"Midden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to pass them. What was to be done? His lordship could not turn back, and the coal-carts were in no less perplexity. Every body was out of doors to see and to help; when, in trying to get his lordship's carriage over the top of a midden, the horses gave a sudden loup, and couped the coach, and threw my lord, head foremost, into the very scent-bottle of the whole commodity, which made him go perfect mad, and he swore like a trooper that he would get an act of parliament to put down the ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... to have contributed some stray fragment of its learning, some example of its art. Nothing seemed lacking to this philosophical kitchen-midden, from a redskin's calumet, a green and golden slipper from the seraglio, a Moorish yataghan, a Tartar idol, to the soldier's tobacco pouch, to the priest's ciborium, and the plumes that once adorned a throne. This extraordinary combination was rendered yet more bizarre ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... waterfall, just at the back of the town, I found buried, in several feet of earth, a great number of seemingly recent but very ancient shells. Whether they be remnants of an elevated sea-beach, or of some Indian 'kitchen-midden,' I dare not decide. But the question is well worth the attention of any geologist who may go that way. The waterfall, and the road up to it, are best described by one who, after fourteen years of hard scientific work in the island, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... afford any satisfactory practical demonstration. Therefore, to obtain absolutely authentic examples, it was necessary to indulge in the unwonted pastime of antiquarian research. During an unsystematic, unmethodical overhauling of the shell heap of an extensive kitchen midden—to apply a very dignified title to a long deserted camp— interesting testimony to the diligence and patience of the deceased occupants was obtained. It was evident that the sea had been largely drawn ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... cliff." The cook cast them out upon a bed of rubbish in a corner of the garrison garden, where by-and-by they were covered with fresh rubbish, under which they sprouted; and, next spring, lo! the midden heap had become a mound of glorious ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... return here, of the squalor, the lousiness, the dust-heap, the unblushing immondezzaio quality of Rome and its inhabitants. Everything ragged, filthy, listless; the very cauliflowers they were selling looking all stalk, fit for that refuse midden which symbolises the city. By the Temple of Vesta a lot of carts were drawn up, with galled horses and ragged crouching peasants—that sort of impression ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... believe that for civilised people of the nineteenth century it is as well to say as little as possible about ancestors who possessed our vices without our amenities, our ignorance without our science; who were bred, no matter how, like flies by summer heat, out of that everlasting midden which men call the world, to buzz and sting their foolish day, and leave behind them a fresh race which knows them not, and could win no honour by owning them, and which owes them no more than if it had been produced, as midden-flies were said ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... shock, it was our habit to rummage in the general midden outside our stockings. If there was a drum upon the heap, should not first a tune be played—softly lest it rouse the house? Or if a velocipede stood beside the fender, surely the restless creature chafed for exercise and must be ridden a few times around the room. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... with a growing sense, which I have had ever since return here, of the squalor, the lousiness, the dust-heap, the unblushing immondezzaio quality of Rome and its inhabitants. Everything ragged, filthy, listless; the very cauliflowers they were selling looking all stalk, fit for that refuse midden which symbolises the city. By the Temple of Vesta a lot of carts were drawn up, with galled horses and ragged crouching peasants—that sort ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee |
