"Stale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a conciliatory tone that he owed me eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he exclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money out of the loose jacket of ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... well be worth any man's while to say or to hear for the thousandth time that As You Like It would be one of those works which prove, as Landor said long since, the falsehood of the stale axiom that no work of man's can be perfect, were it not for that one unlucky slip of the brush which has left so ugly a little smear in one corner of the canvas as the betrothal of Oliver to Celia; though, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale of Polite ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... of raisins, stoned and cut in half. One pound of currants, picked, washed and dried. One pound of beef suet chopped fine. One pound of grated stale bread, or, half a pound of flour and half a pound of bread. Eight eggs. A quarter of a pound of sugar. A glass of brandy. A pint of milk. A glass of wine. Two nutmegs, grated. A table-spoonful of mixed cinnamon and ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... Priest, at whose elbow the Devil during prayer Sate familiarly, side by side, Declared that, if the Tempter were there, 35 His presence he would not abide. Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that's a very stale trick, For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil, In your ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Hamlet, Act i. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... of the shadows of the dark landing the dog came slowly and warily, ready to turn and slink off if he met no welcome, but Tode was in the mood when even a strange dog was better than his own company. He fed the half-starved creature with some stale sandwiches, and then talked to him and tried to teach him some tricks until to his own surprise he heard the city clocks striking nine, and the long, lonely evening ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... praised London as the only place to live in were now vying with one another to live furthest from a station, to have no chimneys visible on the most distant horizon, to depend on tradesmen who only called once a week from cities so distant that fresh-baked loaves grew stale before delivery. "Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other friend had ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... that she was not fond of him. She was; and grateful to him, as well. For, pretty as she was, no man had ever before asked Terry to be his wife. They had made love to her. They had paid court to her. They had sent her large boxes of stale drugstore chocolates, and called her endearing names as they ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... like. When taken from the clear, cold waters of Lake Huron or the Straits, and boiled as nearly alive as humanity will permit, Salmo Namaycush is nearly equal to the true salmon; but after two or three days in ice, "how stale, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... question dismayed the Duchess more than a threat of suicide could have done; indeed, the woman of the nineteenth century is not to be frightened by that stale stratagem, the sword has ceased to be part of the masculine costume. But in the effect of eyelids and lashes, in the contraction of the gaze, in the twitching of the lips, is there not some influence that communicates ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... me with a copy of Marcus Aurelius. I found him dull, stale, and unprofitable in comparison with ['A] Kempis. His philosophy of life seemed to lead to nothing except the cultivation of a very high opinion of oneself. I gave this conclusion to one of my English friends, who objected to my uncharted course of reading, and he said, "A person like you ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... Some of the most inspiriting of the strains that were inducing the youth of the country to familiarize themselves with steel blades and rifle barrels proceeded from the pens of those fair and gifted beings. Day after day, as this party sickened of the stale platitudes, and timid counsels, and crooked policy of the Hall, O'Connell, his son John, and other leading members of the Association, insisted more and more strongly on their doctrine of moral force, and indulged in the wildest and most absurd denunciations of the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Langley and the Smithsonian, and wishing I hadn't lied so extravagantly in some of my specifications at Washington. Then I quit thinking for quite a while, and when I resumed my train of thought I was nude, Sir, in a very stale stretcher, and my mouth was full of fine dirt all ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... no breach of good taste in the Governor's manner, no warning reminder of an origin that was certainly obscure and presumably low, no stale, dust-laden odours of the circus ring. He had looked and spoken as any man of Stephen's acquaintance might have done, facetiously, it is true, but without ostentation or vulgarity. When the break came, therefore, it was the more shocking to the younger ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... 6. Stale or Decayed Foods.—Food which has been allowed to stand until it is spoiled, or has become stale, musty, or mouldy, such as mouldy bread or fruit, or tainted meat, is unfit to be eaten, and is often a cause of very severe sickness. Canned fish or other meats spoil very ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... effect upon the minds of persons not sufficiently well balanced to stand the disclosure. Moreover, they know that if the average person knew the principal details of his future life on earth, then he would lose interest in it—it would become stale and would lose the attraction of the unknown. In such a case, the pleasant things to come would lose their attractiveness by reason of having been dwelt on so long that their flavor was lost; and the unpleasant things would become unbearable by reason of the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... of colored views thrown upon the screen, Lilly sang from a dark stage into the warm musk and stale linen-smelling theater, a ballad as slow and sweet as taffy in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the telegraph. From that point he sent it over the wire to Washington. It was successfully received at the Washington end, and never were human beings more surprised than were the train passengers on alighting at the capital city to find that they brought stale news, and that Clay's nomination was already known throughout Washington. It was the first public proof in America of the powers of the telegraph, and certainly a ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sort of attraction these unchaste, nakedly adorned, women "of fashion" hold out can never inspire that precious, priceless thing which "passeth all understanding," which survives all the travail of tribulation, that beautiful emotion that "age cannot wither nor custom stale," which radiates the dark places with ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... a boy of seventeen, to live by literature or to die. Accordingly, he set to work and wrote every kind of productions— poems, essays, stories, political articles, songs for public singers; and all the time he was half starving. A loaf of bread lasted him a week; and it was "bought stale to make it last longer." He had made a friend of the Lord Mayor, Beckford; but before he had time to hold out a hand to the struggling boy, Beckford died. The struggle became harder and harder— more and more hopeless; ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... not what Zilah thought, however. He wondered if this happy hallucination which had lasted so many years, these eternal love-scenes with Vivian, love-scenes which never grew stale, despite the years and the wrinkles, were not the ideal form of happiness for a being condemned to this earth. This poetical monomaniac lived with his dreams realized, finding, in an asylum of Vaugirard, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... sins have passed away and He has made all things new. Through eternity, new joys, new knowledge, new progress, new likeness, new service will be ours— and not one leaf shall ever wither in the amaranthine crown, nor 'the cup of blessing' ever become empty or flat and stale. Eternity will be but a continual renewal and a progressive increase of ever fresh and ever familiar treasures. The new and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... cases, or china shirring-cups, about twelve minutes. Serve at once from the dish or dishes. The souffle will "stand up" a little better, if three-fourths a cup of milk be used in place of the half-cup as given, and half a cup of stale grated bread be added before the cheese; but it will ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... swiftly dug trenches of a year ago have given way to the peaked mounds in which turnips wait transplanting. Where there were vast stretches of mud, scarred with intrenchments, with the wheel tracks of guns and ammunition carts, with stale, ill-smelling straw, the carcasses of oxen and horses, and the bodies of men, is now a smiling landscape, with miles of growing ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... and requires more independent spirits to do the same. To him the divinity is the Great First Cause. In this world of ours he can discern the working of a purposeful will, and confuses his mind with windy, worn-out ideals. Virtue, he says—but to what end repeat such stale old stuff?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... moments of regretting that he had not conserved his energies more carefully, been more truly "wedded to his Art," to use the girl's quaint phrase. He felt latterly a little stale, a little jaded and world-worn. It had occurred to him during the night that contact with so vital a personality might refresh him, might do for him what contact with the earth did for the giant Antaeus. Indeed, to his imagination she suggested the earth, field and pasture and wooded ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... pessimistic. Why, for example, did it enter his brain to warn me that the Finnish women of the neighboring villages,—all the country round about is the old Finnish Ingermannland,—in company with the women of his own village, were in the habit of buying stale eggs at the Tzarskoe Selo shops to mix with their fresh eggs, which they sold in the market, the same with intent to deceive? A stale egg explains itself as promptly and as thoroughly as anything I am acquainted with, not excepting Limburger ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... "Orry, you stale mutt," this from an Americanized Pole, without a trace of foreign accent, "I'm too glad to see you to talk much about it. When we bombers got back from the raid that night and neither you nor Lafe had showed ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... world's eyes with your own in the drollest way: If Gorgeous Attire has lain long in your drawers, you fancy the world will detect on its glossy surface how long you had it, and gloated over it, and made it stale to your eye, before you could bring your mind to wear it. That is your delusion, that and the itch for going out shopping; oh, I'm down on you. Mamma dear, you open that gigantic wardrobe of yours; and I'll ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and pond And all the piled acres of lumber beyond From the Oregon ranges the tang of the pine And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine, In a fly-spotted window I there did behold, Among the stale odours of hot food and cold, A ship in a bottle some sailor had made In watches below, swinging South with the Trade, When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits, Or mending up oilskins and leaky seaboots, Or whittling a model or painting a chest, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... cornpopper can be used for toasting odds and ends of stale bread which would otherwise ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... you!" had been the formulated threat of Wessex mothers for many generations. He was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by Buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence. And now the reddleman has in his turn followed Buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... song, while he gave himself afresh to the faithful Master he served. God's blessings were to him always new and fresh. Answered prayers never lost the charm of novelty; like flowers plucked fresh every hour from the gardens of God, they never got stale, losing none of their beauty ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... odours from the warm roots of girl's hair; and Sunday. Sunday; stale odours of churches. You wrote out the sermon you had not listened to and had not heard. Somebody told you the text, and you amused yourself by seeing how near you could get to what you would have heard if you had listened. After tea, hymns; then church ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... tiger-skin, the fragrant blood of the red, red rose. For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell of a first-class bar-room—that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye, cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and blutwurst. For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school, violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender and mignonette. For Zola, ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... loudly and frequently of his distress, while Higginson, the Salem minister, accommodated himself more readily and cheerfully to his changed circumstances, and boasted quaintly in 1629, "Whereas my stomach could only digest and did require such drink as was both strong and stale, I can and ofttimes do drink New England water very well." As Higginson died in a short time, his boast of his improved health and praise of the unwonted beverage does not carry the force intended. Another early ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... confusion; and when a stricken face went by, it was she, Winifred Child, who was stricken. What happened to others suddenly mattered just as much and in exactly the same degree as what might happen to her. The weight of sadness and weariness pressed upon her. The smell of unaired clothes and stale, cheap perfumes made ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... alone, good Syphax, I'll conceal My thoughts in passion ('tis the surest way); I'll bellow out for Rome, and for my country, And mouth at Caesar, till I shake the senate. Your cold hypocrisy's a stale device, A worn-out trick: wouldst thou be thought in earnest, Clothe thy feign'd zeal in rage, ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... but afterwards, as the weather-cock found out, they repeated themselves and always told the same stories, and that's very tedious, and there was no one with whom one could associate, for one and all were stale and small-minded. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... O'Connell returned to the Hall, and repeated to a jaded audience, week after week, the same stale list of grievances. From any other man the repetition would be intolerable. But the public ear had become attuned to his accents, to which, whatever the sense of his language, men listened as to a messenger of heavenly tidings. Mr. Duffy strongly urged upon his ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Chop as much stale bread as will measure two cupfuls, put it into a bowl and pour over it a cupful of sweet, rich milk, let it soak for an hour. When ready to bake the cakes, mash the bread in the milk with a wooden spoon, add a heaping teaspoonful of sugar, a teaspoonful of salt, two tablespoonfuls ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... appearance I took them to be the children of a respectable artisan or small tradesman; but what chiefly attracted my attention was the very great pleasure the elder girl appeared to take in the birds. She had come well provided with stale bread to feed them, and after giving moderately of her store to the wood-pigeons and sparrows, she went on to the others, native and exotic, that were disporting themselves in the water, or sunning themselves on the green bank. She did not cast her bread on the water in the manner usual with ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... their backs. Others discovered a capital way of amusing themselves by putting the barrow on their heads and whirling the wheel as rapidly as possible with their hands. This was a game which never grew stale. The contractor gave up in despair, and went back to the baskets. But it is in the official regions that tradition is most powerful. In the budget of 1870 there was a curious chapter called "Charges of Justice." This consisted of a collection of articles appropriating large sums ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... stated Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions—red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... found herself yawning her head off; the longing for freedom returned, for the open country, the hills, the goatherds. Not for her home in the Vicolo: this everlasting love-making with its aftertaste of stale sugar had turned her sick of Padua. The whole city, to her mind, reeked of bergamot; she guessed a fawning lover at every street corner, a pryer at every ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... to count the landings to know, in the dimness of the hallway, when he reached the fifth floor. He had to pause outside the door to catch his breath; a moment's nausea seized him at the smell of stale food and ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... wasn't sure," said the restaurant keeper. "The man who runs the hotel, Mr. Brown, had a lot of trouble with him because he wouldn't pay his bill—said it was too high. Then he came here once and said the meat wasn't fresh and the bread was stale and sour. I came close to pitching him out. Don't let him walk over you—if he ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... afternoon. The air in our compartment was hot and stale. When we opened the window, the wind blew in on our faces in parching gusts. But it was grateful after the smells of cabbage, soup, tobacco, and dirty Jews that we had been breathing for five ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... in its physical aspects, to be typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated, underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students—almost a sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... that came from you hot are now patched and shivery. Their finer meaning has run out between the lines as though these spaces were sluices for the proper drainage of the page. You had best put on your hat. You will get no comfort from these stale papers. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... plaudits and the gratitude of the world was due to this short period of intensive training, "under men who were intelligent enough to know just what was needed and just how to go about to secure it"—men not hampered by any pedagogical nonsense or grown stale over a long attempt to discriminate between the "infinity of nothingness and the nothingness of infinity" (as one might summarize a rather common criticism), rather than to the former years of patient toil, and discipline, and accomplishment which had really laid the foundation ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... pink and hard acquaintance. I understood that stale look in his eyes. Tears do not bring that. Nothing brings it but sleepless thoughts beyond the assuagement of tears. Behind such eyes the heart is aching cold and the brain searing hot. Who should know better than I, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in her pocket and drew out a tin foil-covered package. "Here's a piece of chocolate I've been carrying around with me ever since I've been at Ellen's Isle," she said. "It's pretty stale by this time, I guess, but it'll keep you from starving while Sahwah and I ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... spread, And forge vile shackles for the freeborn mind; While Insolence his wrinkled front uprears, And all the flowers of spurious Fancy blow; And Title his ill-woven chaplet wears, Full often wreath'd around the miscreant's brow; Where ever-dimpling Falsehood, pert and vain, Presents her cup of stale Profession's froth; 90 And pale Disease, with all his bloated train, Torments the sons ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... palpable nuisance somewhere in the neighbourhood; and, like a trusty servant of the public, turned out of his bed instantly and went in search; till he discovered, hanging among what he judged to be the stems of ore-weed (Laminaria), three or four large pieces of stale thornback, of most evil savour, and highly prejudicial to the purity of the sea, and the health of the neighbouring herrings. Happy Squinado! He needed not to discover the limits of his authority, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... a ghostly and unkempt appearance. The atmosphere of the sitting-room was stuffy and redolent of stale tobacco smoke. Wrayson's first action was to throw open ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by carrying his goods, article by article, round to the back door, out of the way of casual passers. This done, he walked round the mill in a more regardful attitude, and surveyed its familiar features one by one—the panes of the grinding-room, now as heretofore clouded with flour as with stale hoar- frost; the meal lodged in the corners of the window-sills, forming a soil in which lichens grew without ever getting any bigger, as they had done since his smallest infancy; the mosses on the plinth towards the river, reaching as high as the capillary power of the walls ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... started to housekeeping in a modest way. Then I began to look around for a job, but to a man who was used to the excitement and continual action of the range and the cattle ranches, the civilized and quiet life of the city is apt to prove stale and uninteresting. It was that way with me, and after passing up several jobs offered to me I thought I would try railroading for awhile, probably for the same reason that prompted me to leave home twenty years before; I still wanted to see the world. With ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... Out on thee, more than strumpet's impudency, Steal'st thou thus to thy haunts? and have I taken Thy bawd and thee, and thy companion, This hoary-headed letcher, this old goat, Close at your villainy, and would'st thou 'scuse it, With this stale harlot's jest, accusing me? Oh, old incontinent, dost thou not shame, When all thy powers in chastity are spent, To have a mind so hot? and to entice And feed the enticements of ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... little sublimity, and a little humor, and a little antiquarianism,—all very neatly associated in a very charming picture, but not working together for a definite end. Or if the aim be higher, as was the case with Barrett and Varley, we are generally put off with stale repetitions of eternal composition; a great tree, and some goats, and a bridge and a lake, and the Temple at Tivoli, etc. Now we should like to see our artists working out, with all exertion of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... to himself, as he walked, "wouldn't get any fun at all out of a case like this, but I do. That's the way to keep young. It's why I don't grow stale in this town. It is a small puddle for a toad of my size, but I hop around and ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core. Also avoidable by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... salutarily to raise the temper, cultivate caloric, and deepen convictions previously held; he must exchange criticisms and discuss standards with others, else he will be eternally making discoveries that are stale and unprofitable to the rest of the world; he will seek to reach men's souls through channels long dammed up, and his achievements will be marred by naive triteness and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down,— Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among: God grant you find one face there You ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... course of development and issued out of their silk prisons full fledged moths. But those who cultivate them to-day are in sore need. They have masses and indulgences to sell; they have big bills to pay. But whether left to grow their wings or not, their solitude is that of a cocoon larva, narrow, stale, unprofitable to the world. While that of a philosopher, a Thoreau, for instance, might be called Nature's filter; and one, issuing therefrom benefited in every sense, morally, physically, spiritually, can be said to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... in the shoulder look blue or bright red, it is newly killed; but if black, green, or yellow, it is stale. The leg is known to be new by the stiffness of the joint. The head of a calf or a lamb is known by the eyes; if sunk or wrinkled, it is stale; if plump ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... every little peculiarity, every minute feature of men, women, or things, that suggested themselves to my aimless scrutiny were carefully reviewed and criticized. I went placidly on now casting a passing glance on exhibitions of stale confectionery, now on a display of attractive millinery, again it was a "ten cent" establishment, offering such bargains as might puzzle the most economical house-wife, and finally my attention was caught by a succession of dazzling windows, with their bewildering panorama of Japanese ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... to the one hundred and ten degrees. Sydney lived through the experience but had always after that a delicate interior and was petted more than ever in consequence. And there was a tennis court occasionally wetted down with the beer that always went stale while they were saving it for state occasions. It was all a happy, glorious time—because they had discovered and were making one of the ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... condescension, oh, by no means. The doctor said the bedrooms were very shabby in their furniture, and such a meal as those poor girls were eating for breakfast. He said his heart quite ached for them. Nothing but stale bread, and the name of butter, and tea like water bewitched. He said he'd rather never have a child than see her ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... inconsistent with the lightness of the fairy tale. Gawain in the land of all these dreams is burdened still by the heavy chivalrous conventions. The world for him, even after he has gone through the mountain, is still very much the old world with the old stale business going on; especially tournaments and all their weariness. One natural result of all this is that the Fox's part is very much reduced. In the Gaelic story, Mac Iain Direach and his friend Gille Mairtean (the Lad of March, the Fox) are a pair of equals; ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... tape. And he that has fetched and carried will explain how it has fared with him in his dealings, and if he has brought the wrong sort of sugar or thread he will wheedle away the displeasure from that leaden face as a pastrycook girl will drive bluebottles off a stale bun. And that man has known what it was to coax the fret of a thoroughbred, to soothe its toss and sweat as it danced beneath him in the glee and chafe of its pulses and the glory of its thews. He has been in the raw places of the earth, where the desert beasts ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... his room. It was at the top of a very dirty and well-worn house which stood in a narrow and lumpy street, into which few vehicles ever penetrated, except the ash and garbage carts, and the rickety wagons of the venders of stale vegetables. ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... deplorable condition of the modern stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, however, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... stale tobacco smoke Ere many days I fear, And hear full many a rattling joke, And feel, ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... office had barely closed behind McCloskey when that opening into the corridor swung upon its hinges to admit the master-mechanic. He was dusty and travel-stained, but nothing seemed to stale his genial good-humor. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Tiens! I would have it a capital offence for any English cook to prepare hashed mutton without a license, and I would banish all the bakers of the kingdom to Siberia—ah! your English bread, which you have to eat stale so as to avoid a horrible death!—and I would open two hundred thousand cafes—mon Dieu! how thirsty I have been there!—and I would make every English work-girl do her hair properly, and I would ordain that everybody should laugh three times a ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... little more of me; and I thought also that Lowestoft would be more amusing than Woodbridge to a young London Clerk, a Nephew of the Cowells, who comes to me for a short Holyday, when he can get away from his Desk. But early in October I shall be back at my old routine, stale enough. I think that, as a general rule, people ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... useful than those of linseed meal. They do not retain the heat nearly so well as those of linseed meal, and are chiefly used in cuts, wounds, or small abscesses; and also because they are so easily made. A slice of stale bread without the crust is put on a plate, boiling water is poured over it, and drained off; it is then placed on a piece of muslin, pressed between two plates to squeeze out the remaining water, and its surface is greased before it is applied ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... yelled with wild lustiness. Those who did not know the words either whistled the air or improvised an impossible ditty. Whenever there was a pause to recall some new song, the interval was occupied with "Rule, Britannia!" This was a prime favourite, and repetition did not stale its forceful rendition, especial stress being laid upon the words, "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!" to which was roared the eternal enquiry, "Are we down-hearted?" The welkin-smashing negative, crashing through the night, and not entirely ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... and nutritive value of vegetables Exclusive diet of vegetables not desirable To select vegetables Poison in potato sprouts Stale vegetables a cause of illness Keeping vegetables To freshen withered vegetables Storing winter vegetables Preparation and cooking To clean vegetables for cooking Methods of cooking Time required for cooking ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... narrative. Belonging to the same class of composition, though of a very different order of poetic merit, is Lorenzo's wonderfully graceful tale of Ambra. The grace lies in the telling, for the plot was probably already stale when Phoebus and Daphne were protagonists. The poem recounts how the wood-nymph Ambra, beloved of Lauro, is pursued by the river-god Ombrone, one of Arno's tributary divinities, and praying to Diana in her hour of need, is by her transformed into a rock[44]. Lorenzo's Selva d'amore ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... she had used it—not only by denying his petition,—that, of course, was inevitable, feeling as she did,—but by accusing him of selfishness, by insisting that he should accept her terms of friendship. Friendship, bah!—how stale and flat it sounded! Could she not have devised some newer way of wounding an honorable man who had ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... opened for years; it was even more depressingly obvious that we must not open them. One was thankful for such modicum of comparatively pure air as came up the open stair from the floor below; but in the freshness of the morning one trembled to anticipate the atmosphere of this stale and stuffy eyrie through the heat of a summer's day. And yet neither the size nor the scent of the place, nor any other merely scenic feature, was half so disturbing or fantastic as the appearance of my ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... of nice-looking eggs in the pantry and a piece of home-cured bacon neatly sewed into a white muslin bag and partly sliced. This, with slices of golden brown toast—the bread box held only half a loaf of decidedly stale bread—solved her breakfast menu. There were two pans of milk standing on the table, thick with yellow cream, and Betty was just wondering if Bob had milked and when, for the cream could not have risen under two or three hours' time, when the boy came ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... just finished reading a most amusing incident, and, as it occurs in a book not likely to fall into the hands of many of the members, I am tempted to relate it, although it might prove to be 'stale.' Well, to begin: It tells of a maiden lady, who, having arrived at the mature age of 51 without ever having seen a railway train, decides to visit New York. The all-important day having arrived, she seats herself calmly on the platform of the country station, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... owned a library which passed for quite a large one in those days and in the new West, he cared to talk on only one subject, and as that was of no particular interest to other people, and became, in the course of time, extremely stale to those who did not like it, the people of Mount Pisgah and the adjoining country did not spend more time upon old Wardelow than was required by the necessities ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... nate slouch in fat'u ate con fab'u late gone in val'i date con grat'ulate scarf be at'i fy con tam'i nate nerve pro cras'ti nate de cap'i tate raid re tal'i ate e jac'u late graze e vap'o rate e lab'o rate stale pre var'i cate ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... into the drawing-room, but it was stale and dreary. The dining-room, which she tried next, made her hungry. The arrival of a servant with a broom suggested to her that she had better get out of the way of the household work. She felt half sorry for getting up, and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... drops his pretty head And seems to be dispirited, And then his little mistress says: "Poor Dickie misses his chickweed, Or else I've fed him musty seed As stale as last year's oranges!" But all the time I wonder If we half comprehend In sweet song-words The thought of birds, Or why so oft their raptures ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... porch of the Gasthof to seek shelter, and the driver of the coach led his tired horses under cover of a shed in the courtyard. The chief room of the inn was a cheerless apartment, long and dark, with narrow, rough wooden tables fitted round the walls. A strong, stale smell greeted the nose disagreeably. One or two peasants sat at the far end of one of the tables; they stared rudely as the lady entered, and whispered remarks about her, grinning broadly the while. She glanced haughtily at them and called to the innkeeper, who had followed her from ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... I? I find myself, As among strangers! Not a trace is left Of all my former wishes, former joys. Where has it vanished to? There was a time When even, methought, with such a world as this, I was not discontented. Now how flat! How stale! No life, no bloom, no flavor in it! My comrades are intolerable to me. My father—even to him I can say nothing. My arms, my military duties—O! They are such ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was getting less and less, and what there was of it was most unpalatable, for the bread was stale and dry, though the meat kept perfectly in that freezing temperature. How they longed for a hot cup of coffee, such as Washington used to make! and how they would have even exchanged their chance of filling their pockets with the moon diamonds for ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... paid any attention to him, Tom ascended the stairs and entered the cabin. He wanted to see what sort of a looking place it was, but almost recoiled when he opened the door, for it was filled so full of stale tobacco smoke that he did not see how anybody could live in it. But he knew that he would have to become accustomed to that smell before he was on the prairie very long, so he kept on and finally found a chair at the further end of the cabin. There was no one ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... annoyances and trouble which are necessarily encountered. It was past midnight when we arrived at the railroad station at Burgos, where, having telegraphed from Madrid, a very dirty omnibus was in waiting to take us to the hotel. How that vehicle did smell of garlic, stale tobacco, and accumulated filth, to which the odor of an ill-trimmed kerosene lamp added its pungent flavor. But we were soon set down before the hotel, where there was not a light to be seen, every one, servants and all, being sound asleep. An entrance being finally achieved, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... misery; whether he be able or not, it is expected from him, if there comes a Brief to town, for the Minister to cast in his mite will not satisfy! unless he can create sixpence or a shilling to put into the box, for a stale [lure], to decoy in the rest of the parish. Nay, he that hath but L20 or L30 [ L60 to L90 now] per annum, if he bids not up as high as the best in the parish in all acts of charity, he is counted carnal and earthly-minded; only because ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... all right," answered Neil, "and if they'll let me into the game I'll do my best. Only—I'm afraid I'll be a bit stale ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden posture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir. But this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed; that boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not danger, and inconveniences. Therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution; ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... light of a winter dawn mingled with the dull flare of the hanging-lamp increasing the ghastliness of his appearance, sat Michael Gregoriev, in the stale bitterness of a night-old rage and mortification. On the floor, in an unceremonious heap, lay his heavily embroidered coat, with its medals still upon it. In its stead the Prince had wrapped himself in a worn robe of old brocade, fur-lined. Heavy felt slippers shod his feet. His hair was tumbled ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... pocket." And Bab produced from that chaotic cupboard two rather stale and crumbly ones, saved from lunch for the fete. These were cut up and arranged in plates, forming a graceful circle around the cake, still in ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... people. They claim to have invented printing (wooden type), oil-painting, liberty, banking, gardening, etc. Above all, years before my tale, they invented cleanliness. So, while the English gentry, in velvet jerkins and chicken-toed shoes, trode floors of stale rushes, foul receptacle of bones, decomposing morsels, spittle, dogs, eggs, and all abominations, this hosier's sitting-room at Tergou was floored with Dutch tiles, so highly glazed and constantly washed, that you could eat off them. There was one large window; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... interests to other objects more likely to succeed. Many real friends of the Negro were alarmed at the evils of the reconstruction and were anxious to see the corrupt political leaders deprived of further influence over the race. To others the constantly recurring Southern problem was growing stale, and they desired to hear less of it. Within the Republican party in each Southern State, there were serious divisions over the spoils. First it was carpetbagger and Negro against the scalawag; later, when ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of a gas-stove and a kitchen, ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... still been "popular," but latterly at the opening of the new season there had been a distinct falling off. The fringe of cards about her long mirror, where she kept her invitations tucked into the margins and pinned in pendants, had grown less fresh—not to say stale—and less distinguished. Mrs. Bowman had forgotten altogether to invite her to dinner this fall. There were other stings and mortifications that need not be described.... Yes, Milly had been pondering the matter more or less consciously for ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... compartments bulging with dusty papers. There were two or three shelves of uninteresting-looking books, and a desk which extended into a counter. The upper panes of the window were ragged with cobwebs, and the air of the place was redolent of stale publications. A thick-set little man in spectacles sat at the desk. It was not ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... But the Jews make a laughing-stock of modern Hebraists when they convince them that the Holy Scriptures can not be understood except through grammatical rules and an exact science of vowel-points. No exposition is so absurd but that they defend and polish it with their stale ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... intended to send to Black Castle in form of a newspaper, but I found that though every day's conversation and occurrences appeared of prodigious importance just at the moment they were passing, yet afterwards they seemed so flat and stale as not to be worth sending. I must however tell you that I had materials for one brilliant paragraph about the Duchess of York. Mr. Lloyd had seen the wondrous sight. "When she was to be presented to the Queen, H.R.H. kept Her Majesty waiting ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... whose life is frivolous,—divided between aimless cares and superficial enjoyments. He has no resources in himself, no fountain of inward peace and joy. His spirit leaps like new wine in the whirl of exciting pleasure, but in the hour of solitude and of golden opportunity, it is "flat, stale, and unprofitable." He marks off the year by its festivals, and distributes the day into hours of food, rest, and folly. In short, he holds no serious conception of life, and he is untouched by lofty sentiment. The great drama of existence, with its solemn shifts ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... crowded, and crowding may develop fastidious animosities. A man may tolerate shrapnel in the trenches with equanimity, and yet may find his neighbour's table-manners in billets positively intolerable. Men may become "stale" or get on each other's nerves. When a company commander sees signs of this, he has one very potent prescription; he prescribes a good stiff route march. It has never been known to fail. Many a time in the winter months, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... tore himself away, and turned in to the straight, broad stairway that led to the offices above. The stairway, and the hall to which it mounted were dark and smelled of old coco-matting and stale tobacco. Bobby liked this smell very much. He liked, too, the echo of his footsteps as he marched down the hall to the door ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... of Blackstone's Commentaries, and argal (as the gravedigger in Hamlet says) he was not a person to be laughed at.' He attended the Parliament House in the character of a critic, and could give you stale sneers at all the celebrated speakers. He was the terror of essayists at the Speculative or the Forensic. In social qualities he seems to have stood unrivalled. Even in the police-office we find him shining with undiminished lustre. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jew best loved Mozart's, just as Mozart loved Haydn's. Upon one occasion when Meyerbeer was dining with some friends, a question arose about Mozart's place among composers. Some one remarked that "certain beauties of Mozart's music had become stale with age." Another agreed, and added, "I defy any one to listen to 'Don Giovanni' after the fourth act of 'Les Huguenots'!" This vulgar compliment enraged Meyerbeer. "So much the worse then for the fourth act of 'The Huguenots'!" he shouted. Of all his own work this Jewish composer ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... clubs—could we not, but for fear of detaining the fair reader too long, enter into a wholesome dissertation here on the manner of friendship established in those institutions, and the noble feeling of selfishness which they are likely to encourage in the male race? I put out of the question the stale topics of complaint, such as leaving home, encouraging gormandising and luxurious habits, etc.; but look also at the dealings of club-men with one another. Look at the rush for the evening paper! See how Shiverton orders a fire in the dog-days, and Swettenham opens the windows ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a good talking-to, a bracing-up all along the line. You are going stale, your standards are dropping, your ideals are getting dull, and the worst of it all is that when you do a poor job, or are careless about your dress and indifferent in your manner, you do not feel as troubled as you used to. You are not making ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... world had so irrevocably moved away. They are in size out of all modern proportion to the local needs, and the only thing at all alive in the melancholy waste they collectively form is the smell of stale incense. There are pictures on all the altars by respectable third-rate painters; pictures which I suppose once were ordered and paid for and criticised by worshippers who united taste with piety. At Genzano, beyond the Ariccia, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... has proved valuable when applied to the contents. Here, for instance, is a letter which has been opened after being fastened up—apparently by the aid of steam. The envelope is soiled and rubbed, and smells faintly of stale tobacco, and has evidently been carried in a pocket along with a well-used pipe. Why should it have been opened? On reading it I perceive that it should have reached me two days ago, and that the date has been skilfully altered from the thirteenth to the fifteenth. The inference is that my correspondent ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... serious inroads upon his health, from which he never entirely recovered. It was hoped that his life in the East would be beneficial, but it proved otherwise. Meanwhile, the Civil War was raging in the United States, but the news concerning it was very stale long before it reached us. We did not receive the particulars of the battle of Bull Run, for example, until three months after its occurrence. In view of the turbulent state of affairs at home, the government thought it important that Mr. Gouverneur should ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... the tender part of one dozen artichokes. Take one loaf of stale bread crumbs, moisten and squeeze, and add three tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, three cloves of garlic, bruised, one onion chopped fine, several sprigs of parsley chopped fine, a little celery and half a cup of olive oil. Mix all together thoroughly ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... "Least said, soon'st mended, Sadie. Give me the new cream. I guess I might's well make some spice cookies. Be pretty busy Wednesday. Dammy likes 'em a little stale." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... his good name and credit with the tradespeople is a fact; so is the comfort of his home; so are the health, the morals, the education of his children. All these are the true realities of life to him; but the beauty which changes to deformity by the small-pox, which fades under dyspepsia, grows stale by habit, and is worn threadbare by the end of twenty years, is only a skin-deep grace which he does not value. Perhaps he is right. Certainly, some of the happiest marriages among one's acquaintances are those where the wife has not one perceptible ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... conceivable that cables of telephone wires could be laid underground, or suspended overhead, connecting by branch wires with private dwellings, shops, etc., and uniting them through the main cable with a central office." This remarkable prophecy has now become stale reading, as stale as Darwin's "Origin of Species," or Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." But at the time that it was written it ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... became a byword in the capital, and fabulous accounts of it were carried home at week ends to toiling wives and sons and daughters, to incredulous citizens who sat on cracker boxes and found the Sunday papers stale and unprofitable for weeks thereafter. The geraniums—the price of which Mr. Crewe had forgotten to find out—were appraised at four figures, and the conservatory became the hanging gardens of Babylon under glass; the functionary in buff and green and silver buttons and his duties furnished the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Embassy, and its astounding contents had been read by his Chief. He made his way thither, somewhat dubious as to the thrill of his achievement, aware of a shadow about him, the ghost of yesterday's joy, which made all success save the intimate personal one that he most craved, flat, stale, and unprofitable. In the darkness of the street he was aware, too, that he was being observed and followed, but he went boldly toward his destination, sure that as a member of the staff of the British Embassy, his person at ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... we secured a small wooden compartment with seats sharp and narrow and a smell of cabbage, bad tobacco, and dirty clothes. The floor was littered with sunflower seeds and the paper wrappings of cheap sweets. The air came in hot stale gusts down the corridor, met the yet closer air of our carriage, battled with it and retired defeated. We flung open the windows and a cloud of dust rose gaily to meet us. The whole of the Russian army seemed to be surging upon the platform; orderlies were searching for their masters, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... red seed, in preference to the white, is put into a clean pot; milk or stale beer is poured upon it, and it is left for two or three days in this state; it is then mixed with a quantity of fine fat earth, and set aside in a hot chamber, till the seeds begin to put out shoots. They are then sown in a hot-bed. When the young plants ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... into the court-yard. It was stupid to stay alone in his chamber. It was some relief even to promenade the hall, for one so nervous as he was at this time. If any of the Orlando's passengers came near him, he could retreat into his room. He walked up and down several times, but this soon became stale amusement. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... in that case I must pardon the trick you played upon Brothers Mark and Alexis; and I give you my blessing, too, on condition you send some salt to our convent to cure our fish, and save your reputations, which are very stale just now ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a mere freak—(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and butter, when his absurd passion instantly vanished)—I say, for a mere freak, the most intolerable burden of his life was put on his shoulders ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distant tree, from behind which she must appear and spring towards me; my closest scrutiny left the horizon barren as before; night was falling; without any hope now would I concentrate my attention, as though to force up out of it the creatures which it must conceal, upon that sterile soil, that stale and outworn land; and it was no longer in lightness of heart, but with sullen anger that I aimed blows at the trees of Roussainville wood, from among which no more living creatures made their appearance than if they had been trees painted on the stretched canvas background ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... dark, narrow, iron staircase till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to work—perhaps through life! A low lean-to room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... near to its extremely small door, which is in close proximity to its unusually little window. A little library with a scanty supply of books hangs near the stove-pipe, as if the owners thereof thought the contents had become somewhat stale, and required warming up to make them more palatable. A locker runs along two sides of the apartment, on the coverings of which stand several lanterns, an oil-can, and a stone jar, besides sundry articles with an extremely seafaring aspect, among which are several pairs of the gigantic ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... up, or creeping ran; The liquorice, and valerian, Clove-gillyflowers, sun-dressed; And nutmeg, good to put in ale, Whether it be moist or stale, - Or ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Clement, smiling, "as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale. But could it not come ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the famine of the siege of '70 tormented the imagination. Since war had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody to expect a repetition of the same happenings. The storehouses were besieged by women who were securing stale food at exorbitant prices in order to store it in their homes. Future hunger was producing more ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... pretensions of the Americans. The moon served as a pretext for a thousand stale puns and a score of ballads, in which bad taste contested the palm with ignorance. But as formerly the French paid before singing, so now they paid after having had their laugh, and they subscribed for a sum of 1,253,930 francs. At that price they had a right to enjoy themselves ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne |
