"Decayed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said to have been his publisher Becket, and the other probably Mr. James; and, thus duly neglected by the whole crowd of boon companions, the remains of Yorick were consigned to the "new burying-ground near Tyburn" of the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square. In that now squalid and long-decayed grave-yard, within sight of the Marble Arch and over against the broad expanse of Hyde Park, is still to be found a tombstone inscribed with some inferior lines to the memory of the departed humourist, and with a statement, inaccurate by eight months, of the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... it is widely decayed, in many places thin, and everywhere treacherous; but it is, as a whole, so broad, so crystallized about old boulders, so imbedded in shallows, so wedged into crannies on either shore, that it is a great danger. The waters from thousands of swollen streamlets above are pressing behind ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... resolution, and accordingly I boldly entered the house; and after narrowly escaping breaking my shins over a turf back and a salting tub, which stood on either side of the narrow exterior passage, I opened a crazy half-decayed door, constructed not of plank, but of wicker, and, followed by the Bailie, entered into the principal ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... seeing an old decayed willow by a brook, went to it, and took therefrom some touchwood, to which he set a light with his knife and a stone, while Amyas watched, a little puzzled and startled, as Yeo's fiery reputation came into his mind. Was he really a salamander-sprite, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering waggon, with its four stout horses, to the jingling costermonger's cart, with its consumptive donkey. The pavement is already strewed with decayed cabbage-leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable market; men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen expatiating on the excellence of their pastry, and donkeys braying. These ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... wood she dealt the reptile a blow, but the stick being decayed and brittle, inflicted little injury on the serpent, and only caused it to turn itself towards Mrs. Jameson, and fix its keen and beautiful, but malignant eyes, steadily upon her. The witchery of the serpent's eyes so irresistibly rooted her to the ground, that for a moment ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... of fruit, and is particularly rich in mish-mish, or apricots. The finest of these are dried; while those which are over-ripe, or half decayed, are boiled to a pulp in large pots, and afterwards spread to dry on long smooth boards, in the form of cakes, about half an inch in thickness. These cakes, which look like coarse brown leather, are afterwards folded up, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... vulture's neck not covered with feathers as the eagle's is? A. If they had feathers on their necks, like eagles and hawks, they would soon become clotted with blood. Q. Why would this happen? A. Because they are continually plunging their necks into decayed flesh and bloody carcasses. Q. How do vultures sit? A. In a dull, mopeing manner. Q. Where do they generally sit? A. On tall dead trees. Q. Do they continue thus long? A. Yes, for several hours. Q. What is the ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... in ruins, like many in Hind. Broken pillars, exquisitely carved, lay about, and some of the tall windows of marble lace were punctured, as if the fist of some angry god had beaten through. Under the decayed portico stood an iron brazier. Near this reposed a cracked stone sarcophagus: an unusual sight in this part of the world. It was without its lid. But one god now brooded hereabouts—Silence. Not a sound anywhere, not even from the near-by trees. She saw a noiseless lizard slide jerkily across ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... impossible, and the poor man was abandoned to what was considered an inevitable fate by his unenlightened attendants. Expecting to die every moment, he continued several days in a languid state, but the hemorrhage ceased spontaneously, and the arm decayed, shrunk, and dried into a mummified stump, which he carried about for quite a while. Rooker speaks of a fracture of the forearm, near the lower part of the middle third, in a patient aged fourteen. Incipient gangrene below the seat of fracture, with associate inflammation, developed; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... fables connected with his name, but the most portentous is this: One day, during his subaqueous wanderings, he discovered the foundations of Messina. They were insecure! The city rested upon three columns, one of them intact, another quite decayed away, the third partially corroded and soon to crumble into ruin. He peered up from, his blue depths, and in a fateful couplet of verses warned the townsmen of their impending doom. In this prophetic utterance ascribed to the fabulous Cola Pesce is echoed a popular ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... mangled bodies of these old soldiers. Men with arms and no legs; others had legs but no arms; some with canes and crutches, and some wheeling themselves about in little hand carts. About three thousand of the decayed soldiers were lodged in the Hotel des Invalids, at the time of my visit. Passing the National Assembly on my return, I spent a moment or two in it. The interior of this building resembles an amphitheatre. ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Stout Theseus and Pirithoeus his fere; Pylades and Orestes by his side; Mild Titus and Gesippus without pride; Damon and Pythias, whom death could not sever; All these, and all that ever had been tied In bands of friendship, there did live forever; Whose lives although decay'd, yet loves decayed never. ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... himself, "that many of the seeds which fall upon the ground do not grow, yet, strange to tell, retain the power of growth. I suspect myself, but have not had opportunity of testing the conjecture, that such fall in their pods, or shells, and that before these are sufficiently decayed to allow the sun and moisture and air to reach them, they have got covered up in the soil too deep for those same influences. They say fishes a long time bedded in ice will come to life again: I can not tell about ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... about fifteen hundred feet distant from the Powder Mills, on the same side, further up the canal; this, as well as each of the other permanent structures, was made of brick, having thin walls and light roofs. Wood in the damp atmosphere of the canal speedily decayed. ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... at last, Jack, after we have weathered so many hard gales together? D— my limbs! I thought you had been more of an honest heart: I looked upon you as my foremast, and Tom Pipes as my mizen: now he is carried away, if so be as you go too, my standing rigging being decayed, d'ye see, the first squall will bring me by the board. D— ye, if in case I have given offence, can't you speak above-board? and I shall make ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... her old quarters the Jaguar was apparently satisfied that they would serve their purpose another season, and set about renovating them. This consisted of carefully digging up and turning over the decayed bark and leaves that had sifted in through the opening. Nor was this labor without its reward, for numbers of fat grubs and the helpless larvae of rhinoceros beetles were unearthed, providing dainty morsels for the big cat. This accomplished, Suma inquisitively sniffed at each nook ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... confidential friend of a decayed noble. A pair of bright eyes draws him away from us: it seems to him a worthy object of ambition to become Rothsattel's man of business. This intimacy with nobility is the legacy bequeathed to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... slower and slower, till they finally cease to move. A warm day starts them again, slowly or briskly according to the degree of heat, but in December they are finally stilled for the season. These creatures, like the big fat grubs of the June beetles which one sometimes finds in the ground or in decayed wood, are full of frost in winter; cut one of the big grubs in two, and it looks like ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... other publications of the time as absurd (viewed by the light of the present day) as Gressot's. Thus, "A Country Tradesman," addressing the public in 1678, in a pamphlet entitled 'The Ancient Trades decayed, repaired again,—wherein are declared the several abuses that have utterly impaired all the ancient trades in the Kingdom,' urges that the chief cause of the evil had been the setting up of Stage-coaches some twenty years before. Besides the reasons ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... and shelter at the end of your day's journey. Nor was it different in the Middle Ages. Then individuals had either no leisure from war or strife with the elements, or else they devoted themselves to the salvation of their souls. But when the ideas of the Middle Ages had decayed, when improved arts of life had freed men from servile subjection to daily needs, when the bondage of religious tyranny had been thrown off and political liberty allowed the full development of tastes and instincts, when, moreover, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... kinds of type and how they are made, and showed specimens of the old block-printing which preceded the movable type and is still used in China. He pointed out the intimate connection between printing and handwriting—as long as the latter was good the printers had a living model to go by, but when it decayed printing decayed also. He showed on the screen a page from Gutenberg's Bible (the first printed book, date about 1450-5) and a manuscript of Columella; a printed Livy of 1469, with the abbreviations of handwriting, and a manuscript of the History ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... attractive to tourists than ruins, and the country which possesses an abundance of them is in a fair way to grow rich easily. But it is necessary that the ruins should be properly matured. No man with an educated taste for food will eat Stilton cheese which is only half decayed. No educated tourist will take long journeys and pay hotel bills in order to look at an immature ruin. The decaying mills of Ireland have not yet reached the profitable stage of development. Their doors and windows are still boarded ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... only are the title Detested titles, invented by the English He did not vastly respect beautiful women Look backward only to correct an error of conduct in future Meditations upon the errors of the general man, as a cover Not to be the idol, to have an aim of our own Objects elevated even by a decayed world have their magnetism One idea is a bullet Quick to understand, she is in the quick of understanding Religion is the one refuge from women Scorn titles which did not distinguish practical offices The divinely damnable naked truth ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... without his knowledge—is said, by the Illustrated London News to be remarkably like him. It is understood that by his will he has left a million dollars (L200,000) for the purpose of founding an institution for the relief of of decayed artists, and has given it also the chief part of his pictures, to adorn the building which is to be occupied by it. The Times says, "although it would be out of place to revive the discussions occasioned by the peculiarities of Mr. Turner's style ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... They were cracking decayed walnuts and sipping not the very best of wine, and Bertram was expatiating on Sir Robert Peel's enormity in having taken the wind out of the sails of the Whigs, and rehearsing perhaps a few paragraphs of a new pamphlet that ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... mystery of iniquity through these ignorant and thoughtless girls; and to this must be attributed my sad failure in not warning them more distinctly to come out of Babylon. I rather tried to patch up the old, decayed, tattered garment with the new piece of the gospel, as many more have done; and so made the rent worse, instead of replacing the vile article with ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... numbers of convulsive scurrility, the infant effort withered under the frown of the Authorities, who at the same time sent its founder down. Others, however, declare him to have been the offspring of a decayed purveyor of spurious racing intelligence, who naturally sent his son to shift for himself after he had lost his last shirt in betting against one of his own prophecies. Others again aver, and probably with equal accuracy, that he was at no time other than what he is when the world first becomes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... magistrate, Sir Matthew Hale, had sanctioned the conviction of prisoners accused of witchcraft. To fall back on the errors of the time is very proper when we are trying our predecessors in foro conscientace: The houses they dwelt in may have had some weak or decayed beams and rafters, but they served for their shelter, at any rate. It is quite another matter when those rotten timbers are used in holding up the roofs over our own heads. Still more, if one of our ancestors ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and at a distance of some twenty paces found another chair with scattered bones on and about the seat, lying where each had fallen as the dead man decayed. Round it were the skeletons of the unfortunates who had been doomed to accompany him upon his last journey, every one of them behind his tray of golden objects, or of simple treasure. In front of this king's chair also were the bones of a dog ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... One can picture to one's self some sad partings in that far-away dark land. "My loves," says the Kruboy to his families, his voice heavy with tears, "I must go. There is no more cloth, I have nothing between me and an easily shocked world but this decayed filament of cotton." And then his families weep with him, or, what is more likely, but not so literary, expectorate with emotion, and he tears himself away from them and comes on board the passing steamer ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... watch there till he returned, and went cautiously in. It proved a passage, level for some distance, then sloping gently up. He advanced carefully, feeling his way as he went. At length he was stopped by a door—a small door, studded with iron. But the wood was in places so much decayed that some of the bolts had dropped out, and he felt sure of being able to open it. He returned, therefore, to fetch Lina and his mattock. Arrived at the cleft, his strong miner arms bore him swiftly up along the rope and through the hole into the dungeon. There he undid the rope from his mattock, ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... Dick had lighted many torches and set them about the high mound where the sleeper lay in a huddle. Taking little heed of where he set them, some of them, as the wind arose, flared out until their flames licked the decayed branches of the fallen white oak. As the boy crouched, pensive and distraught, he was suddenly aroused by a vivacious cracking. He looked up. Lines of fire were darting thither and yon, where dry wood, the debris ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... thee the effects of doting age, Vain doubts, and idle cares, and over-caution; The second nonage of a soul more wise, But now decayed, and sunk into the socket; Peeping by fits, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... cleared the log, just grazing it with their hind feet as they went over, sending a shower of dust and decayed wood ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... vehicles I fancied more and more of them in the hired turnouts which cannot long keep their secret from the critical eye. These were as obvious to conjecture as some other turnouts, which I fancied of a decayed ancestrality: cumbrous landaus and victorias, with rubberless tires, which grumbled and grieved in their course for the passati tempi, and expressed a rheumatic scorn for the parvenu carriages, and for all the types of motors ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... ones, but, as is always the case, were of a different description of wood altogether. On a careful inspection of the spot where he found the money, it appeared that the wheel had passed lengthways along an enormous old decayed pine, in the hollow of which he supposed the money must have been hid; and when the tree fell, the dollars had rolled along its centre fifty feet or more, and remained there until the wood was rotten, and had crumbled ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... western world; for we discover among those which appear strictly national, many which are common to them all. Of our own familiar ones several may be tracked among the snows of the Latins and the Greeks, and have sometimes been drawn from "The Mines of the East:" like decayed families which remain in obscurity, they may boast of a high lineal descent whenever they recover their lost title-deeds. The vulgar proverb, "To carry coals to Newcastle," local and idiomatic as it appears, however, has been borrowed and applied by ourselves; it may be found among the Persians: ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... farce—perhaps I should say tragedy, of West India abolition! I will not harrow your feelings by asking you to review the labors of your life and tell me what you and your brother enthusiasts have accomplished for "injured Africa," but while agreeing with Lord Stowell, that "villeinage decayed," and admitting that slavery might do so also, I think I am fully justified by passed and passing events in saying, as Mr. Grosvenor said of the slave trade, that its ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... of them were decayed, or blown over in the wind, so that there was just enough left to sit on for private soliloquy, or social debate, and to give a picturesque charm to the landscape; yet, it was a fact which I found worthy of notice, that, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... suddenly smelled an Indian encampment. He could neither see nor hear anything of it, but no one having once recognized the pungent odor, combined of smoke, skins, furs, freshly peeled bark, dried grasses, and decayed animal matter, that lingers about the rude dwellings of all savage races, could ever mistake it for anything else. A single faint whiff of this, borne to Donald, on a puff of the night wind, gave him the very knowledge he wanted, and he at once began to move ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... is yellow, and disposed to crumble. It has a pompous propylon of enormous stuccoed columns. Any house smaller than Blenheim would tail on insignificantly after such a frontispiece. The interior has a certain careless, romantic, decayed-gentleman effect, wholly Virginian. It was enlivened by the uniforms of staff-officers just now, and as they rode through the trees of the approach and by the tents of the New York Eighth, encamped in the grove to the rear, the tableau was brilliantly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... rattling outside my open window-port, wakened to a small tragedy. A circular wire rat-trap, depending from a line held by someone on the poop, and containing two frantic rats, dangled against the opening. Alas! how they ran round and round and round! The cause of all their agony, a piece of decayed fish and a fragment of mouldy cheese, was left untouched as they dangled before me. The voice of my friend the Mate is audible down my ventilator. He is arguing with the Steward, one Nicholas, of whom you have heard. Said Nicholas is protesting in his clickety Graeco-English ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... a long range of old stabling at the doctor's house, with extensive lofts. The first part was partitioned off for a coachman's room, but this had not been in use for half a century, and the whole place was ruinous and decayed. Once upon a time some one with a love of horses must have lived there, for there were stalls for eight, and a coach-house as well, but the doctor only kept two horses, and they occupied a new stable built ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... but in this forest there were no indications that there had ever been a fire. Trees were in all stages of growth and decay. Humus was deep. Here I found a stump of a Douglas spruce that was eleven feet high and about nine feet in diameter. It was so decayed that I could not decipher the rings of growth. This tree probably required at least a thousand years to reach maturity, and many years must have elapsed for its wood to come to the present state of decay. Over this stump was spread ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... nest-building material was drawn out of the two guns, the first obtained being evidently of that season, while farther in it was old and decayed to a mere mouldy powder that might have been carried in by the industrious little birds ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... rains, was ground into the consistency of a thick cream. Pioneer battalions were reinforced by large parties of Egyptian labour corps, and these worked ceaselessly, clearing off top layers of mud, carrying stones down from the hills and breaking them, putting on a new surface and repairing the decayed walls which held up the road in many places. The roadmakers proved splendid fellows. They put a vast amount of energy into their work, but when the roads were improved rain gravely interfered with traffic, and camels were found to ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... stomach, there is frequently almost instant relief. Where the attacks can be traced to indigestion, or come on always a certain time after a meal, this is the proper method from the first. Where a decayed tooth is the cause of pain, of course go ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... score, Dreams of a gown of forty-four; Imaginary charms can find, In eyes with reading almost blind; Cadenus now no more appears Declined in health, advanced in years. She fancies music in his tongue, Nor farther looks, but thinks him young. What mariner is not afraid To venture in a ship decayed? What planter will attempt to yoke A sapling with a falling oak? As years increase, she brighter shines, Cadenus with each day declines, And he must fall a prey to Time, While ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... within his house, Was found the value of five thousand pound; His furniture fully worth half so much, Which being all strained for, for the King, He frankly gave it to the Antwerp merchants, And they again, out of their bounteous mind, Hath to a brother of their company, A man decayed by fortune of the Seas, Given Bagot's wealth, to set him up again, And keep it for ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... lovely specimens of the feathered tribe had white wings and claret-coloured plumage. Flowers were of all hues, and of immense size; some of the more lofty trees were literally covered with clusters of rich golden flowers. On the decayed trunks we caught sight of crabs of every variety of tint and size, watching for their prey, while butterflies and dragonflies of gorgeous hues flitted amid the more open spots wherever the sunlight found its way, some of the latter with ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... pursued his course, turning his steps ever toward the north, at least toward what he believed to be so, thanks to his astronomical knowledge. As the priest had foretold, he could not find any path through the forest; decayed vegetation, tall shrubs, vines, trunks of trees, an inextricable undergrowth, covered the ground; the trees were so thick that the air, light and sun, penetrated with difficulty through this veil of foliage, among which ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... if it could be justly called so—for it was, more properly speaking, a kind of loft—was lighted, or rather, rendered less dark by a sort of half window, half skylight, which looked out upon a stack of decayed and blackened chimneys, and so much sickly-looking sky as could be seen through the undamaged panes, which were but few, for lumps of rags, old stockings, and similar contrivances blocked up many a space which had once been used to admit the light, while the glass still ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... discarded when preparing vegetables for the table, the stalks and stems, and the peelings of apples, potatoes, etc., should all be used for stock, care being taken, of course, to cleanse them well first, cutting out any insect-eaten or decayed parts. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... and historian of the 17th century, was descended of an ancient, but decayed family in the county of Sussex, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth[1], and was educated a fellow commoner in Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. He afterwards removed to London, and lived about the court, where he contracted friendships with several gentlemen of fashion and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... seeking of the Lord in secret and in their families, attending on the preaching of the word as often as opportunity is offered, liberality, love, charity one toward another, a public spirit and zeal for God. But all these things are now decayed in many and they are again grown as ill if not worse than before." Causes of the Lord's Wrath against Scotland. pp. 48, 49. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... that the great Pitt lived in Baker Street? What would not your grandmothers have given to be asked to Lady Hester's parties in that now decayed mansion? I have dined in it—moi qui vous parle, I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead. As we sat soberly drinking claret there with men of to-day, the spirits of the departed came in and took their places ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grew up, the obsolete exuviae of doctrine dropped off my mind like dead leaves from a tree. They could not get any vital hold in an atmosphere of tolerable enlightenment. Why should we fear the attempt to instil these fragments of decayed formulae into the minds of children of tender age? Might we not be certain that they would vanish of themselves? They are superfluous, no doubt, but too futile to be of any lasting importance. I remember that, when the first Education Act was being discussed, mention was ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... strangers who come to the capital. It is of the cedar family, and its dilapidated condition, together with the size of the trunk, shows its great antiquity. At present it measures ten feet in diameter at the base, with a height exceeding forty feet. Although broken and decayed in many of its parts, it is sufficiently alive to bear foliage. The gray, drooping moss hangs from its decaying branches, like a mourner's veil shrouding face and neck, emblematic of the tears which the daring adventurer is said to have wept in its shadow. An iron railing protects the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... out of the jamb, and raked the hollow space inside with his hand, and brought forth a steel purse of English manufacture, filled with shillings at one end, and fifteen golden guineas at the other; they rolled out through the decayed filigree, rusted, probably, by the rain percolating through the chimney, and the purse crumbled to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... mountains—a feature in natural scenery for which, from my earliest days, it was not extravagant to say that I had hungered and thirsted. In no one expectation of my life have I been less disappointed; and I may add, that no one enjoyment has less decayed or palled upon my continued experience. A mountainous region, with a slender population, and that of a simple pastoral character; behold my chief conditions of a pleasant permanent dwelling-place! But, thus far I have altered, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... stood to be hired; and had not waited long, when a woman coming up asked if he wanted work, to which he replied in the affirmative. She then said, "Part of the wall round the court of my house is so much decayed, that I must have it taken down and rebuilt, and if thou art willing to undertake the job I will employ thee." On his consenting, she led him to her house, and shewing him the wall, gave him a pick-axe, directing him as he went on to place the stones in one heap and the rubbish ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... to time in his eyes as if the flame behind the screen had suddenly grown brighter. "I agree with every word you say; the meanest church in the land should be cherished as long as it will hold together. But unfortunately ours had to come down. It was very old and decayed past mending. The floor was six feet below the level of the surrounding ground and frightfully damp. It had been examined over and over again by experts during the past forty or fifty years, and from the first they ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... extremely well to the speculator. The garden produces European as well as Brazilian vegetables, in great perfection: Fruit-trees also thrive very well.[58] In the cuts for the fishponds I observed below the sand, a rich black earth, full of decayed vegetables, which probably renders this apparently sandy land, so fertile. The ponds were half covered with the white water-lily, and some other aquatic plants of the country. The whole island abounds in gay shrubs and gaudy flowers[59], ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... great, that after much persuasion, Ludjuan gave his consent for me to go. On our way we stopped at the tent, and I procured for the last time, a small quantity of the ship's provisions, although the meat was some of it in a very decayed state. ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... to water. It was paper that would not tear. It was parchment that would not crease. It was leather which neither rain nor sun would injure. It was ebony that could be run into a mould. It was ivory that could be worked like wax. It was wood that never cracked, shrunk, nor decayed. It was metal, "elastic metal," as Daniel Webster termed it, that could be wound round the finger or tied into a knot, and which preserved its elasticity almost like steel. Trifling variations in the ingredients, in the proportions, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... in the Sagar territories used to show several decayed mango-trees in groves where European troops had encamped during the campaigns of 1816 and 1817, and declared that they had been seen to wither from the day that beef for the use of these troops had been tied to their branches. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... although the name is not mentioned,) where he resided while translating a part of the "Iliad." It is one of the most admirable pieces of description in the language,—playful and picturesque, with fine touches of humorous pathos,—and conveys as perfect a picture as ever was drawn of a decayed English country-house; and among other rooms, most of which have since crumbled down and disappeared, he dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen,—which, moreover, he peoples with witches, engaging Satan himself as head-cook, who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the same things as before? What was the use even of loving, if love itself had to yield to death? The trees! How they grew from tiny seeds to great and beautiful things, and then slowly, slowly dried and decayed away to dust. What was the good of it all? What comfort was there in a God so great and universal that he did not care to keep her and Derek alive and loving forever, and was not interested enough to see that the poor old cab-driver should not be haunted day and night with fear of the workhouse for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... horse—seized the bit in his mouth and started off at a dead run. I tried to saw him up, but it was no use; he ran for a couple of miles, and did not slacken till he had brought me to the door of an old, decayed tavern, where I resigned him to the charge of a lame hostler, and made my way into the house in search of the landlord. I found him at last—a poor, poverty-pinched man, who had been ruined by the railroad. He complained bitterly of the hard ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... of the building was the villain captain, with three of his officers, seated round a decayed table, playing cards; on one end of the table stood a dirty decanter, partly filled with apple brandy; three or four cracked, dingy tumblers were scattered over the table, and the rest of the furniture of the apartment was in keeping. In one corner of the room sat Miss ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... Medical science tells us that the skin Is pierced by perspiratory tubes within, In countless thousands, used for drainage pores; Vessels secreting oil are found in stores, Whilst more provide for growth, and others still Carry off parts decayed with matchless skill, Each needing daily cleansing with due care, If we would health and mental vigour share. Providing other strict conditions willed By nature, be unswervingly fulfilled. Thus it should be our first concern to learn, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... enquires of herself why it is that she was twice ravished. Thou, Time, the consumer of {all} things, and thou, hateful Old Age, {together} destroy all things; and, by degrees ye consume each thing, decayed by the teeth of age, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... fists, the lips drew back, showing blackened and decayed teeth. Bristling like an aroused beast, his forehead wrinkling, his nostrils twitching, he made an inarticulate, growling, brute-like noise in his throat. His head twisted sideways. Of a sudden the sweat burst out upon his face, and he began to ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... short time they listened to the singing: but when the aged minister attempted with earnest words to inspire to a better life it seemed as if all the fiends from heaven that fell, had pealed the banner cry of hell. Then a decayed cabbage struck him full in the face, ancient and unfragrant turnips and potatoes filled the air, our little band crowded around to shield him, but unmercifully assailed, we were obliged to wield the chairs vigorously over their heads to fight our ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... was admitted professor of philosophy in that college, where he was very useful in training up the youth in solid learning; and with the learned principal Boyd of Trochridge, the worthy Mr. Blair, and other pious members of that society, his pains were singularly blessed in reviving decayed serious piety among the youth, in that declining and corrupted time, a little after the imposition of prelacy upon the church. Here by a recommendation of the general assembly not long after our reformation from popery, the regents were only to continue eight years ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... possesses no visible interest, and furnishes no employment for the pencil. The town is, like Bolbec, a residence for manufacturers; and the curious stranger would seek in vain for any traces of decayed magnificence, any vestiges or records of a royal residence. And yet, it is held that Yvetot was the capital of a kingdom, which, if it really did exist, had certainly the distinction of being the smallest that ever was ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the multitude of minute oceanic organisms. I rejected this view, as from the few dredgings made in the 'Beagle' in the S. Temperate regions, I concluded that shells, the smaller corals, etc., etc., decayed and were dissolved when not protected by the deposition of sediment; and sediment could not accumulate in the open ocean. Certainly shells, etc., were in several cases completely rotten, and crumbled into mud between my fingers; but you will know well whether this is in ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... fustian, jeans, and cotton-yarn had been started. Iron ore and iron ware of nearly all sorts was produced. Syracuse was manufacturing salt. Lynn already made morocco leather, and Dedham, straw braid for hats. Cotton was regularly exported in small quantities from the South. In New York one could get a decayed tooth filled or a set of false teeth made. Four daily stages ran between New York and Philadelphia. The Boston ship Columbia had circumnavigated the globe. The United States Mint was still working by horse-power, not employing ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... thickets; the birds had hidden themselves beneath the foliage of the trees. Yet when we ceased speaking our ears caught a dull vibration, a continual murmur,—the hum of insects filling all the lower strata of the air, while a confused noise issued from every bush, from the decayed trunks of the trees, from the clefts of the rocks, and from the ground undermined by lizards, crickets, millipedes, and other creatures. Myriads of insects were creeping upon the soil and fluttering round the plants parched by the heat of the sun,—showing ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... his new government unpopular by requiring great supplies from his subjects, summoned at Westminster a council of the peers, without the commons, and laid before them the state of his affairs.[***] The military part of the feudal constitution was now much decayed: there remained only so much of that fabric as affected the civil rights and properties of men: and the peers here undertook, but voluntarily, to attend the king in an expedition against Scotland, each of them at the head of a certain number of his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... are little known in the more bustling scenes of the greedier commerce of our own quarter of the world, or, indeed, in those of most of the northern nations of Europe. There is in her aspect, modes of living, and even in her habits of business, an air of decayed gentility that is wanting to the ports, shops, and marts of the more vulgar parts of the world; as if conscious of having been so long the focus of human refinement, it was unbecoming, in these later days, to throw aside all traces of her history and power. Man, and the climate, too, seem in unison; ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... father said was true, neither did she remember of ever having had the toothache in her life; but quickly recovering herself, she said, "Neither have I a decayed tooth. It was more of a faceache, I suppose, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... very obligingly sent me an account of the roll at Kimbolton; and has since, at my desire, borrowed it for me and sent it to town.(1016) It is as long as my Lord Lyttelton's History; but by what I can read of it (for it is both ill written and much decayed), it is not a roll of kings, but of all that have been possessed of, or been Earls of Warwick: or have not—for one of the first earls is Aeneas. How, or wherefore, I do not know, but amongst the first is Richard the Third, in whose reign it was finished, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and bushes as grow in the more dry and elevated parts of the country where the soil is shallow. These bushes he easily overturns, and feeds on the roots, which are in general more tender and juicy than the hard woody branches or the foliage; but when the teeth are partly decayed by age, and the roots more firmly fixed, the great exertions of the animal, in this practice, frequently causes them to break short. At Kamalia I saw two teeth, one a very large one, which were found in the woods, and which were evidently broke off in this ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... humorous over my legacy. It amounted to about seventeen hundred pounds invested in Government Stock, and he asked me what I meant to do with it; proposed a Charity to be established on behalf of decayed half-castes, insisting that servants' money could never be appropriated to the uses of gentlemen. All the while he was muttering, 'Turncoat! eh? turncoat?'—proof that the word had struck where it was aimed. For me, after thinking on it, I had a superstitious ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and their monarchs became less warlike, and wealth accumulated, and national spirit decayed, the Persian character by degrees deteriorated, and sank, even under the Achaemenian kings, to a level not much superior to that of the ordinary Asiatic. The Persian antagonists of Alexander were pretty nearly upon a par with the races which in Hindustan have yielded to the British power; they occasionally ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... New York, rather far to the eastward, and in the upper reaches of the town; he occupied two small shabby rooms in a somewhat decayed mansion which stood next to the corner of the Second Avenue. The corner itself was formed by a considerable grocer's shop, the near neighbourhood of which was fatal to any pretensions Ransom and his fellow-lodgers might have had in regard to gentility of situation. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... the palace where for generations had dwelt the heads of the Anician family. It lay on a gentle slope above the river, at the foot of the Janiculan Hill; around it spread public porticoes, much decayed, and what had once been ornamental gardens, now the pasture of goats. As Basil had expected, he was kept waiting without the doors until the porter had received orders regarding him. Permitted at length to enter, he passed by a number of slaves who stood, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... gabled house of an Early Victorian type, built about 1840 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners on the site of an old clergy house, of which all traces had been ruthlessly effaced. The front garden lying before it was a tangle of old and for the most part ugly trees; elms from which heavy, decayed branches had recently fallen; acacias choked by the ivy which had overgrown them; and a crowded thicket of thorns and hazels, mingled with three or four large and vigorous though very ancient yews, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... This Sir John Harrison erected the fine brick mansion in Balls Park, S.E. from Hertford, once the property of Charles Townsend, Secretary of State to George II. His widow built four almshouses at Butchery Green, long ago decayed.] ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... Scourge of Villainy. It would be as reasonable to identify him with Dekker, who wrote the greater part of Satiro-mastix. 'Mastic' is doubtless an adjective formed without recondite significance from the substantive 'mastic,' i.e. the gum commonly used at the time for stopping decayed teeth. No hypothesis of a polemical intention is needed to account for Shakespeare's conception of Ajax or Thersites. There is no trait in either character as depicted by Shakespeare which a reading of Chapman's Homer would fail to suggest. The controversial interpretation ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... into the pit (June 26, 1284). The street through which Bunting conducted his victims was Bungen, and from that day to this no music is ever allowed to be played in this particular street.—Verstegan, Restitution of Decayed Intelligence (1634). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... back into Broadway again and slopped onward and away, begging, crying, losing track of his thoughts, one after another, as a mind decayed and disjointed ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... until the panther had finished her covering of leaves. He heard her footsteps begin to recede, until the sound was lost in distance; then, creeping out from his covering of leaves, he discovered near him an old decayed log about the length of a man. This he moved to the spot where he had lain, and covered it with leaves, then, casting his eyes around, he saw a tree that he could easily climb, and, slinging his gun over his shoulder, fastened ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... while The Sky Pilot seized upon Abigail Prim. No one paid any attention to Giova, nor, with the noise and confusion, did the intruders note the sudden clanking of a chain from out the black depths of the room's further end, or the splintering of a half decayed studding. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... policemen returned from the Cowgate with a motley assortment of pallbearers. There was a good-tempered Irish laborer from a near-by brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a drunken fisherman ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... the spirit of illiberal fanaticism decayed in some parts of Scotland, that only thirty years ago, when Wilson, the ingenious author of a poem, called "Clyde," now republished, was inducted into the office of schoolmaster at Greenock, he was obliged formally, and in writing, to abjure "the profane and unprofitable ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... plants and animals which we see, there are many strange unseen ones floating in the atmosphere around us, lying in the dust of corner and closet, growing in the water we drink, and thronging decayed vegetable and animal matter. Everyone knows that mildew and vermin do damage in the home and in the field, but very few understand that, in addition to these visible enemies of man, there are swarms of invisible plants and animals some of ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... each day where Dante's bones are laid:[261] A little cupola, more neat than solemn, Protects his dust, but reverence here is paid[ej] To the Bard's tomb, and not the Warrior's column: The time must come, when both alike decayed, The Chieftain's trophy, and the Poet's volume, Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth, Before Pelides' ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to revivify the dead corpse, and put a fresh life into the stiff and motionless limbs. With great energy and determination he set himself to accomplish the task. Applying himself, first of all, to the restoration of what was decayed and ruined, he re-established the canals and the roads, encouraged agriculture, favoured the development of the population. The ruined towns were gradually repaired and rebuilt, and vast efforts made everywhere to restore, and even to enlarge ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... upon them. Here and there, along the slopes, the rude old plough of the Georgics, dragged by great gray oxen, turns up the rich loam, that "needs only to be tickled to laugh out in flowers and grain." In the olive-orchards, the farmers are carefully pruning away the decayed branches and loosening the soil about their old roots. Here and there, the smoke of distant bonfires, burning heaps of useless stubble, shows against the dreamy purple hills like the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites. One smells the sharp odor of these fires everywhere, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... of an apple-tree but a few yards off, and much nearer the house than they usually build, a pair of high-holes, or golden-shafted woodpeckers, took up their abode. A knothole which led to the decayed interior was enlarged, the live wood being cut away as clean as a squirrel would have done it. The inside preparations I could not witness, but day after day, as I passed near, I heard the bird hammering away, evidently beating down obstructions and shaping ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Excavate all the decayed wood with a chisel or gouge or whatever cutting tool may work well and fill the cavity with Portland cement in such a way as to exclude moisture. This will prolong the life and productiveness of the trees for many years ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... shall rest, and then our children keep Their road in life, and then, forgotten, sleep; Meanwhile the building slowly falls away, And, like the builders, will in time decay. The old Foundation—but it is not clear When it was laid—you care not for the year; On this, as parts decayed by time and storms, Arose these various disproportion'd forms; Yet Gothic all—the learn'd who visit us (And our small wonders) have decided thus:- "Yon noble Gothic arch," "That Gothic door;" So have they said; of proof you'll need no more. Here ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... caused by the fall of a tree, and once when winding our way by the steep side of a mountain, we saved ourselves by fleeing towards the lake. The tree was a huge yellow birch and it was so much decayed that it was broken into thousands of pieces, ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... a chapel with an unusually nne portal of Renaissance work, but the chief architectural beauty of the town is the decayed Benedictine abbey of La Trinita. The building is roofless; it was never completed, and the ravages of time and of man have not spared it; earthquakes, too, have played sad tricks with its arches and columns, particularly that of 1851, which ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... He was now abreast of the very extreme point of the islet; a bush that hung over the water was his only hope; with three or four desperate strokes he exhausted his remaining strength, at the same time that he seized hold of a small bough. It was decayed—snapped asunder, and Newton was whirled away by the current ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... course of evangelization in North America as those which affected the church of Spain; and of these by far the most important in their bearing on the early course of Christianity in America were, first, the purifying and quickening of the miserably decayed and corrupted mendicant orders,—ever the most effective arm in the missionary service of the Latin Church,—and, a little later, the founding of the Society of Jesus, with its immense potency for good ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... discernible in the short period known to us by history and tradition. Physically and in mental powers men have been pretty much the same in all known ages. The sciences and arts have flourished now and have again decayed, but when they reached the highest perfection among one people, the neighbouring peoples were perhaps wholly unacquainted with them. We are therefore uncertain whether at present man is advancing to his point of perfection or declining ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury |
