one long street, just as would be found in the far west, with fields at each end. But through this long street, and on and out into the open, is continually pouring the human living undergrowth of that vast forest of life, London. The nondescript inhabitants of the thousand and one nameless streets of the unknown east are great travellers, and come forth into the country by this main desert route. For what end? Why this tramping and ceaseless movement? what do they buy, what do they sell, how do they ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... was at its purplest, the furze at its yellowest, the grasshoppers chirped loud enough for birds, the snakes hissed like little engines, and Elfride at first felt lively. Sitting at ease upon Pansy, in her orthodox riding-habit and nondescript hat, she looked what she felt. But the mercury of those days had a trick of falling unexpectedly. First, only for one minute in ten had she a sense of depression. Then a large cloud, that had been hanging in the north like a black fleece, came and placed ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... sudden, without apparent cause, he turned back, took us in possession, and led us undissuadably along a by-path to the river's edge. There, in a nook of the most attractive amenity, he bade us to sit down: the stream splashing at our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery enshrining us from above; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought us a cocoa- nut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to carve: the nut for present refreshment, the sandal-wood for a precious gift, and the stick—in the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recruited the summer visitor. Never was so brilliant a lecture-room as his evening banqueting-hall; highly connected students from Rome mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable to his deserts. Herod was noted for his repartees; and we have instances on record of his setting down, according to the emergency, both ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... With a nondescript salute, the man departed on his errand; while we made haste to get into our clothes; after which, we began to ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... through an evening—it was because I got too hungry not to need something to eat before the last of the company had said good-night. We did not offer even the comfort of space. Once the small dining-room that had been Etty's studio, and the not over-large room that was J.'s, and the nondescript room that was drawing-room and my workroom combined, were packed solid, there was no place to overflow into except the short, narrow entrance hall, and I still grow hot at the thought of what became of hats and coats if it also was filled. I can never forget the distressing ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... person who aims at equable temperature, should wear light colours. Light colours are far the best for sporting purposes, as they are usually much less conspicuous than black or rifle-green. Almost all wild beasts are tawny or fawn-coloured, or tabby, or of some nondescript hue and pattern: if an animal were born with a more decided colour, he would soon perish for want of ability ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... a tall young man in corduroy trousers and high boots, a blue flannel shirt and a nondescript hat—though the hat had come off as he approached the garden, where Sally Lane, in blue gingham and short sleeves, was carefully setting ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... jovial, rough old fellow, with a wind-blown face and beard and hair enough to make his head look to be as big as a bushel basket. He was dressed in a long, faded "duster" over his other nondescript garments, and his battered hat was after the shape of those worn by Grand Army men. He limped, too, and was slow in his movements and deliberate in ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... you are not near enough to be disenchanted!" Nattie replied to "C." "Your mind's eye is very unreliable. Tall! why, I'm only five feet! never was guilty of a dimple, and my eyes are of some dreadfully nondescript color." ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... spend the summer, and which, as the coast of Flanders becomes better known, is visited every year by increasing numbers of travellers from the other side of the Channel. Knocke is in itself one of the least attractive places on the Flemish littoral. The old village, a nondescript collection of houses, lies on the Vicinal railway about a mile from the sea, which is reached by a straight roadway, and where there is a digue, numerous hotels, pensions, and villas, all of which are filled to overflowing in the season. The air, indeed, is perfect, ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... on that farm I did four times more pastoral work than I had ever done in my life. I was the minister of the nondescript and the destitute. I presided over funerals, weddings, baptisms, strikes, protests, mass meetings. Nobody thought of paying anything. To those I served I had a sort of halo, a wall of mystery; to me it was often the halo of hunger—of the wolf ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... what the outside world looked like, but from it she was quite aware that a beard was a most unusual thing for a young modern man of the world, and that John Derringham for that reason must always be distinguished from his fellows. Carpenters and hedgers and ditchers wore them, and nondescript young fellows she remembered seeing when she went into Upminster with her aunts; but these excursions had been discontinued now for the past five years, so the villagers of Sarthe-under-Crum and the denizens ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... have puzzled their own officers to name the various regiments to which they belonged; about one hundred cavalry; and three batteries of field artillery: the whole accompanied by an enormous number of baggage, ambulance, and ammunition wagons, water carts, and nondescript vehicles of every imaginable description, and an immense lowing, bellowing, and bleating herd of captured cattle, sheep, and goats, many of which seemed to be half-mad with terror. Mounted officers in scores dashed frantically to and fro ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... like our friends of the Roebury club, who made hunting their chosen pleasure, and who formed, in number, perhaps the largest portion of the field; officers from garrisons round about; a cloud of servants, and a few nondescript stragglers who had picked up horses, hither and thither, round the country. Outside the gate on the road were drawn up a variety of vehicles, open carriages, dog-carts, gigs, and waggonettes, in some few of which were seated ladies who had come over ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... the pay seems to be enough to induce a goodly number of THETES (the poorest class of the Athenian citizens) to accept service, and the rest can be supplied by hired metics or any kind of foreign nondescript who can be brought into discipline. The rowers are of course the real heart and soul of the trireme; but they are useless without proper training. Indeed it was the superior discipline of the Athenian crews which in the days of Themistocles and Pericles gave Athens the supremacy ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... do, my dears?" interrupted a brisk voice. In the doorway stood a plump middle-aged woman, nodding her head rapidly. She wore a faded alpaca gown, patched here and there, a shawl of shepherd's plaid stained with the weather, and a nondescript bonnet. Her face was red and roughened, as if she ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... preceded the entrance of Madame Filomel was heard at the door, and Herr Hippe replied with a hoarse, guttural cry. The next moment two men entered. The first was a small man with very brilliant eyes. He was wrapt in a long shabby cloak, and wore a strange nondescript species of cap on his head, such a cap as one sees only in the low billiard-rooms in Paris. His companion was tall, long-limbed, and slender; and his dress, although of the ordinary cut, either from the disposition of colors, or from the careless, graceful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the platform, all huddled-up with hands in pockets, George beheld a ragged nondescript of a man whose appearance confirmed Master Jerry's previous ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... been bitten—and bitten badly—by a nondescript mongrel that had been chased into the Chatham backyard by a crowd of stone-throwing boys, and which she had sought to oust with a stick from its hiding place under the steps. Since then Dorcas had had an unconquerable fear and dislike of dogs. ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... small wooden box he found in the feed bin, then stepping out into the barnyard, he called the chickens around him. He could not help observing what a nondescript lot of chickens they were —not a purebred among them; besides, he noticed many were old, and some had frozen feet and combs. No wonder, he thought, as he glanced at the poorly built hen house that faced ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... his way, not unaccosted, through the crowd to the Eagle porch. There was much excitement. The Governor was speaking from the head of the steps. Below him planters, merchants, lawyers, and politicians were now listening eagerly, now commenting sotto voce, while beyond them the nondescript population swayed and exclaimed. To one side were massed the tall plumes of the Blues. Rand saw, near these, Fairfax Cary's handsome face, not pale as it had been between nine and ten o'clock, but alert, flushed, and—or so Rand interpreted its light and energy—triumphant. He went on ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... t'ings on, Marse Benson, ef yo' please, sah," mocked the mulatto, tossing down some woefully tattered, nondescript garments, and, after them, a battered, rimless Derby hat and a pair of brogans out at ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... coat and skirt of a soft, mouse-coloured velvet, very quiet and nondescript in hue, and the hat, with its curling brim, was covered with the same material. So far, very douce and quiet; but entirely round the hat, and curling gracefully over one side, was a magnificent ostrich plume, which was plainly the pride of ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... ever I have tasted. The trees—pines, spruces, hemlocks, balsams, cedars—are to me about the pleasantest of all, both in taste and odour, and though the spruces and pines taste and smell much alike at first, one soon learns to distinguish them. The elm has a rather agreeable, nondescript, bitterish taste, but the linden is gummy and of a mediocre quality, like the tree itself, which I dislike. Some of the sweetest flowering shrubs, such as the lilac, have the bitterest of leaves and twigs or, like certain ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... rolled together. There were boats for making pontoon bridges, mounted side by side on wagons, with the dried mud of the River Meuse still on their flat bottoms; there were baggage trains miles in length, wherein the supply of regular army wagons was eked out with nondescript vehicles—even family carriages and delivery vans gathered up hastily, as the signs on their sides betrayed, from the tradespeople of a dozen Northern German cities and towns, and now bearing chalk marks on them to show in what ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the hall poured the others of Edgemere Cottage, attired in a nondescript collection of garments hastily donned. Will, in his bath robe, had his collar and tie in his hand, though it is doubtful if he wore an article of dress to which it could be attached. From the servants' rooms came frantic demands to know if ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... The boys wore nondescript costumes, in which red jerseys and yellow sashes played a prominent part, while King achieved the dignity of a mantle, picturesquely slung from one shoulder. Many badges and orders adorned their breasts, and lances ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... researches; his letters show that he made several excursions into the inland country in order to examine its flora, which, however, he found disappointing. He writes to Banks: "The whole number of plants observed in this port did not much exceed 300, of which about 40 were new to me and, I believe, nondescript. From Port Dalrymple we had a ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... pass; will they never cease? One's spine shivers at the sight of the endless, green snake which crawls along, insinuating its greedy length into the gardens of plenty. This morning four new officers came to the chateau; three of them were nondescript, but the fourth, to all appearances, was an Englishman, pure blood. He spoke English absolutely without accent and had a perfect English drawing-room air. It was as funny as an impersonation and as he had appeared on the ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... naughty things, for Holly had no intention when at school to be good or to learn much. She went solely and entirely for her own happiness, because she preferred the girls with the blue, gray, and nondescript eyes to the kitchen cat, Jean, and to the great loneliness which had descended on ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... that Reverence which is due to a Superior—if nondescript Nature; and as my Heart was entirely subdued by the captivating Voice I had heard, I fell down at his Feet and wept. I could hardly have explained why, but 'tis the sort of thing one always does in an Eastern Apologue. The Genius smiled upon me with a Look of Compassion ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... tincture of European blood. Her voice is truly wonderful, both in its compass and truth. A more correct intonation, so far as our ear can decide, there could not be. She strikes every note on the exact centre, with unhesitating decision.... She is a nondescript, an original. We cannot think any ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... we call a nondescript medley of dialogue and dance and song a revue, when revue in French is the exact equivalent of 'review' in English? Why should we call an actress of comic characters a comedienne and an actress of tragic characters a ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... of the Forest of Fontainebleau is remarkably varied; Denecourt gives seventy varieties of plants and flowers which grow and propagate here naturally, to which are to be added a great number of nondescript vines, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... surrounding desert. For the first time in weeks, the searchers sat down at a table. DeWitt, Porter and Newman were in astonishing contrast to the three who had dined at the Newman ranch the night of Cartwell's introduction to Porter. Their khaki clothes had gradually been replaced by nondescript garments picked up at various ranches. DeWitt and Porter boasted of corduroy trousers, while Jack wore overalls. On the other hand, Jack wore a good blue flannel shirt, while the other two displayed ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... mid-day now, and we are more than ready for suggestions of alimentation. There is a sheltered table with benches just out of doors before the hospice, and here we seat ourselves, flanked by with two massive dogs, and soon are discussing a nondescript repast which is too late for lunch and too early for dinner but which is remarkably appetizing in either view. An hour later, we are again in Luchon, greeted by the deferential head-waiter of the Richelieu, whose starchy bosom expands ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... to the hum of its varied labors. Mr. Jarvis, dictating letters to a typist, smiled occasionally as he pictured the arrival of this over-favored young man in the drawing-room of Mrs. Weatherley, attired in the nondescript fashion which his words had suggested. One or two of the clerks ventured upon a chaffing remark. To all appearance, the person most absorbed in his work was the young man who had been singled out ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nondescript host with some such rueful aspect as a man would eye the devil, and determined to give his feather-bed soldiers a seasoning. He accordingly put them through their manual exercise over and over again, trudged them backwards and forwards about the streets ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... new role as a holiday resort has a serious obstacle to surmount; the only sea "front" possible is a wide shingle beach separated from the old town by a nondescript stretch of sandy desert; when and if this is filled in or converted into a garden the town should prosper exceedingly, for it has great natural attractions in Seaford Head which rises to the east and ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... proper qualities better than myself, as he was thrown in closer contact with the men. The steward, Gunning, was a mulatto, as I have said, and he was of a sympathetic disposition. Among the men who had first come aboard from the wreck was an old fellow of nondescript appearance who had very thoughtfully seized several bottles of Captain Sackett's rum to have in the small boat in case of sickness. This was made possible by the flooding of the ship, which made it necessary for the men ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... third degree, slowly extracted from Theophilus the startling story. A year before, just as the Gold and Green practiced for the Ham game, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., one afternoon, had arrayed his splinter-structure in a grotesque, nondescript athletic outfit, and had jogged out on Bannister Field. The gladsome youth's motive had been free from any torturesome purpose. He intended to round up the Phillyloo Bird, Shad Weatherby, and other non-athletic collegians, and with them boot the pigskin, for exercise. However, little Skeet ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... modernity stands side by side with a dwarfish, Dutch anachronism, but neither possesses any right of precedence over the other. They are equal in the eyes of the proletary. Classic and nondescript, marble and brick, granite and iron, unite to form the most heterogeneous collection of fashions the earth's surface anywhere exhibits. Even Milton's blind eyes pictured nothing so fantastic as this architectural ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... one hundred miles away. Hannibal was inclined to rank itself as of next importance, and took on airs accordingly. It had society, too—all kinds—from the negroes and the town drunkards ("General" Gaines and Jimmy Finn; later, Old Ben Blankenship) up through several nondescript grades of mechanics and tradesmen to the professional men of the community, who wore tall hats, ruffled shirt-fronts, and swallow-tail coats, usually of some positive color-blue, snuff-brown, and green. These and their families constituted ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... whiskered Tongan, dimly supposed to be Lafaele's step-father; and they have been having a good time; in the end of my verandah, I hear Simi, my present incapable steward, talking Tongan with the nondescript papa. Simi, our out-door boy, burst a succession of blood-vessels over our work, and I had to make a position for the wreck of one of the noblest figures of a man I ever saw. I believe I may have mentioned the other day how I had to put my horse to the trot, the canter and (at ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... still in no hurry, but he grew cautious now, and secretive. He made a wide circuit of the basin, keeping out of sight as much as possible, behind some nondescript brush, riding in depressions; going a mile out of his way to follow the sandy bed of a washout. His objective was Chavis' shack, and he wanted to come upon it unnoticed. Or, if that failed, he desired to make his visit ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... had time to communicate with Mrs. Hannaford, a letter from her occasioned him new anxiety. His sister wrote that Olga was bent on making a most undesirable marriage, having fallen in love with a penniless nondescript who called himself an artist; a man given, it was suspected, to drink, and without any decent connection that one could hear of. A wretched, squalid affair! Would the Doctor come at once and see Olga? Her father was away, as usual; of course the girl would not be influenced by him, in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... not a big man, but was evidently very strong and active. His dress was of the most nondescript character, consisting mainly of a tattered fur cap, with a woolen muffler tied over his ears; a patched and parti-colored coat belted at the waist with a frayed rope. His legs disappeared into the wide tops of a pair of boots ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... monkeys with black beads for eyes, and long tails; lions, tigers, and leopards, with large, savage, black, glass eyes, with manes or tails suited to each, and properly crooked by a wire extending to the tip. And finally he laid the bogi-boo, a nondescript with a head on each end much like the head of a lion or tiger. When not used as a plaything, this served the purpose ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... was to the castle, which we reached by going across the causeway that bridges the valley, and has some edifices of Grecian architecture on it, contrasting strangely with the nondescript ugliness of the old town, into which we immediately pass. As this is my second visit to Edinburgh, I surely need not dwell upon describing it at such length as if I had never been here before. After climbing up through various wards of the castle to the topmost battery, where Mons Meg holds ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were bound for Notting Hill, Ealing and Acton, drifting towards the wide and gloomy spaces of the Park. He crossed the great roadway and went into the Park, too. Attracted by a small gathering of dark figures he joined them, and standing among nondescript loungers he listened for a few minutes to a narrow-chested man with a long, haggard face, a wispy beard and protruding, decayed teeth, who was addressing those about him on the mysteries ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... expressions. That upon the face of the Irishman is of sadness, as if for the loss of an old shipmate; the Malay looks on with the impassive tranquillity peculiar to his race; while in the sunken orbs of the nondescript can be detected a look that speaks of a ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... paper, and as he read the letters danced before him. He blinked his eyes and started again, slowly. In plain black and white and nondescript-coloured finger-marks, Mr. Lister, after a general statement as to his bodily and mental health, left the whole of his estate to the cook. The will was properly dated and witnessed, and the cook's voice ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... entailed by the first setting on foot such an establishment as the F. U. E. E. were a heavy drain on her private purse, as she insisted on all accounts being brought to her, and then could not bear that these small nondescript matters should be charged upon the general fund, which having already paid the first half-year's rent in advance, and furnished the house, must be recruited by some extraordinary supply before she could build. The thing could not be done at all but by rigid economy, and she was ready ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at Bray was one of those styleless nondescript river-side residences which, apart from the incomparable beauty of their surroundings, have a charm of their own, elusive but distinct. Originally it had been no more than a couple of cottages, thatched and low-eaved, but her husband in his lifetime had dealt with these so successfully by building ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... practised irregular commerce, and protected that commerce by irregular fighting with the Turks. At the first sound of revolution they threw in their lot with the insurgents of the mainland, and thus a nondescript navy of some four hundred brigs and schooners, of from sixty to four hundred tons' burthen, and manned by about twelve thousand sailors, adepts alike in trade and piracy, but very unskilled in orderly warfare, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... 1837 can hardly be said to have turned it distinctly: for the Dickensian novel is a species by itself—neither strictly novel nor strictly romance, but, as Polonius might say, a picaresque-burlesque-sentimental-farcical-realist-fantastic nondescript. Not till Vanity Fair did the novel of pure real life advance its standard once more: while the historical novel-romance of a new kind may date its revival with—though it should scarcely trace that revival to—Esmond, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... his heart thumped. The fellow's appearance was anything but reassuring: he was swarthy and sun-browned, his clothes were ragged, his overalls were patched; instead of a coat, he wore a loosely flapping vest over a black sateen shirt, long since rusted out to a nondescript brown. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... the hopefulness of inexperienced travellers, began already to speculate about our proximity to Bartram-Haugh, and were sorely disappointed when we heard from the nondescript courier—more like a ostler than a servant, who sat behind in charge of us and the luggage, and represented my guardian's special care—at nearly one o'clock, that we had still forty miles to go, a considerable portion ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... letters, to whom the Duchess presented her with the half kindly, half patronising air of one who feels that any genius in man or woman is a kind of disease, and that the person affected by it must be soothingly considered as a sort of "freak" or nondescript creature, like a white ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... towards the Alps, a spacious terrace had been built out far beyond the chateau wall. Along the parapet were a number of primitive tables and benches. The tiny cafe from which they were served was at the end of a group of nondescript buildings that had probably grown up on a ruined bastion of the chateau. Seated at one of these tables, you see the Mediterranean from Nice to Antibes, with an occasional steamer and a frequent sailing-vessel, the Vintimille rapide (noting its speed by the white engine smoke), one tramway ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded—every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the catalogues, and Harding ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... round, she never would join the church as a member. She never agreed with the minister, and he never could make anything out of her. They did not quarrel, but she thought nothing of his sermons, and he was perplexed and uncomfortable in the presence of a nondescript who did not respond to any dogmatic statement of the articles of religion, and who yet could not be put aside as "one of those in the gallery"—that is to say, as one of the ordinary unconverted, for she used to quote hymns with amazing fervour, and she quoted them ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... beginning to be very sultry, and I felt that I should enjoy the shelter and repose of a habitation. As we went along, indications of the new power, which had already effected the easy transit of the desert, were visible in small patches of coal, scattered upon the sand; presently we saw a dark nondescript object, that did not look at all like the abode of men, civilized or uncivilized; and yet, from the group hovering about an aperture, seemed to be tenanted by human beings. This proved to be an old ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... came to herself with a start, rubbing her eyes. Gaunt and grey in the first dim light of morning, Aunt Matilda stood over her, clad in a nondescript dressing-gown. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... indescribable prosperity that rose off Mr. Becker, in the nondescript but excellent quality of the gray suiting, the polished, square-toed, custom-made shoes, the little linen string of necktie, one for each day, the kind, despite family suasion, he had always worn. But ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... under which we slept. The question of arms was more obscure. We had a good many tools, indeed, which we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of the combatants. At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one blade of the scissors ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was just a homely, nondescript, untidy, riotous type of schoolgirl, with a very strong capacity for affection, and an unmanageable predilection for scrapes and adventures, that made her more likely to fall under the sway of Lorraine, should it promise any chance ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... and except to crawl to meals was unable to leave his bunk. Every day came the foreman to inquire anxiously if he was fit to go to work, but steadily he grew worse. Yet he bore his suffering with great spirit, and, among that nondescript crew, he was a thing of joy and brightness, a link with that other world which was mine own. They nicknamed him "Happy," his cheerfulness was so invincible. He played cards on every chance, and he must have been unlucky, for he borrowed the last of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the steps of the Beebe store, wearing a cloth cap which was, to say the very least, out of the ordinary. Its material was a fuzzy frieze of nondescript colors, a shade of dingy yellow predominating, and its shape was weird and umbrellalike. With it upon his head little Galusha resembled a walking toadstool—an ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Euston. It was a muggy, slushy night, with a thin brown fog wreathing the houses and fading away above their tops into a dull, slate-blue sky. The wet street looked like a black canal; the blurred forms, less like vehicles than nondescript boats, moving over its inky surface, were indistinctly reflected therein; the gas-lights flared redly through the murky haze. It was not a pleasant evening in which ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... housed the engine and a cab for the