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Littered   /lˈɪtərd/   Listen
Littered

adjective
1.
Filled or scattered with a disorderly accumulation of objects or rubbish.  Synonym: cluttered.  "His library was a cluttered room with piles of books on every chair"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Littered" Quotes from Famous Books



... made no comment. Knight never asked her to join him in the den, but alluded to it as an untidy place, a mere work room which he kept littered with papers; and only the new butler, Charrington, was allowed ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... friendly littered little room was not so inviting in working hours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. It was like a woman seen in evening dress by daylight. But the boy who had invaded it so hotly unmasked no conspiracy here. The men at the ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... She chose the more littered of the two show windows and almost threw everything out of it in her hurry. Then she swept down the cobwebs and dead flies, and brushed away all the dust. It was no small task to scrub the panes of glass clean, and all the woodwork; but Janice knew how to work. The old black Mammy who ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... gun-fire so that the white chalk of its subsoil was flung above the earth and grass in a wide, sterile stretch of desolation pitted with shell-craters, ditched by deep trenches, whose walls were hideously upheaved by explosive fire, and littered yard after yard, mile after mile, with broken wire, rifles, bombs, unexploded shells, rags of uniform, dead bodies, or bits of bodies, and all the filth of battle. I saw many villages flung into ruin or blown clean off the map. I walked into such villages as Contalmaison, Martinpuich, Le Sars, Thilloy, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... littered with the stuff put aboard from the lighter that left the brig just before I reached her, and the huddle and confusion showed that the transfer must have been made in a tearing hurry. Many of the boxes gave no hint of what was inside of them; but a good deal ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... went back to the littered desk and wrote carefully again upon another sheet of paper. "I think this will be quite satisfactory," he said, and ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... rifles, high boots, and all the trappings and harness belonging to a cowboy's outfit littered the place, and stretched out on the robes and furs, in easy, careless attitudes, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... endeavouring to improve his apparatus. He was incessantly making fresh mirrors, or trying new lenses, or combinations of lenses to act as eye-pieces, or projecting alterations in the mounting by which the telescope was supported. Such was his enthusiasm that his house, we are told, was incessantly littered with the usual indications of the workman's presence, greatly to the distress of his sister, who, at this time, had come to take up her abode with him and look after his housekeeping. Indeed, she complained that in his astronomical ardour he sometimes omitted ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... old-fashioned," he said; "dogma is up to date. Credo! I believe in a personal devil, virtuous maidens in bowers, and rosewood furniture. As for illusions I cherish as many as you do!" He turned with subtle impudence to Wayward. "And the world is littered with the shattered fragments." ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... glance did Pollyanna give about her; then, with a confused vision in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined walls, a littered floor, an untidy desk, innumerable closed doors (any one of which might conceal a skeleton), and everywhere dust, dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to the great carved door, still half open ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... sea during the night. It was furnished with Spartan simplicity. Neither image, crucifix, nor painting adorned its walls—the occupant's dress alone suggested his calling. A hanging shelf held a few books, all evidently used as texts in the adjoining college. A table, much littered; a wooden dressing stand, with a small mirror; and an old-fashioned, haircloth trunk, bearing numerous foreign labels, eked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... area that was littered with small volcanic islands, the type that rise above or fall below sea level continually, so that what one year is above water is later below. Some of them have even been known to only rise above the waves for a ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... ushered his guest into another room, which from floor to ceiling was lined with books—books on all subjects and in many languages. A huge writing-table, littered with letters and foreign newspapers, occupied the centre of the apartment, which was evidently a working room, though luxurious in all its appointments. De Froilette did not speak until the servant had placed the coffee on a side table and had left the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... round with conditions—made necessary a system of petty expedients under which practically every provincial administration hypothecated every liquid asset it could lay hands upon in order to pay the inordinate number of undisciplined soldiery who littered the countryside. The issue of unguaranteed paper-money soon reached such an immense figure that the market was flooded with a worthless currency which it was unable to absorb. The Provincial leaders, being powerless to introduce improvement, exclaimed ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... appeared to be about forty years of age; he wore his hair cropped short, and his face was partially hidden by a heavy, unkempt beard and moustache. He had evidently just dined, for the draped extremity of the table was littered with the remains of a repast, he was smoking an immense pipe, while a tumbler of steaming vodki stood close to his hand upon the table. This individual was Count Vasilovich; and he was alone. He made no movement to rise at von Schalckenberg's ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... dogs must be taken young, but where were young ones to be obtained? It is not so easy to capture the pups of the wild hound. Until they are able to run well, their mothers do not permit them to stray far from the caves in which they are littered; and these are usually crevices among rocks quite inaccessible to man. How could he obtain a set of them? He had already formed such an intention. Where could be ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... twilight, an old man came from a village and stood calling at the door of the convento, which was closed and guarded by sacristans. The old man beat the door with his fists and with his head, while he littered cries stifled and inarticulate, like those of a dumb person, until he was at length driven away by blows and shoves. Then he made his way to the gobernadorcillo's house, but was told that the gobernadorcillo was not there, he was at the convento; ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... hastily, wrung out his wet clothes upon the littered floors and climbed into his bunk, threatening to tear down a whole terrace of the crazy structures as ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... have endured the appalling uniformity of this human beehive? Everywhere, too, were the same recurring evidences of the haste and panic that had characterized the final moments of that terrible hegira. Hats and garments, cash-boxes and account-books, littered the hallways, and were piled in little heaps at the entrances to the elevators—impedimenta that must inevitably be abandoned at the last if life itself were to be saved. And the final tragedy—an elevator cage that had jammed in its ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... his work in his little study, a sanctum littered with innumerable manuscripts. He, like most authors of the day, dictates to a secretary, who types what he says. It is, I think, in many ways a pity that so many authors type their manuscripts; for not only are they machine-made, they have not the interest that they should have for posterity. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... straw produced on their farms. Yet chemical analysis has clearly proved that the manurial value of straw is perfectly insignificant, and that, as a constituent of stable manure, it is chiefly useful as an absorbent of the liquid egesta of the animals littered upon it. As food for stock, straw was at one time regarded by our farmers as almost perfectly innutritious; some even went so far as to declare that it possessed no nutriment whatever, and even those who used it, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... as that of any picture I have seen. It is a picture, and I can see it now,—the jagged edges of the hole in the side of the cabin, through which the grey fog swirled and eddied; the empty upholstered seats, littered with all the evidences of sudden flight, such as packages, hand satchels, umbrellas, and wraps; the stout gentleman who had been reading my essay, encased in cork and canvas, the magazine still in his hand, and asking me with ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... nightly chores,— Brought in the wood from out of doors, Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows: Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... rep with modern tapestries, had had it papered in peacock and gray, had covered the old, dark woodwork with cream-colored enamel and replaced the black marble mantel with a simply carved one of white stone. The chairs here were all comfortable now; Rachael's book lay on a magazine-littered table, a dozen tiny, leather-cased animals, cows, horses, and sheep, were stabled on the hearth, and the spring sunlight poured in through fragile curtains of crisp net. Over the fireplace the great oil portrait of Warren Gregory smiled down, a younger Warren, but hardly more handsome than ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... dresses in a machinist's clothes when thus employed in his laboratory, and was long accustomed to work continuously for as long as he was so inclined without regard to regularity, or meals, or day or night. He is willing to eat his food from a bench that is littered with filings, chips and tools. To relieve strain and take a moment's recreation he is known to have bought a "cottage" organ and taught himself to play it, and to go to it in the middle of the night and grind out tunes for relaxation. He has a working library containing several thousand books. He ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... marshy, sometimes hard-packed clay or stone flags deeply littered, led them a winding course in the night. Now and then shapes met them and pattered past in single file, furtive and sinister. At last, where a wall loomed white, Heywood stopped, and, kicking at a wooden gate, gave a sing-song cry. With rattling weights, the door swung open, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... dress and surroundings is slovenliness.—The sloven is known by his dirty hands and face, his disheveled hair, and tattered garments. His house is in confusion; his grounds are littered with rubbish; he eats his meals at an untidy table; and sleeps in an unmade bed. Slovenliness is a vice; for it is an open confession that a man is too weak to make his surroundings the expression of his tastes and wishes, and has allowed his surroundings to run over him ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... up from the paper-littered desk as Peggy flung breathlessly into his sanctum. He knew that only unusual news would have led her to interrupt his work in which she was as ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... curiously round the room. It was small, and smelt strongly of tobacco smoke; chairs, mantelpiece, and floor were untidily littered with old newspapers, books, pipes, and bills scattered about in confusion; a pair of boxing-gloves, which looked to her like the enormous hands of some dead giant, hung on the wall, and on each side of them a bright silver ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton

... the passage, a thing that had never before occurred to me in Judith's establishment, and presently returned with her answer. Would I mind waiting in the dining-room? I entered. The table was littered with sheets of her statistical work and odd bits of silk' and lining. A type-writer stood at one end and a sewing-machine at the other. On the writing-desk by the window, in the midst of a mass of letters and account-books, rested a large bowl filled with magnificent ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... the easel—was hidden by the velvet curtain. Sitting by a table that was littered with a confusion of sketches, books and papers, the young man was re-tying a package of old letters that he had, evidently, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... size, obscurely lighted by high narrow latticed windows. One end was entirely occupied by book-shelves, greatly too limited in space for the number of volumes placed upon them, which were, therefore, drawn up in ranks of two or three files deep, while numberless others littered the floor and the tables, amid a chaos of maps, engraving, scraps of parchment, bundles of papers, pieces of old armour, swords, dirks, helmets, and Highland targets. Behind Mr. Oldbuck's seat (which was an ancient leathern-covered easy-chair, worn smooth by constant ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... could lie in comparative safety while they swept all the level ground around with their rifle fire. Mr. Ralph, the American correspondent, whose letters were among the most vivid of the war, has described these lairs, littered with straw and the debris of food, isolated from each other, and each containing its grim and formidable occupant. 'The eyries of birds of prey' is the phrase with which he brings them home to us. In these, with nothing visible but their ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... bargemen, students, and human driftwood. As he climbed the badly lighted stairs, a little, gray-haired man, wearing spectacles, passed him, coming down. A "pardon" was mumbled, and the little man proceeded into the restaurant, picked a Figaro from the table littered with newspapers, ensconced himself in a comfortable chair, and ordered coffee. No one gave him more than a cursory glance. The quarter was indigent, but ordinarily respectable; and it was only when some noisy Americans invaded the place that ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... royal garden was dedicated to its service. In the oldest part of the palace, hard by the grey and ancient tower where the king loved to out-watch the stars and to brood over strange wisdom, overlooked by a terrace whose very steps were littered with petals, the caressed earth glowed into a very miracle of roses. Every shade of red that a rose can wear was represented in that dazzling pleasaunce, from the faint pink that surely the lips of divinity had scarcely brushed to the smiling scarlet that suggested Aphrodite's ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... he was talking about was soon demonstrated. For several hundred yards the tracks led straight through the swamp. Suddenly the Indian halted at the foot of a spruce that reared high above its neighbours and pointed to the snow which was littered with needles and bits of bark. There were no tracks beyond the foot of the tree, and Connie peered upward, but so thick were the branches that he could see nothing. Removing his snowshoes and pack, 'Merican Joe climbed the tree and a few moments later Connie heard ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... next note God's way of fulfilling His promise. A panic would spread fast in an undisciplined army, and history supplies examples of the swift change into a mob under the influence of groundless terror. There is nothing wonderful in the helter-skelter rush for the Jordan, or in the road being littered with abandoned baggage. The divine intervention produced the impression which naturally brought the flight about, and the coincidence of the prophecy and the panic which fulfilled it stamp both as divinely originated. But if we looked on events as devoutly, and saw into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to some foolery. Then I saw littered about his feet the shattered remains of the best of our electrometers. "What's up, man?" said ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... day arrived on which the survey did assemble. The large table in the cabin was duly littered over with paper and medical books, and supplied with pens and ink. Three post-captains in gallant array, with swords by their sides, our own captain being one, and three surgeons with lancets in their pockets, congregated with grave politeness, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... empty. He lighted the gas, which flared up, squeaking like a bagpipe. The room was square and crowded. Shelves ran all the way round it, tightly filled with books. In the center was a large writing-table, littered with papers, and on each side of the fireplace stood two worn, but comfortable, arm-chairs, each with a reading-lamp at its side. There was nothing beautiful in the furniture, and yet the room ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... Whereas Alice grows nine feet taller, Dick sprouts "two inches taller" and Emmeline "twice as plump." Like the baby in the "Pig and Pepper," Hannah sneezes at the first sight of Dicky. The novel is artfully littered with references to wonder, curiosity, and strangeness—all evidence of Stacpoole's conscious effort to invoke and honor ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... peacefully exhilarating in the thought of rising from the red dead level of that awful plain, littered with the bones of camels and the slaves whom men pinned into the yokes to perish or survive in twos.* As we mounted foot by foot we fell asleep. Later, as we mounted higher, we shivered under blankets. There is a spirit and a spell of Africa that grip men even in sleep. The ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... and from the pile of stuff that soon littered the ground, it was evident that the three lads had taken a fair advantage of their expenses being guaranteed, for they certainly had not stinted themselves along ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... and say farewell noisily to all the good folk going farther. Then, as we are far enough from thoughts of sleep, we visit Blank in his quaint house, and sit an hour or so in a great tapestried chamber, laid with furs, littered with sleeping hounds, and lit up, in fantastic shadow and shine, by a wood-fire in a mediaeval chimney. And then we plod back through the darkness to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... very ancient wood, the Forest of Aulnes, and the old trees were long past timber value. Even those gleaners of dead wood and fallen branches seemed to have passed a different way, for the forest floor was littered with material that seldom goes to waste in Europe, and which broke under foot with a dull, thick sound, filling the nostrils with the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... considerable need of paint. It had no great pretensions to architectural beauty, being about as handsome for a house as Abner Holden was for a man. There was a dilapidated barn, a little to one side, and the yard was littered up with a broken wagon, a woodpile and various odds and ends, giving the whole a very ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... society that is congenial. But Lady Kirkbank was not one of these. The advance of age made her only more keen in the pursuit of pleasure. She would have abandoned herself to despair had the glass over the mantelpiece in her boudoir ceased to be choked and littered with cards—had her book of engagements shown a blank page. Happily there were plenty of people—if not all of them the best people—who wanted Sir George and Lady Kirkbank at their parties. The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was good-natured, and just sufficiently ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Uppernavik, had so nobly thrown up an appointment under the Danish crown to serve as interpreter with Penny in the search for Franklin, he brought with him a sledge and a few dogs: these had twice littered, and the numerous puppies were already grown into serviceable dogs, forming two efficient teams. The major part of the winter, scarcity of food, such as seal and bear, had told severely upon the poor creatures; but an Esquimaux dog lives on little ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... mystic place the trenches. To his left a crumbling wall ran along until it bent out of sight, a wall which in most places was three or four feet high, but which at one spot had been broken down until it was almost flush with the ground, and the bricks and rubble littered the weeds. In front of him lay the town, desolate, appalling, with a few rooks cawing discordantly round the windowless houses. And over everything brooded an oppressive hot stinking stillness that almost terrified ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... troubles all began At Cambridge, when his manuscripts were burned. He had been working, in his curious way, All through the night; and, in the morning greyness Went down to chapel, leaving on his desk A lighted candle. You can imagine it,— A sadly sloven altar to his Muse, Littered with papers, cups, and greasy plates Of untouched food. I am told that he would eat His Monday's breakfast, sir, on Tuesday morning, Such was his absent way! When he returned, He found that Diamond (his ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... his whole face became radiant, and at last tears rolled down his cheek when I read the account of the glory of the sunrise. Then he read us a very able paper on Spiritualism which he was writing. The den was dense with smoke, and very dark, littered with hay, old blankets, skins, bones, tins, logs, powder flasks, magazines, old books, old moccasins, horseshoes, and relics of all kinds. He had no better seat to offer me than a log, but offered it with a graceful unconsciousness ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... said, nodding his head towards my desk, which was as usual littered with papers. "What line? You don't look very clever," and he glanced at me critically from under his ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow

... toilet, Mr. Reardon next sat in at his littered desk, swept a space clear of tobacco crumbs, ashes, pipes and some old copies of the Cork Eagle, and sat down to write a farewell letter to his wife, hoping that, even though his enemies should ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... at the War Ministry. His table was littered with papers and reports, amongst which he pointed out laughingly one of my articles. I can't think why he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... the skirts of his gown; laughed, and made others laugh; drank claret at Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's, and eat oysters in the Covenant Close." On his desk "the new novel most in repute lay snugly intrenched beneath Stair's Institute, or an open volume of Decisions;" and his dressing-table was littered with "old play-bills, letters respecting a meeting of the Faculty, Rules of the Speculative, Syllabus of Lectures—all the miscellaneous contents of a young advocate's pocket, which contains everything but briefs and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... into an easy trot, for the floor of the pass dipped up and down, littered with sharp-toothed rocks or treacherous, rolling ones, as bad a place for speed as a stiff upslope. According to his nicest calculation the posse could not reach the edge of the gulch before he was at the farther side, out of range of everything except ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... in a faded and greasy but rather handsome theatrical-looking dressing-gown and seated in a worn arm-chair. As for the room itself, he suppressed an exclamation of mingled surprise and impatient remonstrance, for, although of large proportions and not badly lighted, it was so littered with books, papers, maps, and pamphlets, so overgrown with piles of dusty blue-books, reports, dictionaries and works of reference, thick and antiquated, thin and modern, local and foreign, standing on end, on tables, on the mantel-shelf, extending ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... with pleasure as she went about her work, or sat sewing in the shade of the house. At her instigation Shaw had put up a shed for his machinery, which formerly had littered the yard, and put his ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... this crossing they came to a line of wire strung on poles. Originally a fair passageway had been cleared through low brush and dense timber alike. A pathway of sorts still remained, though dim and little trodden and littered with down trees of various sizes. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... but I fear it will never be our home again, so why cling to it? But really, do you suppose any city family would be satisfied with this?" indicating the large, littered ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... locked door leading to a room which dees not belong to Knox's suite. At rear center is fireplace. At left rear door leading to Knox's bedroom. At left are windows facing on street. Near these windows is a large library table littered with books, magazines, government reports, etc. To the right of center, midway forward, is a Hat-top desk. On it is a desk telephone. Behind it, so that one sitting in it faces audience, is revolving ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London

... covered with snow to the depth of three feet. The cattle were littered down inside the inclosure of palisades round the cow-house; the sheep were driven into the inclosed sheep-fold, and the horses were put into a portion of the barn in the sheep-fold which had been parted off for them. All was made secure, and every preparation was ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... in front of half a dozen wrecked cafes little knots of policemen stood on the glass-littered sidewalk, in low-voiced consultation; far down the Boulevard, helmets gleamed dully through the haze where municipal cavalry were quietly riding off the mobs and gradually pushing them back toward the Montmartre and Villette quarters, whence ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... Here, in the Breton Carnac, are no evidences of architectural skill. These sombre stones, unworked, rude as they came from cliff or seashore, are not embellished by man's handiwork like the rich temples of the Nile. But there is about this stone-littered moor a mystery, an atmosphere no less intense than that surrounding the most solemn ruins of antiquity. Deeper even than the depths of Egypt must we sound if we are to discover the secret of Carnac. What mean these stones? What ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... friend, and thereby, it might be, ensure more consideration for her in her new home. There were one or two little whims and peculiarities of hers which he must explain. He thought of pretty Mrs. Forsyth and her broken pledge regarding Tara. He looked along the dusty, littered hall, and, in the distance, saw an elderly lady leading an Irish Wolfhound. A moment later, and he recognized the hound as Tara, and the lady as a good friend of his own, a kindly, wealthy Yorkshire woman who had bought two whelps of him before he left ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... a few days after this visit, and not long before the time fixed for the Bishop and his large band of emigrants to sail. Under these circumstances the ceremony was a quiet one. The old rectory was in disorder, littered with packing cases, and upset from cellar to garret. Even when the wedding was over both Phebe and Hilda were too busy for sentimental indulgence. The few remaining days were flying swiftly past them all, and keeping them in constant ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... offer no suggestions for a new campaign," and Sir Tancred, looking with some contempt at the score of grey, pink, yellow, and green sheets which littered the grass around his long cane chair, fanned himself with his panama; for, though the month was ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... mocked at her; and she was soon ushered into a vast bedroom, in the midst of which, on a Persian carpet, sat her diminutive bag, now empty. Various elegant "confections" in the shape of tea-gowns and dressing-gowns littered the bed and the chairs. The toilet-table showed an array of coroneted brushes. As for the superb Empire bed, which had belonged to Queen Hortense, and was still hung with the original blue velvet sprinkled with golden bees, Doris eyed it with a ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... sure you've got everything you want?" they asked us. "There mayn't be a chance to get fitted up after this." Socks, pull-throughs, overcoats, regimental buttons, badges, hats, tunics, oil-bottles, gloves, puttees, and laces littered the floor and were piled on the benches. We took what we required; ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... difficult thing of the two because Mrs. Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with waste- paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by appointment. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... that it hadn't been used for some time. The piano, a baby-grand, stood open, with dust on its dingy keys and more dust on its shining case. The centre-table held a handsome reading-lamp and some books, but was littered with piles of old newspapers and magazines without covers. A kitchen-apron was flung across an armchair; a dirty, paper-covered book lay on a little table with a plate beside it covered with cake-crumbs, and there were crumbs on the richly colored Turkish rug and on the arm of the tapestry-covered ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... shoulders stood in the front entrance. Back toward the patio there were sounds of boots on the stone floor. Shadows flitted across that end of the corridor. Thorne entered a huge chamber which was even more poorly lighted than the hall. It contained a table littered with papers, a few high-backed chairs, a couple of couches, and was ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... floor to ceiling with shelves that groaned beneath their burden of the literature of genius. Indeed he had, in fancy, beheld even the chairs and couches covered with stacks of volumes, the very floor littered with the choicest productions of the brains of the dead and living. His surprise was, therefore, very great when, on passing through the door, he beheld Madame Sagittarius reposing at full length upon a maroon sofa in a small ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... was in the parlor, busy as usual with her dusting-cloth. Without heeding her, Sir Marmaduke strode up to the table and pushing the crockery, which now littered it, aside, he ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... couple of horsehair armchairs, filled the further end of the room. The wall-paper, a Highland plaid pattern, was glazed over with the grime of years. Between the window and the grate stood a long table littered with papers, and opposite the fireplace there was a cheap mahogany chest of drawers. A second-hand carpet covered the floor—a necessary luxury, for it saved firing. A common office armchair, cushioned with leather, crimson once, but now hoary with wear, was drawn up to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... small house with a thatched roof, and barns made of flat stone. There are three rooms, with earthen floors, crooked ceilings, and windows that lift up and down instead of opening outwards.... The walls are covered with rifles, pistols, sabres and whips. The chest of drawers and the window-sills are littered with cartridges, instruments for mending rifles, tins of gunpowder, and bags of shot. The furniture is lame and the veneer is coming off it. I have to sleep on a consumptive sofa, very hard, and not upholstered ... Ash-trays and all such luxuries are not to be found ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... she moved away from the mirror, and wandered restlessly to the pile of fashion magazines and festively decorated "books on etiquette" that littered the table beside the chintz-covered couch. "They don't know everything!" she thought contemptuously. How hard she had tried to learn, and yet how confused, how hopeless, it all seemed to her to-night! All the hours that she had spent in futile study appeared to her wasted! ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... straight iron ladder from the wings to his little platform, with only sufficient foothold for two people, and there I stood with him for two hours, while he waggled spots, floods, and focuses, and littered the platform with the hastily ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... littered straw were hard to leave in the chill mist of the morning. The warning notes of the reveille trilling in sweetest melody from the fife of the accomplished fife-major, accompanied by the slumber-ending rattle of the drum, admitted of no alternative. ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... back until they fell in with our cavalry, or the infantry, which was being brought forward in trucks. As we bowled along in pursuit the scene reminded me of descriptions in the novels of Sienkiewicz or Erckmann-Chatrian. The road was littered with equipment of every sort, disabled pack-animals, and dead or dying Turks. It was hard to see the wounded withering in the increasing heat—the dead were better off. We reached the heights overlooking Haditha to find that ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who being, I as am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and drab I purchased this caparison; and my revenue is the silly-cheat: gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway; beating and hanging are terrors to me; for the ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... a pleasant languor possessed his limbs—a wholesome weariness from his long wanderings—and he lay down upon a bank littered with fallen leaves and slept. And as he slept in the fading light, the spirit of Virginia approached him more nearly—more tangibly—than ever before; and finally, when the red sun had sunk into the river, and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... essential in a home as over-neatness is destructive to it. There is nothing homelike in any room that is in perfect order; but, on the other hand, there is little of the home feeling in a room that is not bright and fresh with cleanliness. Tables littered with books, chairs and sofas strewn with gloves and ribbons, and even a floor encumbered with a prostrate doll or two, are cheerful; a trail of leaves and mosses from a basket of woodland treasures is endurable dirt. But dust in the corners which ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... when ready to trust anybody. The way he employed his day prevented any real attention to business. He was filthy in the extreme, and proud of it. Fools called it simplicity. His bed was always full of dogs and bitches, who littered at his side, the pops rolling in the clothes. He himself was under constraint in nothing. One of his theses was, that everybody resembled him, but was not honest enough to confess it as he was. He mentioned this once ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... objects with which the table was covered, as well as those which filled and littered the room in all directions, clearly designated the young man's employment to be that of a sculptor and colourer of images for the ornament of churches, as well as an illuminator of missals and manuscripts—an occupation at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... supper room the air was hot. The table, littered with napkins and ash-trays, was old and stale. It was between dances as they entered, and Muriel Kane looked up with ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... his arms on the big dusty table, littered with pamphlets and charcoal studies and squeezed-out paint tubes. After a while he lifted his head: "That's nothing. I ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... closed behind Wilmot with an ominous click, and he found himself face to face with the legless beggar. In this one's eyes, seen above a table littered with pamphlets and writings, was none of that mock affability to which he had formerly treated Wilmot Allen. He looked angry, dangerous, poisonous. And he broke into a ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... for later and more personal inspection. Uncle Noah watched him with misty eyes. Presently his gaze furtively sought the rusty ax in the corner, and great tear rolled down his cheek. Caught in the wave of a sudden panic he dropped upon his knees and clasped his trembling hands. The dusky barn, littered with odds and ends, was dimly visible in the glimmering light of the old-fashioned lantern whose slanting rays fell upon the doomed bird and the praying negro. No thought of sacrilege marred the quaint, halting prayer. A terrible earnestness lined the negro's face ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple

... were then, though the weather was very dry, for oyster-shells, fish heads and bones, potato-skins, and cabbage-stalks littered the roads; but dirty was a word which does not give the faintest description of the almost impassable state in which I found them, when I waded through them ankle-deep in ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... burdened shores; flatboats ramble and thread among them, and above the steamers bridges swing on great arches of steel, striding with mighty grace from shore to shore. Everywhere are brick kennels,—tall, black and red chimneys, tongues of flame. The ground is littered with cars and iron, tracks and trucks, boxes and crates, metals and coal and rubber. Nature-defying cranes, grim elevators rise above pile on pile of black and grimy lumber. And ever below is the water,—wide and silent, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... If he had kept them neat, and groomed his horse, and cleaned the cows, and dug up the garden, it would have taken up all his time; but he never tidied the place at all, till his yard and stable got so littered up with things he threw down that he could not make his ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... with smiling interest. In the panic, the torches had been dropped or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullen crowd which hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, the daylight fell cold on the littered street and the cripple's huddled form prone in the gutter. A priest raised on the shoulders of the lean man in black began to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent, the brandished arms which greeted his appeal, had their effect on Tavannes' men. They looked to the window, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... attention of his military secretary, Captain Tremayne, of Fletcher's Engineers, who sat at work at a littered writing-table placed in the window recess. He looked up sharply, sudden concern in the strong young face and the steady grey eyes he bent upon his chief. The sight of O'Moy's hunched attitude brought him ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... stored the tables dormant and benches which would be needed for banquet or high festivity. The floor was of polished tiles, with a square of red and black diapered Flemish carpet in the centre; and many settees, cushions, folding chairs, and carved bancals littered all over it. At the further end was a long black buffet or dresser, thickly covered with gold cups, silver salvers, and other such valuables. All this Alleyne examined with curious eyes; but most interesting of all to him was a small ebony table at his very side, on which, by the side of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... who were dead or unable to mount a horse. I obeyed. I followed the general all day in battle, and when I was not detained at headquarters, I went back to the Palace, and at nightfall, Colindo and I, passing among the dying and the dead bodies of men, women, and children which littered the streets, went to pray at ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... of Radical-Reform and Honest-Workingman's Tickets,) is suddenly and mysteriously impressed with the recollection that this is Christmas Eve. "Why, bless my soul, so it is!" he cries, springing up from his littered rosewood desk like a boy. "Here, you General Superintendent out there in the office!" sings he, cheerily, "send some one down to Washington Market this instant, to find out whether or not any of those luscious anatomical western turkies that I saw in the barrels this morning ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various

... after object below—a huge group of sculptured figures in the middle; some kind of a motor vehicle jacked up on trestles for repairs; things that looked like machine-guns and auto-cannon; long tables, tops littered with a dust-covered miscellany; machinery; boxes and crates ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper

... to which a language belongs one must be careful not to be misled by structural features which are mere survivals of an older stage, which have no productive life and do not enter into the unconscious patterning of the language. All languages are littered with such petrified bodies. The English -ster of spinster and Webster is an old agentive suffix, but, as far as the feeling of the present English-speaking generation is concerned, it cannot be said to really exist at all; spinster and Webster have been completely disconnected from the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... for the most part empty. Others showed only fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side walls or were open above and littered with the debris of their roofs. Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... route was strewn with bones of horses and camels, while here and there a human arm or leg protruded from the sand, for the Turks did not dig very deeply, and the desert soon gives up its dead. At Romani especially the ground was littered with bones, great ravens hung over the putrifying bodies of animals, and a horrid, fetid smell pervaded the atmosphere. We were glad to get away from ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... his broad American face smiling over a tray of glasses and decanters and tinkling ice. It was all very tranquil and public and almost commonplace—just the high tropic seas at the moment of their unrestrained sundown, and the odour of tea-cakes about the pleasantly-littered deck. And for the moment, held by a common thought, every one kept silent. Now that The Aloha was really moving toward home, the affair seemed suddenly such a gigantic impossibility that every one ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... not an absolute gale. It didn't rain, but the clouds hurried across the sky all day long, and the tops of the trees tried to bend themselves in two; and their leafless boughs and black broken twigs littered the deserted playground—for we all sat on the parapet of the terrace by the lingerie; boys and servants, le pere et la mere Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris—all feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... unwholesome reek from the stock-yards, and saw a bituminous reek that outdoes London, with vast chimneys right and left, "huge blackened grain- elevators, flame-crowned furnaces, and gauntly ugly and filthy factory buildings, monstrous mounds of refuse, desolate, empty lots, littered with rusty cans, old iron, and indescribable rubbish. Interspersed with these are groups of dirty, disreputable, insanitary-looking wooden houses." [Footnote: H. G. Wells, "Future in America," p. 59.] Nothing but these in ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... but a diffident distrust of myself, and a vague sense of awkwardness about intruding thus unexpectedly upon the family, while engaged in all the cares and preparations for a speedy departure. The hall-door lay as usual wide open, the hall itself was strewn and littered with trunks, imperials, and packing-cases, and the hundred et ceteras of travelling baggage. I hesitated a moment whether I should not ring, but at last resolved to enter unannounced, and, presuming ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... the rest of the afternoon, if you don't mind," said Jane, at her winningest. "That is, if there's something I can do?" She looked at the littered table. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... the room and Jed heard him stumbling through the littered darkness of the shops on his way to the front door, kicking at the obstacles he tripped over and swearing and sobbing as he went. It was ridiculous enough, of course, but Jed did not feel like smiling. The bitterness of the little man's final curse was not humorous. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and of the Niflung's gold, and of Gudrun's revenge on Atli when she gave him the hearts of his children and hers to eat while battle swept the benches, tore down the hangings raped from southern coasts, and, littered the feasting board ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... female cat, and, although the season was early, she had littered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leaves blown by the wind into ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... had elapsed when Elliott returned. The sentry's challenge caused Brock to look up from the table, littered with plans and despatches. Another figure darkened ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... round the world; all over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of mud. Everywhere the waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted ruins, and the earth littered like a storm-worn beach with all that had floated, and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its children. For days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way, and piling ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... called—a story-and-a-half shanty, about thirty feet square, covered with rough, unpainted boards, and lit by two small, dingy windows. It was approached by a sandy walk, and the ground around its front entrance was littered with apple peelings, potato parings, and the refuse ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... chapter; but internally, it was hard to say whether it resembled more a pig-sty or a dog-kennel. The floor was of the bare earth, covered in patches with loose plank of various descriptions, and littered over with billets of 'lightwood,' unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap stools, a pine settee—made from the rough log and hewn smooth on the upper-side—a full-grown blood-hound, two younger canines, and nine dirt-encrusted juveniles, of the flax-head species. Over against the fire-place ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... it in silence, and sitting down at a table littered with papers examined the seals. Then drawing his poniard he was about to cut open the packet when ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... we found another door, which opened on to a winding stair with the cellar at the bottom. The Cossacks had been there before us, as was easily seen by the broken bottles littered all over it. However, the Mayor was a bon-vivant, and I do not wish to have a better set of bins to pick from. Chambertin, Graves, Alicant, white wine and red, sparkling and still, they lay in pyramids peeping coyly out of sawdust. Old Bouvet stood with his candle looking ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... eye swept the littered field from which Jabez Rockwell rose, as one from the dead, to rally his comrades, alone, undaunted, pathetic beyond words. A little later two privates were carrying to the rear the wounded lad, who had been picked up ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... Pair picked the girl up (she was scarcely eighteen then, and had only been married a sixmonth), he picked her up from where she had fallen, half fainting, on the pavement, carried her to his lodgings, which were at hand, and sent for a doctor. In his manuscript-littered study, for rather more than nine weeks, she lay on a bed of fever, the consequence of blows, exhaustion, and exposure. When she got well there was no talk of her leaving. Pair couldn't let her go back to her tailor; ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... a fake," declared Bertram. He slumped heavily into a chair, and scowled at Average Jones' well-littered desk, whereon he had just tossed a sheet of paper. His usually impeccable hair was tousled. His trousers evinced a distinct tendency to bag at the knees, and his coat was undeniably wrinkled. That the elegant and flawless dilettante ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... across the littered yard, explaining en route that he was fed up, and why he was fed up, and what they could do to fill the vacancy which would undoubtedly occur the next day, and where they could go to, so far as he was concerned, and so, unlocking one rusty lock after another, passed through dark and desolate offices, ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... indeed arrived at his Headquarters. He was directed to a small, frowzy apartment, which apparently had once been the land-lord's sitting-room. Two officers, Colonel Hullocher and his Adjutant, both with ribbons, were seated close together at a littered deal table, behind a telephone whose cord, instead of descending modestly to the floor, went up in sight of all men to the ceiling. In a corner a soldier, the Colonel's confidential clerk, was writing ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... broad daylight, bruised and broken by his fall. The leaves of the manuscript he had written the night before still littered the desk. He read them through again, folded and sealed them with his seal, put the roll inside his gown, and unheeding the menaces the witches had twice over given him, started to carry his revelations to the Lord Bishop, whose Palace lifted its battlements above the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... of the deal table of the papers and books, brushes and chalks that littered it, the citoyenne laid out on it the earthenware soup-bowl, two tin porringers, two iron forks, the loaf of brown bread and a jug of ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... right was a barn in which the Germans had slept. It was littered with their equipment. And in front of it was a derelict motor-car dripping in ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... did," was the candid reply. "But did you see what he brought me this morning?" He pointed to the seat behind him, littered with novels, which Elizabeth recognized as new additions to their travelling store. "He begged or borrowed them somewhere from his friends or people in the hotel; told me frankly he knew I should ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... pushed and driven and parched and bleached, by the enormous forces of industry and commerce, that all distinction in them seems to be reduced to a strange colorlessness; while the primordial animal cravings, greedy, earth-born, fumble after their aims across the sad and littered ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys

... the negligee of the tables, littered with the plates and dishes, dreary survivors of a dozen breakfasts, he divined that he was the tardiest guest in the household. A slatternly young woman in a soiled shirt-waist—the waitress—received him with great calm and waved ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... the subordinate centres of the urban region we have foreseen. The apartments will be more or less agreeably adorned in some decorative fashion akin to but less costly than some of the many fashions that will obtain among the wealthy. They will be littered with a miscellaneous literature, novels of an entertaining and stimulating sort predominating, and with bric-a-brac; in a childless household there must certainly be quaint dolls, pet images, and so forth, and perhaps a canary would find a place. I suspect there ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... the signal for the burning of Cremona. In these scenes the whole tragedy of the Empire rises before us. The armies of the Danube and Rhine left the frontiers defenceless while they met in the shock of battle on Italian soil, still soaking with Roman blood and littered with unburied Roman corpses; behind them the whole armed strength of the Empire—immensa belli moles—was gathering out of Gaul, Spain, Syria, and Hungary; and before the year was out, the Roman Capitol itself, in a trifling ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... and without pause Mrs. Meyerburg walked directly to the small deal table there beside her bed and still littered with half-curled blue-prints. These she gathered into a tight roll, snapping a rubber band about it. She rang incisively the fourth of the row of bells. A man-servant responded almost immediately with a light rap-a-tap at the door. She was ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... To-morrow, then, at one o'clock, as struck here, precisely here," advancing and placing his finger upon the clasp, "the poor mechanic will be most happy once more to give you liege audience, in this his littered shop. Farewell till then, illustrious magnificoes, and hark ye ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... clothed with pines. In build it was very much such a cabin as the original hut had been,—six rooms, all on one floor, the sixth being a kitchen. It was newly completed, and sawdust and fresh shavings were littered freely about the place. Clover's first act was to light a fire in the wide ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... observation than ever a 'longshore jack or coast-wise skipper had achieved in the years when I wore rings. Never before had I suffered a stare more keen and unabashed: 'twas an assurance stripped of insolence by some tragical need and right. He sat beyond a broad, littered table, leaning forward upon it, his back to the riley light, his drawn face nestled within the lean, white hands of him; and 'twas now a brooding inspection I must bear—an unself-conscious thing, remote from my feeling, proceeding from eyes as gray as winter through narrow slits that ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... bethought him that Bayard had told him if ever he felt like smoking to go right into his study and help himself. Now was the very time. A dozen strides brought him to the broad-topped library-table littered with books, pamphlets, papers of all kinds, and among them the inviting-looking brown box. Another moment, and, ensconced in the big easy-chair, with a fragrant Regalia between his lips and a late New York paper in ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... lodging. The best and only accommodation that the miserable village affords is what was formerly used by robbers as a prison-house for their victims, but which is now used as a kind of store-room. There is but one room, and its earthen floor is littered over with filth of almost every description, while dust and cob-webs everywhere abound. This is the RECEPTION-ROOM ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal

... gossiping over their evening cup of tea; for these creatures, though they live in the open air, have their ideas of fireside comforts. There were two or three children sleeping on the straw with which the tents were littered; a couple of donkeys were grazing in the lane, and a thievish-looking dog was lying before the fire. Some of the younger gipsies were dancing to the music of a fiddle, played by a tall, slender stripling, in an ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... of the early winter morning showed a depressing interior, for the window was not the only opening. There was a great gap in the roof where, earlier in the night, the chimney had fallen, and now its bricks littered the floor, already well covered with snow. Some attempt must have been made, as McVay had boasted, of "fixing it up"; there were books in the shelves on the walls, and a black iron stove on which the snow now lay fearlessly. ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller

... I must spend together A hungry night among the heather. If I'd her here ...' And as I uttered, I tripped, and heard a frightened squeal; And dropped my hands in time to feel The hare just bolting 'twixt my feet. She slipped my clutch: and I stood there And cursed that devil-littered hare, That left me stranded in the dark In that wide waste of quaggy peat Beneath black night without a spark: When, looking up, I saw a flare Upon a far-off hill, and said: 'By God, the heather is afire! It's mischief at this time of year ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... dilapidation, and the icy wind whistled through the rubbish of the doleful spot. He ran back to the laboratory, where Peters was hunting about, hoping to find Masusaelili alive, yet fearing to find his emaciated form lying lifeless amid the mass of chemical and mechanical appliances which littered the room. Several of the large vase-like objects before alluded to stood here and there; and as the smaller of them might have hidden the body of a large-sized man, the searchers even glanced into ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... ascent. As the dog continued howling from a great depth, my father got the old butler, who alone knew most of the localities about the castle, to unlock a sort of stable, in which Kill-buck was found safe and sound, the place being filled with the same commodity which littered the stalls of Augeas, and which had rendered the dog's fall an ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... door and knocked on it. There was no answer. Judith turned the knob, the door opened, and they stood in what had been unmistakably the Fingals' kitchen. Evidence of wild haste and confusion was everywhere about them—the floor was littered with excelsior, the shelves half cleared and half occupied still with cooking supplies, a packing-box partly filled with kitchenware which at the last moment the fugitives had evidently decided ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... came to us from Werner's office. After some little hesitation Kennedy opened the door unceremoniously. At the table, littered with blue prints and drawings and colored plates of famous home interiors, was the director. With him was Manton. Seated facing them, in rare good humor, was ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... the dhrink was dyin' out in me, an' I felt as though a she-cat had littered in my mouth. I had not learned to hould my liquor wid comfort in thim days. 'Tis little betther I am now. "I will get Houligan to pour a bucket over my head," thinks I, an' I wud ha' risen, but I heard some wan say: "Mulvaney can take the blame av ut for ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... of the room, a little to the right, there is a large and comfortable settee, and on the left of the settee is a table littered with books, magazines, a scent-atomizer, a small silver-framed mirror, a case of manicure instruments, a box of cigarettes and a match-stand, and other odds and ends. Behind the table there is a fauteuil-stool, and on the right of the table a cosy arm-chair. ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... littered with papers, coats, collars, ties, and underwear. Drawers had been dragged out and emptied, my trunk gutted of its contents. Evidently the captain had been engaged in a thorough search of the cabin when my entrance ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... be many comrades in trouble, we were early away, and dancing like a bubble, we ran north, keeping as close inshore as we could, and watching the coast-line with our glasses. The coast was littered with remains. Forty-one vessels had been lost; in one uninhabited roadstead alone, some forty miles away from Indian Harbour, lay sixteen wrecks. The shore here was lined with rude shelters made from the wreckage ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... for light from hidden windows is splintered into the darkness by intervening wayside trees and bushes. Still that wristlet tinkles against the water-jar, and retreating steps rustle from down the lane littered ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... a table littered with papers in the middle of the room, and behind it, in a gray riding-habit, with a gray soldier-cap on her red hair, writing for dear life, sat the girl. She lifted her head quick, as the door swung open, and then made a ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... numerous workmen go about their work on bicycles. Even here in the country, the roadsides were planted with palms and other ornamental trees, and gay with flowers. Abruptly he came upon a squalid village of the old regime, with ugly frame houses, littered streets, sagging sidewalks foul with puddles, old tin cans, rubbish; populous with children and women in back-yard dressing sacks—a distressing reminder of the worst from the older-established countries. And again, at the end of the week, he most unexpectedly found himself seated on a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... playground, always a May day celebration with its Maypole dance and its May queen. I remember that one year that honor of being queen was offered to the little girl who should pick up the largest number of scraps of paper which littered all the streets and alleys. The children that spring had been organized into a league, and each member had been provided with a stiff piece of wire upon the sharpened point of which stray bits of paper were impaled and later soberly counted ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... The room was littered with wreckage. I saw that by some miracle of chance the microscope was still standing, and I had a moment ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... center of the city was shaded by trees and littered with refuse. The Palace of the Governors fronted it along the entire north side, a long, low, one-story structure whose massive adobe walls defy the wearing years. Compared to the kingly palaces of my imagination, this royal dwelling seemed a very commonplace thing, and the wide portal, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... from the slanting, fallen turret, over the wreckage of the littered deck. It was not difficult, a lightness was upon us. The Planetara's gravity-magnetizers were dead: this was only the light ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... Hole-in-the-Wall, and stride up the street alone. It was the first time Cheyenne had seen Sears since he had taken the single room opposite the gambling-house. Cheyenne stepped back, drew down the curtain, and turned on the light. The bare board floor was littered with cigarette stubs. A pair of saddle-bags hung on the iron bedstead. Other furniture was a chair, a scratched and battered washstand, a cracked mirror. Standing by the washstand Cheyenne took his gun from its holster, half-cocked ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... depths of the Paradou. Autumn was fast approaching, and the trees seemed anxious as they stood there with their yellowing crests from which the leaves were falling one by one. The paths were already littered with dead foliage soaked with moisture, which gave out a sound as of sighing beneath one's tread. And away beyond the lawns misty vapour ascended, throwing a mourning veil over the blue distance. And the whole garden was wrapped ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... together, leaving my office littered with broken glass and sea-shells. With some astonishment I followed through the warehouse to the street; they had entered a carriage and were driving rapidly away. The next morning's paper explained the whole ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... proportion of his letters were written in the railway train, and dated from 'near' this town, or 'between' this and that. We remember to have heard from one who was his companion in a railway carriage that before the journey was half-finished the adjoining seat was littered with envelopes of letters which he had read, and with the answers he had written since he started. All this undeniably shows energy and determination, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... wagged his head, staring at his note pad, which was littered with jumbled calculations. Miller had a chance to study him. He was tall, heavily built, with wide, sturdy shoulders despite his sixty years. Oddly, he wore a gray-green smock. His eyes, narrowed and intent, looked gimlet-sharp beneath those toothbrush brows of his, as he ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner

... square windows gleamed softly through the dust and cobwebs of unwashen years. For all the cold that snapped and bit through the stillness of the forest night, the door of the camp was thrown wide open, and from it a long sheet of light spread out across the trodden and chip-littered snow. Around the doorway crowded the rough-shirted woodsmen, loafing and smoking after their prodigious dinner of boiled pork, boiled beans, and steaming-hot molasses cake. The big box-stove behind them, which heated the camp, was wearing itself to a dull red glow; ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... and indefinable indication of relief in his manner, however much he professed to be embarrassed at the discovery. It might have been, she thought, that he was a great friend of Mr Westray, and had been sorry to think that his room should be littered and untidy as Mr Sharnall's certainly was, and so was glad when ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... library at the old manse that afternoon there was less of sunlight and joy. Shadows hung between the walls and there were shadows, too, in the heart of one of the men who sat by a central, paper-littered table. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... to him, just as it is to every one seeing it for the first time. The shops huddled together, their show-windows littered with articles of every description, the second-hand establishments, the pawnbrokers, the peddlers and street-stand merchants, who offered everything from shoelaces to collars, books and trick novelties, were all decidedly ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer

... fireplace and a mantel are on the right. A bookcase contains law and sporting books. On the wall is a full-length portrait of CYNTHIA. Nothing of this portrait is seen by audience except the gilt frame and a space of canvas. A large table with writing materials is littered over with law books, sporting books, papers, pipes, crops, a pair of spurs, &c. A wedding ring lies on it. There are three very low easy-chairs. The general appearance of the room is extremely gay and garish in colour. It has the easy confusion of a ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell



Words linked to "Littered" :   untidy



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