"Miry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like, into miry wilds whence there ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... by means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to the Holborn Union; when the last clerk shall have engrossed the last parchment behind the last splash on the last of the mud-stained windows, which, all through the miry year, are pilloried out of recognition in Gray's Inn-lane. Then, shall a squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump in it, lying between the coffee-house and South- square, be wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have its empire divided between those animals ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... found himself on the Quai near the Pont d'Iena. It was a bright day, but the gloomy walls of the houses and the grey look of the river banks seemed to proclaim that life is hard and cruel. Out in the stream a dredger, all drab with marl, was discharging one after the other its bucket-fuls of miry gravel. By the waterside a stout oaken crane was unloading millstones, wheeling backwards and forwards on its axis. Under the parapet, near the bridge, an old dame with a copper-red face sat knitting stockings as she waited for customers ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... of Genesis, and ability was given us to preach the Gospel of life and salvation. All hearts seemed touched, and our own overflowed with gratitude. We may in truth say, Our Heavenly Father has plucked our feet out of a horrible pit and out of the miry clay, and set them upon a rock, and put a new song into our mouth, even praise to his glorious name. On considering afterwards our situation, we could not but behold the hand of a gracious Providence which had led us to this ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... is now used by the inhabitants as a kind of general cow-house, and the bottom is consequently too miry for examination. Some of the stones which covered the later abbesses have inscriptions, which might yet be read, if the chapel were cleansed. The roof of this, as of all the other buildings, is totally destroyed, not ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... rained. Den de raincrow got up in a high tree an' he holler an' axed de Lord for rain. It rained till ebery little rack of cloud dat come ober brought a big shower of large drops. De fiel's wus so wet an' miry you could not go in 'em an' water wus standin' in de fiel's middle of ebery row, while de ditches in de fiel's looked like little rivers, dey wus so full of water. It begun to thunder agin in de southwest, right whar we call de 'Chub hole' of de sky, whar so much rain comes from ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... antagonist. Then he set his lips as he met the shock. Charnock struck him with his shoulder and forced him backwards by the weight of the bag. The mud slipped under his feet; he staggered and clawed at the bank, but his fingers found no hold. They plowed through the miry gravel, and falling face downwards, he rolled down ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... they set earnestly to work, and succeeded in removing the greater portion of the goods; when they made another attempt, happily with better success than previously; and brought the dray from its miry adherence to a position on the bank. It was then reladen with the goods; while the men, barely recovered from the chagrin caused by the misadventure, performed their work with a sullen moroseness, enlivening ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the cross; and attested to be genuine by the seals of the patriarch of Jerusalem and others! He commanded a procession the following day; and the historian adds, that though the road between St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey was very deep and miry, the king kept his eyes constantly fixed on the phial. Two monks received it, and deposited the phial in the abbey, "which made all England shine with glory, dedicating it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... seemed to view, as one appraises the pattern of an unrolled carpet, every action of Jurgen's life: and she seemed, too, to wonder, without reproach or trouble, how men could be so foolish, and of their own accord become so miry. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... being a good Spaniard, along with the second lieutenant-poor Treenail-to Morillo's headquarters. We got an order to the officer commanding the nearest post on shore, to provide us with horses; but before reaching it, we had to walk, under a roasting sun, about two miles through miry roads, until we arrived at the barrier, where we found a detachment of artillery, but the commanding officer could only give us one poor broken-winded horse, and a jackass, on which we were to proceed to headquarters on the morrow; and here, under a thatched ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... in what it is easier to call large puddles than anything so poetic as small pools. A motor car sent by friends had halted beside the platform; I got into it with a not unusual vagueness about where I was going; and it wound its way up miry paths to a more rolling stretch of country with patches of cactus here and there. And then with a curious abruptness I became conscious that the whole huge desert had vanished, and I was in a new land. The dark red plains had rolled away like an enormous nightmare; and I found myself ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... helpful and sustaining, rather than clinging and dependent. She had a heart "at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize." From the depths of her soul she pitied Gregory and wished to help him out of a state which the psalmist with quaint force describes as "a horrible pit and the miry clay." ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... a horrid pit Where mourning long I lay, And from my bonds releas'd my feet, Deep bonds of miry clay. ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... spot, stretched out their gaunt arms, and implored charity in the name of the Merciful Mother! Glyndon hastily threw them some small coins, and, turning away his face, clapped spurs to his horse, and relaxed not his speed till he entered the village. On either side the narrow and miry street, fierce and haggard forms—some leaning against the ruined walls of blackened huts, some seated at the threshold, some lying at full length in the mud—presented groups that at once invoked ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... day, unbrightened by any sun. For almost a week there had been rain, and the roads were heavy and the lanes muddy and full of pools of miry water. ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... they came to an old broken gate, half open; it was the entrance to a narrow cartway, now unused, which descended windingly between high thick hedges. Ruts of a foot in depth, baked hard by summer, showed how miry the track must be ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... experiencing a mistake, they willingly returned to their respective duties. Thus when the rabble of Athens murmured at the exaction of the magistrates, Themistocles satisfied them with such another tale of the fox and the hedge-hog; the first whereof being stuck fast in a miry bog, the flies came swarming about him, and almost sucked out all his blood, the latter officiously offers his service to drive them away; no, says the fox, if these which are almost glutted be frighted off, there will come a new hungry set that will be ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... he has been an American soldier, and is an American citizen, they had cheerfully marched through heavy mire. So much had they given to so small a demand on their natural sentiment, he could not doubt they would with equal alacrity, and with the same firm step, march over a field miry with the blood of comrade and of foe, where opposing causes make to ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... alone, was seen and pursued by a party of savages. He retreated fighting, killed three Indians with his own hand, and probably would have regained his boat in safety, had he not accidentally plunged into a miry hole, from which he could not ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... was the firm reply. "He has taken my feet out of the miry clay and set them on firm ground, and I have promised him that they shall not go down into the pit again. But Andy! I must ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... wanted, for he had a plan for revenging himself on his upstart nephew. He drove on till he got to a place where there was a muddy and miry puddle beside the road. Then by a dexterous manoeuver, for he understood driving thoroughly, he managed to overturn the wagon, and Nicholas was thrown headlong into the puddle. Dick leaped out just at the right time, retaining his hold on ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... wife upon a miserable horse, lean and lank, which he had picked out for the purpose, and himself and his servant no better mounted; they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and ever when this horse of Katharine's stumbled, he would storm and swear at the poor jaded beast, who could scarce crawl under his burthen, as if he had been the most passionate ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the hill, we descended to a deep miry watercourse, full of bulrushes, then over another hill, from the heights of which we saw Suwarora's palace, lying down in the Uthungu valley, behind which again rose another hill of sandstone, faced on the top with a dyke of white quartz. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to find an American novel a good deal like the now extinct American stage-coach whose passengers not only walked over bad pieces of road, but carried fence-rails on their shoulders to pry the vehicle out of the sloughs and miry places. It was partly the fault of the imperfect roads, no doubt, and it may be that our social ways have only just now settled into such a state as makes smooth going for the novelist; nevertheless, the old stage-coach was hard to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... And, stranger yet, at that very instant, too, there sprang from Lord Farquhart's window a figure strangely resembling Lord Farquhart himself, decked out in Lord Farquhart's riding clothes, that had been cast aside after the miry ride from London town, and tucked away in one corner of Lord Farquhart's room were the dark riding coat and breeches of the youth who had slumbered before the hearth of The ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... take your stand some winter's morning just before nine o'clock, where you can overlook a circle of some two or three miles' radius, the center being the Old Red School-house. You will see little figures picking their way along the miry roads, or ploughing through the deep drifts, cutting across the fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus and his cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... most," snarled Kemp, "but mostly lies! And why does he forget the miry lanes By Brainford with thick woods on either side, And the deep holes, where I could find no ease But skipped up to my waist?" A crackling laugh Broke from his lips which, if he had not worn The cap ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the miry road, And spake no word to us, but had the look Of one whom other care constrains ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and danced ahead of him like a will-o'-the-wisp, and was often lost entirely; while the tired boy, burdened with his cumbersome box, hastened after as best he might, stumbling and tumbling over stones and tough roots, splashing through miry places and running violently against tree-trunks, till just as he was ready to sink down in despair and let his unpleasant companion go where he would, he came suddenly upon the Funny Man resting upon the gate of ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... long and earnestly across the miry waste. Then she turned to her companion with a strange look ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... running up over the hills, giving their own names, with a sprinkling of the names of bear-flag heroes, not forgetting the usual Washington and Jackson, leaving in the centre a plaza, the cove in front to be filled in later. The streets were narrow, dusty in summer and miry in winter. Spanish-American streets are usually thirty-six feet wide. Winding trails led from the Presidio to the Mission, and from Mission and Presidio to the cove. This was the beginning of San Francisco, which a merciful providence has ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... lost, coats torn, boots burst and pantaloons dropped with magnificent miscellaneousness, and dozens of those who rose from the miry streets into which they had been thrown looked like the disembodied spirits of a mud bank. The snakes crawled on the sidewalk and into Broadway, where some of them died from injuries received, and others were dispatched ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the soft, miry road. The one wheel seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the clay, and the others showed a ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... the gentle charities, that, like the face of Una, make sunshine in the shady place, are often found not far from rugged rage and black despair. Press on through glad and sombre scenery. Press upward in steep ways, miry and craggy, narrow and broad, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... of wet, miry road took us to the run of which the Colonel had spoken. Arrived there, we found the hound standing on the bank, wet to the ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... of walking to a farm which was about half a league distant by the road, but the distance could be reduced by half by going over a deep and miry ditch across which a narrow plank was thrown, and I always insisted upon going that way, in spite of the fright of the ladies who always trembled on the narrow bridge, although I never failed to cross the first, and to offer my hand ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... dim vista of the past, following the sound of the dead feet that wander so restlessly, stamping upon the impress that will not be stamped out. Rave on, wild wind, eternal voice of human misery; fall, dead footsteps, eternal echo of human memory; stamp, miry feet; stamp into forgetfulness that which will not ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... of course. Some good people will think I am either a fanatic or an artful schemer, while the clerical place-seekers, who love the flesh-pots of Egypt and have their eyes on the thrones of the Church and the world, will denounce my 'secularity' and tell me I am feeding the 'miry troughs' of the publican and sinner. No matter, if only God is pleased to vouchsafe 'signs following.' And one weary-faced lonely girl, grown fresh of countenance and happy of mien, or one bright little woman, snatched from the brink ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... neck somewhat east, making but slow way because the ground was so broken and rocky; and in another hour's space Sure-foot led down-hill due east to where the stony neck sank into another desolate miry heath still falling toward the east, but whose further side was walled by a rampart of crags cleft at their tops into marvellous-shapes, coal-black, ungrassed and unmossed. Thitherward the hound led straight, and Gold-mane ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... by nature a very light and cheerful heart; her spirit was as bright and cheery as her appearance. She picked up her courage very soon, stepped neatly through the miry, slippery streets, and presently reached her home. Mrs. Reed and the six grandchildren lived in a model lodging-house in a place called Sparrow Street, off Whitechapel Road. The house possessed all the new sanitary improvements, a good supply of water was laid on, the rooms were well ventilated, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... was generally obstructed by fallen trees, old logs, miry places, pointed rocks and entangled roots, which were not to be avoided. We were alternately on the ridge of a lofty mountain and in the depths of a valley. At best, our path was obscure and we needed guides to go before us. Night approaches, ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... When we look towards winter from the last borders of autumn, it seems as if we could not encounter it, and as if it never would go over. So does threatened trouble of any kind seem to us as we look forward upon its miry ways from the last borders of the pleasant greensward on which we have hitherto been walking. But not only do both run their course, but each has its own alleviations, its own pleasures; and very marvellously does the healthy mind fit itself to the new circumstances; ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch farmer—John Van Antwerp—and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... and along the miry, uneven ways, men stand in groups, their conversation all of the luck of "the toffs." But around the Office of the Gold League the crowd is greatest, and the cheers of the members are ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... the 30th of May, 1793, the streets of Paris were darkened with a dismal storm of low, scudding clouds, and chilling winds, and sleet and rain. Pools of water stood in the miry streets, and every aspect of nature was cheerless and desolate. But there was another storm raging in those streets, more terrible than any elemental warfare. In locust legions, the deformed, the haggard, the brutalized in form, in features, in mind, in heart—demoniac men, satanic ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... age which succeeded those ancient ones, and to know what its quality formerly was, and still is? Follow me, and you shall see. They are those concerning whom Daniel thus prophesied: 'A kingdom shall arise after those four in which iron shall be mixed with miry clay: they shall mingle themselves together by the seed of man: but they shall not cohere one with the other, as iron is not mixed with clay, Dan. ii. 41-43:'" and he said, "By the seed of man, whereby iron shall be mixed ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... guns from Philadelphia. A prize, taken from the enemy, put some fit and excellent pieces at the disposal of the Navy Department. To avoid the danger of capture by the enemy's cruisers, these were carted over the miry roads of New Jersey. Twenty heavy cannon were thus conveyed by the strength of horses. Carriages of the most approved model were constructed, and every thing done to bring her into prompt action, as an efficient ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... through great solitudes, where the trees upon the banks grew thick and close; and floatad in the stream; and held up shrivelled arms from out the river's depths; and slid down from the margin of the land, half growing, half decaying, in the miry water. On through the weary day and melancholy night; beneath the burning sun, and in the mist and vapour of the evening; on, until return appeared impossible, and restoration to their home a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it—except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... without any appeal, or permission to resort to another court of law. The witnesses in giving evidence wore their caps to show that they were free miners, and took the usual oath, touching the Book of the Four Gospels with a stick of holly, {149a} so as not to soil the Sacred Volume with their miry hands. These singular usages explain the observation of the Rev. H. Berkin that "the inhabitants are completely sui generis," and "their exact situation can scarcely be understood except by those on the spot," as likewise the sentiment which the Rev. H. C. H. Hawkins ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... of the reins, or by the tearing of some frightened thing through the canes that beset the low, miry bank, the horse sprang aside; then stood trembling with pricked ears. The white man stared at the stream; turned in his saddle and stared at the tree trunks, the patches of moonlight, and the impenetrable shadow that closed each vista. "The blazed trees!" ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... boat glided into miry pulpy water, where her course tended downwards, and where the earth-vault above darkened as it sank ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... inaccessible intrenchments. Thirty thousand English or Prussians[53] were sacrificed by their hands on that fatal day; and when it is considered, that this horrible carnage was the work of fifty thousand men[54], dying with fatigue and hunger, and striving in miry ground against an impregnable position and a hundred and thirty thousand fighting men, we cannot but be seized with sorrowful admiration, and decree to the vanquished ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... don't understand. What are you speaking about?" Evelyn told her of Sister Miry John's departure. "You cared for her a great ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... moving on towards Chalons was the only visible figure in the landscape. Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided. With an old sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of some wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard untrimmed; the cloak he carried over his shoulder, and the clothes he wore, sodden with wet; limping along in pain and difficulty; he looked as if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if the wail ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... hoped for a longer interview. "Stop as you come back, won't you?" she asked. "I'm goin' to pick you some of the handsomest poppies I ever raised. I got the seed from my sister-in-law's cousin, she that was 'Miry Gregg, and they do beat everything. They wilt so that it ain't no use to pick 'em now, unless you was calc'latin' to come home by the other road. There's nobody sick about here, is there?" to which the doctor returned a shake of the head and the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... youth. Like David Copperfield, he had known what it was to be a poor, neglected lad, set to rough, uncongenial work, with no more than a mechanic's surroundings and outlook, and having to fend for himself in the miry ways of the great city. Like David Copperfield, he had formed a very early acquaintance with debts and duns, and been initiated into the mysteries and sad expedients of shabby poverty. Like David Copperfield, he had been made free of ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... strange companions, To thee—so slender and chaste and cool— But a white star loses no glimmer of beauty In all the mud of a miry pool That holds the grace of its white reflection; Nothing could fleck thee, nothing could stain, Thou hast made a home for thy delicate beauty Where all things peaceful ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... re-enter Moscow it was necessary to cross the camp, or rather the several camps, of the army; and we wended our way over cold and miry ground, through fields where all was devastation and ruin. This camp presented a most singular aspect; and I experienced feelings of bitter melancholy as I saw our soldiers compelled to bivouac at ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... downpour. A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about the house-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed for losing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up, painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He moved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because of the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... slowly advancing, were within seventy miles of London. Though midwinter was approaching, the weather was fine; the way was pleasant; and the turf of Salisbury Plain seemed luxuriously smooth to men who had been toiling through the miry ruts of the Devonshire and Somersetshire highways. The route of the army lay close by Stonehenge; and regiment after regiment halted to examine that mysterious ruin, celebrated all over the Continent as the greatest wonder of our island. William entered Salisbury with the same military pomp which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... well," said Henry. "Had the boy grown up verily like my father, thou and he might have fallen out; or if not—why, you knights and nobles ride in miry bloody ways, and 'tis a wonder if even the best of you does not bring his harness home befouled and besmirched—not as shining bright as he took it out. Well, what didst thou with the poor lad? Cut him in ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he sold the saddle—said he wasn't going to risk HIS life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe—always HAD despised to ride on a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... making two crossings. At the point where the new trail led to the right we held a council of war to determine whether to keep to the old trail, and so save several days' travel, or to turn to the right and avoid the difficult crossing. The new trail was reported to be exceedingly miry, and that determined the matter—we concluded to make ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... itself which had turned, and which was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... heavy weight in the other scale—that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Hence, before his volumes are put within the reach of immature minds, there is need of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Bladud made to, drive or entice them from this spot were entirely useless. They continued to wallow in their miry bed, until at length the calls of hunger induced them to seek the woods for food; but after they had eaten a hearty meal of acorns, they returned to the swamp, to the increasing surprise of Bladud. As for his part, having taken a supper of coarse black bread and roasted acorns, he sought shelter ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... to the more excellent things. If thou declinest to that which is worse, never expect any other to punish thee: thou hast put thyself in a miserable estate; as if by turns thou lookest down to the miry ground, and up to heaven, setting aside all outward causes, by the very law of sight thou seemest sometime to be in the dirt, and sometime present to the stars. But the common sort considereth not ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... was uttered as they followed their guide. Mrs Franklin lifted up her heart in silent praise for their preservation, and in prayer for present direction. Backward and forward swayed the lantern, just revealing snatches of hedge and miry path. At last the deep barking of a dog told that they were not far off from a dwelling: the next minute Mr Tankardew exclaimed, "Here we are;" and the light showed them that they were come to a little ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... to Toby's place, the main trail through the swamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm was situated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way—that is, a road built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Save in very wet weather this road ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... disgrace, which is the motive of other men. He too has been a captive, and the willing agent of his own captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him, and he has heard her voice; she has gently entreated him, and brought him out of the 'miry clay,' and purged away the mists of passion and the illusions of sense which envelope him; his soul has escaped from the influence of pleasures and pains, which are like nails fastening her to the body. To that prison-house she will not return; ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... through the languid atmosphere of a hot-house. She was arrayed characteristically in a short-skirted, tailor-made gown of a brown hue and bound with brown leather, and wore in addition a man's cap, dog-skin gloves, and heavy laced-up boots fit to tramp miry country roads. With her fresh complexion and red hair, and a large frame instinct with vitality, she looked aggressively healthy, and Lambert with his failing life felt quite a ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... great quantity of water flows from one into another, as into basins, and there are immense bulks of ever-flowing rivers under the earth, both of hot and cold water, and a great quantity of fire, and mighty rivers of fire, and many of liquid mire, some purer and some more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come to each of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... their master's confidence or not is not certain, but just before midnight they plunged into a narrow, miry road that traversed wastes and low coppices; the plash of the horses' feet showed the tract to be marshy and full of pools. Her ladyship looked out across the dreary ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... has sunk into some mossy or miry place," said Michael, to a man near him, into whose face he could not look, "a cruel, cruel death to one like her! The earth on which my child walked has closed over her, and we ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... spunkies Decoy the wight that late an' drunk is: The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... worketh still, In ways most wonderful. He drew me from the miry clay, He filled my cup quite full. And while my heart can speak ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... Learning, who stood watching Lubin and Nelly. "Why, the boy has twice sat down to rest on his bundle; and now, surely my spectacles must be at fault, can he be rolling his carpet up the hill, instead of carrying it on his shoulder! In a fine miry state it will be by the time that he ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... 'twas the ——," he said, rubbing a miry hand across the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse (p. 065) luck! Are ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... Hunting-lodges. The Gohrde at Hanover, for example, what a splendor there in comparison! But it serves Friedrich Wilhelm's simple purposes: there is game abundant in the scraggy woodlands, otter-pools, fish-pools, and miry thickets, of that old "Schenkenland" (belonged all once to the "SCHENKEN Family," till old King Friedrich bought it for his Prince); retinue sufficient find nooks for lodgment in the poor old Schloss so called; and Noltenius and Panzendorf drive out each once a week, in some light vehicle, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... she uttered this petition than she thought she heard a voice, and these were its words: "Say, 'O Lord, pluck me out of the fiery brands, and take my feet out of the miry pit, and make me stand on the everlasting rock; and, O Lord, save my soul.'" Tidy had heard a great many of her people tell about dreams and visions and voices, but she had never before had any such experiences. But this came to her ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... to-day. Among other discourses one Mr. Oudant, secretary to the late Princesse of Orange, did discourse of the convenience as to keeping the highways from being deep, by their horses, in Holland (and Flanders where the ground is as miry as ours is), going in their carts and, waggons as ours in coaches, wishing the same here as an expedient to make the ways better, and I think there is something in it, where there is breadth enough. Thence to my office, sent for to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... suits of clothes formed almost the sum total of his worldly wealth, that as he was accompanying the queen in one of her daily walks,—during which she was fond of giving audience, because she imagined that the open air produced a favorable effect on her complexion,—she arrived at a miry spot, and stood in perplexity how to pass. With an adroit presence of mind, the courtier pulled off his rich plush cloak and threw it on the ground to serve her for a footcloth. She accepted with pleasure an attention which flattered her, and it was afterwards quaintly said that ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... rooted in. Born a poor farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at Fortune and brought her to her knees amidst a shower ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the thought to that which I have elsewhere considered, that man's true treasure is in God. That great axiom of the religious consciousness, which pervades the whole of Scripture, is rapturously expressed in many a psalm, and never more assuredly than in that one which struggles up from the miry clay in which the Psalmist's 'steps had well-nigh slipped' and soars and sings thus: 'The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup; Thou maintainest my lot,' 'The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Hollanders came down the street to take part with their comrades, on whom we laid such load that they took to their heels, some being knocked down, and many having their pates pitifully broken, while others had to run through a miry ditch to escape us. The master of their admiral had occasioned this tumult, as he had gone from ship to ship, desiring the men to go armed on shore and kill all the English they could meet: and when some of our people were going on board the Dutch ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... which he gave, of his own drawing. The largest was on Lake Erie, the other on French Creek, fifteen miles apart, with a waggon road between them. The nearest and levellest way to them was now impassable, lying through large and miry savannas; they would have, therefore, to go by Venango, and it would take five or six sleeps (or days) of good travelling to reach the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... when they saw us charging down upon them. In a moment they sprang upon their ponies and dashed away. Had it not been for the creek, which lay between us and them, we would have got them before they could have mounted their horses; but as it was rather miry, we were unexpectedly delayed. The Indians fired some shots at us while we were crossing, but as soon as we got over we went for them in hot pursuit. A few of the redskins, not having time to mount, had started on foot toward the brush. One of these ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... a vision of social life in its most charming and refined forms, of quick-pulsed youth, of fair, impassioned faces invested with all the charm of poetry, framed in a marvelous setting of luxury or art; and, on the other hand, he saw a sombre picture, the miry verge beyond these faces, in which passion was extinct and nothing was left of the drama but the cords and pulleys and bare mechanism. Mme. de Beauseant's counsels, the words uttered in anger by the forsaken ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... weather the traveled roads are even worse than the unfrequented ones, for the ground is rendered more miry, and the bogs are more frequent. On a highroad near La Vega I arrived at a mudhole where an old man was being rescued by a passer-by from drowning in the liquid mud; I snapped a photograph of the scene ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... an hour Kent returned with the information that he had found the boat about half a mile up, but that Leslie was not in it. Both started, and, after stumbling over bushes loaded with water, and sinking into the miry shore, and wading in the river by turns, they came upon it, pulled high up on the bank. It was becoming lighter every moment, and as Kent knew that as soon as possible their trail would be followed, he was unwilling ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... then got possession of another of the balsas containing Pizarro's wardrobe; but, as the men who defended it raised loud cries for help, they reached the ears of Hernando Pizarro, who, with a small body of horse, had effected a landing some way farther down the shore. A broad tract of miry ground, overflowed at high water, lay between him and the party thus rudely assailed by the natives. The tide was out, and the bottom was soft and dangerous. With little regard to the danger, however, the bold cavalier spurred his horse into the slimy depths, and followed ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... and Spot ne'er whined But quickly caught the thief behind; He dragged him down in the mire and dirt, And tore his coat and tore his shirt, Then held him fast on the miry ground; The robber uttered not a sound, While his hands and feet the farmer bound, And tumbled ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... solitude and changeful beauty of their pathway was too perfect for her to mar it by any mournful forebodings. He walked beside her under the arched aisles of the pine-woods bareheaded, singing snatches of song as joyously as a school-boy, or waded off through marshy and miry places in quest of some rare plant which ought to be growing there, splashing back to her farther on in the winding road, scarcely less happy if he had not found it than if he had. How could she be troubled whilst her father was ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... wi' angry sugh; The shortening winter-day is near a close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The blackening trains o' craws to their repose: The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes— This night his weekly moil is at an end,— Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... long in thickets and in brakes Entangled, winds now this way and now that His devious course uncertain, seeking home; Or, having long in miry ways been foiled And sore discomfited, from slough to slough Plunging, and half despairing of escape, If chance at length he find a greensward smooth And faithful to the foot, his spirits rise, He chirrups brisk his ear-erecting steed, And winds ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... it like yesterday, Pierre," exclaimed Amelie, sparkling at the reminiscence; "I recollect how I wept and wrung my hands, tired out, hungry, and forlorn, with my dress in tatters, and one shoe left in a miry place! I recollect, moreover, that my protectors were in almost as bad a plight as myself, yet they chivalrously carried the little maiden by turns, or together made a queen's chair for me with their locked hands, until we all broke down together and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sinned against the Saviour.' In this deep abyss of misery, THAT love which has heights and depths passing knowledge, laid under him the everlasting arms, and raised him from the horrible pit in miry clay, when no human powers could have reached his case. Dr. Cheever eloquently remarks, that 'it was through this valley of the shadow of death, overhung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blasphemy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... on a little knoll, around which was miry ground, making a cavalry charge difficult. The Indians numbered as many as we did. The safest plan was to dismount some of the men, leaving others to hold the horses, and proceed to the attack on foot. The rest of the men were to remain with their horses, and ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... hamlet a few miles from the town—so lonely that what are called lonely villages were teeming by comparison—there lived a man of curious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet. The way to his house was crooked and miry—even difficult in the present unpropitious season. One evening when it was raining so heavily that ivy and laurel resounded like distant musketry, and an out-door man could be excused for shrouding himself to his ears ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... rendered toilsome, and even dangerous, by the heavy rains of this season, and early snows that had already fallen on the mountains, which had changed the little rills into rushing torrents, and the low bottom-lands into deep and miry swamps. Much delayed by these and the like hinderances, Washington, upon reaching the banks of the Monongahela, deemed it best to send two of the backwoodsmen with the baggage in canoes down this river to its mouth, where, uniting its waters with those of the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... a horse's feet on the somewhat miry road, she 'wondered whether it was a gentleman's horse,' and finally concluded it was, for the impressions were too small to have been made by a 'great clumsy cart-horse'; and then she 'wondered ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... can stand on the river bank without shelter in a heavy storm of rain. There was no sign of abatement; therefore Nagendra, thinking it necessary to seek for shelter, set out to walk to the village, which was at some distance from the river, through miry paths. Presently the rain ceased, the wind abated slightly, but the sky was still thickly covered with clouds; therefore both wind and rain might be expected at night. Nagendra went ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... this night in the forest, and reach an Indian settlement about three o'clock the next evening, after walking one-third of the way through wet and miry ground. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... estate, and accounted solid and judicious beyond his years, he does, nevertheless, much lack the ease and ready wit with which the latter commendeth himself to my sweet kinswoman. We crossed about noon a broad stream near to the sea, very deep and miry, so that we wetted our hose and skirts somewhat; and soon, to our great joy, beheld the pleasant cleared fields and dwellings of the settlement, stretching along for a goodly distance; while, beyond all, the great ocean rolled, blue and cold, under an high easterly wind. Passing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hae a turn at the crack noo," he said, coming forward to a part of the foul miry dungeon where a crowd of male and female prisoners were endeavouring to inhale a little fresh air through a crevice in the wall. "I'm fit to choke for want o' a breath ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... that they could not have broken out of that pasture, and that the river bank was impassable, because of high, thick bushes and miry mud in the open spaces. She had a fight with Blue over these latter places and demonstrated beyond doubt that they were miry, by getting him in to the knees in spite of his violent objections. They left deep tracks behind them when they got out. The calves had not ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... feats this single week Wad mak a daft-like diary, O! I drave my cart out ow'r a dike, My horses in a miry, O! I wear my stockings white an' blue, My love's sae fierce an' fiery, O! I drill the land that I should pleugh, An' pleugh the drills entirely, O! O, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... order still further to increase the difficulty of forcing a passage, they conducted the water of the warm springs over the ground without the wall, in such a way as to make the surface continually wet and miry. The old wall had now fallen to ruins, but the miry ground remained. The place was solitary and desolate, and overgrown with a confused and wild vegetation. On one side the view extended far and wide over the sea, with the highlands of Euboea ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... but such a trouvaille would be impossible now as Kidd's treasure. And yet the mere taming of the neighborhood does not quite satisfy me as an explanation. Twenty years ago, on my way to bathe in the river, I saw every day a brace of woodcock, on the miry edge of a spring within a few rods of a house, and constantly visited by thirsty cows. There was no growth of any kind to conceal them, and yet these ordinarily shy birds were almost as indifferent to my passing as common poultry would have been. ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... taunt, he seized Hseh P'an by the left leg, and dragging him several steps into a miry spot among the reeds, he rolled him about till he was covered with one mass of mud. "Do you now know what stuff I'm made ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the way, and Harold trudged off to accomplish, as best he might, five Irish miles over miry highways and byways through the darkness of the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... happily ignorant that hot afternoon of the riot, as he followed the peaceful brook through its sheltered glen, and so came up again at last, after his rough handling, to friendly Swarthmoor, where young George Fell, escaped from his persecutors and the miry ditch, had arrived before him. 'And there they were, dressing the heads and hands of Friends and friendly people that were broken that day by the professors and hearers of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... exactly what I had done on that day long ago. I had half slid on a miry descent; it was still there; a little lower I had knocked off the top of a thistle; the thistles had not been discouraged, but were still growing. I recalled it because I had wondered why one knocks off the tops of ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... the more keenly alive and vigilant. It took him but a moment to decide what to do. Through the swamp he ran with a lightness and ability of which in calmer moments he would have been scarcely capable. The exigency of the occasion inspired him. Such leaps he took over miry places! so safely and swiftly be ran the length of an old mossy log! so nimbly he avoided the undergrowth! and so suddenly he arrived at last at the tree the rebel ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of that man's own voice. I dare protest the man no thief, but in all things a madly honourable gentleman. My poor bruised, puzzled boy," said Melicent, with an odd mirthful tenderness, "how came you to be blundering about this miry world of ours! Only be very good for my sake and forget the bitterness; what does it matter ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... been used by the citizens of the county as a place for holding camp-meeting. I estimated its length at not far short of one mile and a half. The main passage is in general quite spacious, the roof elevated, and the floor tolerably level, but often wet and miry. For some distance beyond the entrance there is not much to attract attention; but as we proceed, at the far extremity the chambers are quite as picturesque as the most noted of the well-known Mammoth Cave. The ceilings, sides and floor are adorned with a multitude ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... sense, to corruption. They emerge for a brief season into the light of day, run their swift and fiery career of sin, and then disappear. Dante, in that wonderful Vision which embodies so much of true ethics and theology, represents the wrathful and gloomy class as sinking down under the miry waters and continuing to breathe in a convulsive, suffocating manner, sending up bubbles to the surface, that mark the place where they are drawing out their lingering existence.[4] Something like this, is the wretched life of a vicious population. As ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... Swamp about a quarter of a mile, and re-crossed with great difficulty by a cow-path."* (* "Jackson himself," writes Dr. McGuire, "accompanied by three or four members of his staff, of whom I was one, followed the cavalry across the Swamp. The ford was miry and deep, and impracticable for ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... her couch's foot Lorenzo stood, and wept: the forest tomb Had marr'd his glossy hair which once could shoot Lustre into the sun, and put cold doom Upon his lips, and taken the soft lute From his lorn voice, and past his loamed ears Had made a miry channel for ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... gust of wind arise, The brittle forest into atoms flies: The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends, And in a spangled show'r the prospect ends. Or, if a southern gale the region warm, And by degrees unbind the wintry charm, The traveller, a miry country sees, And journeys sad beneath the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... name will live forever in American annals, and whose monument is North Carolina's beautiful State capital, is said in the familiar story to have attracted the notice of Queen Elizabeth by spreading his scarlet cloak over a miry place for the queen to walk upon. He made rapid progress in the good graces of his sovereign, who was quick to discern the men who could be useful to her and to her kingdom. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half brother to Sir Walter, had perished on an expedition to found an English colony in America. A ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... our travellers think of the grand men of old who had built this mighty causeway six or seven centuries earlier. Their chief feeling, when they reached it, was one of relief; the change was so acceptable from the tangled and miry bypath through the forest. ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... to Cremona is rich and fertile, the roads deep and miry of course; very few of the Lombardy poplars, of which I expected to see so many: but Phaeton's sisters seem to have danced all away from the odoriferous banks of the Po, to the green sides of the Thames, I think; meantime here is no other timber ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... night—the driver, the guard, the corporal and I—all well muffled up and swathed about the throat against the northwest wind; and we carried but one inside passenger, though he snored enough for six. You could hear him above the chink of the swingle-bars and the drumming of our horses' hoofs on the miry road. What this inside fare was like I had no means of telling; for when the corporal and I overtook the coach at Torpoint Ferry he was already seated, and being served through the door with hot kidney pasty and hot brandy-and-water. He had travelled ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... some other planks were thrown off, and the horses of the third section refused to take the leap. At this time Lee came up, and every effort was made to replace the planks, but without success. The creek was too deep and miry to afford foot hold to those who attempted to raise them from ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... next day Sherman and McPherson moved their entire forces toward Jackson. The rain fell in torrents all the night before, and continued until about noon of that day making the roads at first slippery and then miry, notwithstanding, the troops marched in excellent order without straggling and in the best of spirits about fourteen miles, and engaged the enemy about 12 o'clock, M., near Jackson. McClernand occupied Clinton with one division, Mississippi Springs with another, Raymond with ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... was not in such scenes as these, or even in the deep and miry road, that Will Marks found the chief obstacles to his progress. There were kites and ravens feeding in the streets (the only scavengers the City kept), who, scenting what he carried, followed the cart or fluttered on its top, and croaked their knowledge of its burden ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... process of the ages, 'the Word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us.' He will never be 'the Bread of Life' unless He is 'the Bread that came down from heaven.' For humanity needs that the blue heavens that bend remote above should come down; and we cannot be lifted 'out of the horrible pit and the miry clay' unless a Hand from above be reached down into the depths of our degradation, and lift us from our lowness. Heaven must come to earth, if earth is to rise to heaven. The ladder must be let down from above, if ever from the lower levels men are to ascend thither where at ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... admiration, I attempted, as our caick approached the landing-place, to be the first to leap upon the quay, when, just as I was in the act of springing, my foot slipped, and I fell headlong into a miry stream. Such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... road was wet and miry, and discouraging enough. The soil was exceedingly rich, producing tropical plants in great profusion, in the midst of which were seen the neat bamboo cottages, with their industrious and cleanly-looking inhabitants. When they reached the foot of the mountain, they found it was impossible to ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... XV., on the west by the Avenue de Marigny, to the south by the road, to the north by the gardens of the Faubourg Saint-Honore. Never is this pretty variety of woman to be seen in the hyperborean regions of the Rue Saint-Denis, never in the Kamtschatka of miry, narrow, commercial streets, never anywhere in bad weather. These flowers of Paris, blooming only in Oriental weather, perfume the highways; and after five o'clock fold up like morning-glory flowers. The women you will see later, looking a little like them, are would-be ladies; while the fair ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... that the nearest priest in our part of the country lived a long distance away, and to get to him and his little thatched chapel one had to cross a swamp two miles wide in which one's horse would sink belly-deep in miry holes at least a dozen times before one could get through. In these circumstances the Gandara family could not go to the priest, but managed to persuade him to come to them, and as La Tapera was not considered a good ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... down. Dawn was breaking and Sim's wild eyes cleared. Here a press of cattle, dazed with fright, and the red and miry heather. Queer black things were curled and stretched athwart it. He noticed a dead man beside him, perhaps of his own slaying. It was a shabby fellow, in a jacket that gaped like Sim's. His face was thin and patient, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... male trio, too, that claimed some attention. They represented to the life merry, devil-may-care vagabonds, and so well did they act their parts that one would have supposed they had just been picked up on the miry highway outside. They deemed it, of course, strictly within their privileges to get drunk with all due speed,—an endeavor in which they admirably succeeded. From that hour on they became an unmitigated nuisance, not even atoned for by some humor or merry ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... consented to advance me a pound sterling on my watch, and without stopping to take breakfast, I plunged into the miry streets. I was at a loss what course to pursue. The fog of the previous evening had prevented my noticing any of the external features of the hotel in which I had dined with my Scotch acquaintance, and where my trunks, that contained all the money for my travels, and the introductory ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... near to a very miry Slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Dispond. Here they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and Christian, because of the Burden that was on his back, began ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... and roundabout, through mud and brambles and swamps; over little brooks and through big miry ponds where they were nearly drowned,—roundabout and roundabout all night long. They wanted to rest, but she went so fast that they could not catch her to make her stand still. And they dared not lose sight of her big whiteness through the dark, for now ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... hence the forests, if this region was ever generally wooded, have been gradually swept away and devoured, until none remain. In fact, from the river bottoms of the lower Kansas to those of the San Joaquin and Sacramento, there is no swamp, though two or three miry meadows of inconsiderable size, near the South Pass, known as 'Ice Springs' and 'Pacific Springs,' are of a somewhat swampy character. Beside these, there is nothing approximating the natural meadows of New England, the fenny, oozy flats of nearly all inhabited countries. Bilious fevers find ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... content in living retired from the world in a cavern. I said: 'Why dost thou not come into the city, that thy heart might be relieved from a load of servitude?' He replied: 'In it there dwell some wonderful and angel-faced charmers, and where the path is miry, elephants may find it slippery.'—Having delivered this speech, we kissed each other's head and face, and took our leaves:—What profits it to kiss our mistress's cheek, and with the same breath to bid her adieu. Thou mightest say that ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... his festival dress; but his best stockings and buckled shoes were stained and splashed, as from much walking in miry ways. Also he came unsteadily, and his face was white as ashes. The ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an insinuating cluck to the horses, while several passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily over the miry road. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Lord fought against the Egyptians also with the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. The former made the soil miry, and the mire was heated to the boiling point by the latter, so that the hoofs of the horses dropped from their feet, and they could not budge ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... understood now that the houses might hold human beings, his brothers and his sisters, since some one roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle. Thus he emerged from the alien swarm amid which he had walked in solitude so many days. Above the dull and miry ways were the beauty of her gray-blue eyes and the glory of her golden hair. He felt as if a white dove had lighted on the town, yet he laughed at his own feelings; for what did he know of her? He had seen her twice, and her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... princes, gave ground on all sides, and were pursued with great slaughter by the victorious Normans. A few troops, however, of the vanquished had still the courage to turn upon their pursuers; and attacking them in deep and miry ground, obtained some revenge for the slaughter and dishonour of the day. But the appearance of the duke obliged them to seek their safety by flight; and darkness saved them from any farther pursuit ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... perhaps to this very moment,—there lingered in Richmond a memorial of those days, most peculiar and most instructive. Before the days of Secession, when the Northern traveller in Virginia, after traversing for weary leagues its miry ways, its desolate fields, and its flowery forests, rode at last into its metropolis,—now slowly expanded into a city of twenty-eight thousand inhabitants,—he was sure to be guided erelong to visit its stately Capitol, modelled by Jefferson, when French minister, from the Maison Carre. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... faces were laughing, though their mustaches dripped. Others grimaced at the spongy bread and flabby meat, or at the missiles which attacked their skin from all sides at every defect in their heavy and miry armor-plate. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... chance go by, for it would not take them two days out of their way, so I went to the fandak to see mules and men, and complete the bargain. There had been a heavy shower some days before, and the streets were more than usually miry, but in the fandak, whose owner had no marked taste for cleanliness, the accumulated dirt of all the rainy season had been stirred, with results I have no wish to record. A few donkeys in the last ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... Him, if only the rubbish is removed which chokes the springs of affection. There are different shades in love—the love of gratitude, where the rescued spirit sings the praise of Him who took it from the terrible pit and miry clay; the love of complacency, with which the holy soul admires Him who is fairer than the sons of men, and dwells with rapture on His majestic beauty and endearing goodness; the love of friendship, in which by constant intercourse a deep attachment arises between the confiding soul and ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... they gazed up at a great mass of apple blossoms in bloom, "Do you think there is anything in all that stuff about God anyway, Westcott?"—of a night when he had gone with some loose woman of the town and of the wet miry street that they had left behind them as she had closed the door—of that night at the party when he had seen Cardillac again—of the things that Maradick had said to him that night when young Stephen was ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and bickering windmill. The hinds were trudging homewards from the fields. A brisk little woman passed us by. She was seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering milk-cans; and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels upon the donkey's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dream, that just as they had ended this talk, they drew nigh to a very miry slough that was in the midst of the plain: and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... horses bore superb silken housings, and the very bits were gilt. [Note 2.] Ten strong men in the royal livery walked, five on each side of the char; and their office, which was to keep it upright in the miry tracks—roads they were not—was by no means ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... loud wi' angry sugh: The shortening winter-day is at its close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh, The black'ning ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... all and of the innocent blood shed. Then Nature herself intervened, and winter came down like a black curtain on the world, and the passes closed up behind the men and were filled with drifts of snow that covered the bones and the blood and the deep miry slides, marked with slipping tracks where struggling, gasping lives had gone out, and the river closed up behind the men and the ice thickened there daily, and the men were in the camps and there ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... All about them stood the dark and silent wilderness, through which they were to make their way for sixteen miles, to reach the Dead River. In this dreaded route there were four carrying places. The last was three miles long, a third of which was a miry spruce and cedar swamp. It took {24} five days of hardest toil to cut their way through the unbroken wilderness. Fortunately, the hunters shot four moose and caught plenty of ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... the secretest parts of his soul lying in the nakedest manner visible: all his passions come out now, all his vanities, and those shamefuller humours which discretion clothes. His body becomes at last like a miry way, where the spirits are beclogged and cannot pass: all his members are out of office, and his heels do but trip up one another. He is a blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on. All the use he has of this vessel himself, is to hold thus much; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the dazzling of the fireworks, the glittering of the flowers, the crash of the rockets, to the serenity of a lovely night—starlit, clear, and still. Alas! yes, this good girl preferred the black mud of the streets of the capital to the verdure of its flowery meadows; its pavements miry or tortuous, to the fresh and velvet moss of the paths in the woods, perfumed by violets; the suffocating dust at the City gates, or the Boulevards, to the waving of the golden ears of corn, enameled by the scarlet of the wild poppy and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... can reach the wicket-gate, they fall into a 'miry slough.' Who does not know the miry slough too? When a man begins for the first time to think seriously about himself, the first thing that rises before him is a consciousness of his miserable past life. Amendment seems to be desperate. He thinks ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... sparks from his lips by a hat skilfully flung. He picked it up miry and cleaned it, observing that his honour was pledged to this fellow. The hat he trampled into a muddy lump. Wilfrid found it impossible to ape his coolness. He swung about for an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