operator. The body of the vehicle was simply an open rectangular box. There were two men in the cab, and about twenty or thirty more crowded into the box body. These were dressed in faded and nondescript garments of blue and gray and brown; all were armed with crude weapons—axes, bill-hooks, long-handled instruments with serrated edges, and what looked like broad-bladed spears. The vehicle itself, which seemed to be propelled by some sort of chemical-explosion ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... darkness. There came a lull in the chatter and Joe was feeling a bit mollified. Suddenly, before he realized it, the crowd was leaving, and one by one they filed past him, each bidding good-night. There was the thin girl in the chair, then two boys who were entirely nondescript, with noisy throats cut out of the same copper plate, a soft billowy shadow of a woman under a floppy hat and exuding a ghastly sweet, cloying perfume. Her bare arm was as soft and flabby as jelly as she stretched ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... use of anecdote and episode, which to the stumbling reader reduce his books to collections of disconnected essays and instances, gave to German mediocrity a sanction to publish a mass of multifarious, unrelated, and nondescript thought and incident. It is to be noted that the spurious books such as the Koran, which Germany never clearly sundered from the original, were direct examples in England of such disjointed, patchwork books. Such a volume with a significant title is "Mein Kontingent zur ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... stood watching the crowd until the last sweating nondescript had obediently disappeared, and then returned into the temple to ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... women, prating scandalous things. Have you ever received my picture in oil from Sanders, London? It has been paid for these sixteen months: why do you not get it? My suite, consisting of two Turks, two Greeks, a Lutheran, and the nondescript, Fletcher, are making so much noise, that I am ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... down upon the shabby red sofa and looked about her. What a horrible room! Its darkness was tainted with a creeping coldness that seemed to steal in wavering gusts from wall to wall. The carpet was faded to a nondescript colour and was gashed into torn strips near the fireplace. No pictures were on the walls from which the wall-paper was peeling. He had done nothing whatever to make ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... contained an enclosure, but the sheet was blank. With wildly beating heart and trembling fingers Paul undid the smaller packet's folded ends. And there the morning sunbeams fell on a tiny curl of hair, of that peculiar nondescript shade of infant fairness which later would turn to gold. It was less than an inch long, and of the fineness of down, while in tender care it had been tied with a thread ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... farther on the only cow in the place, who is descended from the scriptural lean ones, was munching the discarded tail of a large codfish which probably still held a faint flavor of the salt with which it had been preserved. Nondescript dogs, bearing very little resemblance to the original well-known breed, wandered aimlessly ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... the open door from the hall outside came Jack Warford, leading by the arm a strange and nondescript figure. It was that of a small, bent, old-looking man, dressed in a faded suit of brown. His hair was thin, and long, and white; his face sharp and lean. His gaze was fixed straight before him, ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of this vision is a nondescript; for among all the animal creation there could not be found one that could suitably represent Rome. But one was made for the purpose, combining in itself all that is fierce and terrible. "And behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... shore of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-hill, stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea and shore had equally contributed. It was built partly of logs and partly of driftwood and tarred canvas. Joined to one end of the main building—the ordinary log-cabin of the settler—was the half-round pilot-house of some wrecked steamer, while the other gable ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... which wise and profitable observations will be found in this book would be superfluous. The wine is good, and needs no bush. So much may be said that the book is one to interest that nondescript person, the general reader in Europe or America, as well as the Anglo-Indian official. Besides good advice and sound teaching on matters of policy and administration, it contains many charming, though inartificial, descriptions ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... shaggy eyebrows showed all the fire of youth, and seemed to have no part in the seventy years which had bent the tall form, and rounded slightly the broad and massive shoulders. The Captain wore a rough pea-jacket and long boots, while his head was adorned with a nondescript covering which might have begun life either as a hat or a cap, but would now hardly ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage and a tricolour subscription box by way of sole adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. The food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional character; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to peck and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly German, and somehow ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... east end of the parish, are some fine trees, remnants of a former avenue. The ancient well, said to be Roman, in the rectory grounds, has already been mentioned. The church was re-fashioned in 1879, and an old, nondescript, flat-ceiled structure was converted into a substantial and well-designed edifice of Early Decorated style, with clock-tower and good clock, which gives out its notes of time ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... distinguished from a working-woman. Her friends, indeed, said that she had not the least care for her personal appearance, and unless she was watched, she was sure to go out in her shabbiest gown and most battered hat. She wore tonight a brown ulster and a nondescript black bonnet drawn close down on her head and tied with black strings. In her lap lay her leathern bag, which she usually carried under her arm, that contained medicines, lint, bandages, smelling-salts, a vial of ammonia, and so on; to her patients it was a sort of conjurer's bag, out of which ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to flash his light over the floor, walls, and contents of the cellar. The latter consisted principally of barrels, boxes and a nondescript pile of scrap lumber. Most of this was ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... This nondescript personage was pitched upon by government as the very man to command a vessel fitted out to cruise against the pirates, since he knew all their haunts and lurking-places: acting upon the shrewd old maxim of "setting a rogue to catch a rogue." ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... "Hare." I haven't seen them, but friends tell me that a great difference is felt between the two plays: that "The Medal" in comparison with "The Hare" seems something clean, artistic, and having form and semblance. There you have it! Literary men are swept out of the theatre, and plays are written by nondescript people, old and young, while the journals and newspapers are edited by tradesmen, government clerks, and young ladies. But there, the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... a small crowd had collected round the aeroplane. Mr. Daventry and Mr. Van Kloof were there, with several other Englishmen, and a number of Chinese coolies and nondescript natives stood at a little distance, gazing in wondering silence. Rodier had his watch in his hand, and looked reproachfully at his employer. Smith pressed through the crowd, shaking hands with the Englishmen one after ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... A nondescript-clad figure came out of the brushwood into the open clearing, walking towards the spot where the mountain-sheep lay stretched on the sward, which was partly covered with the snow that remained unmelted under the lee of the cliff; and a voice, without doubt appertaining ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... course," Jeff urged. "They're all women, in spite of their nondescript clothes; nice women, too; good strong sensible faces. I guess we'll ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... been fed, and the other Indians had come in, and squatted on the buffalo-skin with Nicholas, the first course was sent round in tin cups, a nondescript, but warming, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... piano or a hurdy-gurdy—but there was music, and it was loud, and there was a platform laid over the cobble-stones of the street, and on that platform ten or more couples were "ragging," their shoulders working like the walking beams of side-wheelers. The men were of that nondescript type one would expect to see in a fifteen-cent dancing place, but the women were of curious appearance, for all were dressed alike, the costume being a fringed khaki suit with knee-length skirt, a bandana at the neck, and a sombrero. On inquiry I learned that this was called ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the state apartments, is supplemented by the fires in the heater and on the snow outside, round which the waiting coachmen warm themselves, with Rembrandtesque effects of chiaro-oscuro second only to the picturesqueness of dvorniki in their nondescript caps and shaggy coats, who cluster round blazing fagots in less aristocratic quarters when the thermometer descends ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... only gone a few paces when a rather wretched- looking setter-dog ran out from behind a bushy willow to meet us, and behind him appeared a man of middle height, in a blue and much-worn greatcoat, a yellow waistcoat, and pantaloons of a nondescript grey colour, hastily tucked into high boots full of holes, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and a single-barrelled gun on his shoulder. While our dogs, with the ordinary Chinese ceremonies peculiar to their species, were sniffing at their new acquaintance, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... were so many various parties in the House that it was never certain when a combination of adverse factions might outnumber the followers of the "Court." To these followers there was opposed a strong phalanx of ardent Republicans, and the balance was held by a nondescript element called the "Neuters," amongst whom there were some even of Royalist leanings. Hyde was in constant correspondence with Royalist adherents in England, as to the means by which these different parties in Parliament might be used to involve the Government ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Gorgeous Girl went in for Hanover society and proved herself a valuable asset. She was nearly twenty-four, almost as slight of figure as a child, as dainty as Watteau's most delicate imaginings, with tiny, nondescript features, lovely sunshine hair, and big dove-coloured eyes with pale-gold lashes. Meantime, the question of a husband for this lovely young person was before the household. She had had a dozen offers of marriage but accepted none of them because she had plenty of time ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... "strike" and the landing of the game. Instantly withdrawing the grass culm, I found my fish at its tip, from which he quickly dropped to the ground. His singular identity is shown in my illustration—an uncouth nondescript among grubs. His body is whitish and soft, with a huge hump on the lower back armed with two small hooks. His enormous head is now seen to be apparently circular in outline, and we readily see how perfectly it would ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Toulouche, from the back of her store, was watching with a derisive air the good-natured Cranajour fasten up the Academician's robe in a prominent position on the front of her nondescript emporium, someone stepped inside, and warmly greeted ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... with them for the vacations Pinky's room had been done over in cream enamel and rose-flowered cretonne. She said the chromos in the hall spoiled the entire second floor. So the gold frames, glittering undimmed, the checks as rosily glowing as ever, found temporary resting-places in a nondescript back chamber known as the serving room. Then the new sleeping porch was built for Ted, and the portraits ended their ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... temptations. Docile and hopeful as a tired animal thinking of its stable, she walked through the dark crowd that pressed upon her, nor did she even notice when she was jostled, but went on, a heedless nondescript—a something in a black shawl and a quasi-respectable bonnet, a slippery stepping-stone between the low women who whispered and the workwoman who hurried home with the tin of evening beer in her hand. Like one held and guided by the power of a dream, she lost consciousness of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... their fascinating big dogs, with brandy-bottles round their necks, incessantly hauling happy travellers out of the snow. The only dog at the settlement was an Irish terrier, and the good fellows who owned him, and were owned by him, in common, wore clothes of the most nondescript order, and mostly cultivated side-whiskers. I had wandered up there one day, searching (as usual) for something I never found, and had been taken in by them and treated as friend and comrade. They had made me free of their ideal little ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... out at the wagons, the carts, the nondescript vehicles of every description; but a moment before she had been there,—so near; he had caught beneath filmy white the glitter of gold,—her hair, the only bright thing in that murk and gloom. He recalled ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... were ships which were intermediate between the ship of the line and the frigate. These were the two-deckers of 56, 54, 50, 44, and even 40 guns. They had long been regarded as not 'fit to lie in a line,' and they were never counted in the frigate classes. They seemed to have held a nondescript position, for no one knew exactly how to employ them in war any more than we now know exactly how to employ our armoured cruisers, as to which it is not settled whether they are fit for general actions or should be ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... where he had unaspiringly settled down. To support this impression there were his pallid complexion and enormous round spectacles; his dusty air of premature age; his general effect of dried-up detachment from his environment. One noted, too, the tousled mass of nondescript hair, which he wore about a month too long; the necktie-band triumphing over the collar in the back; the collar itself, which had a kind of celluloid look and shone with a blue unwholesome sheen under the gas-light. On the other hand there was the undeniably trim cut of the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... knew no more of Heyst than the rest of us trading in the Archipelago did. Had the Swede suddenly risen and hit him on the nose, he could not have been taken more aback than when this stranger, this nondescript wanderer, said with a little ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Champigny, and Vaudreuil drew the first smoke, then the Iroquois deputies, and then all the tribes in turn. The treaty was duly signed, the representative of each tribe affixing his mark, in the shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, plant, or nondescript object. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... lodgers got courage enough to come back. Then we went to the house of the Blazers, in 'Cow Bay,' and used to lodge there with Yellow Bill. They said Bill was a thief by profession; but I wasn't old enough to be a judge. Little Lizza Rock, the nondescript, as people called her, used to live at the Blazers. Poor Lizza had a hard time of it, and used to sigh and say she wished she was dead. Nobody thought of her, she said, and she was nothing because she was deformed, and a ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... despairing period when most girls are nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that she did not intend to marry. She would train to be a cholera nurse or a bubonic plague nurse—anything, in short, that was most calculated ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... gallant commander of the Orient was secretly amazed by the metamorphosis effected in Robert's appearance since he scrutinized him through his glasses. Iris, too, unaccustomed to the constraint of high-heeled shoes, clung to the nondescript's arm in a manner that shook the sailor's faith in Lord Ventnor's pretensions as ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... quaint funeral service. HENRY IRVING, "the Master" not only of Ravenswood, but the art of acting (as instanced by a score of fine impersonations), flouts the veteran comedian, HOWE; and, Howe attired? He is in some strange garb as a nondescript parson. Then "Master" (as the Sporting Times would irreverently speak of him) soliloquises over Master's father's coffin. Arrival of Sir William Ashton. Row and flashing of steel in torchlight. Appearance of one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... fashionable hotel. The caricaturing effect of his trousers and coat were unspeakably comical. The wearer had a face as grave as an undertaker's and the air of a serious-minded college professor; but he had the nondescript look of a scarecrow composed of whatever available garments could be obtained from the cast-off wardrobe of summer ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... history's going on forever repeating itself," he said. "I wonder if this town's going on building up things and rolling over them, as poor father once said it was rolling over his poor old heart. It looks like it: here's the Amberson Mansion again, only it's Georgian instead of nondescript Romanesque; but it's just the same Amberson Mansion that my father built long before you were born. The only difference is that it's your father who's built this one now. It's all the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... stood a large and rather nondescript gray structure built by Flood, the Comstock millionaire. It had served for varied purposes, but now it housed the Palais Royal, an immense saloon and gambling rendezvous. In the massive, barn-like room, tile-floored and picture-ornamented, were close to a hundred ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... at the tent door sees himself at church, a pious varier from chapel. The July sunbeams are falling through stained glass; the roof-beams of the nondescript old building are half visible in shadow. The windows are open, and a warm, spiced wind flutters through in pleasantly successful disputation with odours of dry-rot and chilly earth and stone. The sheep are bleating amongst the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... pardons for such rough treatment. What the—!" And he stopped short, too surprised to finish; for, instead of the petite form of the fascinating Violet, there shambled out on to the road the slouching figure of a disreputable tramp, clothed in nondescript garments of uncertain age and colour, terminating in a pair of broken boots, out of which protruded sockless feet. He had a rough shock of hair, surmounted by a soft hat full of holes, and a fat German face, ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... find (save in the treble-gilt aodication and their own accession) the coat, the immortal coat, unchanged! The waistcoat is of a material known only to themselves—a sort of nightmare illusion of velvet, covered with a slight tracery of refined mortar, curiously picked out and guarded with a nondescript collection of the very greenest green pellets of hyson-bloom gunpowder tea. The buttons (things of use in this garment) describe the figure and proportions of a large turbot. They consist of two rows (leaving imagination to fill up a lapse ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... cross-country efforts to speak English, and became on the strength of that an universal favourite—it takes so little in this world of shipboard to create a popularity. There was, besides, a Scots mason known from his favourite dish as "Irish Stew," three or four nondescript Scots, a fine young Irishman, O'Reilly, and a pair of young men who deserve a special word of condemnation. One of them was Scots: the other claimed to be American; admitted, after some fencing, that he was born in England; and ultimately ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conversations produce, such mollifiers of the temper are they. "So, so," said I to myself, "my Aunt Lina's paragon is a 'lady-help.' Of all kinds 'of help' the very one I have endeavored most to avoid; it is such a nondescript kind of creature that lady-help;" and as I soliloquized, recollections of specimens of the kind I had been afflicted with, came in sad array before my memory—maids with slip-shod French kid slippers, that had never been large enough for their feet—love-locks on either side of their cheeks, twirled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the hand nor with the fist, neither with the wet nor with the dry. But he killed him in the morning twilight by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea. The foam of the sea is just such an object as a savage might choose to put his life in, because it occupies that sort of intermediate or nondescript position between earth and sky or sea and sky in which primitive man sees safety. It is therefore not surprising that the foam of the river should be the totem of a clan ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... in glass jars, and chains of little sugary biscuits hanging on long red strings. There was the old-clothes' stall with trousers and coats and waistcoats, all shabby and lanky, swinging beneath the gas, and piles of clothes on the boards, all nondescript and unhappy and faded; there was the stall with the farm implements, and the medicine stall, and the flower stall, and the vegetable stall, and many, many another. Each place had his or her guardian, vociferous, red-faced, screaming out the wares, lowering the voice to ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... magic of his name. When on the point of starting to relieve these garrisons, he found himself compelled to disband a regiment of 500 Bashi-Bazouks, who constituted the only force at his immediate disposal. He had then to organise a nondescript body, after the same fashion as he had adopted at the Equator, and with 500 followers of this kind—of whom he said only 150 were any good—he started on his march for the districts which lie several hundred miles west of the White Nile, and approach ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... hall stood Mr. Wigglesworth, important, fussy and unctuously impressive, welcoming, directing, introducing and, incidentally but quite ineffectively, seeking to inspire with respect for his august person a nondescript crowd of small boys vainly seeking entrance. With an effusiveness amounting to reverence he welcomed McNish and directed him in a mysterious whisper toward a seat on the platform, which, however, McNish declined, choosing a ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... other substances, in a fossil state, are found at the depth of eighteen or twenty feet below the surface of the ground. Some of these are of very extraordinary description. In the year 1712, several bones and teeth of a vast nondescript quadruped, were dug up at Albany in the state of New York. By the ignorant inhabitants these were considered to be the remains of gigantic human bodies. In 1799 the bones of other individuals of this animal, which has since been denominated ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... For both sexes, there is no exception to the law, that their greatest power and largest attainment lie in the perfect development of their organization. "Woman," says a late writer, "must be regarded as woman, not as a nondescript animal, with greater or less capacity for assimilation to man." If we would give our girls a fair chance, and see them become and do their best by reaching after and attaining an ideal beauty and power, which shall be a crown of glory and a tower of strength to the republic, we ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... reins, and had smashed the cart against a house, which had seemed to have danced into the middle of the road for their diversion, - and, after having put back to The Bear, and prevailed upon that animal to lend them a nondescript vehicle of the "pre-adamite buggy" species, described by Sidney Smith, - that, much time having been consumed by the progress of this chapter of accidents, they did not reach Peyman's Gate until a late hour; and Mr. Verdant Green found that he was once more in ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... troops or destroyed by fire; all bridges were to be destroyed, and the roads rendered as nearly impassable as possible. Blair went forty-five miles and was gone almost a week. His work was effectually done. I requested Porter at this time to send the marine brigade, a floating nondescript force which had been assigned to his command and which proved very useful, up to Haines' Bluff to hold it until reinforcements ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... he was quite different from the traditional tramp. He walked with far too lively a step, too jauntily, and he had with him a small, shaggy, nondescript dog, a dog as shabby as he, trotting close at his heels. He carried a light stick, which he occasionally twirled over in his hand. As I drew nearer I could hear him whistling and even, from time to time, breaking into a lively bit of song. What a devil-may-care chap he seemed, ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... was put to bed Cutty changed. A nondescript suit of the day-labourer type and a few deft touches of coal dust completed ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... four informers) watching the movements of a flock of geese. "'Tis plain," says one of the former, "there is a plot on foot; let's seize them, Brother Oliver." "I have no doubt of it: I can smell it plainly," answers his companion. In the second, a couple of fierce nondescript beasts are regarding a number of innocent lambs: "These bloodthirsty wretches," remarks one of the two, "mean to destroy man, woman, and child, I know it to a certainty; for they carry sedition, privy conspiracy, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... and the austere family portraits; and when I found my hostesses in the hall I thought their looks still less in keeping with the house. Both ladies were on the wrong side of forty, but their dress was that of young girls. Miss Doria Wymondham was tall and thin with a mass of nondescript pale hair confined by a black velvet fillet. Miss Claire Wymondham was shorter and plumper and had done her best by ill-applied cosmetics to make herself look like a foreign demi-mondaine. They ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... different sort from most of Edna's friends," he muttered, as he lighted his pipe and retired to the nondescript apartment that was called his study. "There does not seem much nonsense about her. What do you think about it, Mac?" as the hound laid his head on his knee. "I imagine, as a rule, women have ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Two nondescript Pagan gentlemen of Titanesque proportions had joined the watch of the conventional leonine twins, and the big gate now stood hospitably open, over it swinging the new sign in gallant crimson and white, that announced to all the world that ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... down opposite her. His bared head revealed a shock of exquisitely slicked-back red hair. His face was pleasantly ugly—nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a sportsman. His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... with new eyes his short sturdily-built figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Pope never written any thing else, his name would not have been known as a name even of promise, but would probably have been redeemed from oblivion by some satirist or writer of a Dunciad. Were a man to meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.," Love out of Mount Mlna by Whirlwind"he would suppose himself reading the Racing Calendar. Yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological monsters to whom the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... gaiety, and idleness—a vision of endless intrigue and vapid love-making among the antiquated remains of feudal privileges and social caste. In this fairyland one being alone has reality—Figaro, the restless, fiendishly clever, nondescript valet, sprung from no one knows where, destined to no one knows what, but gradually emerging a strange and sinister profile among the laughter and the flowers. 'What have you done, Monsieur le Comte,' he bursts out at last to his master, 'to deserve all these advantages?—I know. Vous vous etes ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... demonstrated to them. Wits much less acute than a Maori's would appreciate the difference between hacking at hardwood trees with a jade tomahawk, and cutting them down with a European axe. So New Zealand's shores became, very early in this century, the favourite haunt of whalers, sealers, and nondescript trading schooners. Deserters and ship-wrecked seamen were adopted by the tribes. An occasional runaway convict from Australia ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... their hats, eagle-nosed Spaniards under the boina of the Pyrenees, Spaniards from Castile speaking like a gatling-gun in action, now and again even a snappy-eyed Andalusian with his s-less slurred speech, slow, laborious Gallegos, Italians and Portuguese in numbers, Colombians of nondescript color, a Slovak who spoke some German, a man from Palestine with a mixture of French and Arabic noises I could guess at, and scattered here and there among the others a Turk who jabbered the lingua ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck |
