"Puddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... male and female workers; often queer enough people, and from all parts—none too coarse for using. The pickpocket, trained to the loom six months in Bridewell, came forth a journeyman weaver; and his precious experiences were infused into the common moral puddle, and in due time did their work." No wonder that "the distinctive character of all sunk away. Man became less manly—woman unlovely and rude." No wonder that the factory, like too many more, though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes "a prime nursery of vice and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... eye on the creaming fringes of the surf, and then he glanced over it at the purple plain of ocean which lay level and unruffled beyond. A great African moon glowed above it in the night, and the lonely vastness of it all gratified him like the presence of a friend. "You are a decent old puddle," he murmured to himself, "though I say it that's got precious little from you beyond mud and slashing. It's good to be back in reach of the stink of ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... see,' he evaded them, 'are visible in the sky on their way to us, but once they touch the earth they disappear and go out like a candle. Unless a chance puddle, or a pair of eyes happens to be about to catch them, you can't tell where they've gone to. They go really into these ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... somebody else wins. When I was younger, just butting into the game, there was another fellow trying to get hold of a lead mine out West that I was after. He beat me to it at first. He was a big toad in the puddle and I was a little one. But I didn't quit. I waited round the corner. By and by I saw my chance. He was in a hole and I had the cover to the hole. Before I let him out I owned that mine. It cost me ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "why people should think the names of places in the country more poetical than those in London. Shallow romanticists go away in trains and stop in places called Hugmy-in-the-Hole, or Bumps-on-the-Puddle. And all the time they could, if they liked, go and live at a place with the dim, divine name of St. John's Wood. I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... It was very hard to get Hayes along; every ten or a dozen yards he would insist on stopping in the middle of the roadway to argue the value and the sincerity of the friendship his comrades bore for him. Mortimer strove to pacify him, saying that he would stand in a puddle all night if by doing so he might prove that he loved him, and Dubois entreated him to believe him when he said that to sit with him under a cold September moon talking of the dear dead days would be a bliss that he could not forego. But the comedian's jokes soon began to seem idle and flat, and ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... fearing it will rust in the grass, the white things dismayed at not looking white; is so greatly the cry of the innocent among beasts, who have nothing to conceal, of the brook fain to show its crystal clearness; and even—for thy very works, O Night, disown thee!—of the puddle longing to glisten, the mud longing to become earth again, by drying; it is so greatly the magnificent cry of the field impatient to feel its wheat and barley growing, of the blossoming tree mad for still more blossoms of the green grapes craving a purple side; of the bridge waiting for ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... will seat him in the nearest puddle; The solace this, whereof he's most assured: And when upon his rump the leeches hang and fuddle, He'll be of spirits ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... and not employed by the French, as the front had moved far beyond them. The sides were dilapidated. Old shirts, bits of uniform, ends of straps, damaged field-glass cases, broken rifles, useless grenades lay all about. Here and there was a puddle of greenish water. Millions of flies, many of a sinister bright burnished green, were busily swarming. The forlornness of these trenches was heartrending. It was the most dreadful thing that I saw at the front, surpassing ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... persons fly each public place; And none, or enemies alone, embrace: To the foul fiend their every passion's sold: They love, and hate, extempore, for gold: What image of their fury can we form? Dulness and rage, a puddle in a storm. Rest they in peace? If you are pleas'd to buy, To swell your sails, like Lapland winds, they fly: Write they with rage? The tempest quickly flags; A state Ulysses tames 'em with his bags; Let him be what he will, Turk, Pagan, Jew: For Christian ministers ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... o' Satan," tartly answered Bill. "He hides away like a hare. You can track him, no doubt, Trimble, but the sun will be down ere long. I'll not pass the night in this cursed puddle of a place." ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... strange fascination, and quickly endear themselves to the stranger who lounges on their parapets and looks down upon the grimy little steamers scuttling under them, or the uncouth barges pushed and pulled over the opacity of the swift puddle. They form also an admirable point for viewing the clumsy craft of all types which the falling tide leaves wallowing in the iridescent slime of the shoals, showing their huge flanks, and resting their blunt snouts on the mud-banks ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... who went to Gloster in a shower of rain, and he is stepping very high to avoid falling into the puddle we have ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... splash, and the crowd scattered fifty ways at once; and I found myself wringin' wet all in a minute. Then somebody gripped hold o' me and pulled me up, and there was Feodoroff, and beside him Lieutenant Berezinski of the garrison laughin' fit to burst. And when I looked round the whole place was a puddle o' water, with dozens of men rollin' in it like flies in treacle; and at the end of the bridge was ten or twelve sogers, and right in front of 'em a great steam fire-engine! Then I understood it all, and began ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of it, and the possession of this enormous ledge of gold-bearing quartz made him a millionaire in an instant. Here was a whole mountain "lousy" with gold, all his! Why, Solomon or Vanderbilt would be so small in the puddle that he would splash mud on them with his superior tread in the sweet ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... was thinking of was not evident. He moved here and there amid the ruins of the ammunition automobile, picking up bits of wood until his arms could hold no more. It was raining heavily, and when Ned stepped into a puddle the mud and water could be seen ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... ha! ha! A puddle in a storm. I shan't stir a step, I assure you. (In a serious tone.) This your house, fellow! It's my house. This is my house. Mine, while I choose to stay. What right have you to bid me leave this ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... pretty job for one to bring in!" said the tailor, in an excited tone of voice. "A pretty job, indeed! It looks as if it had been dragged through a duck puddle. ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... and ponderous, that the united force of all the fifty was insufficient to shove her into the water. Hercules, I suppose, had not grown to his full strength, else he might have set her afloat as easily as a little boy launches his boat upon a puddle. But here were these fifty heroes, pushing, and straining, and growing red in the face, without making the Argo start an inch. At last, quite wearied out, they sat themselves down on the shore exceedingly disconsolate, and thinking that the vessel must be left to rot and fall ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well as all those around him, fall prostrate on the ground, and cover their heads with dust, or with mud, if it rains; so that they often display very hideous figures, with their black bodies and the wool of their heads thus bedaubed with red puddle. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... beheld a half-dozen Marats assembled round a table, with bumpers of wine before them, bawling, singing, cursing, and cracking lewd jests at the expense of each prisoner as he entered. The place was in a litter. A lamp had been smashed, and there was a puddle of wine on the floor from a bottle that had been knocked over. On a bench against the wall were ranged a number of prisoners, others lay huddled on the floor, and all of them ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... removed upon which he hung his clothes and rations. He abused the gaoler for removing the pegs; was gagged and taken to the new gaol, and chained down; was then dreadfully beaten by six or seven constables. He lay in a puddle of blood. The next day a constable came in and jumped upon him, and severely hurt his chest: he pierced his body with a piece of sharp iron or steel. He showed me a scar on his arm he had received on that occasion. He said Mr. Elliot came to the cell and found him in that mutilated condition, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... consult any set of natural history pictures. The giraffe is shown with his long and sinuous neck entwined in fond embrace about the neck of his mate; but the amphibious, blood-sweating hippo is depicted as spouting and wallowing, morose and misanthropic, in a mud puddle off by himself. In passing I may say that I regard this comparison as a particularly apt one, because I know of no living creature so truly amphibious in hot weather as an open-pored fat man, unless it ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... under the "Emperor"! He had fallen very easy, the animal lay perfectly quiet, and the perfumer was to all intents and purposes as dead as the animal. He had not fainted, but he was immovable with terror; he lay in a puddle, and thought it was his own blood gushing from him; and he would have lain there until Monday morning, if my Lord's grooms, descending, had not dragged him by the coat-collar from under the beast, who ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... owd sayin' 'at youth will have its fling,' an' this cauf wor detarmined to goa in for its share. Th' rooads worn't i' th' best order, yet they mud ha' managed to wade throo but for th' cauf seemin' to have a strong desire to find aght if Owd Dawdles could swim, an' whenivver it coom to a pond or a puddle it gave him a chonce to try, but like all young caufs it hadn't mich patience, an' th' way it jurk'd him in an' aght worn't varry pleasant for one on 'em. When they'd gooan a mile or two Dawdles wor ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... last, the gentleman suspected that the bootblack had taught the dog this trick, in order by that means to get customers. He watched, and saw, when he approached the bridge, Master Poodle go and roll himself in a mud puddle, and then come and rub himself against his boots. The gentleman accused the bootblack of the trick. After a while the man laughed, and confessed ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... he dee-dash-dee'd some other flocks Beside those woolly-headed stubborn blocks That stood before him, in vexatious huddle— Poor little lambs, with bleating wethers group'd, While, now and then, a thirsty creature stoop'd And meekly snuff'd, but did not taste the puddle. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... called nasty by lubbers on a gingerbread yacht, but I have sailed the seas in my day and season, and I don't run for an inshore puddle every time the wind whickers a little." He was fumbling with a button under his crisp roll of chin beard and gave the other man a stare ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... private opinion as to faithless persons in general, and faithless Villum, alias the Slogger, in particular, whose character he painted to himself in extremely sombre colours. After that, a heavy thunder-shower having fallen and drenched him, he walked recklessly and violently through every puddle in his path. This seemed to relieve his spirit, for when he reached Hoboy Crescent he had recovered much ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... "He's always got to have his oar in the puddle. Blamed if I'm not sorry Edmund spoiled my aim. I'd have had his scalp to hang up at the Olympus ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... ever intended to act on that maxim. But really, Anne, I do believe that if you had been a prim pattern of perfection, a real good little girl, a true Miss Jenny Meek, who never put her foot in a puddle, never tore her frock, never spoke above her breath, and never laughed louder than a sucking dove, I should never have cared two ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as the frost holds, the country is endurable; nay, it is better than the towns on those great plains of eastern Europe; but when the thaw comes, and each small depression is a puddle, every low-lying field a pond, and whole plains become lakes, few remain in the villages who can set their feet upon the pavement. The early spring, so closely associated in most minds with the song of birds and the budding of ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... a young woman and a child coming towards her. The little thing was clinging to its mother's skirts, stumbling at every step, whining to be taken up, and now she dropped the white rabbit muff and the doll she was carrying into a puddle. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... marbles to a great lubberly boy, because he would thrash her if she didn't. I guess she never had a "hockey stick" play round her ankles in recess, because she got above a fellow in the class. I guess she never had him twitch off her best cap, and toss it in a mud-puddle. I guess she never had to give her humming-top to quiet the baby, and had the paint all sucked off. I guess she never saved up all her coppers a whole winter to buy a trumpet, and then was told she must not blow it, because it would ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... doors the poor Puddle Duck thought to herself sorrowfully: "How and where can I find the Prince who was so mean as ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... them. And so on, as to dry soil or moist, &c. If somebody gives you "a root" in hot weather, or a bad time for moving, when you have made your hole pour water in very freely. Saturate the ground below, "puddle in" your plants with plenty more, and you will probably save it, especially if you turn a pot or basket over it in the heat of the day. In warm weather plant in the evening, the new-comers then have a round of the clock in dews and restfulness before the sun is fierce enough to make ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... her hands together, and drawing them up to a limb, so that she could just touch the ground, took a very large cowskin whip, and commenced flogging; he said that every stroke at first raised the skin, and immediately the blood came through; this he continued, until the blood stood in a puddle down at her feet. He then turned to my informant and said, 'Well, Yankee, what do you ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... My coachman suddenly interrupted himself, and stopping the horses, he bent over on one side and began sniffing. 'Isn't there a smell of burning? Yes! Why, that new axle, I do declare!... I thought I'd greased it.... We must get on to some water; why, here is a puddle, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... northward, keeps east of the Yazoo, and, I think, nearly on the dividing ridge between the waters of the Yazoo and those of the Tombigbee or Tambeckbee; a vile country, destitute of springs and of running water—think of drinking the nasty puddle-water, covered with green scum, and full of animalculae—bah! I crossed the Tennessee; how glad I was to get on the waters of the Tennessee; all fine, transparent, lively streams, and itself a clear, beautiful, magnificent ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the ground, half-stunned, clothed only in a torn shirt of bright blue, a stout heavy figure—once obviously, from the clothes flung to one side, a policeman, now with his large red face in a muddy puddle, his fat naked legs bent beneath him, his fingers clutching dirt, nothing very human at all. Town cads of the worst! Some brute now was raising his foot and kicking ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... the birds are allowed to puddle about on wet soil, or to be much out in the rain, they will get "chip." Young chicks are especially liable to this complaint. They will sit shivering in out-of-the-way corners, perpetually uttering a dolorous "chip, chip;" seemingly ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... mouth; lagune[obs3], lagoon; indraught[obs3]; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles[obs3]; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough[obs3], mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin[obs3], puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c. (store) 636; alberca[obs3], barachois[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... strong rope,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'en lemme git in er puddle er water, en den let Brer B'ar see ef he kin pull ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... backward from the front seat, perched for a moment on the hub, while one heavy leg, with foot shod in slipping sabot, groped wildly for the ground. A soldier with a lantern watched impassively, watched her solid splash into a mud puddle that might have been avoided. So she continued her complaints. She had been dragged away from her husband, from her other children, and she seemed to have little interest in her son, the Belgian civilian, ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... and' I say to 'im dat I ain't doin' nuthin' an' den he say: "dats whut I'm goin to whup you fer 'cause you ought to be home doin' sumpin'. 'Bout dat time when I stooped over to take off my coat I caught 'im in his pants an' throwed 'im in a puddle o' water an' den I lit out fer home. If you git home den dey couldn't do nuthin' to you. He tried to chase me but he did'nt know de way through de woods like I did an he fell in a gulley an' hurt his arm. De next mornin' when I wus hitchin' up de boss man's horse I seed 'im comin' an' I tol de ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... of the young Archer enabled him to escape, and to requite them with the point of his less noisy, though more fatal weapon; and that so often, and so effectually, that the huge strength of his antagonist began to give way to fatigue, while the ground on which he stood became a puddle of blood. Yet, still unabated in courage and ire, the wild Boar of Ardennes fought on with as much mental energy as at first, and Quentin's victory seemed dubious and distant, when a female voice behind him called ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... his wallet among a lot of other calf skins, like a great sponge in a puddle of water, it sucks every square inch of legal tender, which is in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... the sea is no greater than a mere.' The space of a second double hour she bore him: 'Friend, behold the earth what it is,—the earth is no more than a square plot in a garden, and the great sea is not greater than a puddle of water.'" At the third hour Etana lost courage, and cried, "Stop!" and the eagle immediately descended again; but, Etana's strength being exhausted, he let go his hold, and was dashed to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... quick enough. Wade knocked him down flat on a heap of moulding-sand. The hat in mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... You can make it safe in a few hours. You have got a clumsy contrivance for letting off the excess of water: let us go and relieve the dam at once of two feet of water. That will make it safe for a day or two, and to-morrow we will puddle it afresh, and demolish those ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... that the lake actually had a shore; but they could not tell what part of the shore they had reached. They pushed off again, and resumed their hopeless search for the camp. A new trouble now harassed them. From seeming to have no shore at all, the lake now seemed to have shrunk to a mere mud puddle. No matter in what direction they rowed, they would strike the shore within ten minutes, and always at a different place. Joe said that he had never dreamed that so much shore and so little lake ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... learned that verse by heart once in a summer Bible school. And all of a sudden, my thoughts were flying away, and I was remembering Poetry's pet lamb, which you know about if you've read The Sugar Creek Gang in School, whose wool was NOT white one morning when the lamb fell down in a mud puddle, and I was remembering Poetry's funny poetry ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... myself chaste, poor, and obedient. I was much given to fasting, watching, praying, saying of masses, and the like. Yet under the cloak of my outward respectability I continually mistrusted, doubted, feared, hated, and blasphemed God. My righteousness was a filthy puddle. Satan loves such saints. They are his darlings, for they quickly destroy their body and soul by depriving them of the blessings of ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... in the Bloody Tower after Cranmer. This was Sir Walter Raleigh, who, as a handsome, gay young man, had attracted great favour from Queen Elizabeth. It is said that one day when she was going to cross a puddle Raleigh sprang forward and flung a beautiful cloak he was wearing over the mud as a carpet for her feet. The cloak was very rich and handsome, as were the cloaks the nobles wore then. Of course it was spoilt, and Elizabeth was much flattered by the courtesy of the young ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... by a bloody blanket like the other one. From slimy sand-bags and wet ruins came the sickening stench of human corruption. A boot with some pulp inside protruded from a mud—bank where I stood, and there was a human head, without eyes or nose, black, and rotting in the puddle of a shell—hole. Those were relics of a battle on May 9th, a year before, when swarms of boys, of the '16 class, boys of eighteen, the flower of French youth, rushed forward from the crossroads at La Targette, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... waterproofness, which keeps the rain and the snow out, keeps the perspiration of your feet in, and is likely to make them damp. When they are damp, they are as easily chilled as if they had been wet through with rain or puddle water. Always take off your rubbers in the house or in school, because they are holding in not only the water of perspiration, but the poisons as well; and these will poison your entire blood, so that you soon have a headache and ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... in small bunches and their roots puddled," he said, dipping the earth-covered roots in water to show how to puddle them. "They should be planted thus." He struck his mattock sharply into the soil, bent it to one side, and in the hole thus opened thrust a tiny tree. Then he stepped on the ground close to the seedling and pressed the ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... many have heretofore made shew and profession of their Repentance, who were not convinced of their guiltinesse nor humbled for the same, but did thereafter return with the dog to the vomit, and with the sow to the puddle, unto the mocking of God, and the exceeding great reproach and detriment of his Cause: Therefore, for the better determining the Truth and sincerity of the Repentance of those who desire to be admitted to the Covenant and Communion: It is appointed and Ordained that none of those persons ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... words relieved my feelings and put the fire down! Still bullets did fly around us, over our heads and beside us, while we passed along in the black night. Mr. Wright, my Adjutant, saw one strike in a puddle between him and myself as we marched at the head of the Regiment. You will be interested to know what our 72 hours in the trenches cost us. Of course I cannot tell you our casualties for fear this letter should be read by the enemy, but if you remember the number of our house in ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... wind, and sail straight away into the interior of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush, far off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow, and out of sight of even the smallest puddle ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... conversation upon the common theme. A young man of more stalwart figure stands beside the girl, and failing to attract her attention, kneels down on one knee and speaks low to her. A little boy is seated at her feet, alternately stroking her hands, and stirring up a small puddle of water with a short stick. Two other children are engaged at a little distance in making a lean cur beg for a mouthful of bread, which the generous urchins would evidently rather share with the dog ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the spirit, that, unless man is immortal, he is vastly more to be pitied than the meanest reptile that crawls upon the earth. So I thought as I was walking this morning and saw a frog swimming in a puddle of water. I could hardly help envying him when I considered that his condition was suited to his nature, and that he has no ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... from their friends in the river, and were pining away with grief. "Oh! please be so good as to drop us into the water again," they said; but, without any answer, he drank up the drops. He was too proud and a great deal too big to talk to a poor little puddle of water; but the drops said: "Our big brother, the Water, will one day take you in hand, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... and sinking; threatening to swamp itself into a Stygian quagmire, uninhabitable by any noble-minded man. Let us to the well-heads, I say; to the chief fountains of these waters of bitterness; and there strike home and dig! To puddle in the embouchures and drowned outskirts, and ulterior and ultimate issues and cloacas of the affair: what profit can there be in that? Nothing to be saved there; nothing to be fished up there, except, with endless peril and spread of pestilence, a miscellany of broken waifs and dead dogs! In the ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... "if you'll just put away a few of those ancient pipes and puddle your papers a bit in your own cozy corner we can call these quarters ready to receive the ladies, God bless 'em! Does it look kinder bare to you? We might borrow a few drapes from the madam, or would you trust ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in some unseen hamlet struck the hour. The distant sound, coming from the world of men and every-day affairs, seemed to break the spell. An ousel fluttered across the stream and dabbled in a puddle among some stones. Rabbits began to show themselves and frisk with lengthened shadows in the clear spaces. Maynard looked at his watch, half-mindful of a train to be caught somewhere miles away, and then, held by ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... the entire addition is a hundred-acre mud puddle this morning. You couldn't sell a lot in it to a blind man. Every cent that was invested in it is lost. The whole marsh was fed from underground springs that have come up through it and ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... only glad to have the luck of life and limbs to fly with, mud-bedraggled, foul with slime, reeking both with sweat and blood, which they could not stop to wipe, cursing, with their pumped-out lungs, every stick that hindered them, or gory puddle that slipped the step, scarcely able to leap over the corses that had dragged to die. And to see how the corses lay; some, as fair as death in sleep; with the smile of placid valour, and of noble manhood, hovering yet on the silent lips. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... to Gloster, In a shower of rain; He stepped in a puddle, up to the middle, And never went ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... Water.—When, at the watering-place, there is little else but a mess of mud and filth, take a good handful of grass or rushes, and tie it roughly together in the form of a cone, 6 or 8 inches long; then dipping the broad end into the puddle, and turning it up, a streamlet of fluid will trickle down through the small end. This excellent plan is used by the Northern Bushmen—at their wells quantities of these bundles are found lying about. (Anderson.) Otherwise suck water through your handkerchief ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... suppose it comes out of some book. It's only a puddle now, but you see that stream going through it? Well, a good deal of water comes down after heavy rains, and can't get away at once, and the pool becomes quite large and beautiful. Then Freddy used to bathe there. He is very ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... winter, I was routed up after midnight, and brought off in the mud and pelting rain up one of the new streets on the hillside there, simply because a factory girl who was laced too tight had fainted at a dance. I slipped and fell into a puddle in the darkness, ruined a new overcoat, and got drenched to the skin; and when I arrived the girl had recovered and was dancing away again, thirteen to the dozen. It was then that I made the rule. I ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... morning with good courage, though it was dubious weather, and we had a long ride before us. After a while, we young folks headed the procession and cantered when we could, which was seldom, as a great deal of the way was like riding in the bed of a brook. It had rained so much that a puddle of water was met every few feet. Part of our way was through a beautiful growth of gigantic ferns, mingled with other trees. The ferns were of a beautiful species, growing twenty or more feet high, ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... remain in the male stage several days before becoming female; while on a warm, sunny day, when plenty of insects are flying, the change sometimes takes place in a few hours. Among others, the common sulphur or puddle butterfly, that sits in swarms on muddy roads and makes the clover fields gay with its bright little wings, pilfers nectar from the geranium without bringing its long tongue in contact with the pollen. Neither do the smaller bees and flies which alight on the petals necessarily come ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... event, perhaps, in Roy's young life was his first swim. He did not know he could swim. He did not know what it was to swim. He had never seen a sheet of water larger than a road-side puddle or than the stationary wash-tubs of his own laundry at home. He would have nothing to do with the Pond, at first, except for drinking purposes; and he would not enter the water until Jack went in, and then nothing ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... Captain, with his hand on his horse's mane, bigger—(so as to secure portrait) and vignetted if you like; or small on his horse stooping to hold his hand out to a child, Master Johnson, seated in a puddle, and Nurses pointing out the bogy; or standing looking amused ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... o'clock they had set out. The boy's face was badly scratched from his morning battle, but pain had ceased, and his injuries only served as an object of great interest to Timothy. Where water in ditch or puddle made a looking-glass he would stop to ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... that puddle for a regal footstool! Stay, I will move, and then you can come nearer this way. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the nature of his literary labours, and requested to know what were his works. He had abridged something, and he had written a commentary upon another thing!—just the employment fit for some old gentleman who likes still to puddle a little with ink. One could write a commentary upon any thing. One of my children is singing a nursery song, now I'll write a commentary on it in ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Sir Poole? Lord, I kennell, puddle, sinke, whose filth and dirt Troubles the siluer Spring, where England drinkes: Now will I dam vp this thy yawning mouth, For swallowing the Treasure of the Realme. Thy lips that kist the Queene, shall sweepe the ground: And thou that smil'dst at good Duke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides and cart-loads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But in the course of time a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... though it be, it is chiefly Rairoo. We left Meerpore and proceeded about one and a half mile from Joke, following the nullah until we came on a canal in which, from a bund having been thrown across, there was a puddle or two of water. Here we halted. Much remains of cultivation is presented about this, chiefly Bagree, which is perennial. Durand tells me that the sprouts of the second year are poisonous to cattle, i.e. horses; but this report may have ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Moss could not keep her promise, for on Monday it still rained, and the little girls paddled off to school like a pair of young ducks, enjoying every puddle they came to, since India rubber boots made wading a delicious possibility. They took their dinner, and at noon regaled a crowd of comrades with an account of the mysterious dog, who appeared to be ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... problems if she had. She was superficial. She belonged to a new generation which had put him and his theories on the shelf. Her blue dress had stained the cushions of his carriage, and there was a puddle of water in the hall where Sam had put down her satchel and hat, which had been found in the driveway near the stable. They had been thrown from the carriage, and lain in the rain all night. The hat was soaked through and through, and the ribbons were limp and faded; but he did not care a ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... his boot on the ground, and the slime and slush oozed out of it and formed a puddle. "That's pretty stuff to stand in for a man of sixty-four, yent it, John?" With a volubility and energy of speech little to be expected from his wizened appearance, the hedger and ditcher entered into details of his job. He began work at six that morning with stiff legs ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... sartin do. Change your course once in awhile, same as you change your clothes. Wearin' the same suit and cruisin' in the same puddle all the time ain't healthy. You're too apt to get sick of the clothes ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... said, in his exaggerating way, "as if a puddle should mirror the star just above it, and, becoming enamored, should wish it to fall and be quenched in ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... of whisky for three days, and fell out of the ranks by scores. The road for sixteen miles was lined with stragglers. The new men bore the march badly. Rain fell yesterday afternoon and during the night; I awoke at three o'clock this morning to find myself lying in a puddle of water. A soldier of Captain Rossman's company was wrestling with another, and being thrown, died almost instantly from the effect ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... awake all night,' he continued; 'I do so mostly, and a long walk kills me. Eh, deary me, to think that life should run to such a puddle! And I remember long syne when I was strong, and the blood all hot and good about me, and I loved to run, too—deary me, to run! Well, that's all by. You'd better pray to be took early, Nance, and not live ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disappointed but not equal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes and a regretful sigh without going further. A procession of six ducks got well into a line for a laborious "march past" the store, but fell out at the first mud puddle and gave it up. A highly nervous but respectable hen, who had ventured upon the veranda evidently against her better instincts, walked painfully on tiptoe to the door, apparently was met by language which no mother of ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... hanging. There was so many of 'em that it was obliged to be done by relays. There was six rails and a stocking on each, and four small goosbry bushes, always covered with some bit of linning or other. The hall was a regular puddle: wet dabs of dishclouts flapped in your face; soapy smoking bits of flanning went nigh to choke you; and while you were looking up to prevent hanging yourself with the ropes which were strung across and about, slap came the hedge of a pail against your shins, till one was like to be ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a flutter of white, and a neat pair of button boots waving in the air. Then Miss Nugent, sobbing piteously, rose from the puddle into which she had fallen and surveyed her garments. Mr. Wilks surveyed them, too, and a very cursory glance was sufficient to show him that the case was beyond his powers. He took the outraged damsel by the hand, and led her, howling lustily, in to ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... whether she was a lake or only a puddle, left her mark behind her. The Empty House was no longer harmless. It had a new lease of life. It was tenanted by some one who could never have friendly relations with children. The weeds in the old garden took on fantastic ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... said Millard, tartly. "Mrs. Frankland is eloquent, but she has imposed on you and done you a great deal of harm. Why, Phillida, you are as much superior to that woman as the sky is—" He was about to say, "as the sky is to a mud-puddle," but nothing is so fatal to offhand vigor of denunciation as the confirmed habit of properness. Millard's preference for measured and refined speech got the better of his wrath barely in time, and, after arresting himself a moment, he finished ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... the beam an old horse is attached, who, as he slowly walks round the circular track, causes the harrows and drags to so puddle the washdirt and water in the great wooden enclosure that the clay is gradually disintegrated, and flows off with the water which is from time to time admitted. The clean gravel is then run through a "cradle," "long Tom," or "sluice," and ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... walking along a country road deeply engaged in meditation, and that I come to a puddle of water in my pathway. I may turn aside and avoid the obstruction without my attention being called to it, and without interruption of my train of thought. The act has been automatic. In this case the nerve current has passed from the eye (S) ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... happened to Irene McCullough, she would have had to sleep in it, because she's so big she takes up the whole bed. And Priscilla said I could be thankful to-morrow's Saturday when we get clean sheets; it might have happened so that I would have had to sleep in that puddle of chocolate a whole week. And then the "Lights-out" rang, and they left me to clean up, and the housekeeper's gone to bed, and I can't get any fresh bed clothes, and I won't sleep that way! I'm not used to sleeping in chocolaty ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... a puddle in a storm! He is for a crusade for the regeneration of the Antilles; the most forcible of feebles, the most energetic of drivellers; Velluti ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... thought the Hoojers had a very clean, blue, pretty river," said Dotty, thoughtfully; "it looks some like a mud-puddle. Perhaps it carried off ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... lambskin pelisse, and Ivan Nikiforovitch, in his cinnamon-coloured nankeen spencer, used to set out for church almost arm in arm; and if Ivan Ivanovitch, who had remarkably sharp eyes, was the first to catch sight of a puddle or any dirt in the street, which sometimes happened in Mirgorod, he always said to Ivan Nikiforovitch, "Look out! don't put your foot there, it's dirty." Ivan Nikiforovitch, on his side, exhibited the same touching tokens of friendship; and whenever he ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Tom knew, he was sailing through the air, high above Swift Enterprises. Lake Carlopa was a tiny blue puddle below, and the town of Shopton a mere cluster of toy ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... before them, waited Clematis, roguishly lying in a mud-puddle in the gutter. He had run through alleys parallel to their course—and in the face of such demoniac cunning the wretched William despaired of evading his society. Indeed, there was nothing to do but to give up, and so the trio proceeded, with William unable to decide which contaminated him ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... and was dressed in white and had a very becoming rose from home, and the sea, on her cheeks. As we prayed I made a sketch of them for her sister at home. Then they and the witnesses signed their names, and where their hands and wrists touched the vestry table there was a tiny puddle, and yet this is what ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... and I hope to persuade Father Burrowes to have me on probation. If he once does that, I'm sure that I shall satisfy him. This sounds like the letter of a conceited clerk. It must be the fault of this horrible inn pen, which is like writing with a tooth-pick dipped in a puddle! I thought it was best not to stay at the Rectory, with Esther on the verge of her profession. It wouldn't be fair to her at a time like this to make my immediate future a matter of prime importance. So do forgive my going off in this fashion. I suppose it's ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Parade Ground and marched to Chocques—the irrepressible Drums giving us one or two tunes on the way. It rained hard at the Station and there was a terrible shortage of accommodation. At length, with much shoving, swearing and puddle-splashing we got on board, and at 4-0 a.m. left the Bethune Area. We had been on the Lens-La Bassee Sector for seventeen months: we never saw ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... up quietly, and silently slipped out into the rainy night. The darkness was so thick that he could not see objects six feet away. Walking through the mud was out of the question. He stumbled down, the street, once falling headlong into a muddy puddle, finally reaching the horse- lines, where, saying that he had an errand for the Colonel, he saddled a horse and slopped off ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... ('Ficus'), upward of twenty species of which are found here. Seven or eight of them cluster round a spot on one of the smaller branches, and there keep up a constant distillation of a clear fluid, which, dropping to the ground, forms a little puddle below. If a vessel is placed under them in the evening, it contains three or four pints of fluid in the morning. The natives say that, if a drop falls into the eyes, it causes inflammation of these organs. To the question whence ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... up this puddle sufficiently. I now finish. Nor must you think me unfair for having turned my argument against Lutherans and Zwinglians indiscriminately. For, remembering their common parentage, they wish to be brothers and friends to one another; and they take ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... ago. I wet my feet in a puddle in the street," she answered. "But Anne did say that they would soon get dry, if I held them to the fire, because my other boots was not clean. Oh, my head ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... your society artists and authors simply wallow in them? Have you got any cigarettes, or papers? I dropped mine into a puddle. Ah, thanks.... That's a pretty face. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... water, which seemed to be nothing but a transient puddle caused by the melting snow, was a tiny fish. I asked him by what miracle he got there, but he could give no explanation. He, too, might well enough have joined ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... seemed to dive in between some high bushes, and the Curlytops could not see him any more. But Trouble was still sitting on the rock, the water from his clothes making a little puddle all around him, and he was crying hard, his tears running ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... height as Jack, both being about a half a head taller than she; Jack on her left in his black tail-coat and round hat, and the other man on her right—well, he was a sailor-man in wet oilskins. I could see the moonlight shining on the water that ran down him, and on the little puddle that had settled where the flap of his sou'wester was turned up behind: and one of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie's waist, just above Jack's. I was fast to the spot where I stood, and for a minute ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... is built, as shown by the cross section, Fig. 6. On the canal side of it there is a wall of rubble masonry F, laid in hydraulic cement, connecting the two locks, and backed by a puddle wall, E, three feet thick; next the river there is crib work, G, from ten to twenty feet wide and the space between brick-work and puddle filled with earth. The outer slope is protected with riprap, composed of large bowlders. This had to be made very strong to prevent the destruction of the bank ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... they would agree that perhaps by this time there was a "break in the rains," and that nothing in the world was so trying as a break in the rains, the sun grilling down and drawing up steam from every puddle. In September things, they remembered, would be at their very worst and most depressing: one had hardly the energy to lift a finger in September. Mrs. Simpson looked back upon the discomfort she had endured in ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was finished, the colonel signed it in a bold, round hand, and attested it by a burning puddle of red wax into which he plunged the old family seal. Fitz and I duly witnessed it, and then the colonel, with the air of a man whose mind had been suddenly relieved of some great pressure, locked the important document in his drawer, and handed the ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... trees, in the hollow, was a great puddle, and here the pigs reclined, great and small. They found the place so inexpressibly lovely! "Oui! oui!" they all exclaimed. That was all the French they knew, but even that was something; and they were so ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Mrs. Smith motioned for me to come to her where she stood at a window whose sash she had slightly lifted; the same to which the moth had once been lured by the little puddle of ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... yesterday. Or, if so, it shall be a symbol to me that even a human breast, which may appear least spiritual in some aspects, may still have the capability of reflecting an infinite heaven in its depths, and therefore of enjoying it. It is a comfortable thought, that the smallest and most turbid mud-puddle can contain its own picture of heaven. Let us remember this, when we feel inclined to deny all spiritual life to some people, in whom, nevertheless, our Father may perhaps see the image of His face. This dull river has a deep ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... load of reeds from the steppes, turns his creaking cart into the Cossack captain's broad and clean courtyard, and lifts the yoke off the oxen that stand tossing their heads while he and his master shout to one another in Tartar. Past a puddle that reaches nearly across the street, a barefooted Cossack woman with a bundle of firewood on her back makes her laborious way by clinging to the fences, holding her smock high and exposing her white legs. A Cossack returning from shooting calls ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... effort he succeeded in turning the scientist face up. Then he saw what had happened, and knew in a flash that Fuller had saved him from the singing dart whose energy was making a sizzling puddle of the stones where it had landed. The missile, in passing, had carried away the belt and part of the fabric of Tom's garment—carried away the capsule and the radium that energized it. Made the thing worse than useless. And Fuller had done this ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... of a staff gyrocar and waded through mud for half a mile, after which he, in person, waked two sleeping men. They were sprawled out in the puddle of rain which had gathered in a torn-away tread from the Wabbly. They waked with extreme reluctance, and then yawned even in the act of ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... a terribly big toad in the cannery puddle," Stubby recited, "and I guess he has made his last splash. They always cut a wide swath in town, and that sort of thing can sure eat up coin. I'm kind of sorry for Betty. Still, she'll probably marry somebody with money. I know two or three fellows who would be tickled ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... is my way, is it?" he asked, with a jerk of his thumb toward a cloud of blue-and-yellow butterflies drifting over a shining puddle—"five miles as the crow flies, and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... of anything better he picked up the heavy glass inkpot standing on the table, emptied the contents in a puddle on the floor, and held the inkpot itself ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon |
