"Broken-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and its sinister notes penetrated likewise into the large guard-house, and spoke to the prisoners confined there. One of these prisoners was a gloomy, broken-down old man, General Kinkel; the other was a youth, mortally wounded and violently delirious. It was Colonel Dittfurt. The bullet of the Tyrolese had not killed him; he still lived, a prisoner of the peasants, and, amidst his delirium and his agony, he was fully conscious ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... his heart upon it. Go he would; and he begged and pleaded so long that the King was forced to let him go. He gave Boots an old broken-down nag; but Boots did not care a pin for that, he sprang up on his ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... broken brick steps that Old Meg, the fortune-teller, had her den where through the superstitions of those inhabiting the neighborhood she managed to eke out a miserable existence. The interior of the den was unspeakably filthy. The furniture consisted of a broken-down couch, a chest of drawers in a like condition, a card-table, a few kitchen chairs, and some boxes. Most of the panes in the windows had been broken and the empty spaces had been covered with old newspapers. Consequently, a candle thrust into an old wine-bottle supplied ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... in the United States Senate in regard to the League of Nations with the consideration of a broken-down car in a roadside garage the contrast is shocking. The rural mechanic thinks scientifically; his only aim is to avail himself of his knowledge of the nature and workings of the car, with a view to making it run once more. The Senator, on the other hand, appears too often to have ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... to the fire from the left bastion of the town, which completely out-flanked them, and from which the matchlock-men kept pouring in a cool and most destructive fire upon this dense mass with the utmost impunity; while a wide, broken-down doorway in the centre exposed them to a fire from another bastion in their front, if ever they shewed their nose for an instant to see how matters were going on, or to return their fire. Poor fellows! you may guess their situation was anything but pleasant. The consequences ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... whistles, and other strange sounds proceeding from them as we passed near. Others lay in the middle of the harbour ready for sea, but waiting for their crews to be collected by the press-gangs on shore, and to be made up with captured smugglers, liberated gaol-birds, and broken-down persons from every grade of society. Altogether, what with transports, merchantmen, lighters, and other craft, it was no easy matter to beat out without getting athwart hawse of those at anchor, or ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... with the exception of the guard, to plod our way shamefacedly through the mud. Our ponies, with their quick, peculiar gait, soon caught up the heavily-laden waggons, and we supplied ourselves with mealies, flour, fowls, etc., that had been thrown overboard or left behind on a broken-down waggon. Such is the fortune of war, and the things were better in our hands than in those ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... in the time of the Bourbons, numbered about 80,000 families. The order was simply the remains of the once powerful but now broken-down feudal aristocracy of the Middle Ages. Its members were chiefly the pensioners of the king, the ornaments of his court, living in riotous luxury at Paris or Versailles. Stripped of their ancient power, they still retained all the old pride and arrogance ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... he was very friendly with some families in the town; the doctor's, the rector's, his own agent's (a broken-down brother officer and bosom friend, who had ceased to love him since he received his pay); and he used to take Mr. Lintot and me to parties there; and he was the life of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... give any of their workers all the work they can do; they dole out the work to them, trying to make them think it is very scarce. If they ask for higher pay, they are met at once with a threat of discharge. Do you ask why they do not hunt for something better? What can a poor, half-broken-down mother, with three little babies, do hunting work? Who will pay the rent, furnish them food, and care for the children while she makes her search? There are thousands of laboring people, both men and women, in all our great cities, who are in the same condition that a majority of the ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... Some poor, broken-down horses, whose mouths have been made hard and insensible by just such drivers as these, may, perhaps, find some support in it; but for a horse who can depend upon his own legs, and who has a tender mouth and is easily guided, it is not ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... price of a bed. To any one interested in the misery of the city, the array presented on such an occasion is very striking. One sees every variety of character, runaway boys, truant apprentices, drunken mechanics, and broken-down mankind generally. Among these are men who have seen better days. They are decayed gentlemen who appear regularly in Wall street, and eke out the day by such petty business as they may get hold of; and are lucky if they can ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... rather old and broken-down platform, just as Roland proved to be a rather old and broken-down place, and the girls stood on it ruefully as they watched the train ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... me," said Ryder, "that the proposition can be judged largely upon its own merits. It is a proposition to put through an important public improvement; a road which is in a broken-down and practically bankrupt condition is to be taken up, and thoroughly reorganised, and put upon its feet. It is to have a vigorous and honest administration, a new and adequate equipment, and a new source of traffic. The business ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... himself stranded and disconsolate beside a foundered horse. And linked to the tragedy of the disjunctive was this other tragedy. It is the generous-hearted who pay for the follies of others. Had the broken-down beast been a cowardly scum it would never have lain a castaway ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... ask," pursued Lord Wrotham, with an amicable leer, "the names of your two daughters, Madam? They've been awfully kind to us broken-down-travellers—should just like to know the difference between them. Like two roses on one stalk, don't-cher-know! Can't tell ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... not proved a happy valley for the Lincolns and Greys, who were at Nitral's Nek, some eight miles to westward of us, and had been attacked and suffered badly in the morning. (The explanation of the heavy firing already alluded to.) Near the town we came on a broken-down ambulance waggon in a donga, out of which the wounded were being assisted as well as the circumstances permitted. Close by, on the ground, was something under a blanket, which we nearly rode over. A man close by, lighting his pipe, revealed it to us. It was one poor fellow who had died on ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... valuable to the seigneurs and an equally great inconvenience to the habitants. Many seigneurs made no attempt to provide adequate milling facilities. They gave the habitants a choice between bringing their grain to the half-broken-down windmill of the seigneury or paying the seigneur a money fine for his permission to take their grist elsewhere. New seigneurial demands, unheard of in earlier days, were often put ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... gone before. Bengalis were as scarce as poodles among the simple Borderers, who cut each other's heads open with their long spades and worshipped impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines. They crowded to see him, pointing at him, and diversely comparing him to a gravid milch- buffalo, or a broken-down horse, as their limited range of metaphor prompted. They laughed at his police-guard, and wished to know how long the burly Sikhs were going to lead Bengali apes. They inquired whether he had brought his women with him, and advised him explicitly not to tamper with theirs. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... followed by a mule, on which, in a snuff-coloured coat, black tights, white neckcloth, and a beef-eater's hat, the whole sheltered beneath a green carriage umbrella, rode His Excellency the Governor of the district. Behind him walked his secretary, the Syndic of Subiaco, four gendarmes, and three broken-down, old livery-clad beadles, who carried the umbrellas of these high dignitaries. In truth, had it not been for the unutterable shabbiness of the whole affair, I could have fancied I saw the market scene in "Martha," and ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... these vigorous lovers of nature, these heroic searchers after truth, suddenly pushing aside the decrepit Giottesque allegory-mongers, we ask ourselves in astonishment whence they have arisen, and how those broken-down artists of effete art could have begotten such a generation of giants. Whence do they come? Certainly not from the studios of the Giottesques. No, they issue out of the workshops of the stone-mason, of the goldsmith, of the worker in bronze, of the sculptor. ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Divine. Christianity will triumph. It is equal to all it has to perform. It is not mere enthusiasm to imagine a handful of missionaries capable of converting the millions of India. How often they are cut off just after they have acquired the language! How often they retire with broken-down constitutions before effecting anything! How often they drop burning tears over their own feebleness amid the defections of those they believed to be converts! Yes! but that small band has the decree ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... of course, the answer to his questions; no one better. But he was a broken-down preacher, old before his time; and knowing the answer was not at all the same as having the answer. So he had been brought home from Hillcrest, mind-weary and much cast down. Nor did he regain any of his old buoyancy ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... "Alley man," we must take him from the first of his career. He is generally some broken-down clerk or tradesman, who, having lost every prospect of life, chooses this description of business as a dernier ressort. First started in his calling, he associates with the loiterers at the Stock ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... dollars and eating his lunch with the chauffeurs somewhere below stairs and picking up much information that he will impart to me later! What a bully world this would be if all mankind followed my system: stupid conventions all broken-down; the god of mirth holding his sides as he contemplates the world at play! You may be sure that old lady is a stickler for the proprieties when she's at home; widow of a bishop most likely. Those girls have been carefully reared, you can see that, but full ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... so? Well, nowadays the countries who place the picturesque before the useful are very few and far between. I guess it's as well for the community at large that it is so. You would scarcely call that broken-down old omnibus, dragged along by a lame mule, a credit to Theos or a particularly ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... which must have come to her from some Russian ancestor. Her last words lingered in his mind. He was to talk to her about art! A fleeting vision of the youth in the yellow oilskins mocked him. He remembered his morning's tramp and the broken-down motor-car under the trees. The significance of these things was beginning to take shape in his mind. He resumed his seat, a ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was not them. But they are responsible for my having for a long time thought very highly of you, Miss Riis. If you will excuse my saying so, I had never before seen fashionable young ladies trying to do anything useful—never. I am only a little broken-down tradesman travelling for a firm—a worthless sort of chap in many ways, and one that very likely deserves what he has got—but anyway I wanted you to be spared. Indeed thought it was my duty—absolutely my duty. But now when I see you sitting there before me—well, now I ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... to which it may legitimately and laudably aspire. A mechanic should find in the excellence of his mechanism a greater reward and satisfaction than in the wearing of a badge of office which any fifth-rate lawyer or broken-down man-of-business with influential "friends" may obtain, and whose petty duties they may discharge quite as well as the first-rate mechanic. The mechanic who is master of his calling need yield to none. We would not have him like the ironmongers denounced by the old religious writer as "heathenish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... a broken-down rustler whose activity had ceased and who spent his time hanging on at the places frequented by younger and better men of his kind. As he was a parasite, he was often thrown out ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... the gendarme had kicked open the door of No. 25, and I followed him into the room. The place looked dirty and squalid in the extreme—just the sort of place I should have expected Theodore to haunt. It was almost bare save for a table in the centre, a couple of rickety chairs, a broken-down bedstead and an iron stove in the corner. On the table a tallow candle was spluttering and throwing a very feeble circle of ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... but urged the converts to tell their own stories at each service. I have said that I was never interfered with or molested in the work, and the following incident can hardly be called an exception. A broken-down prize fighter, slightly under the influence of liquor, tried to prevent us from holding a meeting one afternoon. I ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... for a time. Mary Louise got a good look at her now and saw that her freckled face might be pretty if it were not so thin and drawn. The hands lying on her lap were red and calloused with housework and the child's whole appearance indicated neglect, from the broken-down shoes to the soiled and tattered dress. She seemed to be reflecting, for after a while she gave a short, bitter laugh at the recollection of her late exhibition of temper ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... us and our destination. At the top the valley of the Moraca could be seen with a magnificent background of rugged mountains. A breakneck descent of two and a half hours, most of it on foot, brought us to the river, which was crossed by a picturesque and broken-down bridge. On a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... to Barchester that day, leading the broken-down cob; and a dreadful walk he had. He was not good at walking, and before he came near Barchester had come to entertain a violent hatred for the beast he was leading. The leading of a horse that is tired, or ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... on board the transports were too numerous and effective to be silenced or ignored. These soldiers were not regulars without influence or connections; they were volunteers who everywhere had relatives and friends to demand an inquiry. Their complaints of overcrowding and of insecure, broken-down ships poured in, and aroused the whole country. A great stir resulted. Congress appointed an ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Such paintings in a broken-down Akbari manner characterize the period 1615 to 1630. From then onwards Mughal painting, as it developed under the emperor Shah Jahan, concentrated on more courtly themes. The early interest in dramatic action ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... by Anna Thedorovna. A plain coffin was bought, and a broken-down hearse hired; while, as security for this outlay, she seized the dead man's books and other articles. Nevertheless, the old man disputed the books with her, and, raising an uproar, carried off as many of them as he could— stuffing his pockets full, and even filling his hat. ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... walls and with daring frescoes!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} He does not see that his spirit has another desire and bent—a totally different outlook—that it prefers to squat peacefully in the corners of broken-down houses: concealed in this way, and hidden even from himself, he paints his really great masterpieces, all of which are very short, often only one bar in length—there, only, does he become quite good, great and perfect, perhaps there alone.—Wagner is one who has suffered ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... suspicions, but no clue. There's a fellow in a sampan who unnecessarily hoists a white umbrella—I have my best eye on him; and there is said to be a broken-down, past-mending motor-launch in a creek beyond Kemmendine, which I propose, when I have a chance, to overhaul on the quiet. Chinese steamers plying between Japan and Rangoon run stacks of contraband; as soon as one method of landing is discovered they find ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... their fortnight's travel, however, the face of the country changed. The timber gradually diminished, until they could scarcely find fuel sufficient for culinary purposes. The game grew more and more scanty, and finally none was to be seen but a few miserable broken-down buffalo bulls, not worth killing. The snow lay fifteen inches deep, and made the travelling grievously painful and toilsome. At length they came to an immense plain, where no vestige of timber was to be seen, not a single quadruped to enliven the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the principal occurrences which took place in that island under the government of Ovando. A great crowd of adventurers of various ranks had thronged his fleet—eager speculators, credulous dreamers, and broken-down gentlemen of desperate fortunes; all expecting to enrich themselves suddenly in an island where gold was to be picked up from the surface of the soil, or gathered from the mountain-brooks. They had scarcely landed, says Las ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... old story, and one which will last while rogues endure—be they broken-down politicians, craving, like Buchanan, a little more paltry notoriety, or any other variety of the great family of the Dishonest. And they will go their way adown the road of time and into history, properly brandmarked. The truth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... see the horse-platforms from here. You must have them loaded up early." The young man went away wondering what sort of broken-down waif this might be who talked like a gentleman and consorted with Greek muleteers. Dick felt unhappy. To outface an English officer is no small thing, but the bluff loses relish when one plays it from the utter dark, and stumbles up and down rough ways, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... days, had without consulting factor or landlord, at once entered upon possession, as the proper successors of its former occupants. They were a savage party, with a good deal of the true gipsy blood in them, but not without mixture of a broken-down class of apparently British descent; and one of their women was purely Irish. From what I had previously heard about gipsies, I was not prepared for a mixture of this kind; but I found it pretty general, and ascertained that at least one of the ways in which it had taken ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... African coast, in charge of the various trading stations that were scattered along the coast, from the Gaboon River, past the mouth of the mighty Congo, to the Portuguese city of St. Paul de Loanda. A mixture of all sorts, especially bad sorts: broken-down clerks, men who could not succeed anywhere else, sailors, youths, and some whose characters would not have borne any investigation; and we very nearly all drank hard, and those who didn't drink hard took more ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... been the desideratum of the young girl's highest hopes that had to wear themselves out in empty longings, the invalid's scanty exchequer only sufficing for doctor's bills and similar twelvemonth, along with several other broken-down lodgers whose slender means compelled them to call this place "home"—this place where never a bit of sunshine seemed to come; where even the birds hated to stop for a song as they flew merrily over the tree-tops. And ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... the other of both armies were encamped wholly or in part within her limits, as in September, 1862, when the triumphant army of Lee, on the eve of the first Maryland campaign, was halted at Leesburg and stripped of all superfluous transportation, broken-down horses, and wagons and batteries not supplied with good horses being left behind;[30] again, in June, 1863, when Hooker was being held in bounds with his great army stretched from Manassas, near Bull Run, to Leesburg, near the Potomac; and yet again, in July, 1863, when Lee's ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... line!— Fire!" and so on, their guns will rise of themselves and the habitual movements will be performed. But "Fire!" now does not mean shooting into the sand for amusement, it means firing on their broken-down, exploited fathers and brothers whom they see there in the crowd, with women and children shouting and waving their arms. Here they are—one with his scanty beard and patched coat and plaited shoes of reed, just ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... road to the underworld. But Larry the Bat was dead and the road was barred. And then a half finished painting standing on an easel at the rear of his den had brought him inspiration. It was one of his hobbies—and it swung wide again for him the door of the underworld. None, in a broken-down, disappointed, drug-shattered artist, would recognise Larry the Bat! The only similarity between the two—the one thing that must of necessity be the same in order to explain plausibly his intimacy with the dens and lairs ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... report, ere long, the accident which has happened to M. de Monsoreau; we had together, by the old copse, a discussion on broken-down walls and horses that go home alone. In the heat of the argument, he fell on a bed of poppies and dandelions so hard ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... he will. His excellency has too great an esteem for these gentlemen to allow them to languish in prison when no stronger proof than the story which a broken-down gambler can invent is urged ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a specimen of house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midlands I have visited. In the room downstairs there were a broken-down old squab, two rickety old chairs, and a three-legged table that had to be propped against the wall, and a rusty old poker, with a smoking fire-place. The Gipsy father was a strong man, not over fond of work; he had been in prison once; the mother, a strong ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... word or two. The two grand horses stretched out their necks, and they sped away southward. For a while they rode over the road by which they had come. It was yet early twilight and they saw many marks of their passage, a broken-down wagon, a dead horse, an exploded caisson, and now and then something from which they quickly turned ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the case with most, learned patience, the virtue of which has been well sustained by goodly potions of Paul and Brown's perfect "London Dock," Fuddle, with grave deportment, receives from the hands of the clerical-looking clerk-a broken-down gentleman of great legal ability-the charge he is about to make the jury. "Gentlemen," he says, "I might, without any detriment to perfect impunity, place the very highest encomiums on the capabilities ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... towers. This fortress, which once belonged to the Odescalchi family, but is now the property of the Roman government, looks like the very spot for a tragedy, as it stands there rotting in the pestilential air, and garrisoned by a few stray old soldiers, whose dreary, broken-down appearance is quite in keeping with the place. Palo itself is the site of the city of Alsium, founded by the Pelasgi, in the dim gloom of antiquity, long before the Etruscans landed on this shore. It was subsequently occupied by the Etruscans, and afterwards ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... has certainly had more effect than it deserves; and I suspect my Ministerial friends, if they love me less, will not hold me cheaper for the fight I have made. I am far from saying oderint dum emerint, but there is a great difference betwixt that and being a mere protege, a poor broken-down man, who was to be assisted when existing circumstances, that most convenient of all apologies and happiest ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... us," Frank said. "No one would venture to try a tent with a pretty strong party; but with only your son and yourself there might have been a temptation to some broken-down gambler to carry it off. Besides, we have Turk as a guard, and I don't fancy any one would venture to try any tricks with our tent while he ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... Frank," continued my father, "I will cut all this matter very short. I was at your age when my father turned me out of doors, and settled my legal inheritance on my younger brother. I left Osbaldistone Hall on the back of a broken-down hunter, with ten guineas in my purse. I have never crossed the threshold again, and I never will. I know not, and I care not, if my fox-hunting brother is alive, or has broken his neck; but he has children, Frank, and one of them ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... children, and one's a baby, an' his wife is a poor broken-down little thing near always in the hospital. You'd wonder how he married her, he's such a fine-looking ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... A.M., and got a miserable meal at Richmond at 12.30. At this little town I was introduced to a seedy-looking man, in rusty black clothes and a broken-down "stove-pipe" hat. This was Judge Stockdale, who will probably be the next governor of Texas. He is an agreeable man, and his conversation is far superior to his clothing. The rival candidate is General Chambers (I think), who has become very popular by the ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... and knives and forks. A highly-coloured portrait of her late Majesty Queen Victoria confronted a long-legged horse desperately winning a race in which he had apparently no competitors. There was a wall-paper of imitation marble and a broken-down book-case with some torn paper editions languishing upon it. Beyond the open window there was a purple haze and a yellow mist—also a bell rang and carts rattled over the cobbles. The waiter shut out these sights and sounds, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the old university since I got my degree, but they've sent me out like a broken-down fire horse. I'll get used to it," the young man said indifferently. He was accustomed to signs of hopelessness when his case was discussed, and was unmoved ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... he blew a ring of smoke between himself and the shrewd eyes, "what on earth have a lot of broken-down old Confederate soldiers got to do with the management of the affairs of the city? You young men are to attend to that—give us a seat in the sun and our ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Debutante, where I see the charming panting dark-haired creature, in flowing white classically relieved by a gold tiara and a golden scarf, rush back from the supposed stage to the represented green-room, followed by thunders of applause, and throw herself upon the neck of the broken-down old gentleman in a blue coat with brass buttons who must have been after all, on second thoughts, Mr. Placide. Greater flights or more delicate shades the art of pathetic comedy was at that time held not to achieve; only I straighten it out that Mr. and Mrs. Blake, not less than Miss Mary Taylor ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... for the views of Addison; but his Twickenham garden was a very stiff affair. Bridgman was the first practical landscape-gardener who ventured to ignore old rules; and he was followed closely by William Kent, a broken-down and unsuccessful landscape-painter, who came into such vogue as a man of taste, that he was employed to fashion the furniture of scores of country-villas; and Walpole[8] tells us that he was even beset by certain fine ladies to design ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... The attack was indiscriminate; spies were employed, and idle words of obscure persons were made grounds of indictment. Both in the superior courts and at quarter sessions severe penalties were inflicted. One Frost, a broken-down attorney, and a pestilent rascal enough, though convicted merely of saying in a coffee-house that he was "for equality and no king," was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, to stand in the pillory, and be struck off the roll. A dissenting preacher, found guilty of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Frank, too, looked in at the Tramp House, and saw the broken-down table, and hunted for the missing leg, and with Tom concluded that something unusual had taken place there, though he could not ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Culture," pp. 313-16. After quoting three mythic descriptions found among the Karens, the Algonquins, and the Aztecs, Mr. Tylor remarks, "On the suggestion of this group of solar conceptions and that of Maui's death, we may perhaps explain as derived from a broken-down fancy of solar-myth, that famous episode of Greek legend, where the good ship Argo passed between the Symplegades, those two huge cliffs that opened and closed again with swift ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... exquisite militaire, casting a suspicious look of self-importance on the other, were irresistible. I was obliged to turn on one side to prevent discovering my impulse to laughter. The captain, I have since learned, turned out to be a broken-down blackleg, seeking to patch up a diminished fortune by a matrimonial alliance, in which he was only foiled by a discovery just time enough to prevent his design upon ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and sleighs. They were down to rations of dog-meat and moccasins, and hardly knew whether to expect death at the hands of raiding Piegans or from starvation. On New Year's Day of 1811, {107} when the thermometer dropped to 24 deg. below zero, with a biting wind, Thompson was packing four broken-down horses and two dogs over the pass to the west side of the Great Divide. The mountains rose precipitously on each side; but when the trail began dropping down westward, the weather moderated, though the snow grew deeper; and in the third week of January Thompson came on the baffling current ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... along the narrow entry leading to the stairway, now so thronged with visitors? Every day she comes and goes, no one seeing her face, and every day, with rare exceptions, her step is slower and her form visibly more shrunken when she goes out than when she comes in. She is a broken-down gentlewoman, the widow of an officer, who left her at his death a moderate fortune, and quite sufficient for the comfortable maintenance of herself and two nearly grown-up daughters. But she had lived at the South, and there acquired a taste for lottery gambling. During ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... meant your throwing yourself away on a broken-down governess! There—let us have done with nonsense. Come in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... days to come, when it should be her delight to minister to his declining years—to be the consolation of his repentant soul. And now she had found him she knew these things could never be—that there was not one feeling of sympathy possible between her and that broken-down, dissipated-looking man of ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and these women are abruptly flung back into domestic life. There is almost no man's place in the industrial world that English women are not satisfactorily filling, with either muscle or brains, and the doctors apprehend a new problem in many thousand neurotics or otherwise broken-down women at the close of the war. Although this painful result of women's heroism would leave just that many women less to compete for the remaining men sound of wind and limb, still, if true, it raises the acute question: Are women the equal of men in all things? ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... said. "All here are saints: don't go near them; and he who lies there in a case," pointing to David, "is also a saint. But we, brother, you and I, are sinners. Choo, gentlemen: excuse an old, broken-down man. We have stolen together," he cried suddenly—"stolen together, stolen together," he repeated with evident joy: at last he had control of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... animals one is likely to see is the wild sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs that never fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices, acquainted with all the springs and passes and broken-down jumpable places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy grace and confidence of strength, his great horns held high above his shoulders, wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber of him like the wind through ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... broken-down Detroit newspaper man, who had been a power in his day, approached an old friend the other day in the Pontchartrain ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... for many weeks, even months. All that could be done was done for him; but the little, active feet were never to walk again, and the spine was so injured that he could not even sit upright. When all that could be done had been done and failed, the boy was sent back to his broken-down and widowed mother. ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... allowed us to proceed. At that moment a furious fusillade of gun-fire attracted our attention, and three shrill blasts of a whistle rang out; then we heard a cry, "Everyone under cover!" Stopping the car, I immediately jumped out, and stood under cover of a broken-down wall, and looking up, could see the ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... entered was evidently the dining-room. It was quite bare of furniture. The next, however, that which Emily had entered by the window, contained another stove, a ramshackle what-not, and a broken-down, ragged sofa. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a mile distant, having a long ditch and a broken-down fence as a foreground, there rose against the muddled-gray sky, a huge dust-heap of a dirty-black color—being, in fact, one of those immense mounds of cinders, ashes, and other emptyings from dust-holes and bins, which have conferred celebrity on certain suburban neighborhoods of a great city. Toward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... at representing an overhanging rock with a hole through it; but merely in order to divide the light behind some human figure. Lakes! No, nothing of the kind,—only blue bays of sea put in to fill up the background when the painter could not think of anything else. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part very complete and well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all, but to give place or explanation to some circumstance of human conduct." And then he would ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... continued the curate, "tell us, has your time been better spent than ours, or have you any news of that unhappy maiden, who, being for so many years the principal joy of this broken-down house, is now proved our greatest unhappiness? Have you not at least discovered her ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... born in London, in the year 1770, in comparatively humble life,—his father being a dissipated and broken-down barrister, and his mother compelled by poverty to go upon the stage. But he had a wealthy relative who took the care of his education. In 1788 he entered Christ Church College, where he won the prize for the best ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... and ruined, and pilloried, and drove out of this fine world, and warned off of all his aristocratic race-courses, then I'll come in and take a look at him; then I'll see my brilliant gentleman a worn-out, broken-down swindler, a dying in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Voice on the spot where Cdicius had heard the voice announcing the coming barbarians; and there was a diligent digging among the ashes to find the sites of the other temples and streets. It was a tedious and almost hopeless task to rebuild the broken-down city, and the people began to look with longing to the strongly-built houses and temples still standing at Veii, wondering why they might not go thither in a body and live in comfort, instead of digging among ashes to rebuild a city simply to give Camillus, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... through a buffalo's nose is made of whole rattan, to which is often attached a split strip for a guiding-rein. Every joint in a native's hut, his canoe, his fence, his cart, woodwork of any kind—indeed, everything to be made fast, from a bundle of sticks to a broken-down carriage, is lashed together with this split material, which must, when so employed, be bent with the shiny skin outside, otherwise it will infallibly snap. The demand for this article is ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Richmond's, and found Stanley informed of the result of the meeting at the Duke of Wellington's in the morning, which was decisive on the question. The Duke, after his extraordinary speech in the House of Lords, when he mounted the old broken-down hobby of the Coronation Oath and cut a curvet that alarmed his friends and his enemies, assembled the Tories at Apsley House, and there, resuming his own good sense, though not very consistently, made them a speech, and told them that some such measure must be passed, for nothing else could ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... were flying half-mast high." A crowd of people were there. Cart-horses with harness on, and a lot of tired-looking saddle-hacks, covered with dry sweat, were fastened to cart-wheels, and to every available post and place. Heaps of old iron, broken-down drays and buggies and wheel-barrows, pumps and pieces of machinery, which Dad reckoned were worth a lot of money, were scattered about. Dad yearned to gather them all up and cart them home. Rows of unshaven men were seated high on the rails of the yards. The yards were filled with cattle—cows, ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... DO YOU FEEL broken-down, nervous and weak sometimes? Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound is excellent to take at such a time. It always helps and if taken regularly and persistently will relieve ...
— Food and Health • Anonymous
... arms spread over the table, and his head resting on them, was the prisoner. His face was hidden, but the coarse, disordered dress, the long hair, half grey, half black, lying loose and shaggy over his bony hands, the dreary broken-down expression of his attitude, made a picture not to be looked upon without pity. Yet the thing that seemed most pathetic of all was that utter change in the man which, even at the first glance, was so plainly evident. This visitor, standing silent and unnoticed ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... casualties. Eager to be at closer quarters, the men increased their pace, breaking from quick-time into the double, and from that to a swift run upon the edge of the wood. A low stone wall, topped by a broken-down fence of wire which ringed the copse on this side, was tumbled flat, and the foremost soldiers of the Dublin, pouring through the thicket, penetrated to the wall and hedge on the farther side. Here their line ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... me and fool me so sincerely, so guilelessly. My poor squire, true guardian of my dulled sword, your knight is a poor, broken-down man. He cannot hold a weapon in his feeble hand. What do I see? Our son's ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... Europeans accept everything from us and return nothing, is being resented, not by the lower classes for they read in our papers how the King shook hands with Jack Johnson; not by the nouveaux riches, for they are perfectly satisfied with the notoriety they get at the hands of your broken-down aristocracy who spend their money,—no not by these classes, but by ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... quite showy at a distance. Among the Mexicans there is no working class; (the Indians being slaves and doing all the hard work;) and every rich man looks like a grandee, and every poor scamp like a broken-down gentleman. I have often seen a man with a fine figure, and courteous manners, dressed in broadcloth and velvet, with a noble horse completely covered with trappings; without a real in his pocket, and absolutely suffering for something ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of the blood from that arm that I heard dripping from your roof-beams," Ernest said with continued gentleness. "He lost his arm in the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the superintendent and the officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... of honour, and on them the safety of the whole army depended. Thus the constant skirmishing, and, occasionally, hard fighting that went on, braced them up, and saved them from the moody depression that weighed upon the rest of the army. They had, too, some material advantage from the broken-down waggons and vehicles of all sorts that fell behind. Every day they obtained a certain amount of stores, while from the bodies of those who had dropped from exhaustion, sickness, or cold they obtained a ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... Raymond's parlour, I found Annas and Flora, alone. I do not know what to say they looked like. Both are white and worn, as if a great strain had been on their hearts: but Flora is much the more broken-down of the two. Annas is more queenly than ever, with a strange, far-away look in the dear grey eyes, that I can hardly bear to see. I ran up to her ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... country as Jack the Killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad at poor old Jack's broken-down condition and rejoicing that he had by chance found him there and had been ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... came a cry from a distance, followed by a pistol shot. The men around the broken-down wagon were instantly on their guard, ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... seen diggers on the track under varying fortunes, cursing dreadfully by broken-down teams, urging on their dull bullocks—slow, but very sure—singing exuberantly as they paced by, carrying heavy swags with light hearts, shouting as they went, under the impulse of a common hope that begot ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and quietly tipped Duncan Argyll off as to Theobald Gustav, the aforesaid D. A. bolted back to his ranch without as much as saying good-by to me. For Duncan Argyll McKail isn't an Irishman, as you might in time gather from that name of his. He's a Scotch-Canadian, and he's nothing but a broken-down civil engineer who's taken up farming in the Northwest. But I could see right away that he was a gentleman (I hate that word, but where'll you get another one to take its place?) and had known ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... farmers are apt to consider unnecessary. But the honest pride that the present owner had in the well-tilled acres extended to the buildings upon it, and neatness and thrift were everywhere present. No hingeless gates propped with sticks met the eye; no broken-down doors were to be seen on his barns; a master hand ruled the land, and his rule ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... Ward turned into the curb. Tenderly he helped her to the ground. Reverently he lifted aside the broken-down gate and led her through the tangle of tall grass and weeds that had almost obliterated the walk to the front porch. Over the rotting steps and across the trembling porch he helped her with gentle care. Very softly he ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... a long letter to Robert, begging and entreating him not to be so down-hearted, and not to leave America without making another effort. I told him I could bear any trial except the wretchedness of seeing him come back a helpless, broken-down man, trying uselessly to begin life again when too old for ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... sold!" Amelius moved forward a few steps, and was half deafened by rival butchers, shouting, "Buy, buy, buy!" to audiences of ragged women, who fingered the meat doubtfully, with longing eyes. A little farther—and there was a blind man selling staylaces, and singing a Psalm; and, beyond him again, a broken-down soldier playing "God save the Queen" on a tin flageolet. The one silent person in this sordid carnival was a Lascar beggar, with a printed placard round his neck, addressed to "The Charitable Public." He held a tallow candle ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... thus addressed, who wore the garb of a broken-down citizen, only answered, "Ay, truly, Master Topham, it is time ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... its wing. That was the first in the collection. He was a lovely pet. When you gave him a piece of meat he said 'Cree,' and clawed chunks out of you, but most of the time he sat in the corner with his chin on his chest, like a broken-down lawyer. We didn't get the affection we needed out of him. Well, then Wind-River found a bull-snake asleep and lugged him home, hanging over his shoulder. We sewed a flannel collar on the snake and picketed him out until he got used to the place. And around and around and ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... from the better classes in their own. Broken-down gentlemen are not likely to succeed at work that needs the strength and endurance of a bull and ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... reached the edge of this depression, the rag-dealer stopped and pointed out to Manuel a hovel standing next to a broken-down merry-go-round ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... eight thousand is as good an eight thousand as any in the land, better than a great many. I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for your broken-down landowners; Berkins has always made excellent investments, and I hear he is now getting as much as fifteen per cent. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... behaved with pluck and patience. Some of them had suffered grievous loss. From Bale and Geneva to Paris and Boulogne the railways were littered with their abandoned luggage, too bulky to be loaded into overcrowded trains. On the roads of France were broken-down motor-cars which had cost large sums of money in New York and London. But because war's stupendous evil makes all other things seem trivial, and the gifts of liberty and life are more precious than wealth or luxury, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... men alighted, and Dennis Wayman led the vicious pony to a broken-down shed, which served as stable and coach-house in Mr. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... firm of solicitors, Messrs. Falcon and Lambe, of Mansion House Chambers, E.C. The firm did all sorts of work, provided only that it paid; the highest class under their style, and the other sorts—the money-lending and "speculative business"—through their own "jackals," that is to say seedy and broken-down solicitors who had made a failure of their own business, but had managed to keep on the Rolls and were not above doing "commission work" ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... servant held the Venetian mirror before him, he was satisfied. The elderly, half-broken-down man of the day before had become a tall, stately noble in the prime of life; nay, in spite of his forty-six years, his eyes sparkled far more brightly and proudly than many a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seen such sad cases, and I'm sorry for you," spoke Joe, softly. He thought of John Dutton, the broken-down pitcher whose rescue, from a life of ruin, had been due largely to our hero's efforts, as told in the volume immediately ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... anything," he pronounced, as he stood looking over the desolate expanse of country, "is that when one comes face to face with the fellow he presents all the appearance of a nerveless and broken-down coward. Then all of a sudden there spring up these evidences of the most amazing, the most diabolical resource.... ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... going on in the pilot-house. Island No. 63—an island with a lovely 'chute,' or passage, behind it in the former times. They said Jesse Jamieson, in the 'Skylark,' had a visiting pilot with him one trip—a poor old broken-down, superannuated fellow—left him at the wheel, at the foot of 63, to run off the watch. The ancient mariner went up through the chute, and down the river outside; and up the chute and down the river again; and yet again and again; and handed the boat over to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... belonging to the monastery. Arrests for debt could not be made within its limits. That is to say, it was so claimed by the residents, who resisted any attempt to violate this privilege by force of arms. It was a notorious place in the seventeenth century, filled with rogues and broken-down gamblers, spendthrifts and profligates. As yet (when this map was drawn) there are very few houses between Whitefriars and the Temple. Beyond the Temple there are marked Arundel Place, Paget Place, Somerset Place, the Savoy, York Place. Duresme—i.e. Durham—Place, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... are manufactured in the same way. "The stupid father," "the awkward son," "the broken-down firm," are "mine." Were they "yours," they would instantly become "the august, venerable father," "the honorable son," ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... liberal education is a true regeneration. When a man is once liberally educated, he will generally remain a man, not shrink to a manikin, nor dwindle to a brute. But if he is not properly educated, if he has merely been crammed and stuffed through college, if he has merely a broken-down memory from trying to hold crammed facts enough to pass the examination, he will continue to shrink and shrivel and dwindle, often below his original proportions, for he will lose both his confidence and self-respect, as his crammed facts, which never became a part of himself, evaporate ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... better. I want you in the character of a broken-down actor now, and you wouldn't look the part with a new and shiny tile. Put a couple of dents in it, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... soldiers is easily accounted for. The northern soldiers had been carefully selected by competent surgeons. They were physically perfect, or nearly so. They were in the bloom of early manhood or the strength of middle age—not an old man among them, not a diseased man among them, not a broken-down constitution among them. But multitudes of the southern, enrolled by conscription, were physically unfit. Many were much too old or too young. Said our General Grant, "To fill their ranks, they have robbed the ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... Mr. Buchanan to answer the question, 'Can a State be coerced?' For two hours he battled, and finally scattered for the time being the heresies with which secession had filled the head of that old broken-down man. He was requested to prepare an argument in support of the power, to be inserted in the forthcoming message."—Hon. H.L. Dawes, in the "Boston Congregationalist." See "Atlantic Monthly," October, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... they had first entered—an abandoned stable—they moved through a broken-down cow-shed to a long, low structure which had evidently been used by the helpers on the ranch. This building was also deserted, and all that remained in it was some ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... Another idea, which she refrained from expressing, for she did not believe Nofre capable of understanding her, helped the young girl to make up her mind. She threw off her languor, and rose from her armchair with a vivacity quite unexpected after the broken-down attitude she had preserved during the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... tangle of brambles, she spied old Mr. Rabbit sitting on his broken-down doorstep with his arms folded ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... hand and clawed at that face from eyes to chin. A howl of pain rewarded her. His hold loosened. Like a flash she was off. She ran. It seemed to her that her feet did not touch the earth. Over brush, through bushes, crashing against trees, on and on. She heard him following her, but the broken-down engine that was his heart refused to do the work. She ran on, though her fear was as great as before. Fear of what might have happened—to her, Tessie Golden, that nobody could even talk fresh to. She gave a sob of fury and fatigue. She was stumbling now. It was growing dark. She ran on again, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... her live, like you, among a lot of broken-down chairs and threadbare carpets!" she exclaimed, the innate respectability of the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the acquired dilettantism ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... nothing," my companion answered, "but an old broken-down wagon. Why they leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where people can see it as they pass, is more than I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ordinary caravans headed the procession. A man conducted each, a naked-footed child or two trotted beside them, and an elder boy led along three goats. The travelling homes were encumbered with osier-and cane-work, and following them came a little broken-down, open vehicle. This was drawn by two donkeys, harnessed tandem-fashion, and the chariot had been painted bright blue. A woman drove the concern, and in it appeared a knife-grinding machine and a basket of cackling poultry, while some tent-poles stuck ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Follenvie dined at the end of the table. The man, wheezing like a broken-down locomotive, was too short-winded to talk when he was eating. But the wife was not silent a moment; she told how the Prussians had impressed her on their arrival, what they did, what they said; execrating them in the first place ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... went up into the pine forests of the Great Lake region a broken-down hypochondriac and confirmed consumptive. He had been measured for a funeral sermon three times, he said, and had never used either of them. He knew a clergyman named Brayley who went up into that ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... rumbling grimly through the night, and a squadron of horse galloped by, the troopers greeting us with shouts of inquiry. The road was deeply rutted by heavy wheels, and littered with all manner of debris, broken-down wagons, dead horses, accoutrements thrown away, and occasionally the body of a man, overlooked by the burial squad. Our horses plunged from side to side in fright at the dim objects, snorting wildly, and we were ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... prosperous, wealthy, energetic son, who, as a boy, had played at marbles in the very kennel, and who had risen in life by his own exertions, and was now virtually M. P. for his native town, tending on the broken-down, aged father, whom even the interests of a son he was so proud of could not win from the colours which he associated with truth and rectitude—had such an effect upon the rudest of the mob there present, that you might have heard a pin fall,—till the carriage drove away back to John's humble home; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than two centuries old, yet the completeness of destruction is such that over most of its area no standing wall is seen, and the outlines of the houses and groups are indicated mainly by low ridges and masses of broken-down masonry, partly covered by the drifting sands. The group of rooms that forms the south east side of the pueblo is an exception to the general rule. Here fragmentary walls of rough masonry stand to a height, ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... very jolly to make their way to the barn in the dark. Dinah had to carry Freddie, he was so sleepy; Mrs. Manily took good care of Flossie. But, of course, there was the duck and the cat, that could not be very safely left in the broken-down stagecoach. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... extraordinary springs are the sole reason of its existence, and only those who must, come to seek health in them. Sad-faced invalids, who have tried other baths in vain and have been ordered hither as a last resort; wounded or broken-down soldiers; cripples, who stump their crutches past us down the earthen road,—these are the ones who haunt Bareges, anxious and self-centred and unhopeful. Style and fashion are things apart; there is not ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... want me to show you the road to the main-to'gallant cross-trees; once I knew it as well as anybody, and I could make quicker time now than most of the youngsters," and the captain gave a knowing glance aloft, while at this moment somebody crossed the gangway plank. It was a broken-down old sailor, who was a familiar sight ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was the pale and emaciated drunkard, whose feeble and tottering gait, and trembling hands, were sufficiently indicative of his broken-down constitution, and probably of his anxiety to be enabled to make some compensation to the world, or some provision on the part of his own soul, to balance the consequences of an ill-spent life, during which morals were laughed at, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... eyes, without speech or language, told their hearts' pity, she spoke again in the same unaltered gentle voice (so different from the irritable impatience she had been ever apt to show to everyone except her husband—he who had wedded her, broken-down and injured),—in a voice so different, I say, from the old, hasty manner, she spoke now the ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Presley reached Hooven's place, two or three grimy frame buildings, infested with a swarm of dogs. A hog or two wandered aimlessly about. Under a shed by the barn, a broken-down seeder lay rusting to its ruin. But overhead, a mammoth live-oak, the largest tree in all the country-side, towered superb and magnificent. Grey bunches of mistletoe and festoons of trailing moss hung from its bark. From ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the whole land why Trenck languishes in prison. You, you alone, should be ignorant of it! Know, then, that Trenck is imprisoned because I love him! Yes, general, I love him! Why do you not laugh, sir? Is it not laughable to hear an old, wrinkled, broken-down creature speak of love—to see a wan, trembling form, tottering to her grave on a prop of love? Look at this horribly disfigured countenance. Listen to the rough, discordant voice that dares to speak of love, and then laugh, general, for I tell you I love Trenck. I love him ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... south of Broek, mynheer, near the canal. It is only a poor, broken-down hut. Any of the children thereabout can point it out to your honor," added Hans with a heavy sigh. "They are all half afraid of the place; they call ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... had not tasted food for twenty-four hours. I sat down on the steps of a German grocery, and was soon ordered away by the keeper. Then I wandered into a place they called Nightmare's Alley, where three old wooden buildings with broken-down verandas stood, and were inhabited principally by butchers. I sat down on the steps of one, and thought if I only had a mother, or some one to care for me, and give me something to eat, how happy I should be. And I cried. And a great red-faced man came out of the house, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... fists raised towards the ceiling, Salvat seemed to be protesting against the abomination of a world and a Providence that allowed old toilers to die of hunger just like broken-down beasts. However, he did not speak, but relapsed into the savage, heavy silence, the bitter meditation in which he had been plunged when the priest arrived. He was a journeyman engineer, and gazed obstinately at the table where lay his little leather ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... hopeful self. He told her all that had passed. She stood up beside him, she held his head against her breast and let him sob away there the weight of grief and shame that almost choked him. Then she spoke bravely to the broken-down, weary man: ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Castle, all chunnicks of stone, or a Habbey, much out of repair, A skelinton Banquetting 'All, and a bit of a broken-down stair, May appear most perticular "precious" to them as the picteresk cops; But give me the sububs and stucco, smart villas, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... life save in power of imagination. He has to learn this fact, the great lesson of all men. Furthermore there may be a future closed to him if he has thrown too extreme a task of repairing on that bare machine of his. The sight of a broken-down plough is mournful, but the one thing to do with it is to remove ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to feelings of cowardice when she came face to face with the dejected and broken-down Therese, amidst the icy silence of the shop. She was not one of those dry, rigid persons who find bitter delight in living a life of eternal despair. Her character was full of pliancy, devotedness, and effusion, which contributed to make up her temperament of a stout and affable ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... out and come home to you as your father ought, and then I could offer myself for some decent place. With a good shirt and coat on my back, people would be glad enough to have me. I could offer myself for a courier, if I didn't look like a broken-down mountebank. I should like to be with my children, and forget and forgive. But you have never seen your father look like this before. If you had ten pounds at hand—or I could appoint you to bring it me somewhere—I could fit myself out by the day ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ourselves and horses, and descending the mass of carcasses, we at last succeeded in reaching a few acres of clear ground. It was elevated a few feet above the water of the torrent, which ran through the ravine, and offered to our broken-down horses a magnificent pasture of sweet blue grass. But the poor things were too terrified and exhausted, and they stretched themselves down upon the ground, a painful spectacle ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Instead of two broken-down horses, six well-fed and well-watered steeds were attached to the wagon, and it was evident that no matter how short had been the supply of food and water, the horses and occupants of this particular conveyance ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... rises CAMILLE enters with a rather broken-down cardboard box containing flowers. She is a young woman with a good figure, a pale face, the warm brown eyes and complete poise of a Frenchwoman. She takes the box ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... so he now took up the task of bringing the government of the Constitution into existence. For eight years he served as president. He came into office with a paper constitution, the heir of a bankrupt, broken-down confederation. He left the United States, when he went out of office, an effective and vigorous government. When he was inaugurated, we had nothing but the clauses of the Constitution as agreed to by the Convention. When he laid down ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... a little man with tumbled hair, weazened face, and the general look of a broken-down gentleman, who was recognized by ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland |
