"Wetness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw such weeping; the extraordinary wetness of her dripping handkerchief abides with me to ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... and walked down to the foamy lip of the tide, which was just waking up from its faint recession. A cold glimmer, which seemed to come from nothing but its wetness, was all the sea had ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... arrives—a long month, from early August to mid-September—it is a glory of whiteness, the tallest sprays on a level with my eyes, the shortest shoulder high, except when rain weighs down the heavy heads and they lean across the paths barring my passage with their fragrant wetness. ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... of the Royal Alcoholic Society is that the Moisture in the Atmosphere counterbalances or nullifies, so to speak, the interior Wetness. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... would have in no way surprised me. If a petty care can break our sleep, what must have been his feeling who had lost the fairest empire on the face of the globe; nay, who had lost a world? From the wetness of the decks, he was in danger of falling at every step, and I immediately stepped up to him, hat in hand, and tendered him my arm, which he laid hold of at once, smiling, and pointing to the poop, saying in broken English, "the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... cold, but with hearts grateful to God for our wonderful preservation. As we were packed very close to each other, the natural warmth of our bodies soon relieved us considerably from the sensation of wetness and cold, and we passed the night as comfortably as ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... comfort she tucked her hands under his arm. Her head dropped back against his shoulder so that her breath fell on his cheek. He felt the silent tears of her humiliation, hot and bitter and human after the cold, impersonal wetness of rain. It was as though a hand drew them together in the darkness; they moved numbly at the same instant, by the same impulse; then with a sort of convulsion they were in each other's arms. Cold, wet, tremulous, their lips met. ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... He had knelt down beside her bed, that was it. And she felt upon her palm, the pressure of his lips, and his unshaven cheek, and on her wrist, a warm wetness ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... fiddler's squealing. And I bless God (with that singular worthy, Peter Walker the packman at Bristo-Port),* that ordered my lot in my dancing days, so that fear of my head and throat, dread of bloody rope and swift bullet, and trenchant swords and pain of boots and thumkins, cauld and hunger, wetness and weariness, stopped the lightness of my head, and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wetness that always existed there, to which had been added many gallons of fluid from the bucket brigade, was now ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... not necessarily mean that it is directly and completely presented; it may only be indicated. We may have before the eyes simply a sign of some fact, but perceive the fact which is the meaning of the sign. We look out of the window and "see it is wet to-day", though wetness is something to be felt rather than seen; {422} having previously observed how wet ground looks, we now respond promptly to the visual appearance by knowing the indicated state of affairs. In the same way, we say that we "hear the street car", though a street car, we must admit, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... very excited; for, now that I stood in the shaft, the reek of the tobacco was very strong. I could see hardly anything—only the light from the burrow-mouth, lighting up the sides of the burrow for a yard or two, and a sort of gleam, a sort of shining wetness, upon the floor of the shaft and on its outer wall. I heard the wash of the sea, or thought I heard it, and that was the only noise, except a steady drip, drip, splash where water dripped from the roof into a pool on the floor. For ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... The wetness of the evening made promptness of decision the more needful, while the bad weather which his experienced eye foresaw would make the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with suitable surfaces, whence the name "radicans." The habit of the shrub, from its dense and flattened foliage, fine colour, and persistent nature, together with its dwarfness and rooting faculty, all go to render it one of the finest rock shrubs for winter effect. The wetness of our climate only seems to make it all the brighter, and it is also without that undesirable habit of rooting and ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... window, looking out blankly into the leaden wetness. It was just after five, and the rain poured. A curious depression settled quickly upon her, which was hardly fully accounted for as "missing Hugo already."... Why? Who upon earth had less cause for depression than she? No girl lived with more all-embracing reasons for being superlatively happy. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... room and that she herself sat, framed against, the yellow candle glow, in an almost trance-like attitude of stress. She was silhouetted there, no longer self-confident and defiant but a figure of wistful unhappiness. From the raw wetness, her bare shoulders and arms were unprotected. Her hair fell in heavy braids over the sheer silk of her night dress and her bosom was undefended against the bite ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... that weapon, with cavalry in squadrons giving the attack. Among the multitude of figures, there was an old man, who wore upon his head an ivy wreath for shade. Seated on the ground, in act to draw his hose up, he was hampered by the wetness of his legs; and while he heard the clamour of the soldiers, the cries, the rumbling of the drums, he pulled with all his might; all the muscles and sinews of his body were seen in strain; and what was more, the contortion of his mouth showed what agony ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the Cyclostyle. I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people. When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Amber affably in his confidences. "By Gad, sar, thees climate iss most trying to person of my habits. The journey hither via causeway from mainland was veree fearful. Thee sea is most agitated. You observe my wetness from association with spray. I am of opinion if I am not damn-careful I jolly well catch-my-death on return. But thatt is all ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... began to sound the savage voice of torrents falling over cliffs, rapids rising and surging in deep gorges. The wetness and the cold sapped Molly's vitality. She shivered, her flesh seemed sodden, her hands and wrists began to puff and she saw their flesh was purple in the fading light. She rode with hands on the saddle horn, her head bowed, water streaming from the rim of her Stetson, the thud of the rain on ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... the journey to Joannina, the capital then of the famous Ali Pasha, was rendered unpleasant by the wetness of the weather; still it was impossible to pass through a country so picturesque in its features, and rendered romantic by the traditions of robberies and conflicts, without receiving impressions ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... a rustling noise along the fields and rain fell slowly in drops large as good teaspoonfuls, yet the heat was so great that my coat of nearly white linen did not for some time show marks of wetness; a black cloud from which the water fell accompanied us along the line of route, and the rain from ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... on me," she quavered wretchedly, her voice indistinct with the wetness that bubbled into it from her tears. "You do—you always pick on me! You've always done it—always—ever since you were a little boy! Whenever anything goes wrong with you, you take it out on ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... did not feel the wetness so much as might be supposed. They were both young, and they were talking of the time when they lived and loved together at Talbothays Dairy, that happy green tract of land where summer had been liberal in her gifts; in substance to all, emotionally to these. Tess ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... hills of Yorkshire are surpassed in wetness by their Lakeland neighbours; for whereas Hawes Junction, which is only about seven miles south of Muker, has an average yearly rainfall of about 62 inches, Mickleden, in Westmorland, can show 137, and certain spots in Cumberland aspire towards 200 ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... thus enabled to ascertain the weight or pressure, the temperature, and the wetness of the air, and now it only remains for us to measure the force, and point out the direction, of the wind. This is done by the familiar weather-vane and the anemometer. The vane shows the direction, and the anemometer is an instrument which ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... Wyoming," pursued Steve, "where you'll go hours and hours before you'll see a drop of wetness." ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of the Hains gravity type. It had four drops and was provided with four mixing hoppers at the top. The concrete was made quite wet. The proportions of sand and water were varied to suit the stone according to its wetness and the percentage of dust carried by it. The head mixer regulated the proportions and his work was checked by the government inspector. From the bottom hopper the mixed concrete dropped into a skip ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and was mossy {5} to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hill sides, there were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sandhill which commanded a very extensive prospect to the northward, I commenced the retrograde movement along our route, which was but too deeply visible in the sand. From what Piper had said the men expected an engagement during the morning; and it was doubtful, on account of the wetness of the day, whether their pieces would go off if the natives came on; but fortunately we continued our journey unmolested. We reached our former encampment notwithstanding the unfavourable state of the ground, and again pitched our tents upon it. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... us, and the waters of the earth, are subject to infinite variations. Yet, whether in the tiny drop that trembles at the point of a leaf or in the vast ocean-globe of our planet, in the torpor of forest-ponds or in the wrath of cataracts, water never loses its quality of wetness,—the open sky never that of dryness. These two characteristics are of course entirely the reverse of each other,—as unlike as are the properties of transparency and opacity,—which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... researches were interrupted till the spring of the year 1798, when, from the wetness of the early part of the season, many of the farmers' horses in this neighbourhood were affected with sore heels, in consequence of which the cow—pox broke out among several of our dairies, which afforded me an opportunity ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... something alive, possessed of the property of remembering, that is not possessed of a store of past experiences. You can no more think of getting rid of these unconscious memories of protoplasm than you can think of getting rid of the wetness of water. They are imbedded in the most intimate chemistry of the primeval ameba as well as in ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... began to search with the utmost care and diligence, although my teeth were chattering, and all my bones beginning to ache with the chilliness and the wetness. Before very long the moon appeared, over the edge of the mountain, and among the trees at the top of it; and then I espied rough steps, and rocky, made as if with a sledge-hammer, narrow, steep, and far asunder, scooped ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the rocks in the darkness was awkward work. The boat would have bumped dangerously if allowed to ride in with the waves that drove into the cove. I found a flat rock for my feet, which were in a bad way owing to cold, wetness, and lack of exercise in the boat, and during the next few hours I laboured to keep the 'James Caird' clear of the beach. Occasionally I had to rush into the seething water. Then, as a wave receded, I let the boat out on the alpine rope so as to avoid ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... elders stamped their feet and clucked, "Fine day!" New York was far off and ridiculously unimportant. Carl and Ruth reached an open sloping field, where the snow that partly covered a large rock was melting at its lacy, crystaled edges, staining the black rock to a shiny wetness that was infinitely cheerful in its tiny reflection of the blue sky at the zenith. On a tree whose bleak bark the sun had warmed, vagrant sparrows in hand-me-down feathers discussed rumors of the establishment of a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... suspended from the ceiling dripped upon the passer-by; and men, dragging saturated skins from vats in the floor, piled them in heaps where the water oozing from them trickled out into the general sloppiness and transformed the floor into a great shallow pool of moisture. Back and forth through this wetness moved workmen who, as they wheeled barrows of freshly tanned skins, left a wake of slime behind them. Peter looked about in consternation. The steaming odor of the room was nauseating and filled ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... them, so we set to and gathered a quantity of grass, sticks, stubble, and like things, and made a kind of wall to keep off a little of the wind and beating rain; and then we tried to make up our fires with anything we could get together, but owing to the wetness of the substances, they were not very lively, and it was a long time before we could get ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... puddle over her shoe-tops. Then she fell against a fence and tore her skirt. Then, when she was sure she had found the road again she ran plump into the barn again, from a different side this time. A window frame minus a window told that the barn was empty and with a grunt of utter disgust at the wetness of the world in general, Sahwah climbed in and stood on a dry floor. She made up her mind to stay there until the sound of the engine would tell her that the Glow-worm had come for her. As the time went by and no familiar throbbing rose on the air, she began to have cold chills ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... had my gravity," thought she, contemplating the water, "I would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!" ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... other, and paid the penalty with over six thousand casualties. All this night the rain fell in torrents. It streamed from the tops and sides of the ambulances, it lashed the yard till it rose in a fine spray; the lamps shone on wetness everywhere—the dripping, anxious faces of the drivers, the pallid faces of the wounded, eyes staring over their drenched brown blankets, eyes puzzled in their pain and distress, like those of hunted animals; and the reception room was filled with the choking odours of steaming dirty blankets ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... of the profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the only characters. A battle-axe was a person of importance, a castle had a character and ways ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... Cavalry, which had been arriving from all parts for several hours. Some of my friends strongly urged the propriety of my returning to Bath, and postponing the meeting to some future time, in consequence of the extreme wetness of the day. I had never promised to attend any public meeting of the people and then disappointed them, and I felt extreme reluctance at the base thought of doing so upon this occasion; particularly as such a body of the military were assembled from all quarters, since, to decline holding ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... many of the prostrate corn fields. The peat turf lay in oozy and neglected heaps, for there had not been sun enough to dry it sufficiently for use, so that the poor had want of fuel, and cold to feel, as well as want of food itself. Indeed, the appearance of the country, in consequence of this wetness in the firing, was singularly dreary and depressing. Owing to the difficulty with which it burned, or rather wasted away, without light or heat, the eye, in addition to the sombre hue which the absence of the sun cast over all things, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... shavings, and these shavings served to start the green pine boughs which had formed their beds; and once a pretty good glow was obtained, with plenty of embers, the wetness of the branches brought under cover mattered very little, especially as the guide ranged them close to the fire to dry, ready against they were required; and had contrived that the blinding smoke should sweep right out at once, a few broad branched ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... delicate aureole of prismatic radiance, and seemed to have swept suddenly round the silver planet in companionship with a light mist from the sea,—a mist which was now creeping slowly upwards and covering the land with a glistening wetness as of dew. A few fleecy clouds, pale grey and white, were floating aloft in the western half of the heavens, evoked by some magic touch of ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... its thin edges, comes across the sky with so influential a flight that no ship going out to sea can be better worth watching. The dullest thing perhaps in the London streets is that people take their rain there without knowing anything of the cloud that drops it. It is merely rain, and means wetness. The shower-cloud there has limits of time, but no limits of form, and no history whatever. It has not come from the clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not shoulder anon the hill to the north. The rain, for this city, hardly comes or ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... stem of one species attains a diameter of a foot, bearing its foliage in a great canopy. From this giant form the species vary to slender, graceful, climbing vines. Wild grapes are as varied in climatic adaptations as in structure of vine and grow luxuriantly in every condition of heat or cold, wetness or dryness, capable of supporting fruit-culture in America. So many of the kinds have horticultural possibilities that it seems certain that some grape can be domesticated in all of the agricultural regions of the country, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... said Dorothy, as Evesham swung himself over the half-door, and his lantern showed them in their various phases of wetness. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... north in as much as to a certain extent it refused to mingle with the drier and slightly warmer air into which it travelled. It was different from them in as much as it fairly dripped and oozed with a very palpable wetness. Just how it displaced the air in its path, is something which I cannot with certainty say. Was it formed as a low layer somewhere over the lake and slowly pushed along by a gentle, imperceptible, fan-shaped current of air? Fan-shaped, I say; for, as we shall see, it travelled simultaneously ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... which the Lord employed as a type with which to print his lesson, portions might be seen where, owing perhaps to peculiar wetness and sourness in the soil, the wheat had wholly disappeared, and the darnel grew alone; in other parts, probably where the soil was warm and dry, the good seed had gained the mastery, and the false scarcely showed ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... said Cap'n Bill. "I've kep' my face turned straight ahead ever since we climbed inter this bank o' wetness. If we don't get twisted any, we'll go straight through to ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... oil-fields, a dangerous crew. Millings at that time had not yielded to the generally increasing "dryness" of the West. It was "wet," notwithstanding its choking alkali dust; and the deep pool of its wetness lay in Hudson's bar, The Aura. It was named for a woman ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... it in a wet and green state, which subjects it to heat, from which cause the grain contracts a dark colour and an unpleasant taste and smell. The natives, however, impute these defects to the wetness of the season. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... mean not only the sensible perspiration which is felt as a distinct wetness on the skin during exertion or heat, or in some illnesses, but also, and chiefly, the constant insensible perspiration. This latter is far more important than the former. No one could live many ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... the leaves lay thick around the unfortunate horses exposed to the weather with miserably insufficient covering. There was a general air of wetness and wretchedness from the infantry to the cavalry barracks, and some misgivings were entertained as to the condition of the garrison of Lough Mask House. General opinion has set in decidedly against the Ulster contingent: horse and foot, and police, magistrates and floating ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker |
