"Mire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arriving within about seven miles of the town, the coach broke down and was upset. I fell upon the big crotchety driver, whose head stuck in the mud; and as he "always objected to niggers riding inside with white folks," I was not particularly sorry to see him deeper in the mire than myself. All of us were scratched and bruised more or less. After the passengers had crawled out as best they could, we all set off, and paddled through the deep mud and cold ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... use up in advance their life-force. It is done in ways more insidious, because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... entirely different person—a low, vulgar creature proud of the brutal strength and coarseness of her man. I seem to be a part of this human beast! When I wake up I feel as if my soul had been stained, dragged in the mire, almost lost. It seems as if I could never again feel any self-respect. Oh, doctor," Penelope's voice broke and the tears filled her eyes, "you must help me! I cannot bear this torture any longer! What can I do to escape from such ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... had a little pony, his name was Dapple Grey; I lent him to a lady, to ride a mile away. She whipped him and she lashed him, She rode him through the mire; I would not lend my pony now For all that ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... perpetual interference of officious morality, which are ever besetting his path with finger-posts and directions to "keep to the right, as the law directs;" and like a spirited urchin, he turns directly contrary, and gallops through mud and mire, over hedges and ditches, merely to show that he is a lad of spirit, and out of his leading-strings. And these opinions are amply substantiated by what I have above said of our worthy ancestors; who never being be-preached and be-lectured, and guided and governed ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the muskets fire, And volleying oaths old Stuyvesant from: "Turn out! In yonder Kills he'll mire, Or drown, unless the fiends conspire. Mount! Follow! Still he must succumb— ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... question. Let the law put its hand on his shoulder—if it could! But at present he was at liberty, and he purposed to remain in that state. His conscience never told him to go back and take his punishment; it tortured him only in regard to the deed itself. He had tossed an honoured name into the mire; he required no prison bars to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... diamonds are very ancient on the coast of Paria. Petrus Martyr relates that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a Spaniard named Andres Morales bought of a young Indian of the coast of Paria admantem mire pretiosum, duos infantis digiti articulos longum, magni autem pollicis articulum aequantem crassitudine, acutum utrobique et costis octo pulchre formatis constantem. [A diamond of marvellous value, as long as two joints ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... restrained contempt, saved him from the silly elation which is the last, and generally successful, struggle of human nature in those who can so far master it to commit a sacrifice. The loss of that brave high young soul-Rose, who had lifted him out of the mire with her own white hands: Rose, the image of all that he worshipped: Rose, so closely wedded to him that to be cut away from her was to fall like pallid clay from the soaring spirit: surely he was stunned and senseless when he went to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Along it the whole of the food, ammunition, and material had to be carried on pony-back, or in a few ponderous carts drawn by gaunt, over-worked teams, which too often left their wheels fast-caught in the mire. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... mother had done before her, Angel dragged out the weary years, almost hopeless; and the one object of her toil and solicitude, was only a pitiful wreck of the former stalwart William Way. Only a miserable, wretched creature, that grovelled in the mire of its own degradation, and from whose bosom the last spark of manhood seemed to have forever fled. To look upon him, you would ask, 'Can this ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... of his position, Lieutenant Somers encouraged the weak as they struggled through the mire on their trying march, and with fit words stimulated the enthusiasm of all. After a march of about a mile, a heavy skirmish line was thrown out, which soon confronted ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... is familiar to all from Hogarth's illustration "On the way to Tyburn," one of the series of Idle and Industrious Apprentices. Here he shows people among the crowd sinking up to their knees in mire, thus proclaiming the state of the principal ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... I though deluges down pour Beating earth to mire, Though heaven shattering with the thunder's roar Scorcheth now in fire, Though every planet molten from its place Should trickle lost ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... them, at a time of life when their minds are ill compacted, their ideas chaotic, and their wills untrained, to face an ordeal which demands above all things reverence based on knowledge and resolution sustained by high affections. An enormously large proportion flounder blindly into the mire before they know what it is, not necessarily, but very often into the defilement of evil habit, but, still more often, into the tainted air of diseased opinion, and after a few years some of them emerge saved, but so ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... a chance for you here. England is to blame as well as you that you have been sucked by the eddies of life into criminal streams. England also rescues you. It is but dragging out indeed, but you are out of the mire. Take heart, you may carry the British flag proudly yet; the career of the sailor is open to you also, and who shall say that some gallant three-master may not yet be commanded by a sailor bred in the 'Cornwall' Reformatory school-ship ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... headlong to the ground. It would have fared ill with the licentiate, in this emergency, but fortunately a small party of troopers on the other side, who had watched the chase, now galloped briskly forward to the rescue, and, beating off his pursuers, they recovered Cepeda from the mire, and bore him ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... talked thus among themselves, some yet doubting whether the thing were true, cried one of them, "Now shall we know the certainty of this matter, for here cometh a herald with leaves of olive on his head, and he hath dust on his garments and mire on his feet, as one who cometh from ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... and the door swung suddenly open to admit two men, or rather three, for between them they dragged one, a short, squat fellow in riding boots and horseman's coat, but all so torn and bedraggled, so foul of blood and mire, as to seem scarce human. His hat was gone and his long, rain-soaked hair clung in black tangles about his bruised face and as he stood, swaying in his bonds, I thought him the very figure ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... circuitous route of Hawick, does not appear. There are two other passes from Jedburgh to Hermitage castle; the one by the Note of the Gate, the other over the mountain, called Winburgh. Either of these, but especially the latter, is several miles shorter than that by Hawick, and the Queen's Mire. But, by the circuitous way of Hawick, the queen could traverse the districts of more friendly clans, than by going directly into the disorderly province ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... the weather as they exercise their inalienable right to roll upon the grass and play in the dirt, and which it will trouble no one to see torn or soiled. Do this, if you have a prince's revenue,—unless you would be vulgar. For, although you may be able to afford to cast jewels into the mire or break the Portland vase for your amusement, if you do so, you are a Goth. Jewels were not made for the mire, vases to be broken, or handsome clothes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... with which Luther had declared against the rebels had displeased even moderate men. The friends of Rome exulted; all were against him, and he bore the heavy anger of his times. But his greatest affliction was to behold the work of heaven thus dragged in the mire and classed with the most fanatical projects. Here he felt was his Gethsemane: he saw the bitter cup that was presented to him; and, foreboding that he would be forsaken by all, he exclaimed: "Soon, perhaps, I shall also be able to say, 'All ye shall be offended because ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... works Rousseau's "Pygmalion" and "Devin du Village," Dalayrac's "Nina" and "L'Amant Statue," Monsigny's "Dserteur," Grtry's "Zmire et Azor," "Fausse Magie" and "Richard Coeur de Lion" and others, were known in Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York in the last decade of the eighteenth century. There were traces, too, of Pergolese's "Serva padrona," ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had been lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide and I, who were old enough friends to stare at each other in silence, talked about when we didn't speak. When we spoke it was only about the brilliant girl ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... he'd come back if he was chased away. Shandon mentioned the police of New York, and Dart asked him reproachfully if he delighted in wounding him in his most sensitive part; wanted to know if his Noble Benefactor was the sort to drive a man back into the mire he had just emerged from, to thwart all effort to lead a pure, sweet, rural existence. Finally Shandon contented himself by forbidding Dart to meddle in the future with anything not in any way a part of his own business; and nourished the secret hope that a few weeks of the humdrum of mountain ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the dejected heads bobbing in front as they bent to the slanting rain, the cottagers that came out to stare as we pass'd; and hearing but the hoarse words of command, the low mutterings of the men, and always the monotonous tramp-tramp through the slush and mire ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... whistled about us, the rain pelted us, but the Major heeded it nothing—neither did I—while K. loudly congratulated himself on having come in waders and waterproof hat, as, through mud and mire, through puddles and clogging sand, we followed the Major's long boots, crossing bare plateaux, climbing precipitous slopes, leaping trenches, slipping and stumbling, while ever the Major talked, wherefore I heeded not wind or rain, ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... through the gates of pearl, Together heard them close; then to the left Descending, by a path evil and dark, Hard to be traversed, rugged, entered they The 'SINNERS' ROAD.' The tread of sinful feet Matted the thick thorns carpeting its slope; The smell of sin hung foul on them; the mire About their roots was trampled filth of flesh Horrid with rottenness, and splashed with gore Curdling in crimson puddles; where there buzzed And sucked and settled creatures of the swamp, Hideous in wing and sting, gnat-clouds and flies, With ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... the young lady's that brought me really back to my senses," Mrs. Lupo had confessed to Miss Campbell. "I thought the young lady had sunk in the mire. The misery that come to me then made me see things different; that and the prayer you taught me. Lupo, he's workin' now in the valley and when the camp is broke up, I guess we'll ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... looked down and scanned the red moccasins. They showed not a grain of dust, not a speck of mire, not a stain of grass, or weed, or water, although he had walked in them—or, if you please, they had walked with him—through many a mile of grassy wood and reedy swamp, where path was none, that had ever been trodden by foot of ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... Christianity would stand like a barricade against this monstrous cult. But already within the Church there had been rumors and disturbances; and now suddenly a bishop arose and voiced his protest against this attempt "to drag the Church into the mire of political controversy." It must be made perfectly clear, said the bishop, that Christianity was a religion, and not a dietetic dogma. Its purpose was to save the souls of men, and not to concern itself with their bodies. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... "Rich in troops from Mourne and Bann, Blood he'll draw o'er shafts of spears; He will cast to mire and sand These ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... unmistakable rattle of wagon wheels on their axles, the straining of harness, the rasp of tug chains,—quite near at hand. The clack-clack of the hubs gradually diminished as the heavy vehicle made its slow, tortuous way off through the ruts and mire of the road. Presently the front door of the cabin squealed on its hinges, the latch snapped and the bolt fell ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... vocabulary the word 'inconceivable.' But he is too well satisfied with his own system ever to consider the effect of what is unknown on the element which is known. To the Hegelian all things are plain and clear, while he who is outside the charmed circle is in the mire of ignorance and 'logical impurity': he who is within is omniscient, or at least has all the elements of ...
— Sophist • Plato
... suddenly changed, and about ten o'clock at night there poured upon us, untented and unprotected, a furious storm of rain, sleet, and snow, making our condition almost unendurable. We are now left in a bed of almost fathomless mire. None of the men who flounder through these oozy roads, under the inclement sky, will ever forget the "Muddy March." We had scarcely reached the river-shore before we were compelled to return. In one instance a piece of artillery with its horses had to be abandoned, submerged so deeply ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... names, insensible of their own degradation, bowed the neck gladly, groveled in beatitude. Deprived of power, they consoled themselves with privileges, patented favors, impertinences vented on the common people. The princes amused themselves by debasing the old aristocracy to the mire, depreciating their honors by the creations of new titles, multiplying frivolous concessions, adding class to class of idle and servile dependents on their personal bounty. In one word, the paradise of mediocrities came ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... their doom; of hundreds of houses crashing down the surging river, carrying men, women and children beyond the hope of rescue; of a night of horrors, multitudes dying amid the awful terrors of flood and fire, plunged under the wild torrent, buried in mire, or consumed in devouring flames; of helpless creatures rending the air with pitiful screams crying aloud in their agony, imploring help with outstretched hands, and finally sinking with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... quickly taken off and only known, Is in a minute shut as soone as showne. Why should weake Nature tire her selfe in vaine In such a peice, to dash it straight againe? Why should she take such worke beyond her skill, Which when she cannot perfect, she must kill? Alas, what is't to temper slime or mire? But Nature's puzled when she workes in fire: Great Braines (like brightest glasse) crack straight, while those Of Stone or Wood hold out, and feare not blowes. And wee their Ancient hoary heads can see Whose Wit was never their mortality: Beaumont dies ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... late worshippers were trampling his memory in the mire, the Baron von Blitzenberg, deserted and dejected, his face still buried in his hands, endured the slow passage of the doleful afternoon. Unlike the prisoner at The Lash, who, by a coincidence that ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... for punishment from one without thee—thine own act hath degraded thee, and thrust thee down. Even so, if alternately thou turn thy gaze upon the vile earth and upon the heavens, though all without thee stand still, by the mere laws of sight thou seemest now sunk in the mire, now soaring among the stars. But the common herd regards not these things. What, then? Shall we go over to those whom we have shown to be like brute beasts? Why, suppose, now, one who had quite lost his sight should likewise forget that he had ever possessed ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... think anything more about it," Sommers answered, closing his lips firmly. "It is part of the mire; we must avert our ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "Mire Chatta," or battle-dance, denotes the frenzy, supposed to animate the combatants, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Anthony was the lighter and younger, Winchester had run for Oxford. Moreover, the latter knew the woods like the back of his hand. Anthony, who did not, ran blindly. This was not a moment to pick and choose. All the time he was desperately afraid of mire.... ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... of my friends lessen my love for my sons, then we might be saved. But I have dipped my hands in the mire of your infamy and lost my sense of goodness. For your sakes I have heedlessly set fire to the ancient forest of our royal lineage—so dire is my love. Clasped breast to breast, we, like a double meteor, are blindly plunging into ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... to banish all patience. Yesterday, on leaving Rosas, she believed herself to be withdrawn forever from the wretched Bohemian life she had so painfully endured. To-day, she felt herself sunk deeper in its mire. Too much mire and misery at last! However, if ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... letter came, Eve was obliged to find a wet-nurse; her milk had dried up. She had made a god of her brother; now, in her eyes, he was depraved through the exercise of his noblest faculties; he was wallowing in the mire. She, noble creature that she was, was incapable of swerving from honesty and scrupulous delicacy, from all the pious traditions of the hearth, which still burns so clearly and sheds its light abroad in quiet country homes. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... imagine a more discomforting atmosphere in which to be abroad: yet Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse was trudging through the mire, and getting wet to the skin, even when he might just as well be sitting beside the fire in ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Pyrrhus thus: 'Go thou from me to fate, And to my father my foul deeds relate. Now die!' With that he dragg'd the trembling sire, Slidd'ring thro' clotter'd blood and holy mire, (The mingled paste his murder'd son had made,) Haul'd from beneath the violated shade, And on the sacred pile the royal victim laid. His right hand held his bloody falchion bare, His left he twisted in his hoary hair; Then, with a speeding thrust, his heart he found: The lukewarm ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... asleep, it was in the thick of marveling over the processes of evolution that could produce from primeval mire and dust the glowing, glorious flesh ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the violent deluges of rain which turned rivulets into torrents, and of the hardships and difficulties of the day; the scanty fare of sun-dried rice dough and sour yellow rasps, and the depth of the mire through which we waded! We crossed the Shione and Sakatsu passes, and in twelve hours accomplished fifteen miles! Everywhere we were told that we should never get through the country by the way we ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervour, as long as we have neighbour Naboths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,—I mean those who protested against it. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... sides, and no remaining mark of military distinction left but your wants, infirmities, and scars? Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution, and, retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity which has hitherto been spent in honour? If you can—go—and carry with you the jest of tories, and the scorn of whigs;—the ridicule, and, what is worse, the pity of the world. Go,—starve ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... these outbursts of heroic energy, dragging mankind out of the rut wherein it had become wedged, and compelling a fresh start. But as soon as the effort has been made and the chariot set in motion, mankind has been only too ready to stick fast in the mire again. Long ago, the French revolution brought all that it could bring to Europe. A time comes when ideas which were once fertilising, ideas which were once the forces of renewed life, are no longer anything more than idols of the past, forces tending to drag us backwards, additional ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... killed at the battle of Mill Springs in Kentucky. The Rebel officers undertook to carry off the immense supplies of food which had been accumulated; but in the panic, barrels of meat and flour, sacks of coffee, hogsheads of sugar were rolled into the streets and trampled into the mire. Millions of dollars' worth were lost to the Confederacy. The farmers in the country feared that they would lose their slaves, and from all the section round they hurried the poor creatures towards the South, hoping to find a place where ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... forsaken husband mourns with passionate anguish and unavailing bitterness of regret, has been to him, whom she now leaves for another, an image of purity: her love and influence have lifted him from the mire, and "the Worst of it," the last pang which he cannot nerve himself to endure, is the knowledge that she had saved him, and, partly at least through him, ruined herself. The poem is one of the most passionate and ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... they heard on every side of them the howling of wolves coming to eat them up. They scarce dared to speak or turn their heads. After this, it rained very hard, which wetted them to the skin; their feet slipped at every step they took, and they fell into the mire, whence they got up in a very dirty pickle; their hands were ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... how can you say so, when she took you, poor little beggar as you was, all from the mire and dirt to ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... an innocent silence. The Abbe disappeared with a commendable constancy, and with that just sense of secrecy which should compel even an archiepiscopal admiration. He was not of those who would drag his cloth through the mire. Not until the darkness he loved so fervently covered the earth would he escape from the dull respectability of Entrammes, nor did he ever thus escape unaccompanied by his famous valise. The grey suit was an effectual ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... started to that Knight, And cut a two his bond; And took him in his hand a bow, And bade him by him stand. "Leave thy horse thee behind, And learn for to run! Thou shalt with me to green wood Through mire, moss, and fen! Thou shalt with me to green wood Without any leasing, Till that I have got us grace ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... manhood, with its many realms and illimitable interests, for the sordid ease of the hearth and the good word of the unworthy. He fills men with thoughts that shake down the unlovely temple of comfort. This was good, to force whoever was not already too far sunk into the mire, high up to the larger atmosphere, whence they could see how minute an atom is man, how infinite and blind and pitiless the might that encompasses his little life. Many feeble spirits ran back homewards from the horrid solitudes and abysses of Manfred, and the moral ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... you!" It cried, "Mr. Prior, I wish you'd get on!" On tugged the good friar, but nigher and nigher Appeared the fierce Russians, with sword and with fire. On tugged the good prior at Saint Sophy's desire,— A scramble through bramble, through mud, and through mire, The swift arrows' whizziness causing a dizziness, Nigh done his business, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have sought to be reputed broad and charitable. They weakened in morals and influence, and lost power and position when tried by the fires of persecution. They finally melted away and disappeared among the enemies of the Covenant, as snowflakes falling on the mire. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... only, but of the long-sustained patience also, the essential monotony of military life, even on a campaign. Peril, good-luck, promotion, the grotesque hardships which leave them smart as ever, (as if, so others observe, dust and mire wouldn't hold on them, so "spick and span" they were, more especially on days of any exceptional risk or effort) the great confidence reposed in them at last; all is noted, till, with a little quiet pride, he records a gun-shot wound which keeps him a month alone in hospital ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Mountains had reached the spot where Slavata with his cavalry was attempting the passage of the morass. Some of the Hulans were entangled there from the soft nature of the ground, the horses having sunk in the mire almost up to their saddle-girths. Others, among whom was their ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... tranquil nights that give in dreams The moonlight of the morning's joy!— All this my heart could dwell on here, But for those gross mementoes near; Those sullying truths that cross the track Of each sweet thought and drive them back Full into all the mire and strife And vanities of that man's life, Who more than all that e'er have glowed With fancy's flame (and it was his, In fullest warmth and radiance) showed What an impostor Genius is; How with ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Mixing two governments that ill assort, Hath missed her footing, fall'n into the mire, And there ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the consecrated host, the substance of Christ's body would not cease to be under the species, so long as those species remain, and that is, so long as the substance of bread would have remained; just as if it were to be cast into the mire. Nor does this turn to any indignity regarding Christ's body, since He willed to be crucified by sinners without detracting from His dignity; especially since the mouse or dog does not touch Christ's body in its proper species, but only as to its sacramental species. Some, however, have said that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... himself across, intending to join us, and remain with us till the rivers fell. The presence of a responsible white man seemed a rest at once. We had several more gulches to cross, but none of them were dangerous; and we rode the last seven miles at a great pace, though the mire and water were often up to the horses' knees, and came up to Onomea at full gallop, with spirit and strength enough for riding other twenty miles. Dry clothing, hot baths, and good tea followed delightfully ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... once, however, by confounding the mill road with the mill lane, and a shaggy dog that lay in a wagon shed pursued me about a mile. The road was full of mire; no dwellings adjoined it, and nothing human was to be seen in any direction. I came to a crumbling negro cabin after two plodding hours, and, seeing a figure flit by the window, called aloud for information. Nobody replied, and when, dismounting, I looked ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... they increase in number, make this city poorer, morally and spiritually; they drag it down and down into the mire. This is not American civilization; it is the rottenness of Gomorrah. This is not Democracy—it is savagery. It shows the glutton hunt for the Dollar with no thought for aught else under the sun or over the earth. It is decadence of the spirit in its ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... buried out of sight. The world and its cares, the flesh and its sins, have returned with new temptations, and the eloquence of iniquity has prevailed over the voice of truth. "The dog has returned to his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire." ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... them to wander in a wilderness'; v. 25: 'He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.' God said of the King of Assyria (Isa. x. 6), 'Against the people will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.' And Jeremiah said (Jer. x. 23), 'O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' And God said (Ezek. iii. 20), 'When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... Orford castle were at Sudborn, so the keys of Buttley were at Orford! By this time it was night; we lost our way, were in excessive rain for above two hours, and only found our way to be overturned into the mire the next morning going into Ipswich. Since that I went to see an old house built by Secretary Naunton.(605) His descendant, who is a strange retired creature, was unwilling to let us see it; but we did, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... mask their minds," &c. This poem, however, must have been undertaken many years after his entrance into Parliament, as the following curious political memorandum will prove:—"I like it no better for being from France—whence all ills come—altar of liberty, begrimed at once with blood and mire." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... and neglected his work, Ariel (who was invisible to all eyes but Prospero's) would come slyly and pinch him, and sometimes tumble him down in the mire; and then Ariel, in the likeness of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape, in the likeness of a hedgehog, he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way, who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... down; tread them out; follow after them with muddy shoes, and cover them up. In vain. See how they rise through the mire! Who can tread out ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... Puck seems but a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged colt, And oft out of a bush doth bolt, Of purpose to deceive us; And leading us makes us to stray, Long winter's nights, out of the way; And when we stick in mire and clay, Hob doth with ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... took a young girl—lifted her up from the mire of the streets and carried her in my arms. Next my heart I carried her. So I would have borne her all through life—lest haply she should dash her foot against a stone. For her shoes were worn very thin when ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... a camel down in the mire. Poor animals, they are lost on such ground, for they have not hoofs like horses, but soft callous pads. When they slip they do so thoroughly and suddenly. All four legs fly up in one direction, and the heavy body ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... stays; if one gets blackened, nothing will cleanse it. No doubt we shall all fly home at last, like a flock of pigeons that were once turned loose snow-white from the sky, and made to descend and fight one another and fight everything else for a poor living amid soot and mire. If then the hand of the unseen Fancier is stretched forth to draw us in, how can he possibly smite any one of us, or cast us away, because we came back to him black and blue with bruises and besmudged and ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... children left to pull The few scared, ragged flowers— All that was ours, and, God, how beautiful! All, all that was once ours, Lies faceless, mouthless, mire to mire, So lost to all sweet semblance of desire That we, in those fields seeking desperately One face long-lost to love, one face that lies Only upon the breast of Memory, Would never find it—even the very blood Is stamped into the horror of the mud— Something that ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... then, not more than fifteen or twenty, as the town, at the time of which we are speaking, had only a population of about five thousand people. As San Francisco grew, however, under the impetus which the discovery of gold gave to it, the streets were naturally multiplied; and, to overcome the mire in wet weather and also the sand of the dry season, which made it difficult for pedestrians to walk hither and thither or for vehicles to move to and fro, they were planked in due time. Wooden sewers were ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... Nevertheless, they were endowed with a sort of reckless, dashing courage which now and then seemed to have in it an element of grandeur. But it is time that I told you about myself, and gave you some idea of the development of my character in the thick of this filthy mire into which it had pleased God to plunge ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... "I ain't come to put the strap on ye.... Habit is a great thing, black hoss, a great thing. In this case I'm kind of dependin' on it. You know what the dog done, don't ye? And the sow that was washed, she went wallerin' in the mire, first chance she got. That's in the New Testament, but Peter, he got the notion from Solomon and didn't give him credit either.... Good-bye, black hoss, and ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... and draw me out of the mire [Ps. lxviii. 15], that I stick not fast therein, that I may not ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... And in the mire to leave him, till the stars are all burnt out, While, in strange-looking shapes, they frisk about the ground, And, afar in the woods, they raise a dismal shout, Till I shrink into my cell again ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... you have thought of it yourself; because, if it had not been for some of our very goot and excellent friends, that would be putting their spoon into other folk's dish, I should have been asking you a civil question myself, how you came to dine with us, with all that mud and mire which Mr. Tyrrel's grasp has left upon the collar of your coat—you understand me.—But it is much better as it is, and I will go to the man with all the speed of light; and though, to be sure, it should ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Moored in one locality, they are a well-known resort of the vicious. In the fields are [Page 10] the tillers of the soil wading barefoot and bareheaded in mud and water, holding plough or harrow drawn by an amphibious creature called a carabao or water-buffalo, burying by hand in the mire the roots of young rice plants, or applying as a fertiliser the ordure and garbage of the city. Such unpoetic toils never could have inspired the georgic muse of Vergil ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... shorter days Are dark and all the ways are mire, How bright upon your books the blaze Gleams from the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... absent sex. "In a case of that sort, Susan, you can't put all the blame off on to the man. There's a woman in it, too, every time, and the one's as deep in the mud as the other is in the mire. And like as not," continued Mrs. West, a tell-tale tension in her voice, "he was a nice, clean-minded young man when she came along, making eyes at him, like a snake charming a sparrow. I'm not crazy about voting, but if I had ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... another, "can the case Be quite so desp'rate as you've said? For they're contending who is head, And lead a life from us disjoin'd, Of sep'rate station, diverse kind."— "But he, who worsted shall retire, Will come into this lowland mire, And with his hoof dash out our brains, Wherefore ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... dwell; and it was in reference to these that he collected. If the book were the one desired by him, no anxiety and toil, no payable price, was to be grudged for its acquisition. If the book were an inch out of his own line, it might be trampled in the mire for aught he cared, be it as rare or costly as it ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... religion, it would assuredly be a terrible blow for the nobility in general, and for the Count de Toumeville in particular, and the freethinkers would be triumphant. The evilly disposed newspapers would sing songs of victory for six months; my mother's name would be dragged through the mire and brought into the prose of Socialistic journals, and my father's would be bespattered. It was impossible that such ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... perceptions were keen, who lived upon joy, from the very constitution of their nature, how were such natures—and he knew that he was of the number—to avoid sinking into the mire of the Slough of Despond, how were they to rejoice in the valley of humiliation? What was to be their well in the vale of misery? How were the pools ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... genius, had faced this fact until he was in a measure used to it. There was to be no escape for him. He, who had dared to scale the heights of Olympus and had diced with the gods, was to be hurled into the mire to rise therefrom no more for ever. He had climbed so high; almost his feet had reached the summit. He had completed his invention, and it had surpassed even his most sanguine hopes of success. At four-and-twenty he had been acclaimed ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... to me, And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is, Or as Matrevis', hewn from the Caucasus, Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale. This dungeon where they keep me is the sink Wherein the filth of all the castle falls. Light. O villains! K. Edw. And there, in mire and puddle, have I stood This ten days' space; and, lest that I should sleep, One plays continually upon a drum; They give me bread and water, being a king; So that, for want of sleep and sustenance, My mind's distemper'd, and my body's numb'd, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... wear red coats. The habitues of the place, who were the contemporaries of the Squire, had, as it were, gone to seed. But there was a sprinkling of a better class, or, at all events, of a class that had not as yet sunk so low as they in the mire of debauchery: a young lord or two in their minority, whom their parents or guardians could not coerce into keeping better company; and other young gentlemen of fashion, in whose eyes Carew was "A devilish good fellow at bottom;" ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... If you will excuse a homely and a coarse simile, 'he will return like a dog to his vomit, or the sow to its wallowing in the mire.' I never knew one of that school thoroughly cured, until he became himself the subject of attack, or, by a close personal communication, was made to feel the superciliousness of European superiority. It is only a week since I had a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... vengeance upon them took root in his very soul. He hated nobody else as he hated them. How often she had heard him swear, in solemn vibrating tones, that to the day of his death his most sacred ambition should be their punishment, their abasement in the dust and mire! ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... state is honeycombed With treason dark unto the pow'rs that be. Even our party men, with cold disdain, Look on our policy with covert sneer. Some few there are who grovel in the mire, But most deport themselves with silent mien; These should be watched, and when the moment comes Where opportunity her hand extends, We should her aid accept, and lop those heads Which placed on shoulders square with spine erect Dare in the privacy of social life To breathe disloyalty ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... can think up," Dolly answered. "Warren Wilks reads all the philosophical and scientific magazines, and he fairly floors us—there I go again; when I talk I either grab the stars or stick my nose in the mire. I mean that Warren's subjects are generally ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... off. I was ready to halt, and my sorrow was continually before me; yet even in my darkest, deepest afflictions, when deep called to deep, and thy waves and billows were passing over me; when my soul seemed sinking in the mire where there was no standing, I groped in the dark; my heart panted, my strength failed, and the light of mine eyes seemed gone out. I was weak with my groaning; in the night I made my bed to swim with my tears; yet even then, by that same covenant ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... Tomline, iii, 458, 459. Burke's unfortunate phrase in the "Reflections": "Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... left. We brought nothing into the world but the name, we take out nothing else. A sore dispensation. I'm not the man I was, not this two years. I must dispone, I know it well. Now the name, that I thought that I cared not an empty whistle for, is worn to a rag, but I cannot leave it in the mire. There's just one that bears it, one Logan by name, and true Logan by the mother's blood. The mother's mother, my cousin, was ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to residence in this foetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my numbered days is new mire added to the heap under which I lie oppressed! But, give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its light and air; give me pure water; help me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy life, in which our spirits ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... much lesse had he any littor or place to cover me withall, for he himselfe alwayes lay under a little roofe shadowed with boughes. In the morning when I arose, I found my hoofes shriveled together with cold, and unable to passe upon the sharpe ice, and frosty mire, neither could I fill my belly with meate, as I accustomed to doe, for my master and I supped together, and had both one fare: howbeit it was very slender since as wee had nothing else saving old and unsavoury sallets which were suffered to grow for seed, like ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... name given to the head of a large marsh, which extends from Bahia Blanca. Here we changed horses, and passed through some leagues of swamps and saline marshes. Changing horses for the last time, we again began wading through the mud. My animal fell and I was well soused in black mire — a very disagreeable accident when one does not possess a change of clothes. Some miles from the fort we met a man, who told us that a great gun had been fired, which is a signal that Indians are ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... tempts An o'ergorged epicure to the last morsel That stuffs him to the throat-gates, is no more. If matter be not, but as sages say, Spirit is all, and all things visible Are one, the infinitely modified, Think, Jacob, what that pig is, and the mire Wherein he stands knee-deep! And there! the breeze Pleads with me, and has won thee to a smile That speaks conviction. O'er yon blossom'd field Of beans it came, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... religion. I know that Christ has been wounded in what should have been the house of his friends; that the banner of his religion which is broad enough to float over the wide world with all its sin and misery, has been drenched with the blood of persecution, trampled in the mire of slavery and stained by the dust of caste proscription; but I believe that men are beginning more fully to comprehend the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am not afraid of what men call infidelity. I hold the faith which I profess, to be too true, too sacred and precious to be disturbed ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... adjusting it, a railroad conductor can easily lift a recalcitrant passenger, and project him through one of the windows of the car, (provided said window is large enough to admit of such exit,) into any selected pool, or pond, or quagmire, or any other sort of mire, of the miasmatic salt meadows, with the produce of which Morris and Essex stock is so ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... twelve men dragged out the shaggy monster whose ponderous carcass demanded their utmost efforts. [Footnote: I remember to have seen an incident precisely similar, many years ago, on the Upper Arkansas. In this case, however, it was impossible to drag the bull from the mire. Though hopelessly entangled, he made furious plunges at his assailants before ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... our dispositions and inclinations, our discourses and wills, which they rule, provoke, and move at the pleasure of their influences.] ... Of all creatures man is the most miserable and frail, and therewithal the proudest and disdainfullest. Who perceiveth himself placed here, amidst the filth and mire of the world ... and yet dareth imaginarily place himself above the circle of the Moon, and reduce heaven under his feet. It is through the vanity of the same imagination that he dare ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... and misjudging the woman I have asked to be my wife. I must be misjudging her—the alternative is horrible. I can't escape one conviction, however. It is turning out just as I expected and told her it would. Arnault's aid to her father has been delusive, and Wildmere is deeper in the mire than ever. This is a fine ending of my social career! The girl of my choice puts me off until she can end this Wall Street business more satisfactorily. She must wait and hear her father's reasons for further diplomacy before she can answer me. If Henry ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... by beginning where all those began who have since ended in ruin. But by entire abstinence from strong drink. Let us renounce entirely what cannot profit us, what forms no important item in our comforts, what may bring us, as it has brought such multitudes as strong as we, to the mire and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... helmet smites That spear, which never yet was couched in vain. Gothland's good king next meets the maid, and lights With feet in air, at distance on the plain. The third (unhorsed by Aymon's beauteous daughter) Half buried lies in mire and marshy water. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... and Rose were pulling off fence-rails and dragging them to the edge of the swamp. Then, while Rose brought more, Russ began to lay the rails on the quivering mire, side by side but about a foot apart, the ends of the first row of rails being only a few inches from the side of ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... pike-pushes between men who had never seen each other before; the same yelling and execrations, sights, sounds, and smells ever the same in horror; the same cheers when the enemy's colours were lowered, followed by the same transient depression; the cleansing of decks from stains of powder and mire of human blood, the casting overboard of human bodies that had done their life's work, broken waste and other rubbish. For weeks Adrian after would taste blood, smell blood, dream blood, till it seemed in his nausea that all the waters of the wide clean seas could never wash the taint from him ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... tree-tops of the Limberlost there are birds whose colour is more brilliant than that of the gaudiest flower lifting its face to light and air. The lilies of the mire are not so white as the white herons that fish among them. The ripest spray of goldenrod is not so highly coloured as the burnished gold on the breast of the oriole that rocks on it. The jays are bluer than the calamus bed they wrangle above with throaty chatter. The ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... man-capitaine. Le Feu-Follet never shows her lantern until she wishes to lead an enemy into the mire!" ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... exit through the keyhole. Meantime the new-comer seats himself in solemn silence, and for five minutes the conversation is only kept up by monosyllables, in spite of the incredible efforts of all parties to appear unconcerned. The young man in his confusion plunges deeper into the mire;—he twists and writhes in secret agony—remarks on the sultriness of the weather, though the thermometer is below the freezing point; and commits a thousand gaucheries—too happy if he can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... a succession of pleasant groves and villages. The road, one of the works of Brandeis, is now cut up by pig fences. Eight times you must leap a barrier of cocoa posts; the take-off and the landing both in a patch of mire planted with big stones, and the stones sometimes reddened with the blood of horses that have gone before. To make these obstacles more annoying, you have sometimes to wait while a black boar clambers sedately over the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we did not go to church because the weather was bad, or there was no preaching within twenty miles of us, or my mother was not well, or the roads were impassable with mire or frost, Mary 'Liza and I learned two questions in the Shorter Catechism, and she learned the references as well. We also committed a hymn to memory, and five verses of a psalm. Beyond this, no religious exercise was binding upon us, and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... therefore, a leap in the dark. It is too precipitate, and shows the infatuation of the victim. Falling in love is not always falling in the embraces of domestic felicity. Such leaping is an act of intoxication. The drunkard, falling in the mire, often thinks that he is embracing his best friend, whereas it is but descending to fellowship with the swine. It is blind love, which is no love, but passion without reason. It is crazy, fitful, stormy, raising the feelings up to boiling point, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... before the wall they fought, While Death exulted o'er them; deadly Strife Shrieked out a long wild cry from host to host. With blood of slain men dust became red mire: Here, there, fast fell the warriors mid ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... dost thou Taunt me with my mortality? "Weak things, Brought forth from earth,"—"Poor simple child of clay,"— These are thy words, when well thou knows't that I, Though bound to earth by bonds made of its mire, Am mightier than thou. Were it not so, Thou would'st not now be face to face with one Of mortal birth. Thou, too, canst feel revenge, And knowest how to wreak it; but, take heed,— The power which brought thee hither, can, and may Deal harshly with thee. If thou knowest ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... privilege? Not once in a lifetime to the multitude such opportunity is the signal favour of fate. Had he let it pass, Piers felt he must have sunk so in his own esteem, that no light of noble hope would ever again have shone before him. He must have gone plodding the very mire of existence—Daniel's brother, never again anything but ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... in the bloody mire Of dead and dying thousands,—sometimes gaining A yard or two of ground, which brought them nigher To some odd angle for which all were straining; At other times, repulsed by the close fire, Which really poured as if all Hell were raining Instead ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... largely developed; and necessarily so, as both in a state of nature or half-civilization, the greater portion of their food is buried under the earth or mingled with the filth and mire of their sties, and would pass unheeded, if not for the acuteness of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... as though walking in a swamp, in danger of sinking at each step in the mire and slime, while his godfather, like a river loach, wriggled himself on a dry, firm little spot, vigilantly watching the life ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... just on the borders of Wales, on the hither side of the river Dee, where the ship was to be launched. Here the train stopped, and absolutely deposited our whole party of excursionists, under a heavy shower, in the midst of a muddy potato-field, whence we were to wade through mud and mire to the ship-yard, almost half a mile off. Some kind Christian, I know not whom, gave me half of his umbrella, and half of his cloak, and thereby I got to a shed near the ship, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fact, disappeared. The dairyman failed in business, and became a hackney-cab driver. The Colonel, perhaps, took up some similar industry for a time. Perhaps, like a stone flung into a chasm, he went falling from ledge to ledge, to be lost in the mire of rags that seethes through the streets ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... his fall, so furious was he at having been outwitted by a boy, and having not only allowed him to escape, but being himself rolled in the mire—raised his voice in a tremendous shout. All listened intently, but no answering sound ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... native heath. That old rogue, my father, used to boast that he never got drunk—I used to boast that I never got sober. Finally, I bumped my last bump and found myself at the bottom. And there I stayed, until Captain Dabney, and the dear girl, pulled me out of the mire." ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... antithetical intelligence! Tenderness and harshness, refinement and vulgarity, sentiment and sensuality; now soaring up into ether, and then dragging along in mud. Mire and sublimity; all that is strangely blended in this admixture of inspired dust. It may seem strange, but to me it appears that a true voluptuary should never abandon his thought to the coarseness of reality. It is only by exalting ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... to alienate his sympathies. 'Think of a man,' he exclaims about poor Whiston, 'who had brilliant preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for half a century through the very mire of despondency and destitution, because he disapproved of Athanasius, or because the "Shepherd of Hermas" was not sufficiently esteemed by the Church of England.' To do him justice, De Quincey admits, in another passage, that this ridicule of a poor ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... behind. Their way was often obstructed by the trunks and branches of fallen trees, thickets tangled and dense and thorny, huge and rugged rocks, and treacherous swamps, covered with long, green grass, into which the horses, stepping unawares, would suddenly plunge up to the saddle-girths in water and mire. ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... to governments. The acknowledged principles which underlie the outward forms of government alone are vitally important, and by the adherence to or abdication of these principles each nation will be judged. The revered name of Republic is as capable of being dragged in the mire as that of the title of any other form of government. Mere names and words have lately had a strange and even a disastrous power of misleading and deceiving, not persons only, but nations,—even a whole continent of nations. It is needful to beware of being drawn ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations, That are little of might, that are molded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations, Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of shadows fast fleeing, Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... heathen! It is not a straight game to fit me out with a pair of hip rubber boots miles too large for me and then sit and howl when you see me losing my life in them. Well, you needn't come into the mire if you don't want to, but you can at least be gentleman enough to pass me the end of that pole that is lying beside ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... men dipped their bits of meat into.) Halliwell curiously explains broo, top of anything. 'Tak a knyf & shere it smal, the rute and alle, & sethe it in water; take the broo of that, and late it go thorow a clowte'— evidently the juice. Ital. broda, broth, swill for swine, dirt or mire; brodare, to ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... ease, had deserted Hugh. When the last hour of the last day was over, and the dawn which he had bound himself in honor not to see found him sitting alone in his room, where he had sat all night, horror fell upon him at what he had done. Now that its mire was upon him he saw by how foul, by how dastardly a path ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... offscourings^, outscourings^; off scum; caput mortuum [Lat.], residuum, sprue, fecula [Lat.], clinker, draff^; scurf, scurfiness^; exuviae [Lat.], morphea; fur, furfur^; dandruff, tartar. riffraff; vermin, louse, flea, bug, chinch^. mud, mire, quagmire, alluvium, silt, sludge, slime, slush, slosh, sposh [U.S.]. spawn, offal, gurry [U.S.]; lientery^; garbage, carrion; excreta &c 299; slough, peccant humor, pus, matter, suppuration, lienteria^; faeces, feces, excrement, ordure, dung, crap [Vulg.], shit ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... not have any divorce trial," said Ishmael firmly. "We will not have your daughter's pure name dragged through the mire of a divorce court; we will have Lord Vincent and his accomplices arrested and tried; the valet for murder, and the viscount and the opera singer for conspiracy and kidnaping. We have proof enough to convict ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... overjoyed. For twenty-five years dragged in the mire of African slavery, the mother of quadroon children and ignorant of her own identity, they nevertheless welcomed her back to their embrace, not fearing, but hoping, she was their ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... with our guns hidden in a deep narrow cart-track, their dark muzzles trained on the enemy, and the gunners, knee-deep in the mire of the lane, sweating at their work. "We're under covering fire now," our young lieutenant explained, as we trudged forward, lifting enormous masses of clay on our boots at every step. "One battalion is ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... The hills receded as they progressed, the basin widened and grew more difficult to traverse, for the ground was boggy and thickly covered with small, rotting pines. Every here and there some had fallen and lay in horrible tangles among pools of mire. A sluggish creek wound through the hollow and the men had often to cross it, while as they plodded through the morass they found their loads intolerably heavy. Still Clarke's directions had plainly indicated this valley as their road, and they stubbornly pushed on, ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... hunde dschinawe duge gole dui trin Lawinser mire zelle gowe, har geas mange an demaro foro de demare Birengerenser. Har weum me stildo gage lean demare Birengere mr lowe dele, de har weum biro gage lean jon man dran o stilibin bri, de mangum me mr lowe lender, gai deum dele. ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... between Chippewa and Sioux." Dick threw a pebble at Norris' face. "Suppose you go up to that inky stream in the north, which twists mysteriously through the forests, black with the bodies of dead men rotting in its mire. I don't wonder they thought the rough life more fascinating than kings and courts. I'd like to have seen sun-dances and maiden-tests; I'd like to have eaten food strange enough to be picturesque, and to have found new streams and traced them to their sources, and to ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... a little pony They called it Dapple Gray, I lent it to a lady To ride a mile away. She whipped it, she slashed it, She drove it through the mire. I will not lend my pony more, For all ...
— The Sleeping Beauty Picture Book - Containing The Sleeping Beauty; Bluebeard; The Baby's Own Alaphabet • Anonymous
... lake in her own grounds. At Castelnau de Montmirail, near Cahors, the head of one of two brothers, De Ballud, was cut off and the blood left to drip upon the face of the surviving brother; the Comtesse de la Mire was seized in her own house by the peasants and her arms cut to pieces; M. Guillin was slain, roasted, and eaten before the eyes of his wife. At Bordeaux the Abbes de Longovian and Dupuy were beheaded and their heads carried about on pikes. M. de Bar was burned alive in his chateau. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Touranian, and had plenty of spirit and animation, he kept himself virtuous as a true saint, in spite of the blandishments of the city, and had passed the days of his green season without once dragging his good name through the mire. Many will say this passes the bounds of that faculty of belief which God has placed in us to aid that faith due to the mysteries of our holy religion; so it is needful to demonstrate abundantly the secret cause of this silversmith's chastity. And, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... it for this I gave thee my fair fame to cherish? Or was it for this that I put my name into thy keeping? Oh, child, listen while there is yet time! Wilt thou with thy own hands take his manhood from thy husband to drag it through the mire? Patience, as I have shared thy childhood, as I have loved and cherished thy girlhood, as I have held thee in my arms as bride and wife, give me back my honor while there is yet time. Oh, my wife! my darling!" And I heard him sobbing like ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... possibly say that they are kind or compassionate? Or are they willing to be good and great when one comes? Do you have confidence in a single one of them? Have they not even dragged your good name into the mire? Are any of the things that are sacred to you and to me sacred to them? Can they be moved the one-thousandth part of an inch by your distress or my distress or the distress of any human being? Is not the slime of slander ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... are men after all; yet there is some reason to fear that, like hogs, they wallow in the mire of sensuality; but their day will be but ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... that I enjoy this sort of thing, you're quite mistaken." Hadn't supposed any such thing; hadn't, indeed, referred to the matter. Only looked at him inquiringly, as ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND, trudging stolidly through the mire, attempted to answer CHARLES RUSSELL. "If I am Irish Secretary, as TREVELYAN once said, I'm an English gentleman, and if you suppose I have any sympathy with the sort of thing that goes on at Clongorey, you're mistaken. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... that man. He was born at hazard, by misfortune, in a hovel, in a cellar, in a cave, no one knows where, no one knows of whom. He came out of the dust to fall into the mire. He had only so much father and mother as was necessary for his birth, after which all shrank from him. He has crawled on as best he could. He grew up bare-footed, bare-headed, in rags, with no idea why he was living. He ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions.'[19] 'I often wished that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil to torment others.' A common childish but demoniac idea. His mind was as 'the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.' 'A while after, these terrible dreams did leave me; and with more greediness, according to the strength of nature, I did let loose the reins of my lusts, and delighted in all transgression against the law of God.' 'I was the very ringleader of all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hours of jogging over the rough roads the weary traveler was put down at a country inn whose bed and board were such as to win little praise. Long before daybreak the next morning a blast from the driver's horn summoned him to the renewal of his journey. If the coach stuck fast in a mire, as it often did, the passengers must alight and help ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... fever. It is interesting to find Dennie writing in his introduction, "Literary industry, usefully employed, has a sort of draught upon the bank of opulence, and has the right of entry into the mansion of every Maecenas.... Authors far elevated above the mire of low avarice have thought it debasement to make literature ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... the gate. As above her there is the purity of the moonlit sky, and below her there are the defilements of the pavement, so may she, haply, be divided in her mind between two vistas of reflection or experience. As her footprints crossing and recrossing one another have made a labyrinth in the mire, so may her track in life have involved itself in an intricate ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... On him they did fire; James Caldwell and Crispus Attucks Lay bleeding in the mire; Their regiment, the twenty-ninth, Killed Monk and Sam I Gray, While Patrick Carr lay cold in death And could ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... but common post-chaises as any squire would have, as these travelled about without drawing the attention that a London coach would. They rattled and slid along at their own convenience on the muddy road, and the postilion were soon reeking with mire thrown ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... occasions. The whole work combines literary beauty, depth of thought and human feeling in a rare degree. Not only is it irradiated with the calm light of peace, faith and happiness but it glows with sympathy, with the desire to do good and help those who are struggling in the mire of passion and delusion. For this reason it has found more favour with European readers than the detached and philosophic texts which simply preach self-conquest and aloofness. Inferior in beauty but probably older is ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... shears to scare Hence the hag that rides the mare, Till they be all over wet With the mire and the sweat: This observ'd, the manes shall be Of ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick |
