"Leaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had settled over her at the funeral. She was only thirty—the best of her life should still be in the future—yet as she looked back at her white face in the mirror it seemed to her that she should never emerge from the leaden hopelessness which had descended like a weight on her body. Above the harsh black of her dress, which added ten years to her appearance, she saw the darkened circles rimming her eyes, the faded pallor of her skin, the lustreless wave of her hair, which had once ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... long time Deane and Terry stood voiceless, each leaden with a dull misery. The shock of his announcement had paled her and she stared hopelessly at him out of wide blue eyes, her full red lips aquiver at the hurt she read in the gray eyes and the queer ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the queen ran to the window: the few clouds which were chasing one another in the sky an hour before had thickened and spread, and—all the blue was blotted out, to give place to a hue dull and leaden as pewter. Mary Stuart's presentiments were thus realised: as to the little house in Kinross, which one could still make out in the dusk, it remained shut up, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... nearer view, took on proportions overwhelming—so dense was that curtain at which he gazed. And to-day the very skies above it were leaden, as though Nature herself had turned atheist. In spite of the vigour with which he was endowed, in spite of the belief in his own soul, doubts assailed him of his ability to cope with this problem of the modern Nineveh—at the very moment when ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... coastguardsmen, who can walk it blindfold. But to this day it remains in my recollection the coast I trod, without companion, during four dark days in December. It was a rude introduction. The wind blew in my face, with scuds of cold rain; a leaden mist hung low on the left, and rolled slowly up Channel. Now and then it thinned enough to reveal a white zigzag of breakers in front, and a blur of land; or, far below, a cluster of dripping rocks, with ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all possible care: he noticed that it was the Remington patent. Then he opened the chamber, and found that the gun was loaded. Each barrel had a cartridge in it. Then he put the gun back in its place, and, pulling from his pocket the leaden cartridge-case which Pitard had found, he showed it to M. ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... as the fellows get in the trenches. I watched a battalion marching back today and they looked like ghosts who had been years in muddy graves. White faces and dazed eyes and leaden feet. Mine's a cushy job. I like it best when the weather's foul. It cheats me into thinking I'm ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the expression began to change; he had the exact air of closing one eye, dropping his jaw, and drawing down his nose; had the thing not been so imposing, I could have smiled; and then almost in a moment, a shoulder of leaden-coloured bank drove in front and blotted it. My attention spread to the rest of the cloud, and it was a thing to worship. It rose from the horizon, and its top was within thirty degrees of the zenith; the lower parts were ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Carthaginians with the most expert slingers in the world, who did them great service in battles and sieges.(582) They slang large stones of above a pound weight; and sometimes threw leaden bullets,(583) with so much violence, that they would pierce even the strongest helmets, shields, and cuirasses; and were so dexterous in their aim, that they scarce ever missed the mark. The inhabitants of these islands were accustomed, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... upon her consciousness like the waves upon a beach, now with a cooing murmur, now with a majestic crash, followed by a long receding moan. She lost herself in the roar, in its barren sensuousness, while the leaden sky grew duskier and the twilight crept on, and the awful hour drew nigh when God would seal what He had written, and the annual scrolls of destiny would be closed, immutable. She saw them looming mystically ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... my handkerchief, and pulled out several little articles, such as fine worked baskets, shells, etcetera, and, among the rest, a pound of tea in a leaden canister. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... are the cause of grace not by their own operation, but in so far as God causes grace in the soul when the sacraments are employed. And they give as an example a man who on presenting a leaden coin, receives, by the king's command, a hundred pounds: not as though the leaden coin, by any operation of its own, caused him to be given that sum of money; this being the effect of the mere will of the king. Hence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... not a common happening in gentle families. He had to accustom himself to the atmosphere of the abnormal, so as to state the psychological case in its numberless ramifications. This he had done. His head was clear. His unalterable decision made. Now the minutes dragged with leaden feet ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... efforts to find Lola were fruitless. I became acquainted with the heartache, the longing for the unattainable, the agony of spirit. The only anodyne was a forgetfulness of self, the only compensation a glimmer of a hope and the shadow of a smile in the grey and leaden ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... was composed of iron, covered with lead. The interior was a cast-iron bottle (similar in shape to a stoneware Seltzer water bottle); the neck formed a nipple to receive a percussion-cap. The entire bottle was concealed by a leaden coating, which was cast in a mould to fit a No. 8, or two-ounce rifle. The iron bottle contained three drachms of the strongest gunpowder, and a simple cap pressed down upon the nipple prepared the shell ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... jack, which had almost Lost, by disuse, the art to roast, A sudden alteration feels, Increased by new intestine wheels; And what exalts the wonder more, The number made the motion slower. The flyer, though 't had leaden feet, Turned round so quick, you scarce could see 't; But slackened by some secret power, Now hardly moves an inch an hour. The jack and chimney near allied, Had never left each other's side; The chimney to a steeple grown, The jack would not be left alone; ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters. Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the icebound, Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands. Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel. All the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... and retarded his cure. He died almost in the arms of the Dauphin, who went every day to see him. The singularity of his disease determined the surgeons to open the body, and they found, in his chest, part of the leaden syringe with which decoctions had, as was usual, been injected into the part in a state of suppuration. The surgeon, who committed this act of negligence, took care not to boast of his feat, and his patient was the victim. This incident was much talked of by the King, who ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... year it became a bustling town whose two streets thronged with cattlemen with pockets burdened with gold which fairly burned its way out to the open air. At other times Elkhead dropped back into a leaden-eyed sleep. ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... of frequent occurrence. It may be due to the habitual drinking of water which has been standing in leaden conductors or in old paint barrels, etc. It has been met with in enzootic form near smelting works, where, by the fumes arising from the works, lead in the form of oxid, carbonate, or sulphate was deposited on the grass and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... coming about, an operation she took some time to perform. It was evident we should be up to the spot where the man— whoever he was—had fallen into the water before she could reach it. We peered through the gloom, but could perceive nothing amid the leaden seas flecked over with ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... the midst of this I felt a flake of snow on my cheek. I started and looked up. To my great surprise I saw that the sky had changed since I had last noticed it. When we left the ship it was clear and blue, but now it was overspread with dark, leaden-colored clouds, and the snow-flakes that had fallen were ominous of evil. A snow-storm here, in the vicinity of the ice, was too serious a thing to be disregarded. But one course now remained, and that was an immediate return ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... new dawn of promise doth redden The rim of our Stygian night; Our bondage is breaking—O blessed awaking To melody merry and bright! My heart, long o'erloaded and leaden, Now bounds to the blue like a bird; The shadow has shifted; with paean uplifted I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... coolness set me up again. I swam more vigorously; but, cramped by my clothes, which stuck to me like a leaden weight, I felt great difficulty in bearing up. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... knife and fork, turns the "swarry" over and over, shaking doubtfully his head. "There's an aspect of quiet resistance about the beggar," says he, "that looks bad." However, to work he falls until the sweat stands on his brow and a dismembered leg falls, dull and leaden-like, on to my dish. To eat it was simply impossible. I did not know before that flesh could be so tough. "The strongest jaws in England," says Bough piteously, harpooning his dry morsel, "couldn't eat this leg in less than twelve hours." Nothing for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quartered its charm. Thirty-nine years later Sir Gilbert Scott and Mr. Ralph Nevill did their best to repair the injury and show the Norman pillars as they should be, but some of the injury done was final. Still, the church within and without is a noble building, and the leaden spire which soars up from the tower is the finest in the county. The church has had at least three famous vicars. One was Owen Manning, famous perhaps against his will, for he asked that no monument for him should be added to the church. His epitaph ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... a sound. When she at last dropped into the deck chair she was absolutely at the end of her power of thinking. "I suppose that's how the condemned manage to get some sleep on the night before the execution," she said to herself a moment before her eyelids closed as if under a leaden hand. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... to-day a mere handful of people other than dealers had drifted in to wait for the sale to begin—something for which the weather was largely to blame, for the day was dismal with a clammy drizzle settling from a low and leaden sky—and with a solitary exception these few were ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... achieveth success. Why shouldst thou not, indeed, reverence the man who liveth on clean food, who refraineth from ever injuring others, whose heart is ever pure, who stands in the splendour of ascetic attributes, who is free from the leaden weight of desire, who abstaineth from injury even when sanctioned by religion? Emaciated by austerities and reduced in flesh, marrow and blood, such a one conquereth not only this but the highest world. And when the Muni sits in yoga meditation, becoming indifferent ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on board, the powder-magazine overflowed. The one cannon could not pretend to use the contents. That gave people more to think about. There were also gigantic saws and powerful instruments, such as levers, leaden maces, handsaws, enormous axes, etc., without counting a considerable quantity of blasting cylinders, enough to blow up the Liverpool Customs—all that was strange, not to say fearful, without mentioning rockets, signals, powder-chests, and beacons of a thousand different sorts. ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... horse and "drew fine" at each shot, till a leaden slug drilled his gun-arm. He swore profusely, and wisely spurred out ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... flank, with fearful crash Shrapnel and ball commingling clash, And bursting shells, with lurid flash, Their dazzled sight confound: Trembles the earth beneath their feet, Along their front a rattling sheet Of leaden hail concentric meet, And numbers ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... accounts; one thought that the man around the corner wanted a boy, and when Fred got there he had just engaged one. Weary, disappointed, and discouraged, he sat down by the iron railing that fenced a showy house, and thought what he should do. It was almost five in the afternoon: cold, dismal, leaden-gray was the sky—the darkness already coming on. Fred sat listlessly watching the great snow feathers, as they slowly sailed down from the sky. Now he heard gay laughs, as groups of merry children passed; and then he started, as he saw some woman in a black bonnet, and thought ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I looked at the snow-fall, And thought of the leaden sky That arched o'er our first great sorrow, When that mound was heaped ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... too burst the leaden bands of Sleep, And while the blinking stars, all faint and pale With their long watch, recall their courier-rays To their far orbits; and our earthly stars, The stars of Fashion, sick and wan as they, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Desire World after having passed through aforementioned experiences, the general feeling seems to be one of relief from a heavy burden, a feeling perhaps akin to that of a diver encased in a heavy rubber suit, a weighty brass helmet upon his head, leaden soles under his feet and heavy weights of lead upon his breast and back, confined in his operations on the bottom of the ocean by a short length of air tube, and able only to move clumsily with difficulty. When after the day's work such a man is hauled to the surface, and divests himself of his ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... but quiet groans, That swell out the little bones Of my bosom; till a trance God sends in middle of that dance, And I behold the countenance Of Michael, and can feel no more The bitter east wind biting sore My naked feet; can see no more The crayfish on the leaden floor, That mock with feeler and ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... attempt to look over, horrified by the danger, confused and distressed by the hair that came wildly flapping about her head and face, and by the puffs of wind at her hoop, had sunk down in the centre of the little leaden square, clinging with all her might to the staff of the weathercock, and feeling as if the whole tower were rocking with her, absolutely seeing the battlements dance. How was she ever to be safely got down ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was spent in a feverishly renewed search which brought no surcease of anxiety and at its end Willa dragged herself with leaden feet to her room. Her head seemed bursting and she shook as with an ague as she dressed for the tedious dinner and the still more tedious game of bridge which was the program of the evening. She dared not absent herself, explanations enough would be demanded of her for the day's broken ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... touch, modern door or window, seems a thing out of place through negligence, the diluted sunlight itself seems driven along with a sparing trace of gilded vane or red tile in it, under the wholesome active wind from the East coast. The long, finely weathered, leaden roof, and the great square tower, gravely magnificent, emphatic from the first view of it over the grey down above the hop-gardens, the gently-watered meadows, dwarf now everything beside; have the ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... long artificial roads which are called Roman roads. These things are at once the splendid memorials of their ignorance and of their greatness. A people which should leave no other vestige of its track than a few leaden pipes in the earth and a few iron rods upon its surface, might have been more the master of nature than ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... whose impact was like a blow. It went right through my overcoat at the first assault, and nosed about hungrily for my little spark of vital heat. A strong wind with the flavor of glaciers was blowing straight from the pole. How inexpressibly bleak was the aspect of the leaden clouds that were banked up around the horizon! I shivered as I looked at the sullen masses. The houses seemed little citadels against the sky. I had not taken fifty steps before my face stiffened ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... entertainment to enliven and make the fatigue supportable. We sat on Wednesday till ten at night; on Friday till past three in the morning; on Monday till between nine and ten.(644) We have profusion of orators, and many very great, which is surprising so soon after the leaden age(645 of the late Right Honourable Henry Saturnus!(646) The majorities are as great as ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Mr. Dilke had sympathized with the wonderful manoeuvres of the child's armies of leaden soldiers, and had added to them large reinforcements, he became troubled by his grandson's keen and excited following of all the reports from the Crimea. He had a terror of the boy's becoming a soldier, and 'used to do his best to point out ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark grey cloud came over the sun, and long, snakelike shadows crept up along the mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden weight of the dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He saw the cataract of the Golden River springing from the hill-side, scarcely five hundred feet above him. He paused for a moment to breathe, and sprang on ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... parched and burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark gray cloud came over the sun, and long, snakelike shadows crept up along the mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden height of the dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He saw the cataract of the Golden River springing from the hillside scarcely five hundred feet above him. He paused for a moment to breathe, and sprang on ...
— The King of the Golden River - A Short Fairy Tale • John Ruskin.
... after Vane said good-by to Kitty he and Carroll alighted one evening at a little station in northern England. Brown moors stretched about it, for the heather had not bloomed yet, rolling back in long slopes to the high ridge which cut against leaden thunder-clouds in the eastern sky. To the westward, they fell away; and across a wide, green valley smooth-backed heights gave place in turn to splintered crags and ragged pinnacles etched in gray and purple on a vivid ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... calamities of the churches. Meletius and Cyril were still in exile, East and West were still divided over the consecration of Paulinus, and now even Alexandria had become the prey of Lucius. The leaden rule of Valens still weighed down the East, and Valens was scarcely yet past middle life, and might reign for many years longer. The deliverance came suddenly, and the Nicene faith won its victory in the confusion of the greatest disaster which ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... to enable him to answer the questions of inquiring friends; and when at length aroused to exercise his colloquial powers, he performed the task in so original a manner that it never failed to upset the gravity of the interrogator. When he raised his large, prominent, leaden-coloured eyes from the ground, and looked the inquirer steadily in the face, the effect was irresistible; the laugh would come—do your ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the day; by five o'clock, the sky was leaden gray and it looked like snow. Some of the fathers and mothers were doubtful as to whether they ought to risk so long a drive. But the weather was ideal, if it only didn't snow, and there might not be another night during the holidays ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the year did not send its contribution to the throng which jostled through the gates into the narrow streets leading to the monastery gateway. Year after year wealth poured into the Cathedral coffers, and pilgrims went away lighter in spirits and in purse, but each carrying with them the little leaden bottle in which the infinitely diluted blood of the martyr mixed with water ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... in torrents during my stay in Gorizia, but, as we recrossed the Isonzo onto the Friulian plain, the sinking sun burst through a rift in the leaden clouds and turned into a huge block of rosy coral the red rampart of the Carso. Beyond that wall, scarce a dozen miles as the airplane flies, but many times that distance as the big gun travels, lies Trieste. It will be a long road, a hard road, ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... described the Ground that returns the best Barley, I now come to treat of making it into Malt; to do which, the Barley is put into a leaden or tyled Cistern that holds five, ten or more Quarters, that is covered with water four or six Inches above the Barley to allow for its Swell; here it lyes five or six Tides as the Malster calls it, reckoning twelve Hours to the Tide, according as the Barley is in body or in dryness; for that which ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... measure of most unhapppiness, for it is in sorrow and anxiety that we are most keenly conscious of it, and are oppressed by its leaden weight. When we are absorbed in work, in study, in the production of anything upon which all our faculties are concentrated, we say that the time passes quickly. When we are happy we know nothing of time nor of its movement, only, long afterwards, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... promptly drew his bow, but as prompt as he had fixed his arrow my faithful Winchester with thirteen shots in the magazine was ready and at the shoulder, and but waited to see the arrow fly to pour the leaden messengers of death into the crowd. But the crowd vanished as quickly as they had come, leaving the burly Thersites, and two or three irresolute fellows of his tribe, standing within pistol range of my levelled rifle. Such a sudden dispersion of the mob which, but a moment before, was overwhelming ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... from the top of the donjon Madame de Montbazon pass in her carriage, and still cherishing an affection for that beautiful woman, he did not wish to be to her what he wished to be to Mazarin, and in the hope of seeing her again, had asked for a leaden comb, which was allowed him. The comb was to be a leaden one, because his beard, like that of most fair people, was rather red; he therefore dyed ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... flames and scorched through and through. The eight bells in this tower also were caught by the flames, and the whole thing fell down near the cross aisle of the transept. The spire of the Belfry of the Angel, at the apse, fell, and with it disappeared the leaden heads which decorated its base. In the interior the sculptures and the walls of the edifice were damaged by fire in the straw which had been strewn about for the German wounded; the great eighteenth century tympanums of the lateral doors, west side, were damaged likewise. The thirteenth century ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... when she touched me,—when she stooped to press her lips to mine. At that instant the accumulating rage which had been smouldering in my breast through all those leaden torturing hours, sprang into flame. Leaping off my couch of rugs, I flung my hands about her throat,—and then she knew I was awake. Then she strove to tighten the cord which she had suffered to become unduly loose. Her baleful eyes were fixed ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... now, as I write, the rain of an English April pours down; the sky is leaden and cold, the houses in front of me are almost terrible in their monotonous greyness, the slate roofs are shining with the wet. Now and again people pass: a woman of the slums in a dirty apron, her head wrapped in a grey shawl; ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... by admixture with lighter metals, lost force in a proportionate degree. Lead may be a soft metal, but it is much harder than any animal's skull, and if a tallow candle can be shot through a deal board, surely a leaden bullet is hard ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of morning showed under the edge of the closed window-blind. In the room day was mingling incongruously with night, for the candle looked sickly, and the aged crone's face was of a leaden colour, lighted by the piercing eyes that brooded hungrily on her son— her only son: the dwarf had told her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wrapped in a drab mantle of desolation. The mountains were like gigantic cones of raw and sticky chocolate, except where the snow lay patched upon their cheerless slopes. The skies were low and leaden, and across their gray stretches a spirit of squalid melancholy rode with the tarnished sun. Windowless cabins, with tight- closed doors, became cavernous dens untouched by the cleansing power of daylight. In their vitiated atmosphere, their humanity grew ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... and suck of waves upon a shore, and in a little while the mists cleared as if at a word, and there before him Arthur saw a lonely lake or sea, hedged round with salt-rimed reeds and sedges, and stretching out its waters, dull and leaden-hued, to so great a distance that his eye could ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... thus that most of the night was spent. Toward morning she sank into a deep slumber, but, when she wakened, a terrible leaden weight seemed to oppress her, and it was several hours before the buoyant cheerfulness, with which she was by nature endowed, could ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... p. 20. "Those who wrote without having seen them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof of the palace, the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine where it ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... spoke had a leaden hue of face, something ghastly, as if the deadly heat had begun a work of decomposition. Andrew looked at him, and his hatred against the rich man who had built himself a stately mansion, and kept his fellow-creatures at work ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... parade-grounds, drilled, and accustomed to the use of arquebus and cannon. Carts and wagons were built in hundreds for the conveyance of stores; spades, mattocks; and baskets were got ready for the pioneers; iron and brass ordnance were cast, and leaden shot melted in enormous quantities; nor were the instruments of torture—the ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... and the Navy Yard, thousands of noses flattened against window-glass in the anxiety of the owners to see if the heavens were propitious; but there was no sign of sunshine. As the day advanced there were some bright streaks in the dull gray of the leaden sky, and the excellence of concrete pavements was shown, as they were free from mud, and the slosh was soon trodden into water, which ran off in the gutters. The flags, which had clung to the staffs, began to dry and flutter in the breeze. Nearly every ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... head in the Philippines! All the trouble he had had to defend himself! He had had to write at least seventeen articles and consult fifteen dictionaries, so with these salutary recollections, the wretched Ben-Zayb moved about with leaden hands, to say nothing of his feet, for that would be plagiarizing Padre Camorra, who had once intimated that the journalist ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... lither hilding! Alina, thou jade! Come hither at once, and get you to work. My Lady's bower yet unswept, by the Seven Sleepers! and ye lingering yonder as ye had leaden heels! By the holy bones of Saint Benedict, our master shall con you light thanks ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... inhabited by the dean and canons; the western by students. The broad terrace in front of the buildings, the extent of the arena, and the circular basin of water in the centre, render this an agreeable promenade.—I had almost forgotten the deity of the place (I hope not symbolical), a leaden Mercury{2}; the gift of Dr. John Radcliffe, which rises from the centre of the basin, on the spot where once stood the sacred cross of St. Frideswide, and the pulpit of the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... short, and soon my weary feet Will greet the peaceful inn of lasting rest. But thou, unhappy Queen! art doom'd to trace Thy lonely walk in the drear realms of night, While many a lagging age shall sweep beneath The leaden pinions of unshaken time; Though not a hope shall spread its glittering hue To cheat thy steps along the weary way. O that the sum of human happiness Should be so trifling, and so frail withal, That when possess'd, it is but lessened grief; And even ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... tripped forth, accompanied by her maid. As she passed the half-closed door of the counting-house, Timothy, with one of his most leaden looks, full of unmeaning, stood edgeways in the opening, his lower side in advance, with the long arm ready ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... mumbling over thanks to God for the great success of his early life. Wrapped in furs, fastened to a stretcher, the Dane was lowered over the ship, carried ashore, and laid in a sand pit. All that day it had been dull and leaden; and just as Bering was being carried, it began to snow heavily. Steller occupied the sand pit next to the commander; and in {44} addition to acting as cook and physician to the entire crew, became ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the road descends upon the lake of Thrasymene through oak-woods full of nightingales. The lake lay basking, leaden-coloured, smooth and waveless, under a misty, rain-charged, sun-irradiated sky. At Passignano, close beside its shore, we stopped for mid-day. This is a little fishing village of very poor people, who live entirely by labour ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Hastening to heaven, would, that he might allow Himself unto all stations and fill all, For these three days become a mineral. He was all gold when he lay down, but rose All tincture; and doth not alone dispose Leaden and iron wills to good, but is Of power to make even sinful flesh like his. Had one of those, whose credulous piety Thought that a soul one might discern and see Go from a body, at this sepulchre been, And issuing from the sheet this body seen, He would ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... learned that craft to which you advise me, for they observing that the world would not willingly suit their lives to the rules that Christ has given, have fitted His doctrine as if it had been a leaden rule, to their lives, that so some way or other they might agree with one another. But I see no other effect of this compliance except it be that men become more secure in their wickedness by it. And this is all the success that I can ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... loaded at the East-end of London with the heaviest merchandise, with bags of iron nails, shot, leaden sheets in rolls, and pig iron; imagine four strong horses—dray-horses—harnessed thereto. Then let the waggoner mount behind in a seat comfortably contrived for him facing the rear, and settle himself down happily among ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... Connecticut fool," I commanded sharply, now thoroughly aroused. "Stop, or I 'll drive into you a leaden slug to silence that blundering tongue of yours for good and all. Get up from your knees there, and play the man. If needs be you must pray, keep grip on ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered twenty feet above their heads. It became more and more ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... of night swept toward her, big with the secrecy of dawn. The sky, washed clean of stars, sprawled above,—a leaden, monotonous blank. Many trees whispered thickly over the chaos of earth; to the left, in an increasing dove-colored luminousness, a field of growing maize bristled like the ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... their prayers, and asked—Do you suppose that any God, if he be worth calling a God, will answer such a request as that? Nay, in our own times, have not the brigands of Naples been in the habit of carrying a leaden image of St Januarius in their hats, and praying to it to protect them in their trade of robbery and murder? I leave you to guess what answer good St Januarius, and much more He who made St Januarius, and ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... some drooping blossom, stretched her fair form on the again burning sand, and slumbered under the protection of her lover and her chosen brother. "Sleep also," said Heimbert softly to Fadrique; "you must have wandered about wildly and wearily, for exhaustion is pressing down your eyelids with leaden weight. I am quite fresh, and I will watch meanwhile." "Ah, Heimbert," sighed the noble Castilian, "my sister is thine, thou messenger from Heaven; that is an understood thing. But now for our affair of honor!" "Certainly," said Heimbert, very gravely, "as soon as we ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... morning set for the trial, to add to our distressed state of mind, a tempest arose. There was rain driven into the town from the hills, and rain driven into the town from the sea, and banks of leaden clouds were blown back and forth over the trees, which were bent double by the Bedlamite wind. The grounds of Stair lay like a pond, the road ran like a river, and the broken bits of trees hurled everywhere made going abroad a dangerous business. As I ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... which affected him seriously. But Lydia's sense of humor was so tickled at the grotesque contrast between Marietta's injured conception of the brilliant social event from which she had been excluded and the leaden fiasco which it had really been, that even at the time, in the midst of denying hotly her sister's charges of snobbishness and social ambition, she was unable to keep back a shaky laugh or two as she cried ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... as there was no remedy, our notary mounted this raw-boned steed and set forth upon his homeward journey. The night was cold and gusty, and the wind right in his teeth. Overhead the leaden clouds were beating to and fro, and through them the newly-risen moon seemed to be tossing and drifting along like a cock-boat in the surf; now swallowed up in a huge billow of cloud, and now lifted upon its bosom and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... and the court, like a beautiful statue? Is it denied to me to have feeling, to love and to hate, like everybody else? Is the Queen of France nothing but the sacrificial lamb which the dumb idol etiquette carries in its leaden arms, and crushes by slowly pressing it to itself? Tell me, Besenval; speak to me like an honorable and upright man, and remember that God is above us ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... but in winter, when the snow lies thickly for weeks together in the narrow lane, the only thoroughfare of the place; when the distant moors also look cold in their garment of white, and the large expanse of sky is covered with leaden-coloured clouds; when the very streams with which the country abounds are frozen into silence—then indeed may Hauxwell be called a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... others, and I was left with a leaden foreboding of grewsome things in store. I knew what manner of man Ukridge was when he relaxed and became chummy. Friendships of years' standing had failed to survive ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... far down at its end the white-haired commodore had taken his seat, with senator, judge, squire, general, and the seventeen-year-old Hayle boy nearest him on his right and left. The bishop was not there. He was at the ladies' table, paired with the judge's sister"—a leaden load ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... tower was crowned by a leaden spire about fifteen feet in height, but this was removed at the end of the seventeenth century on account of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... bleak grasses at our feet. Now and then we crossed a cold stream that came bubbling into our dim circle, and raved hoarsely away in fretted cataracts. Once we passed a black and silent tarn, with leaden waves lapping among the stones. Once or twice, as we descended, the skirts of the cloud drew up suddenly, and revealed black crags and rocky bastions, and down below a great valley, with sheep grazing, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... limited, this comparative freedom, which a man could afford to smile at, was intoxicating. Heavens! under what a leaden cloud of little obligations and restraints, and loneliness and pain, she had been living! And for what purpose? To make obeisance to a phantom public, not because she cared one iota for the phantom or its opinions, but because husband and parents and relations ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... conveyed under the form of a dream, in which there flit before us fantastically white-haired priests sacrificing before the altar; cauldrons of boiling water, in which there are walking about men a span long; brazen-clad warriors in silence reading leaden books, and sphinxes with wings. In such incomprehensible fictions knowledge was purposely, and ignorance ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... shown three caskets, one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead. Upon the golden one is written the words, "Who chooseth me, shall gain what many men desire"; upon the silver casket are the words, "Who chooseth me, shall get as much as he deserves"; and upon the leaden one, "Who chooseth me, must give and hazard all he hath." And only whoso chooseth aright, each suitor is told, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... batteries shelled the Boer kopjes, expending much ammunition with perceptible effect on the brown boulders and presumably on anything animate that might be hidden behind them; we watched many Boers gallop away in haste across the plain, as if unable to stand the leaden hail longer, and one of our batteries advancing boldly got into position, whence it should have enfiladed that of the enemy and wrought havoc among their horses if any were concealed in the adjacent hollows. What effect the terrific shrapnel fire really produced we had no means of knowing. Hardly ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... good taste (1787) amputated it, and thought it quite enough to cover the wound with that large leaden plaster which looks like the lid of a stewpan. Thus was the marvelous art of the Middle Ages treated in almost every land, but particularly in France. We find three sorts of injury upon its ruins, these three marring it to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... from one of the windows, she opened it and stepped out on a balcony, where the long strip of the Quai d'Orsay stretched below her, in gray and silent emptiness. On the swift, leaden-colored current of the Seine, spanned here and there by ghostly bridges, mysterious barges plied weirdly through the twilight. Up on the left the Arc de Triomphe began to emerge dimly out of night, while down on the right the line of the Louvre lay, black ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... exercise of her power upon him. His hair being very short, she took a large leaden comb, and after drawing it through his hair several times, it became of a handsome feminine length. She then proceeded to dress him as a female, furnishing him with the necessary garments, and decorated his face with paints of the ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... her fields between, And on each hill-top mounted high, Her sickle wav'd in extasy; Till Ross, thy charms all hearts confess'd, Thy peaceful walks, thy hours of rest And contemplation. Here the mind, With all its luggage left behind, Dame Affectation's leaden wares, Spleen, envy, pride, life's thousand cares, Feels all its dormant fires revive, And sees "the Man of Ross" alive; And hears the Twick'nham Bard again, To KYRL'S high virtues lift his strain; Whose own hand cloth'd this far-fam'd hill With ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... an infernal fire, a hailstorm of leaden bullets, which split the walls on the outside, ground the tiles to powder, and in the interior cracked ceilings, furniture, window-frames, and door-frames, sending splinters of wood flying through the air, and clouds of plaster, and fragments of kitchen utensils and glass, whizzing, and rebounding, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... majesty's high grace to poesy, Shall stand 'gainst all the dull detractions Of leaden souls; who, for the vain assumings Of some, quite worthless of her sovereign wreaths, Contain her worthiest prophets in contempt. Gal. Happy is Rome of all earth's other states, To have so true and great a president, For her inferior spirits ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... the legions were stripped for the march, many of them were without proper ammunition. Various arms were in use, and the same cartridge did not lit them all. Eager groups could be seen all through the brigades filing down the leaden end of the cartridge to make their weapons effective, until a proper supply could be obtained. This was promised at Fairfax Station, or Centreville, where the army's supplies were to be sent. So, in spite of the high hopes and feverish unrest for the forward ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Mr. Chillingworth. "I wonder we never thought of that. If your ancestor was buried in a leaden coffin, there will be no difficulty in finding which ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Sime draws his large-bladed knife from its sheath; and, resting the piece of wood on the porch bench, splits it open. When cleft, it discloses a thing of rounded form and metallic lustre, dull leaden—a gun-bullet, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... lustrous and immaculate, his tie twisted wildly beneath one ear, his collar unbuttoned, as though wrenched from its fastenings in a moment of fury. These things apart, he had within the hour aged ten years in the flesh: gone the proud flush of his bewhiskered gills, in its place leaden pallor; and gone the quick, choleric fire from eyes now smouldering, dull and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... The glittering table bends o'er that first course, and smiles; For, through the wreaths of smoke, the grey Lusts bear aloft The second course, on leaden chargers, large and soft, Bodies of women, steaming in an opal mist, Red-branded here and ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... would break up all this calm. But now the distant woods were in a deep stillness; the slopes of the lawns were shining with dew; the colours of some of the flowers could almost be guessed. The light of the moon just caught the cornice of the temple and the curve of its leaden dome, and Humphreys had to own that, so seen, these conceits of a past age have a real beauty. In short, the light, the perfume of the woods, and the absolute quiet called up such kind old associations in his mind that he went on ruminating them for a long, long time. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... Good Venture swept round under the stern of the Spaniard at a distance of some forty yards, and as she did so the guns loaded with bullets to the muzzle were fired one after the other. The effect was terrible, and the galleries and poop were swept by the leaden shower. Then the captain straightened the helm again. The crew burst into the wild yells and cries the beggars raised when going into battle. The Spaniards, confused by the terrible slaughter worked by the guns of their enemies, and believing that they ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... have," Sylvanus Power answered, "but whisky can't cloud my brain or stop my tongue. You're looking at my little toy here," he went on, twirling in his right hand a heavy malacca cane with a leaden top. "I killed ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... highroad, a homing instinct guided his leaden feet in the direction of Hampton. And he plodded dazedly the interminable four miles that separated ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... nephew's back," she said, standing in the middle of the room, "but tell me, Smithers, why is Arthur so unpopular? You, I understand, are his only close friend." She stood in a dazzle of sun, and out of it her eyes regarded me with such leaden penetration beneath their thick lids that I doubt if my face concealed the least thought from her. "But there, there," she added very suavely, stooping her head a little, "don't trouble to answer me. I never extort an answer. Boys are queer fish. Brains might ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... she determined not to be diverted. Going back to the state-room for a wrap she returned to wait for the clerk's reappearance. This final pause soon proved to be the severest trial of all. The minutes dragged leaden-winged; and to sit quietly in the silence and solitude of the great saloon became a nerve-racking impossibility. When it went past endurance, she rose and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... submit altogether (finding it useless) to an eighth application of the rod. 'Try some other way, sir,' said I, when he was for horsing me once more; but he wouldn't; whereon, and to defend myself, I flung a slate at him, and knocked down a Scotch usher with a leaden inkstand. All the lads huzza'd at this, and some or the servants wanted to stop me; but taking out a large clasp-knife that my cousin Nora had given me, I swore I would plunge it into the waistcoat of the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the dim starlight, and he observed that there was no light in the window; nevertheless, his high faith did not falter. He pressed on, although each step was the product of an effort, mental and physical. His legs were heavy and dragged, as if he wore upon, his logger's boots the thick, leaden soles of a ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... extremely warm, seemed loaded with vapour. The spirits of the prisoner were depressed in proportion, and since the first hour of his imprisonment he had never, perhaps, felt so much as at that moment, all the leaden weight of dull captivity, the anguish of uncertainty, and the delay of hope, which, ever from the time of the prophet king down to the present day, has made the heart sick and the soul weary. It was in vain that his daughter, with the tenderest, the kindest, the most assiduous ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... attractive in person. His eyes were piercing but his visage was made plain by a disproportionate nose. His legs were thin and misshapen, his gait uncertain. He dressed very simply, wearing an old pilgrim's hat, ornamented by a leaden saint. As he rode into Abbeville in company with Philip, the simple folk who had never seen the king were greatly amazed at his appearance and said quite loud, "Benedicite! Is that a king of France, the greatest king in the world? All ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... thinking to have spoke with Captain Cocke, but he was not within. So I home, and took London-bridge in my way; walking down Fish Street and Gracious Street, to see how very fine a descent they have now made down the hill, that it is become very easy and pleasant, and going through Leaden-Hall, it being market-day, I did see a woman catched, that had stolen a shoulder of mutton off of a butcher's stall, and carrying it wrapt up in a cloth, in a basket. The jade was surprised, and did not deny it, and the woman ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... original state, and is an interesting example of the Renaissance style at a period of transition. There had been a doubt as to the exact whereabouts of the Bishop's remains, some people thinking they had been deposited in a vault beneath. The question was settled at the removal, when the leaden coffin was found, resting on a cross of brickwork, within the tomb. The coffin was exposed for a few days for the public satisfaction, and then replaced in the interior of the tomb, where it now lies. The painted figure above it represents ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... churches in England are in better repair, or better worth keeping so, than that at Plumstead Episcopi; and yet it is built in a faulty style: the body of the church is low,—so low, that the nearly flat leaden roof would be visible from the churchyard, were it not for the carved parapet with which it is surrounded. It is cruciform, though the transepts are irregular, one being larger than the other; and the tower is much too high in proportion to the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... something generous. It was a desperate stroke to re-enter at the point of the bayonet into his self-esteem; and, like all such, it was fruitless in the end. He got to bed with the devil, it appeared: kicked and tumbled till the grey of the morning; and then fell inopportunely into a leaden slumber, and awoke to find it ten. To miss the appointment with old Killian after all, had been too tragic a miscarriage: and he hurried with all his might, found the groom (for a wonder) faithful to his trust, and arrived only a ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden chest which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... his guard; he was motionless, and under the influence of a leaden sleep. Dick Sand, bringing his lips to the door-sill, thought he might risk murmuring Hercules's name. A moan, like a low and plaintive bark, replied ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... was near partaking the infection. I have been listening to the grovelling, avaricious devotees of mammon, whose souls are narrowed to the studious contemplation of a hard-earned shilling, whose leaden imaginations never soared above the prospect of a good bargain, and whose summum bonum is the inspiring idea of counting a hundred thousand: I say I have been listening to these miserly beings till ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... carefully, and as if he reverenced the old workers whose trick he was endeavouring to acquire six hundred years after the original performance had ceased and the performers passed into the unseen. By means of a strip of lead called a leaden tape, which he pressed around and into the fillets and hollows with his finger and thumb, he transferred the exact contour of each moulding to his drawing, that lay on a sketching-stool a few feet distant; where were also a sketching-block, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... a hatchet face, and pale complexion; a man of few words, fidgety as an old maid, exacting as a senior clerk. His paternal solicitude hovered over my merriment and gleeful thoughts, and seemed to cover them with a leaden pall. Any effusive demonstration on my part was received by him as a childish absurdity. I was far more afraid of him than I had been of any ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac |
