"Leaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a disconcertingly leaden stare, the while he thought over what had been proposed. "That's right enough," he announced at last, "but I shall expect you to do some writing too. Since we're dealing on this basis, there must be no doubt about the guarantee that you ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... He leaned his leaden throbbing head against the wall, and wave after wave of sickness even unto death shuddered over him. Michael had tried to kill him. His stiff wrenched throat throbbed together with his head. For a long time ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... (1787) amputated it, and thought it quite enough to cover the wound with that large leaden plaster which looks like the lid of a stewpan. Thus was the marvelous art of the Middle Ages treated in almost every land, but particularly in France. We find three sorts of injury upon its ruins, these three marring it to different depths; first, Time, which has made insensible ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... its surface in the spring had been burned off by sagacious Indians, bent on impeding by every known device the march of troops through their lands,—and what device the Indian does not know is little worth knowing. Under a dripping leaden sky the earth lay desolate and repulsive. Miles away to the north the dim, castellated buttes and pinnacles of the range were still faintly visible, and the tortuous trail of the column of twos winding its way ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the thoroughfare in a new, impersonal way. She felt as if now she were only passing through the slushy streets on her way to new lands. From the tracks of the Elevated Road dripped great drops of turbid water. The sky was leaden and an easterly wind, in spite of the thaw, brought the chill humidity that is more penetrating ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... resembled the divine Raffaelle. But his nose, that feature of the human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening; leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent; perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without definite aim or system. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... had gone the queen ran to the window: the few clouds which were chasing one another in the sky an hour before had thickened and spread, and—all the blue was blotted out, to give place to a hue dull and leaden as pewter. Mary Stuart's presentiments were thus realised: as to the little house in Kinross, which one could still make out in the dusk, it remained ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral, leaden tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the bat flew in circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from all quarters, the sun had set, the sabbath had commenced. The forge was mute, the fire extinguished, the prance of horses and the bustle of men in a moment ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... the bullets hissed and the shells shrieked; and, God, how slow—slow—slow was the run! Crittenden's legs were of lead, and leaden were the legs of the men with him—running with guns trailing the earth or caught tightly across the breast and creeping unconsciously. He saw nothing but the men in front of him, the men who were dropping behind him, and the yellow line above, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... excellent, though I'm afraid not in sufficient quantity to answer all the purposes of cleanliness and convenience; articles in which, it must be allowed, our fellow-subjects are a little defective — The water is brought in leaden pipes from a mountain in the neighbourhood, to a cistern on the Castle-hill, from whence it is distributed to public conduits in different parts of the city. From these it is carried in barrels, on the backs of male and female porters, up two, three, four, five, six, seven, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Devil was no uncommon creature; A leaden-witted thief—just huddled Out of the dross and scum of nature; 340 A toad-like lump of limb and feature, With mind, and heart, and ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Canada dispatched M. de Celeron de Bienville, with 300 men, to traverse the vast wilderness lying from Detroit southeast to the Apalachian Mountains. Assuming this range as the limit of the British colonies, he directed that leaden plates, engraved with the arms of France, should be buried at particular places in the western country, to mark the territories of France, and that the chief of the expedition should endeavor to secure a promise from ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... leaden-footed. It was silent and still in that wild spot, as if theirs were the only two human hearts beating in a dead world. It seemed as though neither could bring it upon himself to terminate the interview. Charles was the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... was overcast, the ground was covered with snow, the weather was damp, and very cold for the last of March. As evening drew on, and the leaden sky lowered, and the chill damp penetrated the comfortable carriage in which they traveled, Mr. Willcoxen redoubled his attentions to Miriam, carefully wrapping her cloak and furs about her, and letting down the leathern blinds and the damask hangings, to exclude the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... dispiritedly along a sandy wash which bottomed the canyon. Here the heat became a leaden weight and the men were panting like four-footed beasts running before hunters. Finally Travis sighted what he had been seeking, a flicker of movement on the wall well above. He flung up his hand, pulling his mount to a stand. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... round the little flotilla in a perfect hailstorm. The Chilian ensign in the stern of Douglas's launch was literally ripped from its staff, proving that, had the Bolivians but depressed their rifle muzzles a trifle more, every man in the steamer's well would have been hit by the leaden shower. Lieutenant Alcerrerez, who was sitting next to Douglas, emitted a curious little cough, turned half round, and fell forward over the lad's knees, while several men in the launch sprang convulsively to their feet, only to drop down again in a limp, motionless heap, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... life was at a big cantonment in Upper India, and he was then telling fortunes with the help of three leaden dice, a very dirty old cloth, and a little tin box of opium pills. He told better fortunes when he was allowed half a bottle of whisky; but the things which he invented on the opium were quite worth the money. He was in reduced ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... like a beautiful statue? Is it denied to me to have feeling, to love and to hate, like everybody else? Is the Queen of France nothing but the sacrificial lamb which the dumb idol etiquette carries in its leaden arms, and crushes by slowly pressing it to itself? Tell me, Besenval; speak to me like an honorable and upright man, and remember that God is above us and hears ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the galling present and the dark future which had made so young and unsentimental a woman as Mary Wells think of suicide for a moment or two; and it now deprived her of her rest, and next day kept her thinking and brooding all the time her now leaden limbs were carrying her through ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... and hot, while the furniture exceeded his powers of description. The unpainted wash-stand seemed to poise itself uneasily upon its three remaining legs—the mirror had evidently been the resort of an army of self-admiring flies, who had left their marks upon its leaden surface until reflection was impossible—two hard and uncomfortable-looking chairs—and a bed, every feature of which was a sonorous protest against being slept upon—completed the provisions which had been made for his entertainment and comfort. Casting a dismal ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the slightest doubt that in formally registering this veritable revolution in the secret stronghold of Chinese political thought, a Bastille has been overthrown and the ground left clear for the development of individualism and personal responsibility in a way which was impossible under the leaden formulae of the greatest of the Chinese sages. In defining the relationship which must exist between the Central Government and the provinces even more formidable difficulties have been encountered, the apostles of ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... are the marshes, "a dark, flat wilderness", as Dickens has described it in Great Expectations, "intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it"; still farther away is the "low, leaden line" of the river, and the "distant, savage lair", from which the wind comes rushing, is the sea. It was in this churchyard that the conception of the story sprang into life, and there are actually not five but ten little stone lozenges in one row, with ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... closely to the ground. An interval of a minute, and they glanced over their tiny stockades to find a British soldier. "They are coming up the kopje!" shouted a burgher, and their rifles swept the hillside with bullets. More volleys came from below and, while the leaden tongues sang above and around them, the burghers turned and lay on their backs to refill the magazines of their rifles. Another interval, and the attack was renewed. "They are running!" screamed a youth exultingly, and burghers rose and fired ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... Norma donned her warmest wraps and set out for a walk over to Lanarth. It was a dull afternoon following on a morning of uncertain brightness; dark clouds, heavy with snow, hung sullenly along the horizon; and above, the sky was of a somber, leaden hue. The air felt chill and clinging, like that of a vault; and heaven above, and earth beneath betrayed a severity of mood infinitely depressing. Norma shivered in spite of her heavy furs, and hurried on, burying her hands ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... favourite doctrine of Utility glittering everywhere through his system, like a vein of rich, shining ore (that is not the nature of the material)—but it might be plausibly objected that he had struck the whole mass of fancy, prejudice, passion, sense, whim, with his petrific, leaden mace, that he had "bound volatile Hermes," and reduced the theory and practice of human life to a caput mortuum of reason, and dull, plodding, technical calculation. The gentleman is himself a capital logician; and he has been led by this circumstance to consider ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... his dish (as the proverb says), very uprightly, without spilling one drop of his humour. He is an orator and rhetorician, that delights in flowers and ornaments of his own devising to please himself and others that laugh at him. He is of a leaden, dull temper, that stands stiff, as it is bent, to all crooked lines, but never to the right. When he thinks to appear most graceful, he adorns himself most ill-favouredly, like an Indian that wears jewels in his lips and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... road became at every turn more picturesque. Instead of passing between swampy fields, it ran along a hollow, and the ground was on each side broken into deep holes with rugged edges; black leafless bushes stood out from the grey and yellow sand, while farther away in the background, against the leaden sky, there was a sombre fringe of thickly planted fir-trees. The daylight, dim at noon, had become dimmer as evening drew near; the grey sky darkened, and the tales of robbery and murder made my thoughts anything ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... cheerless as his mood. It had rained during the night and was still raining, or sleeting, and freezing as fast as it fell. The sky was a leaden grey; the drops that came down only went to thicken the sheet of ice that lay upon everything. No face of the outer world could be more unpromising than that which slowly greeted him, as the night withdrew her veil and the stealthy steps of the dawn said that no bright ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... rear of the shop on the long winter evenings; he who shared her crust of bread moistened with the sweat of her brow, and her love at once sublime and poor; he, that same man, after having abandoned her, finds her after a night of orgie, pale and leaden, forever lost, with hunger on her lips and prostitution in ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... ploughing a vanishing furrow upon the circle of the sea that had the surface and the shimmer of an undulating piece of gray silk. The sun, pale and without rays, poured down leaden heat in a strangely indecisive light, and the Chinamen were lying prostrate about the decks. Their bloodless, pinched, yellow faces were like the faces of bilious invalids. Captain MacWhirr noticed two ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... clearly. I wonder if I am insane?" She went with heavy, leaden steps back to her room. A pale, weary face looked at her from her glass. She began arranging her hair. Her fingers, with wills of their own, refused to obey her own command laid upon them. She sought wildly to delay, delay to the last fragment of the last second before yielding ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... fixed on his guard; he was motionless, and under the influence of a leaden sleep. Dick Sand, bringing his lips to the door-sill, thought he might risk murmuring Hercules's name. A moan, like a low and plaintive bark, replied ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... dropped down over the world, a leaden shroud that was not the coming of twilight. Dan jerked about, his whip cracked out over the heads of the leaders and they broke into a quick trot. The shriek of the runners along the frozen snow cut through ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... heard a snap of shots, but they seemed very far away. And the leaden cold of the water crept farther up his body, turning the throb into a cramp. He tried not to cry out; for him there would ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... long break-up of winter, when the Teuton skies were leaden, and it was neither cold enough nor hot enough to stay comfortably in his room, owing to the Bucher economy of heat in this mid-season, it was pleasanter to be stirring about en ville, and, when weary of this, ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... remember him as lying much on the sofa in those days, and liking to have his head "scratched" by the hour together, with a sharp-pointed comb, to relieve by external irritation the distressing sensation's, which he compared to those made, sometimes by a tightening ring, sometimes by a leaden cap, and sometimes (but this was in later life) by a dull boring instrument. Yet he was the centre of the family life, and of its merriment as well; and his strong social instincts and lively animal spirits made him full of animation and vivacity in society, although he was soon ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... after him myself now," he said, in a blithe tone that betrayed his conviction of success. So the sergeant saluted and left the room, his footsteps echoing down the passages like the leaden feet ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... stern face, who, despite the corrective of a blond wig with heavy curls, and that of the pacific green shade we have already mentioned, expressed on his large features, upon which the fury of study had produced a surface of leaden pallor, a snappish and quarrelsome disposition. Of this he had already given proof before entering the dining-room, where every one ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... forget. It was a holiday; everybody was away from home; and the boy found time hanging heavily upon his hands. In an aimless way he wandered, during the afternoon, into his father's library, and poked about among the shelves. 'I tried,' he says, 'to find some book with which to while away the leaden hours. Nothing attracting me, I turned over a basket of pamphlets and selected from among them a tract that looked interesting. I knew that it would have a story at the commencement and a moral at the close; but I promised myself that I would enjoy the story and leave the rest. It would be ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... the window and watched Droom with leaden eyes as he turned suddenly to resume charge of the packing. "We'll soon be through," he ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of both were fixed upon the poles which were set up on the scaffold, where they remained until past three in the afternoon, when they were taken down, and, with the two bodies, placed in leaden coffins ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the window of a particular room in Neville's Court, which was occupied by Byron during his residence at college. The adventurer after getting out of this window has to climb a perpendicular wall, sustaining himself by a frail leaden spout. He has then to traverse the sloping roof of a long range of buildings, by moving carefully on his hands and knees, at the imminent risk of being precipitated fifty feet into the court beneath. When the library is gained, a stone parapet has to be crossed, a bare glance at which sends ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... last farewell. Glaucon turned back to the wreck. The Solon had settled lower. Every wave washed across the waist. Nothing seemed to meet his gaze save the leaden sky, the leaden green water, the foam of the bounding storm-crests. He told himself the gods were good. Drowning was more merciful death than hemlock. Pelagos, the untainted sea, was a softer grave than the Barathrum. The memory ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... cold day with a leaden sky, and snow was shifting restlessly over the ice. The wind was in the south-east, and as they entered the cabin ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... an avowed despotism, has at least the consolation to know that his sufferings bring down upon that despotism the execration of mankind; but he who is entrapped and entangled in the meshes of a crafty and corrupt system of jurisprudence; who is pursued imperceptibly by a law with leaden feet and iron jaws; who is not put upon his trial till the ear of the public has been poisoned, and its heart steeled against him,—falls, at last, without being cheered with a hope of seeing his tyrants ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... fraught with undue importance, and many impatient fellows, upon consulting their watches, were seen to hold the same up to their ear, as though to make sure the time-piece had not stopped, so leaden-footed did the minutes seem to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... great January snowfall was heralded by a leaden sky and a surly looking sunrise, and early in the forenoon down came the white flakes, thick and fast, whirling this way and that, until the valley and the surrounding hills lay pure and soft ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... and without enthusiasm they sat on the stairs and consumed the pancakes to the last crumb. Then, leaden-eyed and breathing hard, they took their empty plates and entered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... day, we drove in a brougham, with a famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly than any of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron; through suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, in which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan; by pond after pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed shoes flew up ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,—"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that winter; and from our hearts we prayed that all was well with them in that better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... up. Daisy was in despair, but Nan took it to the painter who as at work about the house, got him to paint it brick red, with staring black eyes, then she dressed it up with feathers, and scarlet flannel, and one of Ned's leaden hatchets; and in the character of an Indian chief, the late Poppydilla tomahawked all the other dolls, and caused the nursery to run red with imaginary gore. She gave away her new shoes to a beggar child, hoping to be allowed to ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Josephine; he said nothing about the terrible vicissitudes of the battle, a victory scarcely to be distinguished from a defeat; he kept silence about the cruel sufferings of his army which, without having eaten, had fought amid blinding snow beneath a leaden sky; he said no word about the regiments destroyed, one in particular, from colonel to drummers, all killed or wounded; he did not mention his own danger in the cemetery on the hill, where he had stood surrounded by his Guard, his last resource, anxiously watching the fight ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Leaden disappointment descended on Undine. She had felt almost sure of Moffatt's helping her, and for an instant she wondered if some long-smouldering jealousy had flamed up under its cold cinders. But ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... were round every town, Garden airs went sweetly up, heaven smiled down; Till under leaden hail with flaming breath, Graves and ashen harvest were the keep ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... the full Sou'west All heavy-winged with brine, Here lies above the folded crest The Channel's leaden line; And here the sea-fogs lap and cling, And here, each warning each, The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring Along ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... at it. In the leaden pipe that was fastened to the wall were two nuts, which could be turned by a small spanner, and between them was a brass cap, which fitted on to a circular outlet ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... project is no where explained, but might possibly be intended for conveying water, by means of machinery and leaden pipes, for the supply of some palace or city ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... presence hath dim lookes. Is it because they are in the armes of night, Which sets a leaden lustre in the eye? Or hath some accident occoasted [sic] them That troubles their aspect with melancholy? Is Navar well? is Ferdinando well? Is Pembrooke well? is Bellamira well? 0 where is Bellamira? tell me, Princes, For now my tongue hath strooke upon her ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... below. In this wind lay our hope, and scarcely less in the mists, for they might be the means of dispersing the haze. There went a rift, a patch of blue sky—and there a bit of green mountain! Then again all was leaden, damp, and cold. We seemed to have reached the Ultima Thule, to be the sole living creatures in some far-away corner of an earth gone back to chaos and mysterious twilight. Again a break, and again appeared a stretch of dark fir-covered mountain ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the reports. It made him restless to be lolling here outside of the storm when such a momentous affair was moving down the lake under the leaden pall of the city smoke. He asked questions eagerly, and finally got into discussion with old Boardman, one of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... if it were just ready to burst beautifully upon its world. So it is, still much depends on how the world is going to treat it. The flower blows, if sunshine greets and warms it. But let the sky be grey, sombre, leaden, and that flower cometh not to its full kingdom—cometh ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... over that leave-taking on the porch of the Wayside; so pathetic, so full of tenderness, even of despair, and yet with a slender ray of hope beneath the leaden cloud of anxiety. To Hawthorne it must have seemed even more discouraging than to his wife and children, though none of them could have suspected that the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... resumed at last. "But I am literally in despair at losing Roderick Hudson. His visits in the evening, for the past year, have kept me alive. They have given a silver tip to leaden days. I don't say he is of a more useful metal than other people, but he is of a different one. Of course, however, that I shall miss him sadly is not a reason for his not going to seek his fortune. Men must work ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... dropped to his side like leaden weights. "So long," he said dully, as the other took his place in the sled. Then he ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... an hour or so I watched my leaden soldiers go, With different uniforms and drills, Among the bed-clothes, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... trod the air, there was another who pressed the earth with leaden feet and carried a heart of lead. Halfman read Evander's happiness with hostile eyes; he read, too, very clearly, Brilliana's content in Evander's company, and he raged at it. He had grown so used to himself as Brilliana's ally that he had come to dream mad dreams which were none the less sweet because ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... immediate division from what we love makes the things within us reach the dearest, we put out our hands for them, as violently-parted lovers do, though the soul in days to come would know a craving, and imagination flap a leaden wing, if we ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... morrow I went on my way, still through as fair a country as is to be found in all South England, through Storrington, and so by way of Parham Park, with its noble Elizabethan house and little church with the last leaden font in Sussex, a work of the fourteenth century, to Amberley in the meads of the Arun, a dear and ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... saw a horseman near him clap his hand to his forehead and plunge headlong to the earth: horses reared and snorted, some fell with ugly, red blotches on their breasts and throats; the clangour and the thuds came faster—faster; for now the clay and leaden bullets of the slingers fell in showers, like hailstones, and it was good armour that ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... put it before Providence to cleanse itself of this thing, or suffer the consequence that we now and for ever quit our worship, lose our faith in it and our secret respect. She heard Marko's tale confirmed, whispers of leaden import, physicians' rumours, and she doubted. She clung insanely to her incredulity. Laughter had been slain, but not her belief in the invincibility of Alvan; she could not imagine him overthrown in a conflict—and by a hand that she had taken and twisted in her woman's hand subduingly! He, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... canvas was entirely released, and Faith silently held it up before the eyes of the dying man, upon whose face had come a dull, leaden blankness, and whose eyes were painful to watch as they struggled to pierce the film which was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... emotions, or they could be impervious as a stone wall. Now they were deep and innocent as a girl's, now they rollicked with the buoyant youth in them. Comrades might see them bubbling with fun, and the next moment enemies find them opague as a leaden sky. Not the least wonder of them was that they looked out from under long lashes, soft enough for any maiden, at a world they appraised with the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... philosophers, heathen though they were, laughed, with just contempt, at such men and their prayers, and asked—Do you suppose that any God, if he be worth calling a God, will answer such a request as that? Nay, in our own times, have not the brigands of Naples been in the habit of carrying a leaden image of St Januarius in their hats, and praying to it to protect them in their trade of robbery and murder? I leave you to guess what answer good St Januarius, and much more He who made St Januarius, and all heaven and earth, was likely ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... shudder. She could not, like her mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes, in cleaning pots and pans, or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in a spotless kitchen. What would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that had tortured her became a dull, leaden pain, like that she had known at another time—how long ago—when the suffering caused by Ditmar's deception had dulled, when she had sat in the train on her way back to Hampton from Boston, after seeing Lise. The pain would throb again, unsupportably, and she would wake, and this time ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... feet thick. The military discipline of the Continent made a warship a floating barrack; the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed with drilled troops like marching engines of destruction, dealing leaden death from arquebus and musquetoun. The little ships of Cabot, Willoughby and William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at most a hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them more than ten to one. What could England do against the landing of such an army? An English ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... thought it wise to venture on deck the whole party very willingly repaired there. The sky was still a dull, leaden color, but around the spot where the sun was hiding behind the banked-up clouds shone a misty radiance, sure prophecy of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... accomplices began with Count Giovanni Arrivabene of Mantua, who had no connection with the society, but was charged with having heard from Pellico that he was a member. Pellico and his companions were still lying untried in the horrible Venetian prisons, called, from their leaden roofs, the 'Piombi,' when the events of 1821 gave rise to a wholesale batch of new arrests. As soon as they knew of a movement in Piedmont, the Lombard patriots prepared to co-operate in it; that they were actually able to do nothing, was because ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the forward guns of the German craft belched forth a salvo of leaden hail that followed the path of the searchlight's rays directly upon the eyes of the Monitor. With unerring aim the German gunners had found their mark. A sharp crash; a roar as the water above ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... stayed, he fled, he turned again, Until at last unmarked, unviewed, unseen, When Dudon had Almansor newly slain, Within his side he sheathed his weapon keen, Down fell the worthy on the dusty plain, And lifted up his feeble eyes uneath, Opprest with leaden sleep, of iron death. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 195 Or when the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... is. It goes to the ship—to the Pool. He and Mary Connynge are only just ahead of us. You may hear the wheels. Do you not hear them?" She spoke with leaden voice, and ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and his class. Visions of West Virginia and Colorado rose before his mind. He heard again the whistle of the "Bull Moose Death Special" as it sped on its swift errand of barbarism up Cabin Creek, hurling its sprays of leaden death among the slaves of this man ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... of the poop, a sweep of deck that careened till the lee rail dipped, and green seas lolloped aboard and swirled, foam-flecked, aft. He saw the long jib-boom, now stabbing the leaden sky, now plunging into the depths. He saw the pyramid of bellying canvas on the foremast, the great foresail, the topsails, and the bare ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... he, "where nobody invited ye, you must just stay," added he, "and abide by the consequences. This is an affair of honour, you take, don't ye? and if ye venture to stir one foot from the spot, och then, ma bouchal," said he, "by the poker of St Patrick, but whisk through ye goes one of these leaden playthings, as sure as ye ever spoiled a coat, or cabbaged broadcloth! Ye have now come out, ye observe,—hark ye," said he, "and are art and part in the business; and if one, or both, of the principals be killed, poor devils," said ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... saints must recollect cases in which the saint performs even miracles on behalf of the condemned. Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same feeling which prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to carry a leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard. In an old French fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was always careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before going out to murder and steal; and found the practice ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... effort of will to enable him to answer the questions of inquiring friends; and when at length aroused to exercise his colloquial powers, he performed the task in so original a manner that it never failed to upset the gravity of the interrogator. When he raised his large, prominent, leaden-coloured eyes from the ground, and looked the inquirer steadily in the face, the effect was irresistible; the laugh would come—do your best ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... who now leaned carelessly against the wall in front of Monsieur de Maulincour, like some fantastic idea drawn by an artist on the back of a canvas the front of which is turned to the wall. This tall, spare man, whose leaden visage expressed some deep but chilling thought, dried up all pity in the hearts of those who looked at him by the scowling look and the sarcastic attitude which announced an intention of treating every man as an equal. His face was of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... through the gates into the narrow streets leading to the monastery gateway. Year after year wealth poured into the Cathedral coffers, and pilgrims went away lighter in spirits and in purse, but each carrying with them the little leaden bottle in which the infinitely diluted blood of the martyr mixed with water ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze, And cups o'erflow with wine; Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine. Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love, While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights Sleep's leaden ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... take off all his clothes, piece by piece, even to his shirt, and dress the dead man in them. Even his leaden earring, which he had worn for many years, was put in the ear of the corpse. After this was done, Morten took a spade and gave the head of the corpse two crashing blows, one over the nose, the other on the temple. The body was ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... glimmering with dull, melancholy rays through my dungeon, permitted my distinguishing all its horrors: It was separated from the Cavern by a low and irregular Wall of Stone: A large Chasm was left open in it which formed the entrance, for door there was none. A leaden Crucifix was in front of my straw Couch. A tattered rug lay near me, as did also a Chaplet of Beads; and not far from me stood a pitcher of water, and a wicker Basket containing a small loaf, and a bottle of oil to ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... him. Bettys then asked leave to smoke, which was granted; and he took out his tobacco, with something else which he threw into the fire. Cory saw this movement, and snatched it out, with a handful of coals. It was a small leaden box, about an eighth of an inch in thickness, containing a paper, written in cypher, which the men could not read. It was afterwards found to be a despatch to the British commander at New York, with an order upon the Mayor of that city for thirty pounds, if the despatch ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... stood a gaunt, white-faced young lady resolutely engaged in making up by extravagance of gesture for the deficiencies of an exhausted voice. "There," said one of my companions, "that is the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith." Upon which a person near us, whom I judged from his air of leaden laziness to be a British working man, blurted out, "Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith! Mad Agnes! That's the name her sanguinary friends give her—Mad Agnes!" At that moment the eye of the panting oratress caught mine for an instant, and you and I ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden chest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... overhead, and more shut out the light of heaven; and he knew the Fountain of Oblivion was not far off. Even then the sound of falling waters was mingling with the roar of the pines above him; and ere long he came to a river, moving in solemn majesty through the forest, and falling with a dull, leaden sound into a motionless stagnant lake, above which the branches of the forest met and mingled, forming perpetual night. This was the Fountain of Oblivion. Upon its brink the Student paused, and gazed into the dark waters with a steadfast look. They were limpid ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... month of deadly rain wore on. The Plains had become a vast and fetid swamp, the atmosphere a weltering, steamy heat, charged with fever, leaden with despair. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... certain dullness of perception in other directions.[48] We cannot help feeling that the material of his nature was essentially prose, which, in his inspired moments, he had the power of transmuting, but which, whenever the inspiration failed or was factitious, remained obstinately leaden. The normal condition of many poets would seem to approach that temperature to which Wordsworth's mind could be raised only by the white heat of profoundly inward passion. And in proportion to the intensity needful to make his nature thoroughly aglow is the very high quality of his best verses. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... coin formerly used in Australia and Tasmania. Its history is given in the quotations. In England the word formerly meant a heavy leaden counter; hence the expression, "I don't care a dump." See ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... experiments, and it is thought he might have been living to this day, if he had not unluckily been killed in the Wars of the Roses; for you know no recipe for long life would be proof against an old English arrow, or a leaden bullet from one of ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... certainly odd. The base, or step, is probably of the late fourteenth, or of the fifteenth century. Originally there was not a hole in the bottom to let the water drain away, but one in the side. There is no trace of any leaden lining to the font-bowl. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... therefore, to go out of himself, and sympathise with the sordid sorrows of the poor, and their bottomless egotism in contact with the well-to-do. He brooded on his own love, and his own unhappiness, and his own father's cruelty. His nights were sleepless and his days leaden. He tried hard to read for his first class, but for once even ambition failed: it ended in flinging books away in despair. He wandered about dreaming and moping for some change, and bitterly regretting his excessive delicacy, which had tied his own hands and brought ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... left the boat, they two. Not a foot had printed the deep layer of snow that covered the wharf. It had fallen thick during the night. Just then it was not snowing; the clouds seemed to have taken a recess, for they hung threatening yet; one uniform leaden canopy was over ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the strength of the tides the rowers made slow progress, and it was not till the late afternoon of the seventeenth day that Leif approached Ironbeard with a proud head and spoke a word. The King nodded, and Leif took his stand in the prow with the lead in his hand. The sea mirroring the mist was leaden dull, but the old pilot ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... stare that had greeted him on his first appearance and which now pressed on him from the rear and sides, he felt himself shoot up, inch by inch, into a horrible conspicuousness, whilst his feet grew flat and leaden, and his hands were too swollen to squeeze into ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Sea, December 16th. It has been a wonderful stormy day today; as an officer said: "a typical North Sea winter day"—a leaden sky, roaring wind, smothers of rain, great black-green waves all flecked and blotched in white, big sea birds and little gulls dipping down the wave valleys and soaring up the wave mountains, and the ship taking the most foolish and impossible angles. It was ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... mile away, but that honest "Long Tom" sent its leaden missiles whistling about their ears, and kicking up the dust around their ponies' heels, until, after a few defiant shouts and such insulting and contemptuous gestures as they could think of, the two had ducked suddenly out of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... watching! The hours moved, oh, so leaden-paced and slow! Every day the poor girl waited for the coming of the post-man; and every day, with a pang at her heart, and tear-dimmed eyes, she saw him pass the door. "Edward has been detained; he will come yet, I'm sure," a fond inner voice whispered; "perhaps he has sent no letter, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... hard rowing we came alongside the strange sail in an hour. Three leaden figures, motionless as the unwieldly bark they manned, gazed curiously upon our approaching boat. Our Belgian friend hailed, but hailed in vain. They looked but spoke not. Again he spoke, and at length a monotonous "yaw" proclaimed that they were ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... was still visible against the leaden background of the sky. From the village came the creaking noise of the hauling of water, and the cocks crew as if the weather were ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various |
