"Scorched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I tried in vain to save him, this weird drum filled my ears with its monotonous, intermittent and incomprehensible tone, and I felt lay hold of my bones fear, real fear, hideous fear, in the presence of this beloved corpse, in this hole scorched by the sun, surrounded by four mountains of sand, and two hundred leagues from any French settlement, while echo assailed our ears with this furious ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of rusty iron surmounted the little sanctuary by which they sat, and the roof was of old tiles scorched a mellow tint of brown. To Maris Stella was the shrine dedicated; and within, under the altar, white bones gleamed—skulls and thighs and ribs of men and women who had perished of the plague in ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... already obtained and secured, began to advance their towers and mantlets, and climb the rampart with ladders. But so great was the courage of our soldiers, and such their presence of mind, that though they were scorched on all sides, and harassed by a vast number of weapons, and were aware that their baggage and their possessions were burning, not only did no one quit the rampart for the purpose of withdrawing from the scene, but scarcely ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... saying to herself with a secret smile, as she glanced at the hot fire, which scorched her if she kept near enough to Jack to help him, "This really is being like a missionary, with a tattooed savage to look after. I have to suffer a little, as the good folks did who got speared and roasted sometimes; but ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... and seemed almost lost in the atmosphere, and sometimes, beaten down by the hurricane, closely enveloped the OMBU like a robe of Nessus. Terror seized the entire group. They were almost suffocated with smoke, and scorched with the unbearable heat, for the conflagration had already reached the lower branches on their side of the OMBU. To extinguish it or check its progress was impossible; and they saw themselves irrevocably condemned to a torturing death, like ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... in the voice of the earless trapper. The mustang recognised it; and instead of running forward, obedient to the guidance of her rider, she wheeled suddenly and came galloping back. At this moment a shot fired at the savage scorched her hip, and, setting back her ears, she commenced squealing and kicking so violently that all her feet seemed to be in the air ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... inside, he stumbled against the body of the person who had attempted to open the window, but who had fallen down senseless. As he raised the body, the fire, which had been smothered from want of air when all the windows and doors were closed, now burst out, and he was scorched before he could get on the ladder again, with the body in his arms; but he succeeded in getting it down safe. Perceiving that the clothes were on fire, he held them till they were extinguished, and then, for the first time, discovered that he had brought ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... himself away from that chart-room of knowledge or from the magazines in the reading-room that were filled with the secrets of writers who succeeded in selling their wares. It was like severing heart strings, when he was with Ruth, to stand up and go; and he scorched through the dark streets so as to get home to his books at the least possible expense of time. And hardest of all was it to shut up the algebra or physics, put note-book and pencil aside, and close his tired eyes in sleep. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... commons. My conscience instantly told me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, but neither of ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... them go, having fixed their ransom at two pounds of silver apiece: 66 but their fetters, in which they had been bound, they hung up on the Acropolis; and these were still existing even to my time hanging on walls which had been scorched with fire by the Mede, 67 and just opposite the sanctuary which lies towards the West. The tenth part of the ransom also they dedicated for an offering, and made of it a four-horse chariot of bronze, which stands on the left hand as you enter the Propylaia in the Acropolis, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... them! Not a scorched syllable shall escape! Would you have me a damned author—To undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint praise, bestowed, for pity's sake, against the giver's conscience! A hissing and a laughing-stock to my own traitorous thoughts! An outlaw from the protection of the grave,—one ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... strong than Mr. Prohack's. "I trust that the excellent Eliza is not disfigured for life," he had observed calmly in the automobile. "What are you talking about, father?" Sissie had exclaimed, suspicious. "I was afraid her lips might be scorched. You feel no pain yourself, my child, I hope?" He made the sound of a kiss. After this there was no more conversation in the car during the journey. Arrived home, Sissie said nonchalantly that she was going ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... sea nor the tropical recesses nor the sun-scorched river-edges of his backgrounds that make up the essence of romance in the Conrad books. This is found in nothing less than the mysterious potencies for courage and for fear, for good and for evil, of human beings themselves—of human beings isolated by some external ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... populous village in the south of Lancashire. The speaker was a woman, the regularity of whose features showed that she had once been good-looking, but from whose face every trace of beauty had been scorched out by intemperance. Her hair uncombed, and prematurely grey, straggled out into the wind. Her dress, all patches, scarcely served for decent covering; while her poor half- naked feet seemed rather galled than protected by the miserable ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... fire. But now that she saw the book, now that she held it in her hands, the deed seemed so horribly merciless that she hesitated. Then she knelt down on the hearth and leaned towards the flames. Their light played upon her face, their heat scorched her skin. She held the book towards them, over them. The flames flew up towards it eagerly, seeming to desire it. Catherine tantalised them by withholding from them their prey. For now, in this crisis of action, doubts assailed her. She remembered that she had never read the book, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... work for the doctor here," said one of the women in consternation, as she looked at his poor scorched fingers. ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... one of them do more work than any three negroes; yet when weak for want of victuals and sleep, they were knocked down and beaten with cudgels so that four or five died. "Having no clothes, their backs were blistered with the sun, their heads scorched, their necks, shoulders and hands raw with carrying stones and mortar, their feet chopped and their legs bruised and battered with the irons, and their corpses were noisome to one another." The three English captains were carried to Panama, and there ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... ground, suggesting tea-gardens in England. Further on they sank into the earth till, at the top of the ascent, only their solid brown roofs showed. Torn branches drooping across the driveway, with here and there a scorched patch of undergrowth, explained the reason ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... in my eyes, and I felt as if my face was being scorched. I asked an R.A.M.C.N.C.O., standing at the end of the wagon, to get me something to shade my eyes. Then occurred what I felt was an extremely thoughtful act on the part of a wounded man. A badly ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... boil over with anything—confidence, doubt or fear," said Roger. "When the kettle boils aver, the soup gets scorched. Come, Phil, shake the kinks out of your arm with me, while they're taking their ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... desert lies on your hair and your feet are scratched with thorns and your body is scorched by the sun. Come with me, Honorius, and I will clothe you in a tunic of silk. I will smear your body with myrrh and pour spikenard on your hair. I will clothe you in hyacinth and put honey in ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... The earth is scorched with fire; the sea becomes "as the blood of a dead man;" the islands flee away; the mountains ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... subjected for hours at a time? If, as Professor Langley of the University of Cambridge explained, pain "WOULD CAUSE A RISE OF BLOOD-PRESSURE," was this sign of agony ever evoked when the bare nerve was subjected to "stimulation," or the paws "slowly scorched" one after another? ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... when I looked into the chamber, I saw the poor maiden sitting, with her head hanging down, as if 'twas too heavy for her, on a high-backed chair, no rest for her feet, and the wind blowing keen all round her, and nothing to taste but scorched beef, or black bread and sour wine, and her mother rating her for foolish fancies that gave trouble. And, when my young Freiherr was bemoaning himself that we could not hear of a Jew physician passing our way to catch ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helena sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sand till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. Then she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she paddled in the light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystal beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out on the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... holding ten gallons was built inside the turret. We almost invariably had trouble with the feed-pipes leading from it. During the great heat of the summer the inside of the turret was a veritable fiery furnace, with the pedals so hot that they scorched ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... fireplace against the pole,[11] and the other side against, or nearly over to, the corner of the tent. Use large rocks for the lower tiers, and try to have all three walls perpendicular and smooth inside. When up about three feet, or as high as the flap of the tent will allow without its being scorched, put on a large log of green wood for a mantle, or use an iron bar if you have one, and go on building the chimney. Do not narrow it much: the chimney should be as high as the top of the tent, or eddies of ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... near the northern shore. The soil of the valley is a rich black loam apparently very fertile, and covered with a fine green grass about eighteen inches or two feet in height; while that of the high grounds is perfectly dry and seems scorched by the sun. The timber though still scarce is in greater quantities in this valley than we have seen it since entering the mountains, and seems to prefer the borders of the small creeks to the banks of the river itself. We advanced three and a half miles ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... white linen underskirt, that would show below her old gingham dress, little Elsie might have been taken for the sorriest beggar in town. The dress was faded and outgrown. The little shawl she had pinned over her shoulders had one corner burned out of it, and the edges of the hole were scorched and jagged. A faded silk muffler that she had used in her doll-cradle was drawn tightly over her tousled curls, and tied under ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... was not adapted for any such illumination. For herself, Dolly cared nothing, whether it was the noonday sun or the blaze of a furnace that shone upon her; she defied them both to make her wink. As for complexion, she scorned that old-fashioned vanity. She had not very much, it is true. Having been scorched red and brown in Alpine expeditions in the autumn, she was now of a somewhat dry whitish-greyish hue, the result of much loss of cuticle and constant encounter with London fogs and smoke. She carried Toto—who was a shrinking, chilly Italian greyhound—in a coat, carelessly under one arm, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... journeyed from noon until sunset. At his rising he was attacked by [A]pep, a mighty "dragon" or serpent, the type of evil and darkness, and with this monster he did battle until the fiery darts which he discharged into the body of Apep scorched and burnt him up; the fiends that were in attendance upon this terrible foe were also destroyed by fire, and their bodies were hacked in pieces. A repetition of this story is given in the legend of the fight between Horus and Set, and in both forms it ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... deeper darkness of a small ravine below the hill spur, the hunted turned upon the hunter. Morse caught the gleam of a knife thrust as he plunged. It was too late to check his dive. A flame of fire scorched through his forearm. The two went down together, rolling over and over as ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... conditions are necessary; and, as regards soil, whether we are guided by nature or by gardening experience, we are led to conclude that almost all of them thrive only when planted in one kind, that soil being principally loam. Plants which are limited in nature to sandy, sun-scorched plains or the glaring sides of rocky hills and mountains, where scarcely any other form of vegetation can exist, are not likely to require much decayed vegetable humus, but must obtain their food from inorganic substances, such as loam, sand, or lime. So it is with them when grown in our houses. ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... by the slight pressure of her fingers on his. She sat in an absorbed sadness, thinking of her mother's life, and the conflict which had always haunted and scorched it, between love and religion; first in the case of her husband, and then in that of her daughter. "But oh! how could I—how could I help it?" was the cry of Mary's own ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of day for a youngster like you to be getting up," cried the old sailor jocularly as he entered. "I wonder the bright sun hasn't scorched your eyes out ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... deafening thunder, and whistles shrieked warnings on all sides of him at once; where miniature steam engines came rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white-hot masses of metal sped past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled him and scorched his face. Then men in these mills were all black with soot, and hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity, rushing here and there, and never lifting their eyes from their tasks. Jurgis clung to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... afar off." Her burning cheeks grew more scarlet every moment, and were plainly a matter of great embarrassment to her. She did want to offer her thanks with those of Dorothy, but somehow, her words were scorched when they reached her lips, ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... walls to avoid any possibility of damage from the landing jets in the event the city was inhabited. Even if deserted, the entire scientific personnel would have raised a howl that would have been heard back on Earth if just a section of wall was scorched. When planet-fall was completed and observers had time to scan the surroundings it was seen that the city ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard
... Soul,—If the refulgent flames of your beauty had not evaporated the particles of my transported brain, and scorched my intellects into a cinder of stolidity, perhaps the resplendency of my passion might shine illustrious through the sable curtain of my ink, and in sublimity transcend the galaxy itself, though wafted on the pinions of a gray goose quill! But, ah! celestial enchantress! ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... plumes of meadow-sweet, the "spires of closely clustered bloom" sung by Dora Read Goodale, are surely not frequently found near dusty "waysides scorched with barren heat," even in her Berkshires; their preference is for moister soil, often in the same habitat with a first cousin, the pink steeple-bush. But plants, like humans, are capricious creatures. If the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... rejoicing; everybody appeared in good humour; the distended udders of thousands of camels were an assurance of plenty. The burning sun that for nine months had scorched the earth was veiled by passing clouds; the cattle that had panted for water, and whose food was withered straw, were filled with juicy fodder: the camels that had subsisted upon the dried and leafless twigs and branches, now feasted upon the succulent tops of the mimosas. Throngs ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Moore justly adds:—"The reader must not pass lightly over this letter, for there is a vigor of moral sentiment in it, expressed in such a plain, sincere manner, that it shows how full of health his heart was at bottom, even though it might have been scorched by passion." ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... uttered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from the hips, on ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... he had her adorable little chin clasped between his brown thumb and forefinger, shaking it with little shakes of mock ferocity. He seemed about to deliver some important announcement—impassioned, even, but to her huge disgust he smothered the impulse, jerked his hand away as if he had scorched his fingers, and blushed guiltily. "Oh, I'm a sky-blue idiot," he half growled and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... one of her servants, an Alsatian Jew named Deutz. For many hours before her capture she had been compressed into an inter- stice behind a fireplace, and by the time she was drawn forth into the light she had been ominously scorched. The man who showed me the castle in- dicated also another historic spot, a house with little tourelles, on the Quai de la Fosse, in which Henry IV. is said to have signed the Edict of Nantes. I am, however, not in a position to answer for ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... found. Still we plodded on, parched and weary, until in the eastern sky the dawn rose slowly. For just a brief period we felt the cold, damp, but refreshing breath of morning, and then the hot sun added to our misery. Our heads were scorched by its burning rays, and we were almost blinded by the glare reflected from the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... rainfall, but if need be it will worry along without either. Fowls cannot scratch it up, and even the goat turns away dismayed from its hard-featured branches. The flower is not strikingly beautiful nor ravishingly scented, but it flowers nine months out of the year; smothered with street dust and scorched by the summer sun, you will find that faithful old plumbago plugging along undismayed. A plant like this should be encouraged—but the misguided amateur gardener as a rule ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... and men cried aloud for rain. The hedges were white, the fields scorched and brown; the leaves fell from the trees as at autumn's touch; the fruits scarce formed hung wry and twisted on the bough; the heavens ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... have a load to bear, A heavy, choking grief; Could I have forced a single tear I might have felt relief. I think my hot and restless heart Has scorched the channels dry, From which those sighs of sorrow start ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... and mounted the height east of the valley. From that point, all signs of cultivation and habitation disappeared. The mountains were grim, bare, and frightfully rugged. The scanty grass, coaxed into life by the winter rains, was already scorched out of all greenness; some bunches of wild sage, gnaphalium, and other hardy aromatic herbs spotted the yellow soil, and in sheltered places the scarlet poppies burned like coals of fire among the rifts of the gray limestone rock. Our track kept along ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... innumerable on the dry plains and hung from every leaf and thorn, each little globule a perfect sphere that reflected the sun, and twinkled back the beams in its own little rainbow. Where they fell the scorched vegetation lifted its drooping head. That is what Israel is to be in the world, says Micah. He saw very deep into God's mind and into the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of moisture in his whole body was a pellucid drop that I occasionally noticed on the end of a long, dry nose. He used generally to shuffle about in company with a little fellow that was fat on one side and lean on the other. That is to say, he was warped on one side as if he had been scorched before the fire; he had a wry neck, which made his head lean on one shoulder; his hair was smugly powdered, and he had a round, smirking, smiling, apple face, with a bloom on it like that of a frost-bitten leaf in autumn. We had an ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... Kennedy made a dive for it and unwrapped it. It was a woman's pongee automobile-coat. He held it up to the light. The pocket on the right-hand side was scorched and burned, and a hole was torn clean through it. I gasped when the full significance of ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... in his brooding eyes; and clipped between two fingers, his cigarette grew a long ash, let it fall, and burned down to a stump so short that the coal almost scorched his flesh. He dropped it and crushed out the fire with ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... and lands of heaven. Instead of that, he had been hit upon the head, and in places of deeper tenderness, frequently roasted, and frozen yet more often, basted with brine when he had no skin left, scorched with thirst, and devoured by creatures whose appetites grew dainty when his own ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and the universal gangrene of sin. All the good and wholesome feeling which is intertwined with childhood and the cradle is one of the secrets of the providential government of the world. Suppress this life-giving dew, and human society would be scorched and devastated by selfish passion. Supposing that humanity had been composed of a thousand millions of immortal beings, whose number could neither increase nor diminish, where should we be, and what should ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spurred by his desire To reach the City of the Seven Hills, And gain his absolution. Some leagues more Would bring him to the vast Campagna land, When by a roadside well he paused to rest. 'T was noon, and reapers in the field hard by Lay neath the trees upon the sun-scorched grass. But from their midst one came towards the well, Not trudging like a man forespent with toil, But frisking like a child at holiday, With light steps. The pilgrim watched him come, And found him scarcely older than a child, A large-mouthed earthen pitcher in his hand, And ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... horror. It was a squalid ruin, a graceless desolation, which not even the pitying twilight could soften. The stumps showed their hideous mutilation everywhere; the brush had been burned, and the fires had scorched and blackened the lean soil of the hill-slope and blasted it with sterility. A few weak saplings, withered by the flames, drooped and straggled about; it would be a century before the forces of ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... judgment for the ghostly delusion; before that day in which the brave heart, in its sudden desertion, had humbled his pride—the man, in his nature, was more strong than the god. Now, purified by the flame that had scorched, and more nerved from the fall that had stunned,—that great soul rose sublime through the wrecks of the Past, serene through the clouds of the Future, concentering in its solitude the destinies of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... see, until they see once and are blinded for ever! Back upon my soul rushes the memory of my deed, like a storm of hail mingled with fire, flashing through every old dry channel, that it throbs and writhes anew, scorched at once and torn with the ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... serve the Lord, which spite of fluctuating feeling and periods of wintry coldness was steadily kept in view; ever and anon gathering strength until it ripened into maturity. The sapling, because it bends to the breeze is not therefore destitute of life; unless it be torn up by the roots, or scorched and withered by the noon-day sun, or absolutely frozen by the winter's cold, it will gradually wax and grow until its massive trunk is able to bid defiance to the storm. Conversing on this subject with one of her children ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... complained with a lazy richness, that they might chatter in gangways and nod to their friends. It was all so elaborate, so hollow! and yet in the minds of these buzzing, voluble persons one could generally discern a trickle of unconventional feeling, which could have made glad the sun-scorched pleasaunce. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... father was more angry with her than she had ever seen him, and with reason, as she knew, as she smelled the singeing, and saw a large burnt hole in Aubrey's pinafore, while the front of his frock was scorched and brown. Dr. May's words were not needed, "What ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... stern ladders were consumed in a minute and dropped into the sea the boats which had been receiving the men were obliged also to back astern from the intense heat of the flames; even those on the raft shrieked as they found themselves scorched by the ignited fragments which fell on them as they were enveloped in an opaque cloud of smoke, which hid from them those who still remained on the deck of the vessel. Philip attempted to speak to those on board, but he was not heard. A scene of confusion took place which ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... a third tchetvertachki [13], although from their mien you would suppose that the cupboard contained only linen and nightshirts and skeins of wool and the piece of shabby material which is destined—should the old gown become scorched during the baking of holiday cakes and other dainties, or should it fall into pieces of itself—to become converted into a new dress. But the gown never does get burnt or wear out, for the reason that the lady is too careful; wherefore the piece of shabby material reposes in its unmade-up ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... I. had personified the Renaissance; Charles IX. sums up in himself all the crises of the religious wars—he is the true type of the morbid and disturbed society where all is violent; where the blood is scorched by the double fevers of pleasure and cruelty; where the human soul, without guide or compass, is tossed amid storms; where fanaticism is joined to debauchery, superstition to incredulity, cultured intelligence to depravity ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... with things which he could neither account for nor subdue, which had the greatest influence on his well-being, either favorable or hostile, but which were utterly beyond his comprehension or control. The same sun which ripened his crop sometimes scorched it; the rain which cooled and fertilized his field, sometimes swamped it; the hot winds parched him and his cattle; in the marshes lurked disease and death. All these and many, many more, were evidently POWERS, and could do him great good or work ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... an afternoon in January. It is here that the women of the Smith College Unit have taken up their tenancy. We had extraordinary difficulty in finding the place. The surrounding country had been blasted and scorched by fire. There was no one left of whom we could enquire. Everything had perished. Barns, houses, everything habitable had been blown up by the departing Hun. As a study in the painstaking completion of a purpose the scenes through which we passed almost called ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the lady. This letter still exists, and its appearance indicates the terror into which it threw the earl. It reached him at midnight. With it came a summons to attend the privy council. He read it apparently by the light of a taper, and with such agitation that the sheet caught fire. The scorched letter still exists, and is burnt through at the most critical part of its story. The poor old earl learned enough to double his terror, and lost the section that would have alleviated it. He hastened up to London in a state of doubt and fear, not knowing but ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... thrusting knives into his fellow-creatures and burning them with red-hot irons, any more than it improves them to hold the blinding-white cantery of Gehenna by its cool handle and score and crisp young souls with it until they are scorched into the belief of—Transubstantiation or the Immaculate Conception. And, to say the plain truth, I think there are a good many coarse people in both callings. A delicate nature will not commonly choose a pursuit which implies ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... flock so high, and rarely muses on such thoughts as come to wanderers beyond the shade of trees and the sound of water among the scorched rocks and the barren lava. The day is always cooled and soothed, in his idyls, with the 'music of water that falleth from the high face of the rock,' or with the murmurs of the sea. From the cliffs and their seat among the bright red berries on the arbutus shrubs, his ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... transported in mantles of silk and purple. But they were obliged to desist from the attempt, for "horrible balls of fire breaking out from the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the place inaccessible to the scorched workmen, and the element driving them to a distance from time to time, the enterprise was dropped."[110] Such is the testimony of a heathen, confirmed by Jews and Christians. The inclosures of the mosque of Omar, forbidding them all access to the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... were up in the white-house kitchen, where were also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little Doctor and ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... stumping about our city in a broad-skirted coat with huge buttons, a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His face was broad, but his features were sharp; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes, his nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down, pretty much like the muzzle of an ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... a river in the lower world which flowed in torrents of fire athwart it, and which scorched ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sprang a tree of deadly name: Its poisonous breath, its baleful dew Scorched the green earth like lava-flame, And every plant ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... stood on the burning deck, Peeling potatoes by the peck! The flames rolled on and scorched his shins, As he stood peeling potato skins! 'Oh pa'!' he cried, 'the flames is hot, Come, put the potatoes in the pot!' But his father, alas! ne'er came to sup, So the flames rolled on and ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... heart she pressed; Scorched, the quivering flesh recoiled; Unconsumed his burning breast, While ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Warner!" said Bruno. "Christ my Master scorched His fingers so much with me, that I cannot hesitate to burn ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... saw again the scorched tawny levels, the red hills dotted with little gnarled pinon trees, the purple mystery of distant mountains. A great friendly warmth filled his body, and his breath came a little quickly with eagerness. When he saw a group of Mexicans jogging along the road on their scrawny ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... had appeared, the damage done was not as great as might have been expected. It was the opinion of many that only the tail of the hurricane had passed over the island. It was bad enough as it was. In some places the country appeared as if scorched by fire, in others the crops were totally destroyed; numerous buildings were levelled with the ground, and the trees and shrubs uprooted; a number of people had been killed, and many more seriously injured, by being struck by shingles from ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... happen to her.... She was in hell.... Burning for ever, and ever, and ever, there below his feet. He stared down on the rocky floors. If he could but see through them.... and the eye of faith could see through them.... he should behold her writhing and twisting among the flickering flame, scorched, glowing.... in everlasting agony, such as the thought of enduring for a moment made him shudder. He had burnt his hands once, when a palm-leaf but caught fire.... He recollected what that was like.... She was enduring ten thousand times more than that for ever. He should hear her shrieking in ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... see the lava (as my daughters had done repeatedly and especially during the great eruption of 1868), some forty or fifty had been on the very spot where the new crater burst out, and perished, scorched to death by the fiery vapours which eddied from the fearful chasm. Some were rescued who had been less near to the chasm, but of ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... portage Jan staggered with his eyes half closed and his breath coming in gasps. The smoke blinded him, and at times the heat of the fire scorched his face. In several places it had crossed the trail, and the hot embers burned through their moccasins. Once Jackpine uttered a cry of pain. But Jan's lips were set. Then, above the roar of the flames ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... bonfire before his house, and the favourite amusement seemed to be, who would run the oftenest through it when the blaze was at the fiercest. Shouts of laughter burst from the crowd, as each unlucky wight issued, scorched and singed, from the fiery trial; while the applause was proportionate towards those who ventured ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... and the odour unbearable, the nuts having formed a chemical combination in their insides which made their breath most offensive. The heat in the sun was oppressive on those volcanic rocks. My bare feet were absolutely scorched as I walked ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... had conceived (and not altogether ill) a vision, in which, wandering along some bright Italian bay, he met Dolcino sitting, a spirit at rest but not yet glorified, waiting for the revival of that dead land for which he had died; and Margaret by him, dipping her scorched feet for ever in the cooling wave, and looking up to the hero for whom she had given up all, with eyes of everlasting love. There they were to prophesy to him such things as seemed fit to him, of the future of Italy and of Europe, of the doom of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... attached to Ida de la Molle, after which the horizon grew blacker than ever. At first he tried to get out of the difficulty by avoiding Ida, but it did not answer. She exercised an irresistible attraction over him. Her calm and stately presence was to him what the sight of mountain snows is to one scorched by continual heat. He was weary of passionate outbursts, tears, agonies, alarms, presentiments, and all the paraphernalia of secret love. It appeared to him, looking up at the beautiful snow, that if once he could reach it life would be all sweetness and light, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... she said. "The blame is not his. What is he but my lord's tool?" And her eyes scorched Rotherby with such a glance of scorn as must have killed any but a shameless man. Then turning to the demurely observant gentleman who had done her such good service, "Mr. Caryll" she said, "I want to thank you. I want my lord, here, to ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... roan had been standing since Alick's departure. Perhaps even while I write, the war-tide is surging backwards and forwards once again past the doors of that cozy homestead; but I trust its roof-tree is still inviolate by fire or sword, and that no rude hand has scorched or torn the "new parlor-curtains," in which my trim little hostess took an innocent pride. It was past noon when I bade farewell to my friends, and mounted the roan, to strike Shipley's back trail. There was a light blue sky overhead, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... without any trouble from Galors' outposts: a wary canter over turf brought them to the flank of the hill; they climbed it, and from the top could see the Wan valley and what should be the town. It was a heap of stones, scorched and shapeless. The church tower still stood for a mockery, its conical cap of shingles had fallen in, its vane stuck out at an angle. Prosper, whose eyes were good, made out a flag-staff pointing the perpendicular. It had a flag, Party per pale argent and sable. A dun ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... in the woods, stumbling here and there, driven as by a strong wind, scorched as by a flame. At last he sank down at the foot of a great oak-tree, in a place he knew well, even in the dark: he ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... the heavy slumber that had come to him as soon as his watch was over, seemed to smell something burning. It was like the mingled odor of charred rope and scorched leather and came pungently ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... asleep when he came in last night, and this morning, when I saw that his clothes were all scorched, and his hair singed, and his hands and face red and blistered, and I asked him what in the world he had been doing to himself, he told me there had been a fire at the Hall; but that it was put out before any great damage had been done; nothing but that old wing, that they talked about ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... there! He squirms! He groans! His eyes bulge wildly out, Searching around in vain appeal for help! Another shriek, the last! Watch how the flesh Grows crisp and hangs till, turned to ash, it sifts Down through the coils of chain that hold erect The ghastly frame against the bark-scorched tree. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... all scorched and curly and the cedar was like fire had been put to it. The big, brown rocks was covered with black smoke, and the little drink in the bottom of the cañon was dried up. I was now most under ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... belches forth; the molten stones together will it draw Aloft with moan, and boileth o'er from lowest inner vale. This world of mountain presseth down, as told it is in tale, Enceladus the thunder-scorched; huge AEtna on him cast, From all her bursten furnaces breathes out his fiery blast; 580 And whensoe'er his weary side he shifteth, all the shore Trinacrian trembleth murmuring, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... insignificance when compared with these Alps, though of a height and grandeur which would render it a leading feature in Wales or Cumberland. It is considered in this neighbourhood as stored with rich specimens of botany, and its appearance, much less scorched and barren than the mountains of a southern climate usually are, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... currents of cool air which brought the moisture-laden clouds lower and forced them to precipitate in rain a part of their burden of water. Now that there is no vegetation, the barren mountains, scorched by the sun, send up currents of heated air which drive away instead of attracting the rain clouds, and cause their moisture to be disseminated. In consequence, instead of the regular and plentiful rains which existed in these regions of China when the forests were ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... nightmare in; and all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver candle-sticks, was tall, high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted. Below, in my sitting-room, if I looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the colour of a new brick. The chimney-piece was very high, and there was a bad glass—what I may call a wavy glass—above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my anterior phrenological developments,—and these never look well, in any subject, cut short ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... destruction—frames and all—and three packets of letters and notes in a charming Florentine treasure-box of painted wood; nor was the box, any more than the silver frames, spared this rousing finish. Thrown heartily upon live coal, the fine wood sparkled forth in stars, then burst into an alarming blaze which scorched the white mantelpiece, but Lucy stood and looked on ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... very well that his father and mother would not give it to him. He could not earn it. Only a few weeks later the boys would be sent east to school. Six hundred dollars he wanted, and his whole mind seemed to focus on that amount like a burning glass, and the thought of it scorched him. ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... this that mother of the bird of fair feathers bore (on her shoulders) the mother of the snakes. And Garuda also, directed by his mother's words, carried (on his back) the snakes. And that ranger of the skies born of Vinata began to ascend towards the Sun. And thereupon the snakes, scorched by the rays of the Sun, swooned away. And Kadru seeing her sons in that state prayed to Indra, saying, 'I bow to thee, thou Lord of all the gods! I bow to thee, thou slayer of Vritra! I bow to thee, thou slayer of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... crevices, through which the icy blasts streamed in upon him from all sides; and the hole above, at once window and chimney, was so large, that, as he lay, he could watch the stars as well as in the open air. While the fire in the midst, fed with fat pine-knots, scorched him on one side, on the other he had much ado to keep himself from freezing. At times, however, the crowded hut seemed heated to the temperature of an oven. But these evils were light, when compared to the intolerable plague of smoke. During a snow-storm, and often at ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Frenchman—became very nervous and voluble. The German, the two Americans, and myself bought up all the Scotch whisky and proceeded to drink. The theory was beautiful—namely, if we kept ourselves soaked in alcohol, every smallpox germ that came into contact with us would immediately be scorched to a cinder. And the theory worked, though I must confess that neither Captain Oudouse nor Ah Choon was attacked by the disease either. The Frenchman did not drink at all, while Ah Choon restricted himself ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... stomach became full and my joints loose and I waxed too drowsy to keep awake; so I laid my head on a cushion, after having washed my hands, and sleep over came me; I knew not what happened to me after this, and I awoke not till the sun's heat scorched me, for that I had never once tasted sleep for days past. When I awoke I found on my stomach a piece of salt and a bit of charcoal; so I stood up and shook my clothes and turned to look right and left, but could see no one; and discovered that I had been sleeping ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... It seemed to him it was an evening when he and all the children had gone out and Mrs. Hardy sat alone, looking into the fire as she had been looking before he fell asleep. She was thinking, and her thoughts were like burning coals as they fell into Mr. Hardy's heart and scorched him, as no other scene, not even ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... face; she stared at him, then stared about her, like one who had suddenly waked in hell. He took her by the arm. She obeyed, rose, and stood, fear conquering the remnants of drunkenness, with her whisky-scorched eyes following his every movement, as he got her cloak and bonnet. He put them on her. She submitted like a child caught in wickedness, and cowed by the capture. He led her from the house, out into the dark morning, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... in many climates, this beautiful sun is almost always hidden; in others, its excessive heat torments, creates storms, produces frightful diseases, and parches the fields; the pastures are without verdure, the trees without fruit, the crops are scorched, the springs are dried up; I can only with difficulty subsist, and now complain of the cruelties of nature, which to you always appears so beneficent. If these seas bring me spices, and useless commodities, do they ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... They may die childless, but their example will father the imagination of all the coming ages. These men, in the noble indignation of a great ideal, face a worse hell than the most ingenious of fanatics ever planned or plotted. Men die scorched like moths in a furnace, blown to atoms, gassed, tortured. And again other men step forward to take their places well knowing what will be their fate. Bodies may die, but the spirit of England grows greater as each ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... troughs of the Alleghanies, ready to flood the continent beyond. The peoples threatened by them were dimly conscious of the danger which as yet only loomed in the distance. Far off, among their quiet adobe villages, in the sun-scorched lands by the Rio Grande, the slow Indo-Iberian peons and their monkish masters still walked in the tranquil steps of their fathers, ignorant of the growth of the power that was to overwhelm their children and successors; but nearer by, Spaniard and Creole Frenchman, Algonquin and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hoardings, it stands in rows in every chemist's storeroom, it still assuages the coughs of age and brightens the elderly eye and loosens the elderly tongue; but its social glory, its financial illumination, have faded from the world for ever. And I, sole scorched survivor from the blaze, sit writing of it here in an air that is never still for the clang and thunder of machines, on a table littered with working drawings, and amid fragments of models and notes about velocities and air ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Mryna poked through the ruins before she found anything of significance—a few, scorched pages of a printed pamphlet buried deep in the black earth. The paper excited her tremendously. It was different from the film books photographed in the answer house. She had never touched anything like it; and it ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... recovering their senses at the same instant, dived into the pantry, returning immediately, one with a crock of butter in her hand, and the other bearing a bucket of molasses; and before either of the older girls could intervene, they plunged both of Janie's dirty, scorched hands first into one dish and then into the other, leaving them to drip sticky puddles down the front of Tabitha's dress and on to the ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... filled the dark yew tree, and brought out its pale yellow-green flowers in the sombre boughs. Last night, a great fly, the last in the house, buzzed into my candle. I detest flies, but I was sorry for his scorched wings; the fly itself hateful, its wings so beautifully made. I have sometimes picked a feather from the dirt of the road and placed it on the grass. It is contrary to one's feelings to see so beautiful a thing lying in the mud. Towards my window now, as I write, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... crawled in the depths of perdition, then indeed you might form an opinion as to the relative character of this Dunroe and my noble lover. And yet I cannot weep, Alice; I cannot weep, for I feel that my brain is burning, and my heart scorched. And now, for my only ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the field, in front of them lying, The foeman before them: the fire-spewing dragon, Ghostly and grisly guest in his terrors, Was scorched in the fire; as he lay there he measured Fifty of feet; came forth in the night-time[5] 100 To rejoice in the air, thereafter departing To visit his den; he in death was then fastened, He would joy in no other earth-hollowed caverns. There stood round about him beakers and vessels, Dishes ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... the sheath the lily itself was blighted and slowly withering. One may question whether it is not a more cruel thing to seduce the soul than the body,—to crush all the fine faiths and happy illusions of a fair mind and leave them scorched by a devastating fire whose traces shall never be obliterated. Amadis de Jocelyn would have laughed his gayest and most ironical laugh at the bare possibility of such havoc being wrought by the ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... I trust, passed carelessly over the latter part of this letter. There is a healthfulness in the moral feeling so unaffectedly expressed in it, which seems to answer for a heart sound at the core, however passion might have scorched it. Some years after, when he had become more confirmed in that artificial tone of banter, in which it was, unluckily, his habit to speak of his own good feelings, as well as those of others, however capable he might still have been of the same amiable sentiments, I question ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... roared and flamed as her broadside smashed into the 'Beaucenture,' and 'bout five minutes arterwards we fell aboard o' the 'Fougeux,' and there we lay, young sir, and fought it out yard-arm to yard-arm, and muzzle to muzzle, so close that the flame o' their guns blackened and scorched us, and we was obliged to heave buckets o' water, arter every discharge, to put out the fire. Lord! but the poor old 'Bully-Sawyer' were in a tight corner then, what wi' the 'Fougeux' to port, the 'Beaucenture' to starboard, and the great Spanisher hammering ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... wide world, and how dreary! A great, mad battle is raging; the grass, sloping up to the horizon, is scorched with the heat of the sun—the sun which only made a pleasant warmth in the shady garden. There is the fierce galloping of horses, and wrestling and fighting of men. Shouts and groans fill the air and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... brain for something to amuse him; Hal would not be amused. She bade him come to the window and watch the fountain in Union Park, but he strolled back immediately to the luxurious sofa, and buried his face in his hands. At last he could endure his horrid secret no longer; it scorched his brain ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... a pythoness; she set her teeth to keep them from chattering, and her whole frame quivered convulsively. She had pushed her clenched fingers under her cap to clutch her hair and support her head, which felt too heavy; she was on fire. The smoke of the flame that scorched her seemed to emanate from her wrinkles as from the crevasses rent by a volcanic eruption. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... it to my thinking—great wide streets, planted with trees; lots of steady-going German farmers, with their vineyards and orchards and droll little waggons. The women work as hard as the men, harder perhaps, and get brown and scorched up in no time—not that they've got much good looks to lose; leastways none we ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... are fastened to the under side of the top in the position shown and connected with wires from the outside. Two or three holes about 1 in. in diameter should be bored in the top between and in a line with the lights. These will provide ventilation to keep the pictures from being scorched or becoming buckled from the excessive heat. The holes must be covered over on the top with a piece of metal or wood to prevent the light from showing on the ceiling. This piece should not be more than 1/2 in. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... that they would soon lift their heads and rejoice again in the sun and air. Not so those on which my shadow had lain. The very outline of it could be traced in the withered lifeless grass, and the scorched and shrivelled flowers which stood there, dead, and hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered, and hastened away with ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... a land of woe, darkness, spirits of evil, and fire. Day by day does the little bird bear in its bill a drop of water to quench the flame. So near to the burning stream does he fly that his dear little feathers are scorched; and hence is he named Bronchuddyn (qu. Bronrhuddyn), i.e., breast-burned, or breast-scorched. To serve little children, the robin dares approach the infernal pit. No good child will hurt the devoted ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... from what position the stone may be viewed, a great number of these fissures are certain to split up the light into prismatic colours causing brilliant iridescence. Similar fissures may often be seen with the naked eye on glass, especially if scorched or cooled too rapidly (chilled), and on the surface of clear spar and mica, their effects being of extreme interest, from a colour point of ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... and there, on the reef, where the breakers whitened and beat, Rahero was standing alone, glowing, and scorched and bare, A victor unknown of any, raising the torch in the air. But once he drank of his breath, and instantly set him to fish Like a man intent upon supper at home and a savoury dish. For what should the woman have seen? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... women there may be found at least a good half dozen of feeble creatures who under this violent shock return to their husbands never perhaps again to leave them, like scorched cats that dread the fire. But this scene is a veritable alexipharmaca, the doses of which should be measured out ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... side. A trestled board, much scarred and hacked, ran down the centre of the room, flanked by rows of stone stools. Built around two sides of the room was a series of rude bunks. Over the edge of one of these a head of rough and matted black hair was visible. An odor of stale liquor, scorched meat, and pungent wood-smoke hung heavy in the air. Myleia entered, from the kitchen beyond, with a tray of half-cooked beef. Nicodemus went to the bunk and shook the ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... variations in those sweet, busy-idle days? They vanished all too swiftly. But now the rick-yard was heaped high with golden sheaves; the carts came in steady lines, creaking under endless loads, from those fields which, two years later, lay scorched with drought, and over which famine brooded. The peasant girls tossed the grain, with forked boughs, to the threshing-machine, tended by other girls. The village boys had a fine frolic dragging the straw away in bundles ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the hard little palm of Carruthers and watched him scamper home with it. Miss Theodosia looked happy. She felt pleasant little tweaks at her heartstrings as if small grimy hands were ringing them, playing a tender little tune. Scorched, blundering young hands—Stefana's. The little tune rang plaintive in her ears. She had a vision of Stefana toiling over the ironing of her dresses and going to bed exhausted, when the toil was over. Miss Theodosia's eyes followed Carruther's retreating little figure till it reached ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell |
