"Nondescript" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A rabble of nondescript curs came snapping and yapping about her horse's legs until dispersed by a harsh command from the dark interior of ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... brought a refreshing air from the quarter where the thunder-cloud had exhausted itself last evening. This day the doctor found the tree mentioned as bearing a nondescript fruit in my former journal, Vol. I. page 82., but this tree bore neither flower nor fruit. Thermometer at sunrise, 80 deg.; at noon, 103 deg.; at 4 P.M., 108 deg.; at 9, 100 1/2 deg.; with wet ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded—every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the catalogues, and Harding ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... soon brought the children to our side—good, busy, cheerful, and healthy-looking as ever, and marvellously improved in the matter of equipment Harry had been promoted to a cap, which added the grace of a flourish to his bow; Bessy had added the luxury of a pinafore to her nondescript garments; and both pairs of little feet were advanced to the certain dignity, although somewhat equivocal comfort, of shoes ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... of duty, thereby making them more attentive to the discipline and care of their men. In the matter of uniform, also, a great and desirable change was made. Many corps had become quite regardless of appearance, entirely discarding all pretensions to uniformity, and adopting the most nondescript dress. One in particular, a most gallant regiment of Europeans which had served almost from the beginning of the siege, was known by the sobriquet of the "Dirty Shirts," from their habit of fighting in their shirts with sleeves turned up, without ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... coast of Flanders becomes better known, is visited every year by increasing numbers of travellers from the other side of the Channel. Knocke is in itself one of the least attractive places on the Flemish littoral. The old village, a nondescript collection of houses, lies on the Vicinal railway about a mile from the sea, which is reached by a straight roadway, and where there is a digue, numerous hotels, pensions, and villas, all of which are filled ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... this, I should not have looked twice at him: long, spare, and stooping, a shabby figure, he crouched over a cup of coffee in a corner of the dingy restaurant, at fretful enmity with the world; typical, I should have said, of the furtive London nondescript. But that white hair startled me; it gleamed out, unnaturally cleanly in those not overclean surroundings, and although I had propped my book up against the water-bottle at my own table, where I sat over my solitary dinner, I found my eyes straying from the printed page to the human ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... This from a nondescript fellow with no grains of a gentleman about him in form, feature, or apparel! The captain stared nonplussed, too much taken aback ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the fires in the heater and on the snow outside, round which the waiting coachmen warm themselves, with Rembrandtesque effects of chiaro-oscuro second only to the picturesqueness of dvorniki in their nondescript caps and shaggy coats, who cluster round blazing fagots in less aristocratic quarters when ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... scarlet. The crown of all this terraced glory is the great cathedral. A square massive tower stands up out of the body of the church. A purist may find fault with the mixture of styles this tower incorporates. The bulk of its structure is Gothic; at the base of the superstructure appears a nondescript medley of styles (nondescript at least in the eyes of a dilettante) out of which arises a concern of domes and cupolas one above the other, supported at each corner by little pinnacles crowned with onion-shaped tops. The copper coating of these ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... a stepdaughter of the Earl of Dorminster, was one of those young women who had baffled description for some years before she had commenced to take life seriously. She was neither fair nor dark, petite nor tall. No one could ever have called her nondescript, or have extolled any particular grace of form or feature. Her complexion had defied the ravages of sun and wind and that moderate indulgence in cigarettes and cocktails which the youth of her day affected. ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... agent, a nondescript sort of person, representing England at the court of Pope Pius IX. This gentleman's duty was to watch and report, but not to act. It was through him that England's idea of the policy to be pursued ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... wreck of the Good Hope, the buttery, the kitchens, the stables, the covered cart-shed that surrounded two sides of the court, were all crowded by idle people, partly belonging to Sir Daniel's establishment, and attired in his livery of murrey and blue, partly nondescript strangers attracted to the town by greed, and received by the knight through policy, and because it was the fashion of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he hadn't paid much attention to it. The car was just a common Ford Cruiser of the nondescript steel blue color that was so popular. But Bending had been conscious of its presence for several blocks. He looked carefully in ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... two hours before they reached the fisherman's hut, a nondescript, low-ceilinged shelter of logs, driftwood and untarnished metal plates off some wreck. Several times they were hailed by other fishermen, who addressed the old man as "Deacon" and asked jocularly about what kind of a fish ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... appointed, with perhaps a dozen letters sealed for the post, and a coach-parcel addressed to James Ballantyne, which he dropt at the turnpike-gate as we drove to Melrose. Seeing it picked up by a dirty urchin, and carried {p.285} into a hedge pot-house, where half-a-dozen nondescript wayfarers were smoking and tippling, I could not but wonder that it had not been the fate of some one of those innumerable packets to fall into unscrupulous hands, and betray the grand secret. That very morning we had seen two post-chaises drawn up ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... came, "to protect your property from the natives of the plains," he said. I took occasion to tell him, however, that if he would look after the people of his own village, I would take care of those from the plains, pointing, as I spoke, to the nondescript "merchant" who had already stolen my revolver and several small articles from my cabin, which by a bold front I had recovered. The chap was not a native Uruguayan. Here, as in many other places that I visited, the natives themselves ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... savour the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the patterned wall-paper I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of its inmates has it aught to do with the centuries when our English tongue was otherwise written or spoken than it is to-day. Ye Hutte is a vast, barn-like building, plain and bare save for an inviting vine-grown porch vaguely Gothic in reminiscence, although nondescript in fact. It was erected by some dissenting society for public worship: hence its interior is one immense vaulted room, with cathedral-like windows and choir-gallery across one end. "The body of the house," to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... on; and the nondescript animal was still confined to the windows of "the Macaroni print shops." It was, however, the bloom of the author's fancy, and promised all the mellow fruits ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... would lie sleepily in the sun, dreaming of the days of splendour long by. In the square before the wonderful cathedral there would be stillness—here and there, perhaps, a pigeon would come fluttering down from the ledges and cornices of the Gothic facade; sometimes a nondescript dog would raise a lazy head to snap at the flies; occasionally the streets would send back a nasal echo as a group of American tourists, with their Baedekers and maps, came hurrying along to "do" the town before the next train left for ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... plain, blue, cotton blouse and skirt; her not over-tall figure swelling plumply beneath their starched folds. Her hair was of a nondescript brown, beautified by a glint of gold, so that her uncovered head looked bright in the sunlight. Her face was such as may be seen any day in the villages which nestle beneath the Sussex Downs, under whose shadow she was ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... no comment, but stood awhile by the window in a brown-study, twisting his lip, and frowning slightly. His nondescript features and boyish manner scarcely allowed him at any time to play the magnate with success. But his position as master of Coryston Place, the great family house with its pompous tradition, and the long influence of his mother, had by now asserted, ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the wagons, the carts, the nondescript vehicles of every description; but a moment before she had been there,—so near; he had caught beneath filmy white the glitter of gold,—her hair, the only bright thing in that murk and gloom. He recalled how he had once sat beside her at the opera. How ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... of June the Monarch, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred W. Ellet, arrived in the reach above Vicksburg. This was one of the nondescript fleet of rams, planned, built, equipped, and manned, under the orders of the War Department, by Ellet's elder brother, Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., but now acting under the orders of the Commander of the Mississippi fleet. Ellet ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... the twenty-eighth of August was as fine as heart could wish, and the three sisters rose almost as soon as it was light, to fulfil their promise of attending to all the small nondescript matters of arrangement, needful when a large party is expected by a family not much in the habit of receiving company. Katherine, who had quite given up all thoughts of equalling her elder sister in talent, and who prided herself on being the useful member ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yet of procuring any of those mice which I mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they are plenty in harvest, at which time I will take care to get more; and will endeavour to put the matter out of doubt whether it be a nondescript species or not. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... bully—I am only, God help me, a weak civil arm of the service,"—and whining a little—"still very far from well. Now I'll state my case to you, for your satisfaction, and to prevent any little mistakes. I was lately afflicted with a sort of nondescript atrophy, a stagnation of the fluids, a congestion of the small blood-vessels, and a spasmodic contraction of the finitesimal nerves, that threatened very serious consequences. At the survey, two of the surgeons, ignorant quacks that they are, broached a most ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess the ability to intelligently wage the battle in the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... causa' of all 'belli'- Thou gate of life and death—thou nondescript! Whence is our exit and our entrance,—well I May pause in pondering how all souls are dipt In thy perennial fountain:—how man fell I Know not, since knowledge saw her branches stript Of her first fruit; but how he ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... very sultry, and I felt that I should enjoy the shelter and repose of a habitation. As we went along, indications of the new power, which had already effected the easy transit of the desert, were visible in small patches of coal, scattered upon the sand; presently we saw a dark nondescript object, that did not look at all like the abode of men, civilized or uncivilized; and yet, from the group hovering about an aperture, seemed to be tenanted by human beings. This proved to be an ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... guests drifted in within the next few moments,—the Bishop, Julian's godfather, a curious blend of the fashionable and the devout, the anchorite and the man of the people; Lord and Lady Shervinton, elderly connections of the nondescript variety; Mr. Hannaway Wells, reserved yet, urbane, a wonderful type of the supreme success of mediocrity; a couple of young soldiers, light-hearted and out for a good time, of whom Julian took charge; ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of nondescript. I did not choose my costume; it was made up for me by my friends. They called me Mark Antony, but that was because they did not know what else to call me. But they promised me Cleopatra if I would ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... will send it on the instant to the formidable man; but I will not repeat to him every month, that there are no news. Thank me for my resolution, and for keeping it through the long night.—One book, last summer, came out in New York, a nondescript monster which yet had terrible eyes and buffalo strength, and was indisputably American,—which I thought to send you; but the book throve so badly with the few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals so much, that I never did. Yet I believe now again, I shall. It is called Leaves of ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... living in the dales of the Aire and the Wharfe, and not only were packs of Otterhounds kept, but many sportsmen maintained on their own account a few hounds for their personal delectation. These hounds were no doubt in some instances a nondescript lot, as, indeed, are several of the packs hunting the otter to-day, but there was unquestionably a good deal of Otterhound blood in them, and some pure bred hounds were also to be found. Yorkshire also has always been the great ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... quivers, and other warlike weapons; musical instruments of several different kinds; a silver crucifix, a sepulchral antique vase, and several of the little brazen Penates of the ancient heathens, with other curious nondescript articles, some of which, in the superstitious opinions of that period, seemed to be designed for magical purposes. The library of this singular character was of the same miscellaneous description with its other effects. Curious manuscripts of classical antiquity lay mingled with the voluminous ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... bridges, mounted side by side on wagons, with the dried mud of the River Meuse still on their flat bottoms; there were baggage trains miles in length, wherein the supply of regular army wagons was eked out with nondescript vehicles—even family carriages and delivery vans gathered up hastily, as the signs on their sides betrayed, from the tradespeople of a dozen Northern German cities and towns, and now bearing chalk marks on them to show in what division they belonged. And inevitably at ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a dance hall. Ninety-five per cent. were men, of whom the majority were young men. A year ago the percentage would have been nearer one hundred, but now a certain small coterie of women had drifted in, most of them with a keen eye for prosperity. The red or blue shirt, the nondescript hat, and the high, mud-caked boots of the miner preponderated. Here and there in the crowd, however, stood a man dressed in the height of fashion. There seemed no middle ground. These latter were either the professional gamblers, the lawyers, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... round, caught the eye of Dr. Silence, and stopped. He put his pipe back into his pocket and began to hum softly—that underbreath humming of a nondescript melody I knew so well and had ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... only the Union fleet, but the ports and commerce of the North would be at the mercy of this novel and terrible engine of destruction. The telegraph carried the news everywhere, and in dread and anxiety the people awaited the fate of another day. When morning came at Hampton Roads a small nondescript vessel, looking like an oval raft with a turret, interposed between the Merrimac and its prey. It was the Monitor, the invention of Captain John Ericsson, and it had arrived during the night of ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... neigh;" and again: "the kyang, so far as external aspect is concerned, is obviously an ass and not an horse." Of this there is but little doubt. Moorcroft, in his travels, vol. i. p. 312, states: "In the eastern parts of Ladakh is a nondescript wild variety of horse which I may call Equus kiang. It is perhaps more of an ass than a horse, but its ears are shorter, and it is certainly not the gur-khor or wild ass of Sind." Further on, at page 442, he-adds: "We saw many herds of the kyang, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... went out to help her husband in the field, and while she was cutting rice her little boy was carried off by a wolf. About a year afterward a wolf, followed by several cubs and a strange, ape-like creature, was seen about ten miles from Chupra. After a lively chase the nondescript was caught and recognized (by the mark of a burn on his knee) as the Hindoo boy that had disappeared in the rice-field. This boy would not eat anything but raw flesh, and could never be taught to speak, but expressed his emotions in an inarticulate mutter. His elbows and the pans of his knees ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... we went to the house of the Blazers, in 'Cow Bay,' and used to lodge there with Yellow Bill. They said Bill was a thief by profession; but I wasn't old enough to be a judge. Little Lizza Rock, the nondescript, as people called her, used to live at the Blazers. Poor Lizza had a hard time of it, and used to sigh and say she wished she was dead. Nobody thought of her, she said, and she was nothing because she was deformed, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... glittering display of openly expressed frivolity seemed curiously new, and vaguely alarming. He was angry with it, yet in a manner attracted. He found himself considering, with a curious uneasiness, two small nondescript pink objects that were lying on the floor at some distance from each other. At a first glance they appeared to be very choice examples of that charming orchid known as the 'Cypripedium,'—but on closer examination it was evident they were merely fashionable ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... cases besides the ones labeled "Camp Outfit," "Medical," "Armory Chest," "Grub Chest," and several nondescript ones containing the odds and ends that an expedition of the kind they planned would find indispensable. In some smaller boxes also were packed yards and yards of bright-colored cloth and calico, spangles, cheap jewelry and brass ornaments for use among the natives. In making up their ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... tall in proportion to the spaces they enclose. Two of these spaces, those on the left and right side, are filled in above with meaningless rectangular recesses, while seated statues occupy less than a whole half in altitude of the niches. The architectural design is nondescript, corresponding to no recognised style, unless it be a bastard Roman Doric. There is absolutely no decorative element except four shallow masks beneath the abaci of the pilasters. All is cold and broad and dry, contrasting strangely with the accumulated ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... an act of bold and resolute virtue expiated his crimes and brought about the happy catastrophe of the piece, is left to sneak off unrewarded. As to Florian, though obviously intended for the hero of the tale, he is a strange nondescript, in whose language the author has given buffoonery by way of wit, and bombast by way of dignity. The Count De Valmont is a most interesting personage, and so is ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... carnations. The gown was a masterpiece, designed especially for her by a great French milliner. Rachel often wondered whose eyesight had been strained over those marvellous carnations, but to-night she did not give them a thought. She looked with grave dissatisfaction at her pale, nondescript face and nondescript hair and eyes. She did not know that only women with marriageable daughters saw her as she saw ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... into the road again, and went on with sharp eyes glancing emotionless. His daughter-in-law died soon after, and he assumed sole charge of the young Ellington whom we have seen making a forlorn pilgrimage under the trees. The young man had received a queer sort of nondescript education. All the Ellingtons for a generation or two back had gone in due course to Eton and Oxford, but no such conventional training was vouchsafed to the latest of the family. The hand of the private tutor had been ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... ends, opening on to darkness. Suddenly, without any warning, it abuts upon a void in which the eyes see nothing, and we roll over a yielding, felted soil, where all noise abruptly ceases—it is the desert! . . . Not a vague, nondescript stretch of country such as in the outskirts of our towns, not one of the solitudes of Europe, but the threshold of the vast desolations of Arabia. The desert; and, even if we had not known that it was awaiting us, we should have recognised it by the indescribable quality of harshness and uniqueness ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... Molly can knock spots off them. It's the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't know what to call her. Always see a fellow's weak point in his wife. Still there's destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of the month in the same pecuniary partitions, and to add it up glibly with the rest, calendar and coin together. But Aaron, although he was not averse from honestly misrepresenting the value of goods, drew the line at trickery, and so he was kicked out. It took him a year of nondescript occupations to amass a little stock of mock jewellery wherewith to peddle, and Manchester he found a more profitable centre than the metropolis. Yenta dead, profit and holy learning divided his thoughts, and few of his fellows achieved less of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... England, in July, 1846, there were in camp and on the way 15,000 Mormons, with 3000 wagons, 30,000 head of cattle, a great many horses and mules, and a vast number of sheep. Colonel Kane says that, besides the wagons, there was "a large number of nondescript turnouts, the motley makeshifts of poverty; from the unsuitable heavy cart that lumbered on mysteriously, with its sick driver hidden under its counterpane cover, to the crazy two-wheeled trundle, such as our own poor employ in the conveyance of their slop barrels, this pulled along, it may ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... accompanies this nondescript collection of translations is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable to misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before proceeding to consider it, however, it is ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... spied a nondescript kit flung down in the grass at the man's feet and they set a-dancing. "Then ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... appreciate the difference between hacking at hardwood trees with a jade tomahawk, and cutting them down with a European axe. So New Zealand's shores became, very early in this century, the favourite haunt of whalers, sealers, and nondescript trading schooners. Deserters and ship-wrecked seamen were adopted by the tribes. An occasional runaway convict from Australia added spice to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... others, and totally repudiates self. From early manhood he had roughed life in the very roughest and wildest scenes of the wilderness, and was now returning to those scenes after a short visit to his native land. The doctor was a nondescript; a compound of gravity, fun, seriousness, and humbug—the latter predominating. He had been everywhere (at least, so he said), had seen everything, knew everybody, and played the fiddle. It cannot be said, I fear, that he played it well; but, amid the various ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... A nondescript-clad figure came out of the brushwood into the open clearing, walking towards the spot where the mountain-sheep lay stretched on the sward, which was partly covered with the snow that remained unmelted under the lee of the cliff; and a voice, without doubt appertaining to the figure, exclaimed ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... melody of her voice startled me. Such voices rarely, if ever, issue from any but beautiful forms. I looked at her attentively, but, owing to a nondescript species of shawl in which her head was wrapped, I could discern nothing beyond what seemed to be a pale, thin face and large eyes. Her dress was lamentable. An old silk, of a color now unrecognizable, clung to her figure in those limp folds which are ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... gates where the horses were to enter from their stalls in the basement was a hussar-like shape that filled my romantic soul with joy; and the other figures of the management I thought very fortunate compromises between grooms and ringmasters. At any rate, their nondescript costumes were gay, and a relief from the fashions in the boxes and the promenade; they were costumes, and costumes are always more sincere, if not more effective, than fashions. As I have hinted, I do not know just what costumes they were, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... A. Hayne, of nondescript complexion and Radical persuasion, whose frantic speeches and other wild performances during a political canvass several years ago procured him the sobriquet of "Notoriety," is just now lording over our unhappy people in the guise of a United States commissioner. In this potential capacity ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... book collectors how completely we should be mastered by this love of books. Who did not think that it comprised but occasional visits to the book-shops and bookstalls, perhaps even to an auction-room, and the reading of nondescript catalogues? But it is like all other hobbies: ridden at first with too little restraint, it soon gets the upper hand, and off it goes, bit between teeth, carrying its rider ever farther and farther afield. And no man of spirit would think of seeking to curb his hobby's gallop. We have mounted ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... tables and benches, filled with good-humoured thirsty folk; on one side a weather-beaten wooden chalet, having the proud title of Restaurant du Rhone, served apparently but to house the supply of drinks which nondescript men and sturdy bare-headed maidens carried incessantly on trays to the waiting tables. On the dusty midway space—the garden boasted no blade of grass—couples danced to the strains of a wheezing hurdy-gurdy played by a white bearded ancient who at the end of each tune refreshed himself with ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... history's going on forever repeating itself," he said. "I wonder if this town's going on building up things and rolling over them, as poor father once said it was rolling over his poor old heart. It looks like it: here's the Amberson Mansion again, only it's Georgian instead of nondescript Romanesque; but it's just the same Amberson Mansion that my father built long before you were born. The only difference is that it's your father who's built this one now. It's all the same, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Grant, a political nondescript, not Wade, the uncompromising extremist, came after; and inevitably four years of Grant had again divided the triumphant Republicans. This was the situation during the winter of 1871-72, when the approaching Presidential election brought the country face to face ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... about the city was not to be distinguished from a working-woman. Her friends, indeed, said that she had not the least care for her personal appearance, and unless she was watched, she was sure to go out in her shabbiest gown and most battered hat. She wore tonight a brown ulster and a nondescript black bonnet drawn close down on her head and tied with black strings. In her lap lay her leathern bag, which she usually carried under her arm, that contained medicines, lint, bandages, smelling-salts, a vial of ammonia, and so on; to her patients it was a sort of conjurer's ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... specific, the difficulty of producing good grafted or budded trees of named varieties may readily tempt the less scrupulous to sell any kind of nondescript seedling, while at the same time giving the public the impression that superior stock is being offered. This is, in fact, already being done. I have before me the catalogues of three large general nurseries. One of them offers what are obviously seedling Chinese chestnuts in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... unaspiringly settled down. To support this impression there were his pallid complexion and enormous round spectacles; his dusty air of premature age; his general effect of dried-up detachment from his environment. One noted, too, the tousled mass of nondescript hair, which he wore about a month too long; the necktie-band triumphing over the collar in the back; the collar itself, which had a kind of celluloid look and shone with a blue unwholesome sheen under the gas-light. On the other hand there was the undeniably trim cut of the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... passed through a doorway into a patio, and from the patio into a nondescript room which could have belonged to no one but a bachelor and a sportsman. There was, however, a mother, and the poor lady would have been torn from her bed to greet the welcome ones, had not the father and daughter protested. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... how can we say that it represents anything of the sort to the probably hypnotic or automatic consciousness of the cricket? What does it really represent, as seen from below? A twig, terminating in a bud, with two branching twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... particular and slightly crooked, and his eyes were nondescript in colour, but kind ... so kind! Esther remembered it was the first thing she had noticed about him the night ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... employer. Here was a human touch that would modify the majesty of the impersonal mountain scenery in his description. He waved his handkerchief frantically as the train shot past, and he hardly knew which attracted him most—the expression of happiness on Mr. Rogers's face, or the line of nondescript humanity that gesticulated in the field as though they wished to stop the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... somewhat timid about touching, even though convinced that it was beyond the power of doing any more harm. They saw that both of their bullets had struck the skull, though not at the precise points at which they aimed. One had passed near the right eye of the nondescript, and must have inflicted serious injury, but its toughness would have enabled it to keep up the fight, and to have slain both of the boys before they could have reloaded and ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... wrong-doing man can deal with, the kindest thing is not only to punish, but, with animals especially, to punish at once. He ran to the conflicting parties. They separated the moment they heard the sound of his coming. One came cringing and crawling to his feet; the other—it was the nondescript Tadpole—stood a little way off, wagging his tail, and cocking his head up in his master's face. He gave the one at his feet several pretty severe cuts with the whip, and sent him off. The other drew nearer. His master turned away and took ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... without any prototype whatever, it would be destitute of meaning. But according to Hume's principle, the simple elements in an image, at least, are derived from prototypes-except possibly in very rare exceptional cases. Often, in such instances as our image of a friend's face or of a nondescript dog, an image is not derived from one prototype, but from many; when this happens, the image is vague, and blurs the features in which the various prototypes differ. To arrive at the meaning of the image in such a case, we observe that there are certain respects, notably ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... past along the platform, all huddled-up with hands in pockets, George beheld a ragged nondescript of a man whose appearance confirmed Master Jerry's ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... and masquerading in a French commis-voyageur's modest garb, was seated at ease in Etienne Garcin's death-trap at the Cor d'Abundance, in foggy Granville. His darkened locks and nondescript garb thoroughly effaced the "officer and gentleman." One of the old French villain's wickedest and prettiest woman decoys was coquettishly serving Hawke's breakfast as he read the burning words of Justine Delande's message from the heart. The last greeting, tear-blotted, and promptly ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... wrote the best remembered of her works. Copy from her pen supplied her publisher, Thomas Gardner, with a succession of novels modeled on the French fiction of Marivaux and De Mouhy, with periodical essays reminiscent of Addison, with moral letters, and with conduct books of a nondescript but popular sort. The hard-worked authoress even achieved a new reputation on the success of her "Fortunate Foundlings" (1744), "Female Spectator" (1744-6), and her most ambitious novel, "The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless" (1751). The productions ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... nondescript, Burlesque and satire keen, And irony and playful jest, So that it may ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... privilege or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even to their dens. The common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the oryx, the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare: nondescript packs, in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side with the wolf-dog and the lithe Abyssinian greyhound, scented and retrieved for their master the prey which he had pierced with his arrows. At times a hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother, would be followed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... several thousands, were running pell-mell to loot the granary. Men also joined in plundering the Khalifa's storehouse. They ran against our horses, tripped over each other and fell in their crazy haste to fill sacks, skins, and nondescript vessels of all sorts—metal, wood and clay—with grain. Women staggered under burdens that would assure their households of food for months. It became a saturnalia and jubilee for the long, half-starved slaves, men and women. By-and-by looting became more general. The houses ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... removed by order of the captain, called on the six hundred surviving passengers to kneel while he was administering the rites of the church to the benefactor of them all. Never was a call on the piety and faith of any number of men more cheerfully obeyed. Instantaneously that mixed, nondescript crowd—Irish, English, Scotch, Welsh, Dutch—Catholic, Protestant, infidel—fell on their knees, and, if they did not pray, they paid that outward homage to Religion which sometimes the most indifferent and irreligious ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... tree or two. In a field called “the Park,” at the east end of the parish, are some fine trees, remnants of a former avenue. The ancient well, said to be Roman, in the rectory grounds, has already been mentioned. The church was re-fashioned in 1879, and an old, nondescript, flat-ceiled structure was converted into a substantial and well-designed edifice of Early Decorated style, with clock-tower and good clock, which gives out its notes of time ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... their eyes upon it, though with very different expressions. That upon the face of the Irishman is of sadness, as if for the loss of an old shipmate; the Malay looks on with the impassive tranquillity peculiar to his race; while in the sunken orbs of the nondescript can be detected a look that speaks of a horrible craving—the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... western side of the Edgeware Road. The house of Margaret's aunt was plainly enough indicated to me, as soon as I entered the street where it stood, by the glare of light from the windows, the sound of dance music, and the nondescript group of cabmen and linkmen, with their little train of idlers in attendance, assembled outside the door. It was evidently a very large party. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the South. He hurried up to Hannibal and enlisted with a company of young fellows who were recruiting with the avowed purpose of "throwing off the yoke of the invader." They were ready for the field, presently, and set out in good order, a sort of nondescript cavalry detachment, mounted on animals more picturesque than beautiful. Still, it was a resolute band, and might have done very well, only it rained a good deal, which made soldiering disagreeable and hard. Lieutenant Clemens resigned at the end of two weeks, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pocket-handkerchief. The men are not so aspiring, and usually don on Sundays a blue coat and brass buttons, white pantaloons, white gloves, and a good fur cap in winter, or a neat straw hat or brilliant beaver in summer. The waistcoat is nondescript, but the boots are irreproachable. A cigar has nearly replaced ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... What an assorted company it was! Young and grizzled—trappers, miners, invalids seeking health, adventurers, speculators, a few half-breeds; all men of little education, but of fascinating experience; a few women of quiet poise and resourcefulness. Their clothes were nondescript and betrayed the fact that they had come from the East, having been sent west by condoning relatives, no doubt after having lived in more fashionable circles. There were two little children who fell asleep early in the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... resounded to the hum of its varied labors. Mr. Jarvis, dictating letters to a typist, smiled occasionally as he pictured the arrival of this over-favored young man in the drawing-room of Mrs. Weatherley, attired in the nondescript fashion which his words had suggested. One or two of the clerks ventured upon a chaffing remark. To all appearance, the person most absorbed in his work was the young man who had been singled out for such ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with that Reverence which is due to a Superior—if nondescript Nature; and as my Heart was entirely subdued by the captivating Voice I had heard, I fell down at his Feet and wept. I could hardly have explained why, but 'tis the sort of thing one always does in an Eastern Apologue. The Genius smiled ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... fact that among the animal mounds many nondescript shapes occur which cannot be identified at all, and as many others which have been called after the animals they appear to most nearly resemble, carry out their peculiarities only in the most vague and general way, it is a little difficult to understand the confidence with which ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... vacations Pinky's room had been done over in cream enamel and rose-flowered cretonne. She said the chromos in the hall spoiled the entire second floor. So the gold frames, glittering undimmed, the checks as rosily glowing as ever, found temporary resting-places in a nondescript back chamber known as the serving room. Then the new sleeping porch was built for Ted, and the portraits ended their ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... now passing Euston. It was a muggy, slushy night, with a thin brown fog wreathing the houses and fading away above their tops into a dull, slate-blue sky. The wet street looked like a black canal; the blurred forms, less like vehicles than nondescript boats, moving over its inky surface, were indistinctly reflected therein; the gas-lights flared redly through the murky haze. It was not a pleasant evening in ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... immediately so derived, for remotely the Ziph language may ascend to Nineveh) from Winchester. Dr. Mapleton, a physician in Bath, who attended me in concert with Mr. Grant, an eminent surgeon, during the nondescript malady of the head, happened to have had three sons at Winchester; and his reason for removing them is worth mentioning, as it illustrates the well-known system of fagging. One or more of them showed to the quick medical ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... these creatures. But you see another use for my nondescript building over there. Shall we go ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... summer visitor. Never was so brilliant a lecture-room as his evening banqueting-hall; highly connected students from Rome mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable to his deserts. Herod was noted for his repartees; and we have instances on record of his setting down, according to the emergency, both the one and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... First Illinois Volunteers, Twentieth Army Corps. Their most intimate friends would have failed to recognize them. Glazier was clad in an old gray jacket and blue pants, with a venerable and dilapidated hat which had seen a prodigious amount of service of a nondescript kind; while a tattered gray blanket that had done duty for many a month as a bed by day and a cloak by night, and was now in the last stage of dissolution from age and general infirmity, completed his unmilitary and unpretentious toilet. Having at first no one to identify them, Glazier and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... for two days. His lean bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow, like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go grubbing into the deplorable details of an occurrence which, after ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... suppose you have your house full of silly women, prating scandalous things. Have you ever received my picture in oil from Sanders, London? It has been paid for these sixteen months: why do you not get it? My suite, consisting of two Turks, two Greeks, a Lutheran, and the nondescript, Fletcher, are making so much noise, that I am glad to ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... composition of pomatum for the hair, and gives more satisfaction to a customer than any of the "creams and balms," &c. &c., made up and scented with essential oils; the one smells of the flower, the other "a nondescript." ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... hand. Inside it contained an enclosure, but the sheet was blank. With wildly beating heart and trembling fingers Paul undid the smaller packet's folded ends. And there the morning sunbeams fell on a tiny curl of hair, of that peculiar nondescript shade of infant fairness which later would turn to gold. It was less than an inch long, and of the fineness of down, while in tender care it had been tied with a ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... reflection Michael saw in its warped mirror would have made any boy with a particle of vanity actually suffer. Michael, however, was not vain. He thought little about himself, but this room was depressing. The floor was covered with a nondescript carpet faded and soiled beyond redemption, and when his trunk was placed between the bureau and the bed there would be scarcely room for the one wooden chair. It was not a hopeful outlook. The boy took off his coat and sat down on the ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... these: "His manuscript school-books still exist, and are models of neatness and accuracy. One of them, it is true, a ciphering book, preserved in the library at Mount Vernon, has some school-boy attempts at calligraphy; nondescript birds, executed with the flourish of a pen, or profiles of faces, probably intended for those of his school-mates; the rest are all grave and business-like. Before he was thirteen years of age he had copied into a volume ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... of Nature, weirdo, mutant; rouser, snorter* [U.S.]. individuality, idiosyncrasy, originality, mannerism. aberration; irregularity; variety; singularity; exemption; salvo &c. (qualification) 469. nonconformist; nondescript, character, original, nonesuch, nonsuch[obs3], monster, prodigy, wonder, miracle, curiosity, flying fish, black sheep, black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, mule, hinny, mulatto; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fight them, of course," Jeff urged. "They're all women, in spite of their nondescript clothes; nice women, too; good strong sensible faces. I guess ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... with men from the ranges, freighters from the trail, and the nondescript driftwood that the waves of civilisation cast up upon those far-away shores of human society. With all of them Perault was a favourite. Carroll was out when he entered. On all sides he was greeted with exclamations of surprise, pleasure, and curiosity, ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... No. 92a, Porchester Square, Bayswater. Rhubarb-green and gilt paper, with dark olive dado: curtains of a nondescript brown. Black marble clock on grey granite mantelpiece; Landseer engravings; tall book-case, containing volumes of "The Quiver," "Mission-Work in Mesopotamia," a cheap Encyclopedia, and the "Popular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... there. The house is all in a muddle from the wedding, and we are to have a sort of nondescript meal at eight. Herrick, old fellow, I want you to put me up for a couple of nights. You are coming down to Staplegrove on Tuesday, so I told Dinah that we might as well ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... new green kid gloves, was dressed in a brown cloth coat bound with a braid of several different shades, showing different dates of repair, and surmounted by a velvet collar of the same date as the coat. His trousers were of a nondescript gray, and flapped about a pair of brand-new gaiters, evidently purchased for the occasion, and, from the numerous positions assumed while he talked, evidently ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... shapeless surmises which the singular events of the evening sent crowding to his imagination. His dreams on retiring to seek repose were frightful—several times in the night he saw graceful Phil squinting at him with a nondescript leer of vengeance and derision in his yellow goggle eyes, and bearing Mary off, like some misshapen ogre of old, mounted upon Handsome Harry, who appeared to be gifted with the speed of Hark-away or flying Childers, whilst he himself could do nothing but stand helplessly by, and contemplate ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... panorama, Merry watched everything eagerly, amused and interested by this spectacle of preparation. Such soldiers as she could see distinctly looked like farmers in holiday homespun; the cavalry like nondescript companies of backwoods hunters. There seemed to be no uniformity in infantry equipment or cavalry accoutrements, and the discipline struck her as in keeping with this diversity of dress and ornament. The men could be seen hurrying ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... on the first of May, with all of them, except one of the nondescript collegians and the air-current student, more or less trained aviators. Carl was going out to tour small cities, for the George Flying Corporation. Lieutenant Haviland was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an ex voto, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a written ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as he pushed open the green-baize doors, which worked on springs, he saw they had entered one of those nondescript shops, so numerous in certain parts of New York, where a person can obtain any kind of alcoholic drink, a cigar, a lunch, a "square meal," or a ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... In the massive stone hotels and stores of that period, as well as in the careful construction of dwelling houses, they exhibited a true perception of "the eternal fitness of things." The buildings of the fifties, in their extreme simplicity, are far more imposing than the nondescript, pretentious structures of today, and will, beyond doubt, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... instinctive dislike because it is not familiar. With a little applied education, Americans can bring the charm of the French table to their own homes rather than when they are, as they say, tired of the same old round of "eats," seeking out a nondescript table d'hte restaurant and eagerly consuming what is set before ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... a small crowd had collected round the aeroplane. Mr. Daventry and Mr. Van Kloof were there, with several other Englishmen, and a number of Chinese coolies and nondescript natives stood at a little distance, gazing in wondering silence. Rodier had his watch in his hand, and looked reproachfully at his employer. Smith pressed through the crowd, shaking hands with the Englishmen one after another, but declaring that he had no ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... in front which probably housed the engine and a cab for the operator. The body of the vehicle was simply an open rectangular box. There were two men in the cab, and about twenty or thirty more crowded into the box body. These were dressed in faded and nondescript garments of blue and gray and brown; all were armed with crude weapons—axes, bill-hooks, long-handled instruments with serrated edges, and what looked like broad-bladed spears. The vehicle itself, which seemed ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... might have been predicted for the owner of the nondescript bed resting on the cabin floor. His neck, grimed, red and wrinkled as that of an ancient turtle, rose above his bare brown shoulders and his upper chest, likewise exposed. His only body covering was an undershirt, or two undershirts. Their flannel over-covering had ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... still find real peasants with real peasants' dresses; but even there Manchester stuffs and cottons are making their way fast, and every year the old-fashioned costumes grow rarer and rarer. A grey serge jacket, coarse nondescript- coloured cloth trousers, and a brown felt hat, all more or less ragged and dusty, compose the ordinary dress of the Roman working man. Female dress, in any part of the world, is one of those mysteries which a wise man will avoid any attempt to explain; I can only ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... the midst of a litter of nondescript baggage on the Manila mole when I came ashore from a rice-boat that had brought me across the China Sea from Saigon. The first glance marked him as a missionary, for he wore a huge crucifix cut out of pink shell, and as he hobbled about on the embankment it bobbed at the end of ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... this nondescript service, and gladly accepted a position as assistant wagon-master under Wild Bill, who had taken a contract to fetch a load of government freight ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... thumped him down the passage, and across the covered-in court to the door opening on the garden. There he paused to put on his hat—an aged, battered hat—some sort of nondescript bowler, broken, grey, weather-stained, very battered and very aged—a pitiful hat to put above that broad, Shakespearian forehead. While he fitted it on he was thumped severely: when he opened the door ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... clock of the church tolled the hour, and a man wrapped in a nondescript garment, between a cloak and an overcoat, stole along the moonlit street to where Nino stood, in front ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... were your first visit, and he had touched in you some sympathetic chord, he would have uncovered a nondescript combination of glass jars, horse-shoe magnets, and copper wires which lay in a curious shaped box beneath one of the windows, and in a voice trembling with emotion as he spoke, he would have explained to you the value of this or that lever, and its necessary relation to this ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... well-spoken he was a nondescript individual, and the flash of his dark eyes was not reassuring. Yet the man was so ill that Brett forthwith dismissed him from his thoughts, though he took care to occupy the centre seat himself, thus placing Captain Gaultier on the other side of the carriage. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... the letter I should not have started there, I think. Still, as nearly as I can gather, there is a rather nondescript crowd connected in one way or another with the Montmartre. For instance, there is a pretty tough character who seems to be connected with the people there, my investigators tell me. It is a fellow named 'Ike the Dropper,' one of those strong- arm men who have migrated up from ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... was covered with market gardens, varied with huge masses of rock, and groups of shanties. Very many of the parishioners of that early period lived in these nondescript dwellings, of which they were themselves both the architects and builders, a fact which added not a little to their quaint and picturesque appearance. The sites upon which these "squatters'" homes were placed, and over which roamed and sported their mingled goats, dogs, and children, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... knew not the moment when a sickening crash would herald the final dissolution of the ship, they proceeded with their work methodically. In half an hour they had reached the end. All the injured men—seven nondescript sailors and firemen—were carried to the saloon and placed under Christobal's care. Walker dived below to the engine-room, where he had already disconnected the rods broken or bent by the fracture of a guard ring, which, in its turn, was injured by the blowing out of a junk-ring, a stout ring ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... down-East skipper was entirely one of accident. Wandering along the beach at Bic, we had come upon a boat, half dory, half nondescript, which from the possession of certain peculiarities was claimed by one of the party to be of Maine origin, and, to settle the dispute, a little house a few hundred yards higher ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... our great manufactories. But in the early days of the Western Railroad it was far otherwise, and the locomotive which should successfully and economically operate the hitherto unheard of grade of over 80 feet to the mile was yet to be seen. The Messrs. Winans, of Baltimore, had built some nondescript machines, which had received the name of "crabs," and had tried to make them work upon the Western road. But after many attempts they were given up as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... exterior and the contents. It would probably be far from easy to fill a small case with examples where a really valuable book was enshrined in a covering of corresponding character. It is our ordinary experience to meet with some obsolete nondescript classic, or some defunct theological treatise of alike infinitesimal worth, in a sumptuous morocco garb, bestowed on it by the author as a compliment to his sovereign, or by the sovereign as an ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... seated on the sofa, dressed up in some nondescript sort of uniform with which the youngsters had invested him during Tom's absence on deck—the young imps were always up to some of their larks—and being of a kindred disposition himself, Tom was never hard on them for ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson |
