"Rusty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apart and surrounded by a separate stockade, there suddenly resounded an infernal din. It was like the roar of a lion, like thunder, like the rumbling of a drum, like the laughter of a hyena, the howling of a wolf, and like the shrill creaking of rusty iron hinges. The King hearing these dreadful sounds, began to trumpet, Saba barked, the donkey, on which Nasibu sat, brayed. The warriors leaped as if scalded, and pulled the spears out of the ground. Confusion ensued. Stas' ears were assailed by the uneasy ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Storey was never quite out of his mind. And, as a tiny, at first telescopic crescent with a rusty light enlarged with lessened distance ahead, the ugly enigma of present-day Mars dug ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... he stood up. "What have I done?" He raised his arms at the hazy red sun lying over the spires of towering stone and metal like a bloated balloon scraping precariously over rusty spikes. ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton
... steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over them, and they went out on the sandbar and lay down to sleep. They got scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. After the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, or anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me no reply, but going to the only flat gravestone, which stood on short thick pillars, he put his hand beneath it, and drew out a great rusty key. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... if you like, Daisy; but I'm afraid I shall only be in the way. My dancing has grown very rusty from long disuse." ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... 'And what is that to you?' 'Well, if that's so,' says he, 'vaccinate me. He bared his arm and thrust it under my nose. Of course, I did not bandy words with him; I just vaccinated him to get rid of him. Afterwards I looked at my lancet and it had gone rusty." ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of all sorts that he at first did not perceive the little white-haired old man who bent over a jeweler's work bench in one corner. The walls were lined with shelves, upon which stood bits of ivory and porcelain, miniatures of all sorts, old pieces of silverware, bronze and copper, old coins, and rusty antique weapons. About the walls stood innumerable pictures, old and cracked, in dilapidated-looking frames, while from the ceiling were suspended bits of rusty armor, swords, brass censers, Chinese lamps, and innumerable other objects, the use of which ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... lord, Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... bought, and left to make its own bargain in the marketplace; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul never till then, in that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living,—is a rather curious spectacle! Few shapes of Heroism can ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... rooms. A fire in the study now daily, for the sake of the books: one in the drawing-room, weekly, for the sake of the piano and the furniture. And for Betty, in far-away Paris, a fire of crackling twigs and long logs in the rusty fire-basket, and blue and yellow flames leaping to lick the royal arms of ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... dead, collected after many months from the vast battle-field, lie heaped the last possessions of the soldier who sleeps beneath—his helmet, his haversack, his water-bottle, his spade. These rusty spades were to me a tragic symbol, not only of the endless, heart-wearing labour which had produced those trenched hillsides, but also of that irony of things, by which that very labour which protected the mysterious and spiritual thing which the Frenchman calls patrie, was at the same time ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bed, a small table, covered with a soiled and ink-stained cloth, was heaped with newspapers and magazines; on the right, facing the door, leading to the hall outside, an old-style mantelpiece surmounted a rusty fireplace. A single arm gas jet served for illuminating purposes, and in a little alcove stood a table with a small gas stove connected by rubber tubing with a gas fixture. There were two windows in the room, opening outward in the French manner on to a ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... distant Cheviot's blue, And, home returning, filled the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl— Methought that still, with tramp and clang The gate-way's broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seamed with scars, Glared through the window's rusty bars. And ever by the winter hearth, Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms, Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms; Of patriot battles, won of old, By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold; Of later fields of feud and fight, When pouring from the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... very rejected last night afther she coming in," said Johnny Connolly, manipulating as he spoke the length of rusty chain and bit of stick that fastened the door. "I think it was lonesome she was ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... awkwardly setting down his cup. Joanna rose too. The sunset, rusty with the evening sea-mist, poured over her goodly form as she stood against the window, making its outlines dim and fiery and her hair like ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... welcomed her with his grandest smile; And, mind you, his mother all the while {160} Chilled in the rear, like a wind to nor'ward; And up, like a weary yawn, with its pulleys Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis; And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies, The lady's face stopped its play, As if her first hair had grown gray; For such things must begin ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... not give something for nothing," said the old woman, so she began fumbling about in her pocket until she found an old rusty key. And the best part of the key was, that whenever one looked through the ring of it, one saw everything just as it really was and not as it ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... onwards it was a big straggling sort of suburban town—tramways down the side, dirty little houses lining the street, great chimneys belching (I believe that is the correct term) volumes of black smoke, huge mountains of slag in all directions, rusty brickfields littered with empty tins, old paper, and bits of iron, and other similarly unlovely views. The only thing to be said in favour of this industrial scrap-heap was that the smoke was not quite so sooty as it looked, and things one touched did not "come off" quite ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... that half his popularity in his university world was due to the respect he commanded from the students because of his extraordinary feats in walking and lifting. He was impressive, almost handsome. For what of his face his ragged, rusty beard left uncovered was regularly if coldly featured. He was ascetic in type. Moreover, the look of the born disciplinarian lay on him. His blue eyes carried a glacial gleam. Even through his thick mustache, the lines of ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Parnassus! whom I view above, Not laurel-crown'd, but clad in rusty black; Not spurring Pegasus through Tempe's grove, But pacing Grub-street on a jaded hack; What reams of foolscap, while your brains ye rack, Ye mar to make again! for sure, ere long, Condemn'd to tread the bard's time-sanction'd track, Ye all ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... much is happening. Following on His Majesty King Albert's magnificent discourse [Vive le roi!], the spirit of a great and glorious decision has set the empire in motion. The vast machine moves—though some of the bolts creak and protest a little in their rusty coats and the earth trembles to the rhythm of tramping feet. Hundreds of soldiers and cannon have been passing all night, and this morning routes in every direction are blockaded by detachments from different regiments. There ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... boy went off immediately to the place where the two little boats were moored—boats which they had all laboured to manufacture out of driftwood and rusty iron nails. Jackson remained to throw fuel on the fire, and Percival, suddenly laying a hand on Brian's arm, led him apart and turned his back upon the glittering expanse ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... have known he was near till he flung the door back and came stalking into the light with the rusty bread-knife in his hand. One would not have imagined there were blood enough left in her wasted heart, but her face went crimson when she lifted ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... on the other side of the road, rise some of those mountains whereby the Earth, before she settled down to cool, compassed—she, too—some sort of self-expression. Mildly around his pedestal, among rusty anchors strewn there on the grass between road and beach, sit the fishermen, mending their nets or their sails, or whittling bits of wood. What will you say of these fishermen when——but I outstrip ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... door, blocking a possible opening from the front of the cellar. The lights suddenly were darkened. The sound of shuffling feet would have indicated to a listener that the owner of the nervous hand was retreating to the rear of the darkened den. A noise resembling that of the turn of a rusty hinge might have then been heard: there was a metallic clang, the rattle of a sliding chain and the rear room was as ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... a bit rusty. That's what's the matter with me. I want some hard work to rub me up and put a polish on me and I can't get it here. I've never had enough to do since I left Leeds. Harker was a wise chap to stick to it. It would do me all the good in the ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... called our American accent. The minute we tell the driver of a hansom where we want to go, that place doubles its distance from the spot we start from. Now I think the great reason Jone's rumbling worked so well was that it had in it a sort of Great British chest-sound, as if his lungs was rusty. The waiter had heard that before and knew what it meant. If he had spoken out in the clear American fashion I expect his voice would have gone clear through the waiter without his knowing it, like the person in the story, whose ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... had fallen for six weeks; and though, as the doctor observes, 'neither cloud, fog, nor mist obscured the heavens, yet the sun and moon were scarcely visible; the orb of day appeared as if viewed through a smoked glass, the whole sky presenting a uniform rusty hue. At times, this sameness was disturbed, exhibiting between the spectator and the sun the appearance of a water-spout, owing to the gyratory motions of the impalpable mineral. The sand penetrated the most secluded apartments; furniture wiped in the morning, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... Saturn being plainly discernible. From the Milky Way my eyes at length wandered to the pines, and a puff of air laden with the odour of their resin and decaying brushwood decided me. I took a few preliminary sips of whisky, stretched my rusty limbs, and, placing one foot in a jagged crevice of the wall, swarmed painfully up. How slow and how hazardous was the process! I scratched my fingers, inured to the pen but a stranger to any rougher substance; I ruined my box-calf ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... flies the rusty rickshaw of the Kurumayasan, When he scents a Hippopotam down the groves ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... The same strenuous energy applied to his reading at this period. A friend tells me that in a letter about this time he speaks of devouring "five of Scott's novels in a month, resulting in parental remonstrance; history; and a Greek play, in which he is not so 'rusty' as he feared." In Fann Street his practical business energies found free play, although the bias of his mind undoubtedly lay towards literature rather than commerce; but for nearly a quarter of a century he devoted himself to this work with ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... scattered before her, On purpose to harrow her soul; She stares, till a deep spell comes o'er her, At a knife, or a cross, or a bowl. The sword never seems to alarm her, That hangs on a peg to the wall, And she doats on thy rusty old armor ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... and their scattered neighbours, who had driven there across several leagues of prairie, a supper in his barn, and a big rusty stove, which had been brought in for the occasion, stood in the midst of it. Its pipe glowed in places a dull red, and Stukely now and then wondered uneasily whether it was charring a larger hole through the shingles of the roof. On one side ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... languages. They take care of themselves; they will not get rusty here; our regiments are not made up of natives alone—far from it. And she is picking up Indian ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... If you want a delicious pear don't pick out the great shapely ones, but those that are screwed all on one side and covered with rusty spots. The same with the plums and apples. They are almost always to ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... all right. If the Belloc firm cuts up rusty, I'll think of what you'd do and try to do ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... masonry lay buried amidst weeds and briars. The heavy posts which had supported the wooden roller still remained, but the iron spindle had been dragged from its socket and lay a few paces from the well, rusty, discolored, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... stand forth and range themselves by his side. And, behold, more than three-fourths of the chiefs stood forth and placed themselves beside M'Bongwele, declaring that the Makolo were a warlike nation, whose spears had grown rusty through remaining so long unwashed in blood, while they were growing ever poorer for lack of their neighbours' cattle, under Seketulo's peaceful rule; and that M'Bongwele was far better as a king than had ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... principle was cut short by the entrance of the minister, the Rev. Mr. Simpson. He was a tall, gaunt man, in a coat of rusty black. His hair, of an indeterminate colour, was slightly mixed with grey. A pair of bright grey eyes looked out from underneath bushy eyebrows. His lips were close set. His bony hands were large and ungainly. The Rev. Mr. Simpson had been a ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... same! Don't take any more of that vile stuff, you'll make yourself drunk. Here——" and then, with sudden fury, the preacher grabbed the bottle, threw it out of the window among the debris of rotting fruit and rusty cans ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... used here than in most of the chapels; the work does not seem to have been much, if at all repainted, since Tabachetti left it. One figure of a child in the foreground has disappeared, the marks of its feet and two little bits of rusty iron alone show where it was; the woman who was holding it also remains without an arm. I am tempted to think that some disturbing cause has affected a girl who is holding a puppy, a little to the right of this last figure, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... found an old bucket that would hold three or four gallons, and a couple of quart cans in which water could be boiled. From a tamarind tree he gathered the half-dried fruit with its sweet acidity, and in the old garden he discovered a few stalks of sugar-cane. He picked up a rusty fish-hook and from an old net got a quantity of string. Then filling his bucket with rain water, he started back to Dick and the camp. The journey was a hard one, and though he refused to drink a drop of the water, half of it was lost on the way. The ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... pause to remove one atom of the sticky creek mud that plastered grotesquely his rusty but solemn suit of black. Drenched and defiled, he felt himself an object of sympathy. He would not even remove the occasional green leaves and rosebuds that clung to him here and there with a most ludicrous effect, making one think of a too festive picnicker. Mr. Hand was quite ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... they form two entirely separate worlds. In short, the new view of the world appears in Nicolas still bound on every hand by mediaeval conceptions. A century and a half passed before the fetters, grown rusty in the meanwhile, broke under the bolder ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... a rusty darning-needle sticking in it. Five apples, two mouldy. A square of hardbake. An old neck-ribbon. An odd cuff. Seven letters. A knife, with the blade broken. A bundle of pen-and-ink—well, I suppose they are meant ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... were also vast subterranean works, store-houses, magazines, cannon-foundries, and all the appliances of a first-class fortified town and arsenal; but these were of course empty, and with the exception of a small chamber near the water-gate, which contained a number of rusty helmets and breastplates, there was no object of interest beyond the actual plan ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... give him a piece of advice, which might, perhaps, be serviceable hereafter. Sir Walter heard him, no doubt, with some regret at losing his fee; but concluding to hear what he had to say. "You are a housekeeper, Mr. Scott. For security to your doors, use nothing but a common lock—if rusty and old, no matter; they are quite as hard to pick as any others. (Neither Chubbs' nor Hobbs' non-pickable locks were then invented.) Then provide yourself with a small rat terrier, and keep him in your house at night. ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... about all human doings." Therefore romance has created the "dynamic illusions" of chivalry and love and common sense and religion and art and patriotism and optimism, and therein "the ape reft of his tail and grown rusty at climbing" has clothed himself so long that as he beholds himself in the delusive mirrors he has for centuries held up to nature he believes he is somehow of cosmic importance. Poor and naked as this ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... piles of band boxes, and for seats there was an array of worm-eaten armchairs, into which bits of velvet and silk, which had been cut from old dresses, had been festooned anyhow, and along the walls there were rows of rusty nails which made one think of old portraits and of pictures full of associations, which had one by one been bought for a low price by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... AND CARE.—Small, round, rusty-looking spots are common to both string and wax beans; but when such spots are present they must be removed before cooking. As there is considerable waste in the preparation of such beans for the table, it ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... tall and exceedingly meagre man, dressed in a rusty suit of black,—the pantaloons tight at the calf and ankle, and there forming a loose gaiter over thick shoes, buckled high at the instep; an old cloak, lined with red, was thrown over one shoulder, though the day was sultry; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brick part of the furnace all done when she appeared. They were carefully fitting into place the rusty piece of stove-pipe which was the crowning glory of the structure. Katy and Gertie were seated on an old barrel turned over on its side, watching the process. They made room for Chicken Little ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... Meanwhile, the crew had pinned their faith to burnt cork and their working slops as a disguise, except the five who were to form Jack's boat's crew; these having discarded their working slops and donned dungaree overalls, ancient cloth trousers, rusty with salt-water stains, and stiff with tar and grease, big thigh-boots, and worsted caps. A cutlass belted to the waist, and a knife and brace of revolvers in the belt gave the finishing touch of realism to the get-up, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... speaking before she looks round. Herbert Dallison stands besides her, holding out a French forage cap, a bullet, and a rusty sword broken off in ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... arising far ahead along the road wrought up his hopes to a Bluebeard pitch, as regularly to fall. First came a cast-off soldier from the war in the Netherlands, rakishly forlorn, his breastplate full of rusty dents, his wild hair worn by his steel cap, swaggering along on a sorry hack with an old belt full of pistolets, and his long sword thumping Rosinante's ribs. Then a peddling chapman, with a dust-white pack and a cunning Hebrew look, limped by, sulkily doffing his ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... man, with a flourish of the gun which was a rusty-barreled old weapon, perhaps more dangerous at the butt end than at its muzzle. "Ze chat only fear for her babies. She have zem in dat tree. We will go past leeving zem streectly ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... The sides of the hills were covered with tall weeds, yellow from the blazing sun. Sometimes they met a mountaineer, either on foot or mounted on a little horse, or astride a donkey about as big as a dog. They all carried a loaded rifle slung across their backs, old rusty weapons, but redoubtable ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... that he should be burying himself alive, as they were pleased to term his devotion to his provincial life. His rare excursions to the cities gave more pleasure to other men than to himself, however, in these later years, and he laughingly proclaimed himself to be growing rusty and behind the times to Dr. Ferris, who smiled indulgently, and did not take the trouble to contradict so untrue ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... for a horse, a big old-fashioned bonnet on her head, and a red silk petticoat for a habit. Then they went to sea in a great chest, and got wrecked on a desert island, where they built a fort with boxes and bags, hunted bears with rusty guns, and had to eat dried berries, herbs and nuts; for no other food could be found. Aunt Wee got an old fiddle, and had a dancing-school, where Daisy capered till she was tired. So they rummaged ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely-peaked gables, and a huge clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm tree before the door is known ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... away the afternoon by a tramp over the desert, and after supper turned Felicia over to the landlady at Delmonico's, the adobe hotel, which was clean if it was meager. They were sitting in the office, which boasted a rusty sheet-iron stove, a desk, and a hanging lamp, when a thin, middle-aged man came slowly in the door and walked hesitatingly up ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... agreed to accept the charge and old Dave shuffled over to his cupboard, procured a rusty tin box, and placed it in ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... who ply their trades upon the sidewalk. My hatter—the fellow who cleans my straw hat each Spring—is a partner of a bootblack. Over his head as he putters with his soap and brushes, there hangs a rusty sign proclaiming that he is famous for his cleaning all round the world. He is so modest in his looks that I have wondered whether he really can read the sign. Or perhaps like a true merchant, he is not squeamish at the praise. As I have ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... woman dressed in rusty black, with a quick eye and an eager expression. Having demanded references of Ferrando, she declared herself perfectly satisfied with his statements, for she had met his father, and the likeness was unmistakable. ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... grizzled, wrinkled, weather-beaten, yet sallow, and down-looking, with a watchful kind of eye turning upon everybody and everything, meeting the glances of other people rather boldly, yet soon shrinking away; a long thin nose, a gray beard of a week's growth; hair not much mixed with gray, but rusty and lifeless;—a miserable object; but it was curious to see how he was not ashamed of himself, but seemed to feel that he was one of the estates of the kingdom, and had as much right to live as other men. He did just as he pleased, took the best place by the fire, nor ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fate of Priam thou would'st know. Soon as he saw the captured city fall, The palace-gates burst open, and the foe Dealing wild riot in his inmost hall, Up sprang the old man and, at danger's call, Braced o'er his trembling shoulders in a breath His rusty armour, took his belt withal, And drew the useless falchion from its sheath, And on their thronging spears rushed ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... laugh that this would call forth from the younger birds, the corncrake would exert himself to be more objectionable than ever, and, as a means to this end, would commence giving his marvellous imitation of the sharpening of a rusty ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... him," said I, "it is well known why, and of what he died." At this remark, the fat monk turned rusty, maintained he had died a natural death, and began to declaim against the stories which he said had been spread abroad about him. I smiled, saying, I admitted it was not true that his veins had been opened. This observation completed the irritation of the monk, who began to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... visit to Robespierre, an assassin had fired a pistol at Collot d'Herbois on the staircase of his apartment. We may make allowance for the excitement of the hour, and Robespierre had as much right to play the martyr, as had Lewis the Fifteenth after the incident of Damiens' rusty pen-knife. But the histrionic exigencies of the chief of a faction ought not to be pushed too far. And it was a monstrous crime that because Robespierre found it convenient to pose as sacrificial victim at the Club, therefore he should have had no scruple in seeing not only ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... is pretty general. I went because I wanted to. About once in so often the wheels get rusty and I have to get up and do something real or else blow up. Africa seemed to me a pretty real thing. Before I went I read at least twenty books about it and yet I got no mental image of what I was going to see. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... as I catch a narrow glimpse of its outskirts through the rusty window-bars of the Old Capitol. Should the Southern Mazeppas, whose banners have already floated in sight of Arlington Heights, ever work their will here, I could name one Briton whose composure will not be ruffled by ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Don Egidio, whose large loosely-hung lips were always ajar for conversation. The remarks issuing from them were richly tinged by the gutturals of the Bergamasque dialect, and it needed but a slight acquaintance with Italian types to detect the Lombard peasant under the priest's rusty cassock. This inference was confirmed by Don Egidio's telling me that he came from a village of Val Camonica, the radiant valley which extends northward from the lake of Iseo to the Adamello glaciers. His ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... time of a fish as big as a mountain, and of thick rusty chains; then he got tired of that and began to think of his native place whither he was returning after five years' service in the Far East. He saw with his mind's eye the great pond covered with snow.... On one side of the pond ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... contracted towards the stem in the form of a neck, and swollen towards the opposite extremity; seeds few, and usually produced nearest the blossom-end. The neck is generally solid. While the fruit is young, the skin is deep-green; afterwards it changes to clear yellow, and finally assumes a rusty-yellow or yellowish-brown. Flesh remarkably firm and crisp; exceeding, in these respects, that of any other variety. Very productive ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... but in a camp on the river where the boys would have plenty of open air, exercise, relaxation, and all the fun they wanted, besides doing a certain amount of school work to keep them from getting rusty as ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... to start the fill-in, and there won't be more than two or three weeks after that. Truth to tell, there are lots of other reasons than home that make me want to get out of it in a hurry. It isn't that we have much to do—too little, indeed; I'd grow rusty and evil-tempered with another season of this—but I confess to a great mental blank in considering the bohunk . . . and I've no ambition to understand him better. The more I know him, the more I think Providence was experimenting without encouragement when he created a few of ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... Also an old term for a sword, probably a rusty one, or else from its being dyed red with blood; some say this name alluded to certain swords of remarkable good temper, or metal, marked with the figure of a fox, probably the sign, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... though said he with some spirit, "Jack Butts isn't a baggage-waggon, nor a Jack-of-all-trades; you make him paint pictures for your women's albums, and look after your upholsterer, and your canary-bird, and your milliners, and turn rusty because ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dance and to strut. Jack walks in the lane, Jill waits by the gate. Oh, deary, how slowly he taps." Stout sober boots, saying: "As soon as you can, old friend. Remember we've work to do." Flat-footed old boots, rusty and limp, mumbling: "We haven't much time, Mr. Chumbley. Just a patch, that is all, we haven't much further to go." And old Joe, still peddling his pack, with the help of the same old jokes. And Tom Pinfold, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... don't be silly!" he said. "I am delighted to be of use for a change. I don't do much worth the doing, being more or less of a loafer. It is good for me to exercise my ingenuity now and then. It only gets rusty lying by." ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... thou mayest, through the loss of thy locks, with Samson, be weak at the first, yet, in short time, thy hair will grow again; that is, thy former experience will in short space be as long, large, and strong, as in the former times. Indeed at the first thou wilt find all the wheels of thy soul rusty, and all the strings of thine heart out of tune; as also when thou first beginnest to stir, the dust and filth of thy heart will, like smoke, trouble thee from that clear beholding the grace of thy God, and his love to thy soul; but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... went back and lived without him she would be crippled, and that, too, in a real way: so real that she would suffer pain from it every day until she died, and that children would notice it and laugh at it when she got to be old and walked rusty and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... original gaudy contrasts; there were absurd old engravings upon the walls—relics of the infancy of the art; and curtains to the windows, which the smoke of years had darkened from a delicate fawn to a rusty chocolate color. In the centre of the room, and, as it were, the sun of this dusty system, stood an office-table of more modern manufacture, at which was seated the old man alluded to, sole lord and master of the dismal domicile. He was by profession a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... were all arranged. After dinner, the rusty, dusty, old carriage appeared at the door, with the farm-horses harnessed thereto, jingling, and creaking, and snapping, as if oil and use were strange to its dry joints and stiff straps. Mrs. Griswold mounted to the back seat, after kissing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... ever mortal such a parson view? His cassock old, his wig not over-new, Well might the hounds have him for fox mistaken, In smell more like to that than rusty bacon[A]; But would it not make any mortal stare To see this parson taken for a hare? Could Phoebus err thus grossly, even he For a good ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... rusty about the mare,' the Countess heard Lady Jocelyn say; and Harry just then stooped his head to the carriage, and said, in his blunt fashion, 'After ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... No bed, no chair, no bureau, no rug—nothing at all was in it except two iron hooks. Its floor consisted of split palm logs, round side up, between which opened inch-wide spaces. Its walls were rusty corrugated iron, guiltless of mirrors or pictures, which did not reach ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... a little run in the upper regions, and clear some of the cobwebs out of my head. I declare, I guess I've got the spring fever. I haven't done anything since we got back from Russia last fall, and I'm getting rusty." ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... how, Febrer found himself opening the door of the chapel, an old and forgotten door, which, as it creaked upon its rusty hinges, scattered dust and cobwebs. How long it had been since he had entered there! In the dense atmosphere of the closed room he thought he perceived a vague odor of essences, as from a bottle of perfume opened and long abandoned; ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... religion emerges out of such trials stronger and brighter than before. Yet Churchmen have not profited by the experience; the pulpits and the religious press ring again with the old shrieks of sacrilege; the machinery of the law courts is set creaking on its rusty hinges, and denunciation and anathema in the old style take the place of reasoning. It will not answer; and the worst danger to what is really true is the want of wisdom in its defenders. The language which we sometimes hear about these things seems to imply that while Christianity is indisputably ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... trying effort to make Burge behave himself, that I have not been able to keep my academic reading up to date. I have kept my classics brushed up out of sheer love for them; but my economics and my science, such as they were, may possibly be a little rusty. Yet I think I may say that if you and your brother will be so good as to put me on the track of the necessary documents, I will undertake to put the case to the House or to the country to your entire satisfaction. You see, as long as you can shew these troublesome ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... heterodox, he caused a small edition of the work to be published, hoping, should it be judged as evil, that the error would be circumscribed in its effects, and the medium of the error buried between the dusty shelves of the second-hand collection of some rusty old bibliopole. By reason of this extreme caution, the volume has been out of print for ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... and, despite her wonderful work for others, she lived in a splendid isolation. Once when I called on her I found her resting her mind by reading Greek, and she laughingly admitted that she was using a Latin pony, adding that she was growing "rusty." She seemed a little embarrassed by being caught with the pony, but she must have been reassured by my cheerful confession that if I tried to read either Latin or Greek I should ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... militaires, and passes on at once to Roustchouk, which he found "a fortress of vast extent; but, as it is commanded by the heights from which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity; but rusty old dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a considerable repair." Several days were devoted to a general reconnoissance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... silk dress, without being previously washed, may be refreshed by being soaked during twenty-four hours in soft, clear water, clearness in the water being indispensable. If dirty the black dress may be previously washed. When very old and rusty, a pint of alcohol should be mixed with each gallon of water. This addition is an improvement under any circumstances, whether the silk be previously washed or not. After soaking, the dress should be hung up to drain dry without being wrung. The mode of washing silks ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... rowing out of the cut-off behind an island, I caught sight of a flatboat floating in the contour of a distant bend. There was something familiar in her appearance, and, as I drew nearer, I recognized the pile of nets, the rusty stove, and the civil but silent crew. She was the same flat which had left Hickman, Kentucky, the morning I had departed from that town with my basket of pies. This time the crew seemed like old friends. River life makes all men equal. A pleasant hail now greeted me, and the duck-boat ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... Fowling-piece rusty. Dress uncouth. Women and children at his heels. Attracted attention. Was eyed from head to foot. Was asked on which side he voted. Whether he was Federal or Democrat. Rip was dazed by ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... it now, at any rate," replied Tom. "What do you say to exploring?" and he went to the great, old oak door. "Open! Well, that's luck," and as he spoke he pushed back the portal, although it seemed about to fall, rather than swing on the rusty hinges. ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... the waters; and in this time there was grown upon the plate a crust-like limestone, to the thickness of several inches; which crust being broken open by iron contrived for that purpose, they knocked out whole bushels of rusty pieces of eight; which were grown thereinto. Besides that incredible treasure of plate in various forms thus fetched up from seven or eight fathom under water, there were vast riches of gold, and pearls, and jewels, which they also lit upon; and, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... of sunlight filtered into their cell a key turned gratingly in the rusty lock of the door. Captain Derevaux and Lieutenant Anderson, who now appeared to have been sleeping with one eye open, were on their feet immediately, and the ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... received a tentative offer of a position in a boys' school in Maine," answered Nellie, "but he did not know whether he was going to take it or not. My idea is that he is too poor to even go to Maine. And he had on such an old, rusty, black suit!" ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... glanced about in every direction as we passed down the old streets of Ussel. Suddenly my master turned into a shop behind the market. Hanging outside the front were some old guns, a coat trimmed with gold braid, several lamps, and some rusty keys. We went down three steps and found ourselves in a large room where the sun could never have entered since the roof had been put on the house. How could such beautiful things as nailed shoes be sold in such a terrible place? Yet Vitalis knew, ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... between two champions born and bred for fighting, and particularly for fighting each other. One champion was Eurypelma, the great, black, hairy, eight-legged, strong-fanged tarantula of California, and the other was Pepsis, a mighty wasp in dull-blue mail, with rusty-red wings and a poisonous javelin of a sting that might well frighten either you or me. Do you have any wasp in your neighborhood of the ferocity and strength and size of Pepsis? If not, you can hardly realize what a terrible creature she is. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... dusky, and the gloom lay not in the obscure light of thick-set spruce, pine, and hemlock, but in the shaggy, monstrous, and forbidding growth which appeared to be soiled with some common dye, water, earth, tree-trunks, foliage—all wore the same inky livery, and seemed wrought of rusty iron, so still the huge trees stood, with every melancholy ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... in front of an unpainted farm-house straggling beside the road, a farm-house which began with the dignity of fluted pilasters and ended in a tumble-down open shed filled with a rusty sleigh and a hundred nondescript articles—some of which seemed to be moving. Intently studying this phenomenon from her runabout, she finally discovered that the moving objects were children; one of whom, a little girl, came out and stared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a long, shallow fruit-basket of the light wicker-work which is used in the Campagna, and this was heaped with a litter of objects, inscribed tiles, broken inscriptions, cracked mosaics, torn papyri, rusty metal ornaments, which to the uninitiated might have seemed to have come straight from a dustman's bin, but which a specialist would have speedily recognized as unique of ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... host of courtiers and slaves who depended on the sovereign for support. Each room had, as may still be seen, its own special purpose. There were cellars for wine and oil, with their rows of large oblong jars; then there were store-rooms for implements of iron, which Place found full of rusty helmets, swords, pieces of armour, maces, and ploughshares; a little further on were rooms for the storage of copper weapons, enamelled bricks, and precious metals, and the king's private treasury, in which were hidden away the spoils of the vanquished or the regular taxes ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... some time, if I recollect right, in the early part of the fall of 1808, that a stranger applied for lodgings at the Independent Columbian Hotel in Mulberry Street, of which I am landlord. He was a small, brisk-looking old gentleman, dressed in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet breeches, and a small cocked hat. He had a few gray hairs plaited and clubbed behind, and his beard seemed to be of some eight-and-forty hours' growth. The only piece ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... with rapture. She fastened the fob in a buttonhole of her blouse, but removed it with a shake of the head. "I'll just keep it to look at, and only wear it with my black silk. It's out of place on this rusty alpaca." ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... and leaves, the two stared at each other in delighted amazement. At their feet lay little jewel bags containing the pearls of which Norma had talked, the rose topazes, the dozen cameos. Magnificent diamonds sparkled in a rusty case, ear-rings and rings lay in a little heap, and a handful of uncut stones was wrapped in a bit of chamois skin. Solid silver pitchers and goblets and trays, sadly battered by being flung against the rocks, lay just as they had fallen until Bob and Betty had uncovered the ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... shoulder. The man was roused instantly, and as he sprang to his feet I saw that he was tall and middle aged. His face was shrewd and intelligent, clean-shaven, and slightly wrinkled. He wore a white neck-cloth, antiquated coat and breeches of rusty black, and gray stockings with silver buckles at the knee; a cluster of seals dangled from his watch chain, and his fingers were ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... belonged to the cactus family. Fancy they don't, but am not sure. The suggestion that cucumbers were dug out of the ground like potatoes, was only an error of judgment. Anyone might have made it. But although rusty in his science, he is well up in machine-gun drill. He will suit the expedition to a nicety. Artillery, Cavalry, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... when they strolled by dragging a young puppy in a rusty saucepan by a string tied to the handle, the temptation to join them overcame her. Inch by inch her hand moved up nearer the forbidden gate latch and she was just slipping through when old Jeremy, hidden behind a hedge where he was weeding the borders, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... man's only comment, but the muscles of his lips relaxed slowly, as if rusty from disuse, into one of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... handled, too, the poker used to such good purpose by Geoffrey Crayon. The muse had fled, the fire was out, and the poker rusty, yet a pleasant influence lingered even in that cold little room, and seemed to lend a transient glow to the poker ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and pools and the heaps was a forest on the mountain flank, growing again after the fires and cinder showers of the last eruption. And the other way forest, too, and a kind of broken—what is it?—amby-theatre of black and rusty cinders rising out of it all, and the sea in a kind of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... lived near Genoa, and he had taken at a rent absurdly above its value[78] an unpicturesque and uninteresting dwelling, which at once impressed its new tenant with its likeness to a pink jail. "It is," he said to me, "the most perfectly lonely, rusty, stagnant old staggerer of a domain that you can possibly imagine. What would I give if you could only look round the courtyard! I look down into it, whenever I am near that side of the house, for the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in with his brother's suggestion and drew out the key which was secured round his neck. He unlocked the rusty padlock and threw open the lid. The chest contained six small bags filled to bursting point and securely tied with rawhide; one bag, half-full and open; and a thick packet ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... animal. Arthur Young, writing in Provence, on the 30th of August, 1789, soon after the National Assembly had declared the chase free, thus complains of the annoyance he experienced from the use made by the peasantry of their newly-won liberty. "One would think that every rusty firelock in all Provence was at work in the indiscriminate destruction of all the birds. The wadding buzzed by my ears, or fell into my carriage, five or six times in the course of the day." ... "The declaration of the Assembly that every man is free to ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh |
