"Littered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burned. He had been working, in his curious way, All through the night; and, in the morning greyness Went down to chapel, leaving on his desk A lighted candle. You can imagine it,— A sadly sloven altar to his Muse, Littered with papers, cups, and greasy plates Of untouched food. I am told that he would eat His Monday's breakfast, sir, on Tuesday morning, Such was his absent way! When he returned, He found that Diamond (his little dog Named Diamond, for a black patch near his tail) Had overturned the candle. All his ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... they themselves print. In connexion with this subject, it may be added that many readers habitually shake loose hills out of a magazine before they begin to turn the pages, and that railway stations, railway carriages and even public streets are thus littered with trampled and muddy advertisements. The old practice of distributing handbills in the streets is dying a natural death, more or less hastened by local by-laws, and when the loose bills in magazines and cheap novels have ceased to exist ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her bedroom and without pause Mrs. Meyerburg walked directly to the small deal table there beside her bed and still littered with half-curled blue-prints. These she gathered into a tight roll, snapping a rubber band about it. She rang incisively the fourth of the row of bells. A man-servant responded almost immediately with a light rap-a-tap at the door. She was ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... out a certain crevice between the logs. Harris threw himself flat against the lower log which barely shielded him. One rifleman covered a crack breast-high, another the one next below, drilling it at six-inch intervals. Shreds of 'dobe chinking littered the room. The balls which found an entrance splintered through the bunks and buried themselves in the logs of the far wall. A third marksman worked on the lower crack. Puffs of 'dobe pulverized before Harris's eyes as the systematic fire crept toward him down the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the road we left behind us was littered with abandoned animals. It was pitiful to see these dumb creatures try to drag themselves after us, as if they too feared the pursuing foe. But still the weary march went on, night and day, until a numbed indifference settled ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... as Death Valley. This was rightly so called. Being obscured from the enemy's view, it was a covered means of approach to the infantry positions in front, and afforded at the same time cover for the guns. On this account it was never free from shell fire, and was littered with corpses ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... from his customary ride, he was surprised to see the lobbies and hall of the apartment which he occupied in common with Maltravers, littered with bags and malles, boxes and books, and Ernest's Swiss valet directing porters and waiters in a mosaic of French, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... littered with trunks and clothes. She took her hat and a light cape, and stole out into the broad passage, on either side of which opened the long series of small rooms which had once been Carmelite cells. Only the four or five rooms at the western end, the bare 'apartment' ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... out object after object below—a huge group of sculptured figures in the middle; some kind of a motor vehicle jacked up on trestles for repairs; things that looked like machine-guns and auto-cannon; long tables, tops littered with a dust-covered miscellany; machinery; boxes ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... La Boulaye unhesitatingly, with the air of a man who is intimate with his surroundings and assured of his welcome in them. In the right-hand corner stood the bed on which the clothes were still tumbled; in the centre of the chamber was a table all littered with the disorder of a meal partaken; on the left, by the window, sat Robespierre at his writing-table, and from the overmantel at the back of the room a marble counterpart of Robespierre's own head and shoulders looked down upon the newcomer. There were a few pictures ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... it up to Rocco's chair, sat down opposite to him. Thus they faced each other, their knees almost touching, both in evening dress. On Rocco's right hand was the bed, with the corpse of Reginald Dimmock. On Racksole's right hand, and a little behind him, was the marble washstand, still littered with Rocco's implements. The electric light shone on Rocco's left cheek, leaving the other side of his face in shadow. Racksole tapped him on ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... for light from hidden windows is splintered into the darkness by intervening wayside trees and bushes. Still that wristlet tinkles against the water-jar, and retreating steps rustle from down the lane littered with leaves. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... but stood still in the doorway. In the ten minutes' absence some one had been there. Two drawers of the desk had been forced; the floor was littered with papers flung there hurriedly ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... evaporated in the warm winds of May which came through the open window. The rich velvet sofa of early English design was littered with proofs and copies of the Pilgrim, and the stamped velvet was two shades richer in tone than the pale dead-red of the floorcloth. Small pictures in light frames harmonized with a green paper of long interlacing leaves. On the right, the grand piano and ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the reply; then he opened the door and suffered Moffatt to follow him in. Behind an inner glazed enclosure, with its one window dimmed by a sooty perspective barred with chimneys, he seated himself at a dusty littered desk, and groped instinctively for the support of the scrap basket. Moffatt, uninvited, dropped into the nearest chair, and Mr. Spragg said, after another silence: ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... looked like a gigantic dustbin. Even the floor was littered with toast crusts, envelopes, cigarette ends. But Ma Parker bore him no grudge. She pitied the poor young gentleman for having no one to look after him. Out of the smudgy little window you could see an immense expanse of sad-looking sky, and whenever there were clouds they looked very worn, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... Chebe's bedroom, littered with pieces of cloth and pins and small toilet articles, Desiree Delobelle superintended Sidonie's toilet. The child, appearing taller because of her short skirt of red flannel with black stripes, stood before the mirror, erect ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... friendly littered little room was not so inviting in working hours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. It was like a woman seen in evening dress by daylight. But the boy who had invaded it so hotly ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... enterprise. No Admittance." Archie opened the door and entered. He knew it would be useless to send in his name. It was best to see the editor at once, and without ceremony. He was seated before a large desk, which was littered with papers of every description, and he was a very pleasant person in appearance. Archie stood hesitating near the door, and remained there a minute or two before ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... squalor and dirt, dingy tents flapping in the ceaseless wind, unpainted shacks, wooden houses with boards warping under the hot sun, the single street deep in yellow dust, the surrounding prairie littered with tin cans, and all manner of debris. But with the coming of night much of this roughness departed. Soldiers from the garrison on pass, idle plainsmen, bull-whackers, adventurers of all kinds stranded here ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... through miles of devastated country. Tons upon tons of war material, abandoned by the retiring German troops, littered roads and fields. Clothing, helmets, small arms of all description, whole batteries of Howitzers still in position, dense black fumes from burning ammunition dumps, acres of barbed wire fields and hillsides shell-torn, bodies still unburied—all this was the spectacle of war havoc ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... urban region we have foreseen. The apartments will be more or less agreeably adorned in some decorative fashion akin to but less costly than some of the many fashions that will obtain among the wealthy. They will be littered with a miscellaneous literature, novels of an entertaining and stimulating sort predominating, and with bric-a-brac; in a childless household there must certainly be quaint dolls, pet images, and so forth, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the only house in the whole circle of the horizon; and from the wooden balustrade and verandah, running round the top of it, could be seen nine miles of tents. Sydney Smith said that the bulbous domes of the Brighton Pavilion looked as if St. Paul's Cathedral had come down there and littered; and that grey vista of countless cones looked rather as if the Great Pyramid had multiplied itself on the prolific scale of the herring. Nor was even such a foolish fancy without its serious side; for though these pyramids would pass, the plan of them was also among the mightiest ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... up the nursery a bit before I fetch her," said Susan, looking round the littered room; and so it was half an hour before she knocked at Mrs. Legrange's chamber-door with, "I came ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... into the avenue of trees leading up to an empty chateau, a field-hospital until a few hours before. Mattresses and bandages littered the deserted room, and an electric chandelier was still burning. The young officer pointed to some trenches in the garden. "I had those dug to put the wounded in in case we had to hold the place," he said. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... whom—who would listen. 'He lends me his rooms,' wailed Mr Morrison, 'so that I can be perfectly quiet and undisturbed while I write my novel, and, first thing I know, this music starts to arrive. How can I be quiet and undisturbed when the floor's littered two yards high with great parcels of music, and ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... dak bungalow Roy lay alone, languidly at ease, assisted by rugs and pillows and a Madeira cane lounge at an invalid angle; walls and arches splashed with sunshine; and a table beside him littered with convalescent accessories. There were home papers; there were books; there was fruit and a syphon, cut lemons and crushed ice—everything thoughtfulness could suggest set within easy reach. But the nameless ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... it was, the major was up and hard at work. His tent table, transformed for the time into a mechanic's work-bench, was littered with gun-barrels and tools and screws and odd-shaped pieces of mechanism—the disjointed parts of that breech-loading musket of which the ingenious Scotchman was ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... at once he got a shock— The Go-cart speeding down, Collided with his fancy stock And littered up the town! ...
— The Slant Book • Peter Newell
... through the rubbish of the doleful spot. He ran back to the laboratory, where Peters was hunting about, hoping to find Masusaelili alive, yet fearing to find his emaciated form lying lifeless amid the mass of chemical and mechanical appliances which littered the room. Several of the large vase-like objects before alluded to stood here and there; and as the smaller of them might have hidden the body of a large-sized man, the searchers even glanced into them. Each vase sat apart upon ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... full to bursting. There was a piano in the room and two tables littered with books, prints, and photographs. The space between book-cases and over the piano was hung with etchings, crayons, pen-and-ink drawings, and photographs. The other two of Tevkin's children present were a chubby girl ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the room without further speech, and Robert Turold began rummaging among his papers with a hand which trembled slightly. The table was littered with parchments, old books, and some sheets of newly written foolscap. He picked up his pen and plunged it into a brass inkstand, then paused in thought. His face was perturbed and uneasy. It may be ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... were covered with supper; at each of which sat—as closely wedged as well could be—a great number of work-people of both sexes, and of all ages. Huge dogs were moving backwards and forwards, in the hope of receiving some charitable morsel;, and before the fire, on a littered hearth, lay stretched out two tremendous mastiffs. I walked with fear and trembling. The cooks were carrying the evening meal; and the whole place afforded such an interior—as Jan Steen would have viewed with rapture, and Wilkie have been delighted ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... fearful kicks that he had received. Instead of darting straight out of the alley, the men turned in at a small gate at the side of a narrow building on the corner, and slammed the gate behind them. He could hear the drop of the wooden bolt. He knew perfectly that entrance. It was to the littered back yard of a cheap saloon, at the side of which ran a narrow passageway to the street beyond, where street-cars passed ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Nayland Smith lay, his long, lean frame extended in the white cane chair. A tumbler, from which two straws protruded, stood by his right elbow, and a perfect continent of tobacco smoke lay between us, wafted towards the door by the draught from an open window. He had littered the hearth with matches and tobacco ash, being the most untidy smoker I had ever met; and save for his frequent rappings out of his pipe bowl and perpetual striking of matches, he had shown no sign of activity for the past hour. Collarless and wearing an ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... a bedroom came out softly in the glow. A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the figure of Miss ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... me were six low gravelly mounds. Graves! One had two stones at head and foot. Another had no mark at all. The one nearest me had for the head a flat piece of board, with lettering so effaced by weather that I could not decipher the inscription. The bones of a horse lay littered about between the graves. What a lonely place for graves! Death Valley seemed to be one vast sepulchre. What had been the lives and deaths of these people buried here? Lonely, melancholy, nameless graves upon the windy ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... safely established at his evening meal, and Mrs. Macdonald was satisfied that she could provide nothing more for his comfort, she went upstairs to tidy his room, shaking her head a little over the various things that littered the ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... as well as I could through the cloud of fog and breath that was heavy in it. I noticed the black vapour hanging like a murky curtain outside the great windows, and I noticed the stifled sound of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the street; also, the hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill whistle, or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced. Soon afterwards the Judges, two in number, entered, and took their seats. The buzz in the Court was awfully hushed. The direction was given ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... the long summer days he thought it very cheerful to rest in his dark hole in the ground. He liked the darkness of his home; he liked its warmth, too. For in pleasant weather the sun beat down upon the straw-littered ground above him and gave him plenty of heat, while on gray days the straw blanket kept his house cosy. And it never occurred to Chirpy Cricket that there was anything odd in having a blanket over his house instead of ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the knob, found and turned it, and entered a small, low-ceiled chamber, very cosy with lamplight, and simply furnished with a single chair, a charpoy, a water-jug, a large mirror, and beneath the latter a dressing-table littered with a collection of toilet gear, cosmetics and bottles, which would have ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... be." Then she said, "Towards morning look for me Here, when the city sleeps, before the sun." So till the glimmer of dawn this hardy one Keepeth the watch in Paris' house. All night With hard unwinking eyes he sat upright, While all about the sleepers lay, like stones Littered upon a hill-top, save that moans, Sighings and "Gods, have pity!" showed that they By night rehearsed the miseries of day, And by bread lived not but by hope deferred. Grimly he suffered till such time he heard Helen's light foot ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... next day too the girl remained invisible, and Mrs. Nettlepoint told me she hadn't looked in. She herself had accordingly inquired by the stewardess if she might be received in Miss Mavis's own quarters, and the young lady had replied that they were littered up with things and unfit for visitors: she was packing a trunk over. Jasper made up for his devotion to his mother the day before by now spending a great deal of his time in the smoking-room. I wanted to say to him "This is much better," but I thought it wiser to hold my tongue. Indeed ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... distance up the river to the Whaleback, a small island shaped, as its name indicated, like a whale's back. It was quite flat, only slightly elevated above the surface of the water. On one side it had rather a wide beach covered with stones and littered with driftwood; behind this beach rose a dense growth of pines that extended down to the very edge of the water on the other side ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... boots, and all the trappings and harness belonging to a cowboy's outfit littered the place, and stretched out on the robes and furs, in easy, careless attitudes, lay some ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... Recent Journeys in Persia (Geog. Journal, X. 1897, p. 589), says: "Upon arrival in Rudbar, we turned north wards and left the Farman Farma, in order to explore the site of Marco Polo's 'Camadi.'... We came upon a huge area littered with yellow bricks eight inches square, while not even a broken wall is left to mark the site of what was formerly a great city, under the name of the Sher-i-Jiruft."—H. C.] The actual distance from Bamm to the City of Dakianus is, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... two guards obeyed him, and an alarming spectacle met their eyes. In the middle of the room, beside a big table littered with papers and military documents, lay the Emperor, stretched full length upon the thick velvet pile carpet, one hand, as if to hide something dreadful from view, across his face. He was quite unconscious, ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... would seem that this natural feminine trait has weakened somewhat, since this view was expressed some sixty years ago. According to the Society chroniclers—self-appointed—it certainly has in 'London's West End, littered with broken vows.' ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... table upon which we had been sitting and lay about our feet. Outside, the soil was banked high against the house. At the top of the window frame we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor was littered with smashed hardware; the end of the kitchen towards the house was broken into, and since the daylight shone in there, it was evident the greater part of the house had collapsed. Contrasting vividly ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... had finished, his candle was low in its socket, and the floor around him littered with scraps of torn paper. He sealed the envelope, blew out the candle, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... us all to pieces," the story went on in a low tone at my elbow. "Those shells don't leave many wounded, but they littered the place with arms and legs. They got a good many of us, but they did not seem to be ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... and gone to seed till the harvest of flowers in their season was past gathering, and any child in the neighborhood was at liberty to pluck them by handfuls, while the wicked ones played at "chicken fighting" and littered the ground with decapitated bodies. There is no heartsease nowadays, only the magnificent pansy of which it was the modest forerunner. But one little cluster of dark, spicy blooms like those I used to gather in that old garden would be more to me than the most splendid pansy created ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... One end was entirely occupied by book-shelves, greatly too limited in space for the number of volumes placed upon them, which were, therefore, drawn up in ranks of two or three files deep, while numberless others littered the floor and the tables, amid a chaos of maps, engraving, scraps of parchment, bundles of papers, pieces of old armour, swords, dirks, helmets, and Highland targets. Behind Mr. Oldbuck's seat (which was an ancient leathern-covered easy-chair, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... I mean, people in paying court to Regulus are copying the example he set. He does not move from his gardens across the Tiber, where he has covered an immense quantity of ground with colossal porticos and littered the river bank with his statues, for, though he is the meanest of misers, he flings his money broadcast, and though his name is a byword, he is for ever vaunting his glories. Consequently, in this the most sickly ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... tiny cabin for the teacher were habitable. Here the single artist of the islands, Monsieur Charles Le Moine, had taught the three "R's" to Vait-hua's adolescents for years. He was away now, Neo said, but we found his cabin open and littered with canvases, sketches, paint-tubes, and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... red ochre, which leads to the precincts. The guardians of the gate, Ni-O, the two gigantic Deva kings, who have passed from India into Japanese mythology, are encaged in the gateway building. Their cage and their persons are littered with nasty morsels of chewed paper, wherever their worshippers have literally spat their prayers ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... is a fake," declared Bertram. He slumped heavily into a chair, and scowled at Average Jones' well-littered desk, whereon he had just tossed a sheet of paper. His usually impeccable hair was tousled. His trousers evinced a distinct tendency to bag at the knees, and his coat was undeniably wrinkled. That the elegant and flawless dilettante of the Cosmic Club should ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... strange, quaint words, and it seemed much more as if somebody kept repeating them in his presence than as if he had turned them over himself to the surface, from among the mass of scraps that were lying littered about in the chambers of his memory. "The words of Jonadab the son of Rechab, that ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... the small laboratory opening from this office, was also a familiar one. He could see steam arising from the sterilizer: he knew surgical instruments were boiling merrily away there. A table was littered with objects suggesting careful examination: a fine microscope in position; a centrifuge, Bunsen burners, test-tubes; elsewhere other apparatus of a description to make the uninitiated actively sympathetic with the ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... the stairs with a last buzzing accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone in the unfriendly, empty apartment, where the mats are still littered with the little cups of tea, the absurd little ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cat, and, although the season was early, she had littered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leaves blown by the wind into a ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... one morning in his humble room, with his books and papers littered all about him. This was soon after the Revolution of 1830, and the mayor had him decently interred at night. The clergy purchased the whole of his library at a nominal price and made away with it. No papers were found which served to elucidate the mystery which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... elapsed when Elliott returned. The sentry's challenge caused Brock to look up from the table, littered with plans and despatches. Another figure ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... was on the second landing. Douglas Stone followed the old nurse into it, with the merchant at his heels. Here, at least, there was furniture and to spare. The floor was littered and the corners piled with Turkish cabinets, inlaid tables, coats of chain mail, strange pipes, and grotesque weapons. A single small lamp stood upon a bracket on the wall. Douglas Stone took it down, and picking his way among the lumber, walked over to ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... housework, while the half-breed, Simon, who lived with them, helped with the trapping in winter, and did a little of all sorts of work, was rather less clean and tidy in his ways than even Peter. The sight of the dusty, ill-kept room irritated Katherine. Last night's supper dishes still littered the table, and had probably served for breakfast dishes as well. What was the use of wasting her time in trying to console a woman who so neglected her home, and the privileges of home-making that came with it? For a few minutes she felt disposed to turn back ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... captain—no more the official master of a troopship, in which capacity, as he ruefully said, he could make no friends, and could scarcely regard his ship as his own, provided he brought her safely from port to port. He cast a disgusted glance along the stained and littered decks. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... a feast more eagerly than Father Hecker read a sermon, a lecture, or an editorial showing the trend of non-Catholic thought. After his death his desk was found littered with innumerable clippings of the sort, many of them pencilled with underlinings and with notes. These furnished much of the matter of his conversation, and doubtless of his prayers. Once he ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... from the room and Jed heard him stumbling through the littered darkness of the shops on his way to the front door, kicking at the obstacles he tripped over and swearing and sobbing as he went. It was ridiculous enough, of course, but Jed did not feel like smiling. The bitterness of the little man's final curse was not humorous. Neither was the heartbreak in ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... rails, and Miss Arsdale led the way without hesitation along a grass-grown road and through an old orchard. The trees were scraggly and untrimmed, littered with dead branches, but Spring, the mother, had decked them with green leaves and buds until they looked as jaunty as old people going to a fair. The sun sifted through the tender sprigs to the sprouting soil beneath, making there the semblance ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... beat another to the floor. The third villain was of tougher fiber. Up and down the laboratory they battled, stumbling over broken furniture, now falling to the floor, where they rolled over and over, first one, then the other gaining the mastery, while the broken glass with which the floor was littered cut their clothing to ribbons and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... as it did the fashion of the late seventies; but it was not undignified, with its big door flanked by bay-windows and its narrow porch bounded by a fat wooden balustrade and heavy columns. The porch and steps were weather-stained and faded, and littered now with ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... dear old friend, and thereby, it might be, ensure more consideration for her in her new home. There were one or two little whims and peculiarities of hers which he must explain. He thought of pretty Mrs. Forsyth and her broken pledge regarding Tara. He looked along the dusty, littered hall, and, in the distance, saw an elderly lady leading an Irish Wolfhound. A moment later, and he recognized the hound as Tara, and the lady as a good friend of his own, a kindly, wealthy Yorkshire woman who had bought two whelps of him before he ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... neat in the management of her house as people from Holland usually are; and she did not like that the sitting-room, where her husband had his meals, and spent his evenings, should be littered by the children, or used at all by them during her absence at her daily occupation, in the summer. So she let them use the third room for their employments and their play. Her occupation, every summer's day, was serving out the waters from a mineral spring, a good deal frequented ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... teepee or tent. And small wonder. Their methods of sanitation did not comport with a permanent dwelling. When the teepee grew foul, which their habits made inevitable, a simple and satisfactory remedy was discovered in a shift to another camp-ground. Not so with the log houses, whose foul corners, littered with the accumulated filth of a winter's occupation, became fertile breeding places for the germs of disease and death. Irregularly strewn upon the grassy plain in the valley bottom some two dozen teepees marked the Piegan summer headquarters. Above ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... supporting a top of half-round slabs set with the flat sides up, and affording a few level places for soup-plates; on each side are crooked, unbarked poles laid in short forks, to serve as seats. The poles are worn smoothest opposite the level places on the table. The floor is littered with rubbish—old wool-bales, newspapers, boots, worn-out shearing pants, rough bedding, etc., raked out of the bunks in impatient search for missing articles—signs of a glad and eager departure with cheques when the shed last ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... on the easel—was hidden by the velvet curtain. Sitting by a table that was littered with a confusion of sketches, books and papers, the young man was re-tying a package of old letters that he had, evidently, just ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... room a narrow slit of light shows where the Fourth's room is hooked ajar. I go across and peer in. He is on watch, of course, and there is no one there. But all round I see littered the belongings of George's successor. A quiet, likeable Glasgow laddie, as I know him yet. He has put up his bunk curtains, and as they sway I catch a glimpse of a portrait. And so? Who can blame me if I look searchingly into the eyes of the girl with ribbon in her hair and a silver cross on ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... the cold, nervous night, murmurous with obscure armies on the move, electric with patrols. From across the river, where loomed the darker mass of Peter-Paul, came a hoarse shout.... Underfoot the sidewalk was littered with broken stucco, from the cornice of the Palace where two shells from the battleship Avrora had struck; that was the only damage done by ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... dingy room lined with books and littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... sides parallel to each other, about eight feet apart and at right angles to the fireplace, with the long plank placed across; and the upturned pails and the drawers of the dresser. The floor unswept and littered with dirt, scraps of paper, bits of plaster, pieces of lead pipe and dried mud; and in the midst, the steaming bucket of stewed tea and the collection of cracked cups, jam-jam and condensed milk tins. And on the seats the men in their shabby and in some cases ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... harps between the knees of the hills, played on by the wind and sun. The villages have their roofs on and children romping in their streets. The church spires haven't been knocked down; they stand up tall and stately. The roadsides aren't littered with empty shell-cases and dead horses. The fields are absolutely fields, with green crops, all wavy, like hair growing. After the tonsured filth we've been accustomed to call a world, all this strikes one as unnatural and extraordinary. There's a sweet fragrance ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... and tore at the logs which held him so effectively. He stripped the inside of the pen entirely free of bark, and littered the floor with a bushel of splinters; but all his tearing and biting, pushing and straining, prying and growling, ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... the girl with suddenness, like an apparition, and the fright, instead of passing, began to take hold of her as the uncanny woman neither spoke nor looked up. The room about her was bare, save for some hanks of yarn littered about the boards and a great pile of it drying on a tray by the window. The one ray of sunlight seemed to pass over this without searching the corners under the sloping roof, and fell at ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... murky air. A long table stood in the middle of the room; generally it was covered with blue-prints, or the usual impedimenta of an office. But it was not an office table; it was of mahogany, scratched and dim to be sure, but matching the ancient claw-footed sideboard whose top was littered with letter files, silver teapots and sugar-bowls, and stacks of newspapers. Three times a day one end of this table was cleared, and the early breakfast, or the noon dinner, or the rather heavy supper eaten rapidly and for the most part in silence. Mrs. Maitland was silent ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... be many comrades in trouble, we were early away, and dancing like a bubble, we ran north, keeping as close inshore as we could, and watching the coast-line with our glasses. The coast was littered with remains. Forty-one vessels had been lost; in one uninhabited roadstead alone, some forty miles away from Indian Harbour, lay sixteen wrecks. The shore here was lined with rude shelters made from the wreckage of spars and sails, and ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... please. We are as merry as ever when the trap sets forth again, and say farewell noisily to all the good folk going farther. Then, as we are far enough from thoughts of sleep, we visit Blank in his quaint house, and sit an hour or so in a great tapestried chamber, laid with furs, littered with sleeping hounds, and lit up, in fantastic shadow and shine, by a wood fire in a mediaeval chimney. And then we plod back through the darkness to ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rooms, with earthen floors, crooked ceilings, and windows that lift up and down instead of opening outwards.... The walls are covered with rifles, pistols, sabres and whips. The chest of drawers and the window-sills are littered with cartridges, instruments for mending rifles, tins of gunpowder, and bags of shot. The furniture is lame and the veneer is coming off it. I have to sleep on a consumptive sofa, very hard, and not upholstered ... Ash-trays and all such luxuries are not to be found within ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... as it seemed, unconsciously opened it, and tried to pick out by ear the melody of Tchaykovsky's song; but he slammed it to again directly in vexation, and went up to his aunt to her special room, which was for ever baking hot, smelled of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and was littered up with such a multitude of rugs, side-tables, stools, cushions, and padded furniture of all sorts, that any one unused to it would have found it difficult to turn round and oppressive to breathe in it. Platonida ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... till late in the afternoon but take care of his stable and yard. If he had kept them neat, and groomed his horse, and cleaned the cows, and dug up the garden, it would have taken up all his time; but he never tidied the place at all, till his yard and stable got so littered up with things he threw down that he could not make ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... twelve o'clock," exclaimed Hiram Nelson, looking up at the clock from the dining-room table in Paul Perkins' house. The chamber was strewn with text books on model aeroplane construction and littered with figures and plans of the boys' own devising. "How time flies when you're on a subject that ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... it, and whenever you see a stray thread or bit of dirt, which you can pick up, don't neglect it, but let it's place be in the catch-all. This precaution will make sweeping an easy task and save your room from ever having a littered look. There will be no days of "putting things to right," for they will be right all the time, and your room will be a continual pleasure to you, as you will not count the time it requires to keep it so any more than you do that which you ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... two, with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that lighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing among the uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below. Bale, staring morosely at the crowd ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... graves for one another in the central grassplat. Here the monks shaved each other's heads—an art in which they were expected to be very skilful, and here the novices carried on their studies. Rough mats took off the chill of the stone benches in some degree, and the floor was littered over with hay and straw in summer, and with rushes in winter. But in cold or stormy weather it must have been a desolate place at the best, for the lower parts of the windows opening on the central court ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... through a door diagonally opposite the one by which he had entered from the veranda. On the other side Jack found himself surrounded by walls of books, which formed a parallelogram around a great deal table littered with magazines and papers. Here, indeed, the printed word might riot as it pleased in the joyous variety and chaos of that truly omnivorous reader of herbivorous capacity. Out of the library Jack passed into Jasper Ewold's bedroom. It was small, with a soldier's cot of exaggerated size that ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... drawers and down came boxes, and very soon the small counter was littered with piles of raiment variously gaudy which Spike viewed and disparaged with such knowing judgment that the salesman's respect proportionately grew, and Mr. Ravenslee, lounging in the background, was forgotten quite, the while they chaffered ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... and went out of the laboratory. Tommy looked after him. Even moved to make sure he was gone. And then Tommy Reames went quickly to the work bench on which were the littered notes and calculations Von Holtz had been using and which were now at his disposal. But Tommy did not leaf through them. He reached under the blotter beneath the whole pile. He had seen Von Holtz furtively push something out of sight, and he had disliked and distrusted ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the inn at Capua, where we slept, opened on a terraced garden, with orange trees, vines trained on arched trellises, marble fountains, &c., which, for ten shillings expense, might have been made very gay and attractive; but all was forlornness and disorder, the beds untrimmed, and the walks littered with dirt. Two magnificent plants of Opuntia vulgaris, which flanked one of the windows, the waiter said, were planted there 'per pompa' (for pomp's sake); a motive, unfortunately, so often the leading ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... thought it very likely that he might be still alive. I resolved to call at his house. When I knocked and asked if he was at home, the girl who opened the door replied in the affirmative, and I was shown into the same little study, littered with papers, into which I formerly used to bring him ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... walls it may once have pierced have fallen away from it in their fight with time, and now buttresses and rubbish-heaps, a moat of blurred outline and much filth, alone testify to former pretensions. Beyond was to be found a sandy waste, miscalled an alameda, a littered place of brown grass, dust and loose stones, fringed with parched acacias, and diversified by hillocks, upon which, in former days of strife, standards may have been placed, mangonels planted, perhaps ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... most animated portion of the Marut club-house, had lost its cheerful appearance. The comfortable chairs had been cleared on one side and replaced by a long green baize table littered with papers; the doors leading on to the verandah were closed, and a stifling atmosphere bore down upon the five occupants who were ranged about the table in various attitudes ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... while they became aware that the ground they were standing on was like an unroofed charnel-house, littered over with the bodies of their unburied dead. So they set themselves to cover up their comrades in the earth, never asking which was British and which German, but laying them all together in the everlasting brotherhood of death—that English boy whose mother ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... Holding up my light, I scanned the place with growing interest. It had not been demolished, but neither had it been spared. The furniture was gone, save for a few scattered chairs and a table; the walls were defaced with cartoons and scrawled inscriptions; the floor was stained, and littered with empty bottles and broken plates. From the chimney-place—a medieval-art jewel topped with carved and colored enamels—pieces had been hacked away by some deliberately destructive hand. I glanced at Miss Falconer, whose eyes had ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... miss," said cook, very amiably; and Penelope followed her through the dim hall to a large room where a lady was sitting at a table littered with vases, cans of water, and quantities of cut flowers. She was rather a severe-looking lady, and glanced up so sharply when cook opened the door and showed the visitor in, that Penelope was, for the moment, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... uniformity of this human beehive? Everywhere, too, were the same recurring evidences of the haste and panic that had characterized the final moments of that terrible hegira. Hats and garments, cash-boxes and account-books, littered the hallways, and were piled in little heaps at the entrances to the elevators—impedimenta that must inevitably be abandoned at the last if life itself were to be saved. And the final tragedy—an elevator cage that had jammed in its ways and so hung fixed between ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... be taken in arranging the dinner table to have both sides balanced. There is an old maxim that says, "There must be a use for everything" and this holds especially true of the table of good taste. It must not be littered with useless articles, no matter how artistic or odd, for they hamper the movements of the guests and make things unnecessarily crowded. Butter rarely appears on the table at the formal dinner; and condiments are brought in by the servant ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... large rat-holes, there came up copious ammoniacal smells, which our mucous membrane resented from the first; and well it had fared with us had this been all. We had never been so near horses at night, and had no idea they made such an incessant noise. One horse stabled and littered for the night were bad enough, but we had a whole stableful; and just as we were forgetting the fleas, and forgiving the mosquitos, and sleep led on by indigestion was heavy on our eyelids, a snort, loud as a lion's roar, made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... with a host of small red ants. All this was familiar to Tess. She kicked the pan from her path with her bare foot, and sat down on the three legged stool which her father used at his meals. Portions of fish and plenty of bones were spread about upon the floor, but the littered shanty did not distress her ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... points of the dingy tines as he swung about to face the open door. Fork and mackerel fell to the floor as the seaman abruptly rose and stalked outside. The stern features of the rugged old face sagged with astonishment as he blinked at the small army of men swarming over his littered yard. ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... a word, and came to a stand before the table that was littered with his work. She was agitated, he saw. Her hand was pressed against her heart, and she ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Peter, who knew me at once, and began to purr and rub himself against my legs in a most affectionate manner, as if to appease any outburst of wrath on my part. I felt too pleased to be angry, and followed Peter into the empty room, which was littered with paper and rubbish, and the remains of forty or fifty mice lay strewn about the floor. Peter looked up to me as if to say: "Not a bad bag—eh, master?" In the corner of the room was a bit of sacking which Peter had used as a bed. Pop explained to me that he had heard the men talking about ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... but it gave notice that the weather was lifting, and I was glad to go on deck, where the planks soon began to show white patches as the sailors began to use their swabs; but the bustle and confusion was worse than ever. For the deck was littered with packages of cargo, which had arrived late, with Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, painted upon them in black letters, and some of these appeared to be boxes of seeds, and others crates of ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of our own horses. Their diabolic resistance continued to the last. And one may venture to hope that the sense of final subjugation to man must have proved penally bitter to the horses. But, meantime, it vexes one that such wretches should be fed with good old hay and oats; as well littered down also in their stalls as a prebendary; and by many a stranger, ignorant of their true character, should have been patted and caressed. Let us hope that a fate, to which more than once they were nearly forcing us, namely, regress over a precipice, may ultimately ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... his quill, and there was a dream in his eyes. His desk was littered with papers, well covered with ink; flowing sentences, and innumerable figures. He was the watch-dog of the duchy. Never a bill from the Reichstag that did not pass under his cold eye before it went to the duke for his signature, his approval, or veto. Not a copper ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... about four o'clock in the afternoon ... as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray[395] in an undress, Mr Conway in a morning-grey coat and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr Walpole from Mr More, and ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... the fallen ministers. W. was rather astonished when I told him who had come to tea with me, and thought the conversation must have been difficult. I told him, not at all, once the necessary phrases about the departing ministers were over. The piano was open, music littered about; she was fond of music and she admired very much a portrait of father as a boy in the Harrow dress, asked who it was and what the dress was. She was a perfect woman of the world, and no one ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... "bow-wow-wow!" And the calico cat replied "mee-ow!" The air was littered, an hour or so, With bits of gingham and calico, While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place Up with its hands before its face, For it always dreaded a family row! (Now mind: I'm only telling you What the old ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... sifted ashes and strew them about his bed, and in the morning he will perceive their footprints upon them like a cock's tread. If any one wish to see them, he must take the after-birth of a black cat, which has been littered by a first-born black cat, and whose mother was also a first-birth, burn and reduce it to powder, and put some of it on his eyes, and he will see them." (Vol. i. pp. 104 and 111). And this is the stuff which the author would have us believe was the real origin of the ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... youthfulness, too, in his eyes, yet they had a look as though he had been through fire; and his mouth curled at the corners in surprising smiles. The room was like the man—morally large, void of red-tape and almost void of furniture; no tin boxes were ranged against the walls, no papers littered up the table; a single bookcase contained a complete edition of the law reports, and resting on the Law Directory was a single red rose in a glass of water. It looked the room of one with a sober magnanimity, who went to the heart ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from her improvements, though it was sometimes littered with her work-bags or her work. She had long ago developed the dreadful mistake that it "helped" Michael at his work if she brought hers (perfectly futile as a rule) there too. "I just sit silently in his room, my dear, and stitch or knit something for poor people ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... April 7.—The lawn in front of the White House this morning was littered with paper bags, the dyed shells of eggs, and the remains of Easter luncheon baskets. It is said that a large part of the lawn must be resodded. The children, shut out from their usual romp in the grounds at the back of the mansion, made their way into the front when the sun came ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... The table was littered with books, for he had found it necessary to create a Latin atmosphere before beginning his translation. He worked principally at night, and one morning about three he finished his translation, and getting up from his chair he walked ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... fiery beams, so that the sea that way was too dazzling to look at. And there, right in the centre of the glowing picture, lay the two brigantines—we with our bulwarks torn and splintered to pieces, our sails riddled with shot-holes, our rigging badly cut up, and our decks scored with shot-marks and littered with dead and wounded men; while the Guerrilla was an even more melancholy wreck than ourselves, as she lay heaving and rolling sluggishly, with her covering-boards awash and the sea sweeping her ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... was bustle and noise enough, for the place swarmed with the mailed seamen, who had littered the roadway with goods of all sorts from the houses and merchants' stores, and were getting what they chose to take across the gang planks into their ships. Here and there I saw some of our people standing helpless in doorways, or looking ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... will pay our keep. At half-past 1 when the men turn out again, we generally go out with them, and some out-door occupation is found for us; either driving the waggons or any other odd jobs. There is a lot of hay littered about, and that has to be stacked; also the waste straw or rubbish which is burnt, and the fires have to be made up. Three-quarters of an hour before either dinner or supper (the latter meal is about half-past 6) a flag, the Union Jack, is hoisted ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... passed us by after throwing us aside, even though the New Economic Policy may put on us our feet again for a while, and that ... that ..." Mintz did not finish, but turned round abruptly and strode away with an air of self-assertion, into the remote end of the room, where the debris was littered. ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... to the inn, where they found Mackenzie busy with a heap of letters and newspapers that had been sent across to him from Stornoway. The whole of the breakfast-table was littered with wrappers and big blue envelopes: where was Sheila, who usually waited on her father at such times to keep his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... him comfortably installed behind a much littered kitchen table in a room that I had heretofore known as his dining room. I was a bit struck by its disorder, and the good man was obliged to remove several piles of papers from the chairs before inviting ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... before his desk of hand-carved mahogany, pushing aside the papers that littered its baize-covered lid. In the half-gloom of the high-ceiled room his face assumed the look of a portrait in oils, and he seemed to have descended from his allotted square upon the plastered wall, to be but a boldly limned composite likeness of his race, awaiting the last ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... looked about in astonishment. Not a tree bigger than his thumb gave shade. The gate of the cattle corral stood but a few feet from the kitchen door, and rusty beef-bones, bleaching skulls, and scraps of sun-dried hides littered the ground or hung upon the fence. Exteriorly the low cabin made a drab, depressing picture; but as he alighted—upon Berea's invitation—and entered the house, he was met by a sweet-faced, brown-haired ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... Burgess and Blodgett were the only B's, and the General was glad. His desk was constantly littered with the "letters" of tenderfeet, and his office-tent filled with their portmanteaus, holding dress suits ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... closed behind Wilmot with an ominous click, and he found himself face to face with the legless beggar. In this one's eyes, seen above a table littered with pamphlets and writings, was none of that mock affability to which he had formerly treated Wilmot Allen. He looked angry, dangerous, poisonous. And he broke into a harsh, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... seat, all of them more or less broken by the children's racket. Over the pictures on the warm W. wall—against which, on the other side, the neighbour's kitchener stands—is a line of clean underclothing, hung there to air. The dresser is littered with fishing lines as well as with dry provisions and its proper complement of odd pieces of china. Beneath the table and each of the larger chairs are boots and slippers in various stages of polish or decay. Every jug not in daily ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... finish a task on which the adventurers had been engaged in their leisure moments since leaving Point Barrow. This was the counting and sorting of the skins. The packing-case had been broken open, and the scanty but precious contents littered an improvised table in the hold. Pen in hand, Hardenberg counted and ciphered and counted again. He could not forbear a chuckle when the net result was reached. The lot of the skins—the pelt of the sea-otter ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... supper room the air was hot. The table, littered with napkins and ash-trays, was old and stale. It was between dances as they entered, and Muriel Kane ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to come in?' said Phoebe, leading the way to the parlour, which smelled musty and damp for lack of fire, and was still littered with old canvases, studies, casts, and other gear of the painter who had once used it as ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... furnished—furniture being very dear in those days—but there were a couple of chairs and a table in the outer office, and a cupboard wherein I kept the frugal repast which served me during the course of a long and laborious day. In the inner office there were more chairs and another table, littered with papers: letters and packets all tied up with pink tape (which cost three sous the metre), and bundles of letters from hundreds of clients, from the highest and the lowest in the land, you understand, people who wrote to me and ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... confirmed bachelor at that!" At the utterance of this self-depreciating statement, John generally jerked his legs down from the top of his desk; and, rising and kicking his chair back to the wall, he would stump around his littered office till the manilla carpet steamed with dust. Then he would wildly break away, seeking refuge either in the open street, or in his room at the old-time tavern, The Eagle House, "where," he would say, "I have lodged and boarded, I do solemnly asseverate, for a long, unbroken, middle-aged ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... the edge of the bright clearing, where great trunks of trees, stripped and glistening, lay stretched like naked, brown-skinned bodies. Chips of wood littered the trampled floor, like splashed light, and the bases of the felled trees stood here and there, with their raw, level tops. Beyond was the brilliant, ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... nook the sun, far down in the south, throws but cold and watery gleams from a steel-colored sky, and as the northern blast eddies around the sheltering buildings the poor creatures shiver, and when their morning airing is over are glad to return to their warm, straw-littered stalls. Even the gallant and champion cock of the yard is chilled. With one foot drawn up into his fluffy feathers he stands motionless in the midst of his disconsolate harem with his eye fixed vacantly on the forbidding outlook. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of The New York Press, shoved his green eye-shade far back on his bald head and glanced up irritably from his littered desk. ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... she should care more for his welfare than for her own entertainment; and her offer to abide by the result of hazardous comparison with other women was a finer stroke than her reputation had led me to expect. She received me in a shabby little sitting-room littered with uncut books and newspapers, many of which I saw at a glance were French. One side of it was occupied by an open piano, surmounted by a jar full of white roses. They perfumed the air; they seemed to me to exhale the pure ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... fancy listed, He came to a street that turned and twisted; And there by a shop-front dimly lighted He suddenly stopped as though affrighted, Stopped and stared with his deep gaze centred On something seen, like a dream's illusion, Through the streaming glass, mid the queer confusion Of objects littered on shelf and floor, And about the counter and by the door— And then with his lips set tight ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... were making such a racket that this could not be heard more than a foot or so from the speaker. Lynch himself charged into the mass, swinging his billy and his free fist and laying others out one after the other. Pretty soon the floor was littered with cops. Lynch was doing yeoman duty, but it was hard to tell what side he ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... two hours, and had traversed a greater part of London from east to west. Such breakfast as he had, he took at the comfortless public-house where he had parted from Riderhood on the occasion of their night-walk. He took it, standing at the littered bar, and looked loweringly at a man who stood where Riderhood had stood ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was small, finished with yellow matchboarded walls and ceiling, and containing a closed roll-top desk, a table littered with papers, a vertical file, two cupboards, a telephone, and other simple office requisites. Two doors led out of it one to the manager's bedroom, the other to the shed. Thinking that those could wait, Willis settled down to make an examination ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... of mine, eh! I'll show you it's some business of mine. I am going to tell her all I know about you. I have been a rotter and worse than a rotter." The old flippancy had gone and the harsh voice was vibrant with purpose. "My path has been littered with the wrecks of human lives," he said bitterly, "and they are mostly women. I broke the heart of the best woman in the world, and I am going to see that you don't break the heart of ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... that none but the desperate were driven to these Dalton Street houses, once the dwellings of the well-to-do, and all the more pitiful for the contrast. The heated air reeked with the smell of stale cooking. There was a gas stove at one side, a linoleum-covered table in the centre, littered with bottles, plates, and pitchers, a bed and chairs which had known better days, new obviously bruised and battered by many enforced movings. In one corner was huddled a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... accidentally killed in a game, a quarrel ensued, and a general dispersion of mankind took place. One Indian fixed his residence on the borders of the lake, taking with him a dog big with young. The pups in due time were littered, and the Indian, when he went out to fish, carefully tied them up to prevent their straying. Several times, as he approached his tent, he heard a noise of children talking and playing; but on entering it, he only perceived the pups tied up as usual. His curiosity being excited ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... He looked round. It contained only one room, but this was twenty feet square. There were three small windows, one looking into the street, one looking up the valley, and one behind. The floor was littered with the beams of the roof. The door was still in its place. Having ascertained this, he ran back to the bodies of the two men, picked up the three guns, took off their bandoliers, and removed the pistols from their sashes; and with these, and one of their swords, returned to the ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... when they found in the interior of the great room a number of articles of furniture, such as chairs, tables, settees, and articles which, in their younger days, might have been rugs. Parts of bedsteads were littered around, broken articles of furniture were scattered here and there, and everywhere the place was ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... performance of the promise he had telegraphed, he made his way to the Dovecot were deep and distracted. The newspapers with which he had littered the railway carriage were left unread: he had occupation enough in his own thoughts. Men are so made that they seldom hear even of a death without immediately considering its effects on their private interests. Now, the death of Richard Shields ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... Cheyenne had seen Panhandle leave the Hole-in-the-Wall, and stride up the street alone. It was the first time Cheyenne had seen Sears since he had taken the single room opposite the gambling-house. Cheyenne stepped back, drew down the curtain, and turned on the light. The bare board floor was littered with cigarette stubs. A pair of saddle-bags hung on the iron bedstead. Other furniture was a chair, a scratched and battered washstand, a cracked mirror. Standing by the washstand Cheyenne took his gun from ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... wadded though it be, possesses serious disadvantages: it is littered with the ruins of the children's nurseries. These ruins are so close-welded to the rest of the home that my forceps cannot extract them without difficulty; and to remove them would be an exhausting business for the Clotho and possibly beyond her ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Reproductions and Antiques, Garden Furniture," which so inadequately invited those whom it might concern to a view of the petrified vaudeville within. Through the interstices of the gate the courtyard looked littered and unalluring;—the wicker tables without their fine white covers; the chairs pushed back in a heterogeneous assemblage; the segregated columns of a garden peristyle gaunt against the dark, gleamed a more ghostly white than the weather-stained busts and figures less recently added ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... a huge black fire-place occupied most of it, the floor was littered with pieces of paper, of vegetables and a disagreeable smell protested against the closed and dirty windows. At first it seemed that this place was empty and then, with a start, he was aware that two ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... battle all units were kept busy gathering up the arms, equipment and loose ammunition with which the terrain was littered, as well as maintaining the defence of ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... monologue of a garden god, set up in the garden which Maecenas had begun to lay out on the Esquiline Hill. This spot had until recently been the burial- ground of the Roman poor, a quarter noisome by day, and the haunt of thieves and beasts of prey by night. On this obscene spot, littered with skulls and dead men's bones, Canidia and her accomplice Sagana are again introduced, digging a pit with their nails, into which they pour the blood of a coal-black ewe, which they had previously ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... grave-yard. The inhabitants, worse off than the dead, are buried alive. No gardens, no cultivated patches, no attempt at any thing ornamental relieves the dreary monotony of the premises. Dark patches of lava, all littered with the heads and entrails of fish; a pile of turf from some neighboring bog; a rickety shed in which the fish are hung up to dry; a gang of wolfish-looking curs, horribly lean and voracious; a few prowling cats, and possibly a chicken deeply depressed in spirits—these are ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to him in a profession in which it was often necessary to profess chronic sickness and touching physical decrepitude. Mr Crips despised whiskers, but, as shaving was an extravagant indulgence, his slightly cadaverous countenance was often littered with a crisp, pale stubble, not unlike ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... when the reckoning is out. Hang or drown—gibbet or bullet clears the world of a great deal of rubbish, or the decks would get to be so littered that the vessel could not be worked. The last cruise is the longest of all; and honest papers, with a clean bill of health, may help a man into port, when he is past keeping the open sea. How now, schipper! what lies are floating about the docks this ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... seemed in no way changed. A mere stone shell, littered with fragments of wood and mortar. There was the rough wooden block on which Alan used to sit while he first frightened us with bogey-stories, and then calmed our excited nerves by rapid sallies of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... upon the shabby, music-littered room, broken only by Constance's sobs. Marjorie stood rooted to the spot. Could it be true that Constance, the girl she had fought for, the girl for whose sake she had braved class ostracism, had deliberately stolen her pin? Yet she must believe ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... crystal. It was after nine when Carmichael drove his electric-phaeton down the leaf-littered street, where the country wagons and the decrepit hacks were already meandering placidly, and out along the highroad, between the still green fields. It seemed to him as if the experience of the past night were "such stuff as dreams are made of." Yet the impression ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... the littered yard, explaining en route that he was fed up, and why he was fed up, and what they could do to fill the vacancy which would undoubtedly occur the next day, and where they could go to, so far as he was concerned, and so, unlocking one rusty lock after another, passed through dark and ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... was filled with Napoleonic relics, and littered with political and historical papers. He kept a large room with models of new inventions, which were a great delight to him and to his son. He was fond of wood-turning, and Thelin and he would often make pretty rustic chairs ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... part, relieved itself as at Plugstreet, but had no fixed dwelling-place, sometimes extending as far to the right as Trench Bugeaud, half way up the north slope of the hill of Serre, where the ground was littered with the debris and decomposing bodies of the June fighting, sometimes as far to the left as Trench Morand, about 300 yards north of where the Bucquoy road crossed the trenches. From Morand to Hoche the lie of the land was all in our favour; the trenches ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... and giving them water. In an anteroom two or three children were helping to wash the leaves of ivies and other plants, having had the office of the leaves simply explained. All was done with such care that the clean faces and garments of the children were not soiled, nor the floor and desks littered. ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... the most part empty. Others showed only fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side walls or were open above and littered with the debris of their roofs. Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed lower chambers, at ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet |
