"Worm-eaten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corner of the house, which, to judge by its foundations, must be very ancient, notwithstanding the fragile appearance of its panels of white paper. It contains the blackest of cavities, little vaulted cellars with worm-eaten beams; cupboards for rice which smell of mould and decay; mysterious hollows where lies accumulated the dust of centuries. In the middle of the night, and during a hunt for thieves, this part of the house, as yet unknown to ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... were reduced to the necessity of subsisting on the distributions from the public stores, which had sustained great damage during their long passage. These were both scanty, and unwholesome; the allowance to each man, for a day, being only a pint of worm-eaten wheat and barley. This wretched food increased the malignity of the diseases generated by the climate, among men exposed to all its rigours. Before the month of September, fifty of the company were buried; among whom was Bartholomew Gosnald, who ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... still I see, This drear accursed masonry, Where e'en the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes, Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep Against the smoky paper thrust, With glasses, boxes, round me stacked And instruments together hurled, Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed— Such is my world! And what a world!... Alas! In ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... the shovel of one of the men struck upon something hard, and the man, dropping upon his knees, went to work to scrape the sand away with his hands, presently laying bare to view what was apparently part of a spar of some kind, not old or worm-eaten, but seemingly almost new. Having located this, they started to clear the sand away from the whole length of the piece of timber, and, while doing so, found that there were two other poles or spars ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... eye could see, the soil was green; and the sky was blue to the verge of the horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain seemed at a distance like little woods inclosed each in a circle of thin beech-trees. Coming closer, on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied that he saw a giant garden, for all the old apple-trees, as knotted as the peasants, were in blossom. The weather-beaten black trunks, crooked, twisted, ranged along the inclosure, displayed ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... now—with that small, firm hand she would catch hold of me with when I hurt her. By Jove, if she had been a man, she would have made her mark in the world! She had a will and a way with her! If it hadn't been that she loved me—me, do you hear, you dog!—though there's nobody left to care a worm-eaten nut about me, it makes me proud as Lucifer merely to think of it! I don't care if there's never another to love me to all eternity! I have been loved as never man was loved! All for my own sake, mind you! In the way of money I was no great catch; and ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... shall be bare indeed, if thou forsake not these unprofitable by-courses, and that timely too. Name me a profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Ay, your god of poets there, whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, he whose worm-eaten statue must not be spewed against, but with hallow'd lips and groveling adoration, what ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... the chestnuts (noticing carefully if any are worm-eaten), and boil for half an hour in sufficient water to cover; remove the shells and skins and fry a few minutes in the butter, stir in the flour and salt and fry again, then pour in the milk and parsley and stir five minutes, add the yolk of ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... flat-fishes, the baleen of whales, vertebrate limbs, the laryngeal structures of the newborn kangaroo, the pedicellariae of Echinoderms, or for many of the facts of mimicry, and especially those last touches of mimetic perfection, where an insect not only mimics a leaf, but one worm-eaten and attacked by ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... when you think that old Fletcher can't take his money with him to the next world. As for pure stinginess, I don't believe he'd find his match if he scoured the country. Why, they say his granddaughter barely gets enough to eat. Look here! What are you putting in that bad leaf for. It's worm-eaten all over." ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... believe they have done a mighty act if in their Latin orations they can but shuffle in some ends of Greek like mosaic work, though altogether by head and shoulders and less to the purpose. And if they want hard words, they run over some worm-eaten manuscript and pick out half a dozen of the most old and obsolete to confound their reader, believing, no doubt, that they that understand their meaning will like it the better, and they that do not will admire it the more by how much the less they understand ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... feet. The yearly cut for all purposes, including waste, is now over two hundred billion board feet;—some authorities place the amount as high as two hundred and seventy-five billion feet. This, however, probably includes firewood, one of the largest uses of wood, but taken very largely from worm-eaten wood that could not be cut into lumber. It also probably includes boughs, and other ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... that has been at work here was a disagreeably prosaic thing that you rightly put your foot upon. The bud, as it now appears, suggest the worm more than anything else. So, please, let me cut it out; for art cannot tolerate anything so radically marred and defective. Its worm-eaten heart spoils the beauty ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... still I see. This drear, accursed masonry, Where even the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes. Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep, Against the smoky paper thrust,— With glasses, boxes, round me stacked, And instruments together hurled, Ancestral lumber, stuffed and packed— Such is my world: and what ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... spite of his pleading, was seized and his hands bound behind him. Then, while one man held guard over the captive's wife and children, the other ransacked the house, rummaging through filthy and worm-eaten closets, and exploring dirty coffers, into which had been thrust a wretched assortment of rags—the garb of slavery. Every scrap of paper was captured and jealously guarded. During this time, the greatest silence was preserved. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... flourishing so rankly in the midst of a population not only without the walls of a factory, but also beyond the contamination of a large town.'[36] It may have surprised such people, but it does not surprise us who are surveying the industrial scene and beginning to apprehend the rottenness of that worm-eaten structure which under the misnomer of domestic industry marks the half-way house ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... little triangular cupboard of old worm-eaten walnut-wood fixed high in a corner of the room. Mrs. Lecount tried the door: it ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rushed over and saw a sheet of music lying there. It was the song. But the old man got there first, and crumpled the beautiful paper in his hand. 'What does this mean?' he said. 'Who is this fellow?' 'He is one of the gentlemen from the chancery,' she replied, throwing a worm-eaten pea a little farther away than the rest. 'A gentleman from the chancery,' he cried, 'in the dark, without a hat?' I accounted for the absence of a hat by explaining that I lived close by; at the same time I designated the house. 'I know ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and full of cracks, were so excessively damp that on the side where the Colonel's bed was a reed mat had been nailed. The famous box-coat hung on a nail. Two pairs of old boots lay in a corner. There was not a sign of linen. On the worm-eaten table the Bulletins de la Grande Armee, reprinted by Plancher, lay open, and seemed to be the Colonel's reading; his countenance was calm and serene in the midst of this squalor. His visit to Derville ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... ramparts, and behind, rows of houses. We were posted in covered roads, near this gate, which the sappers had strongly barricaded. Captain Vidal then commanded the battalion, reduced to three hundred and twenty-five men. A few worm-eaten palisades served us for intrenchments, and, on all the roads before us, the enemy were advancing. This time they wore white coats and flat caps, with a raised piece in front, on which we could see the two-headed eagle of the kreutzers. Old Pinto, who recognized them ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... to shame the lukewarmness of our days by their courage, and amaze us by the presence of mind and the wonderful acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures they display.[583] He who will peruse them in the worm-eaten pages of the "Actiones Martyrum," in which their letters were collected by the pious zeal of a contemporary, cannot doubt the proficiency these youthful prisoners had attained, both in sacred and in human letters, at the feet of the renowned Beza. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... that worthy had sat to read a tract of Milton's or of Baxter's, or the table at which he had penned his letters to Hampden or Fairfax, or to his old friend—on the wrong side—Edmund Verney the standard-bearer. Only the worm-eaten shelves were dropping from their supports, and the books lay in mouldy confusion; the roofs had great holes and gaps, whence the laths hung dismally down, and bats came flitting in the dusk; and there were rotten places ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ript off all our Worm-eaten Plank, and clapt on new, by the beginning of December 1686, our Ships bottom was sheathed and tallowed, and the 10th Day went over the Bar, and took aboard the Iron and Lead that we could not sell, and began to fill our Water, and fetch aboard Rice for our Voyage: But C. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... favourite relaxation creates a welcome break in my daily output of prose. By my express orders, the woodman has selected the oldest and most ravaged trunks in his stack. My tastes bring a smile to his lips; he wonders by what whimsy I prefer wood that is worm-eaten, chirouna, as he calls it, to sound wood, which burns so much better. I have my views on the subject; and the worthy man ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... were young, the Deckers had lived in a sagging old frame house (from which the original paint had long ago peeled in great scrofulous patches) on an unimportant street in Chippewa. There was a worm-eaten, russet-apple tree in the yard, an untidy tangle of wild-cucumber vine over the front porch, and an uncut brush of sunburned grass ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... most things now with a good appetite. Some of the houses he went to, in filthy courts off a dingy street, huddled against one another without light or air, were merely squalid; but others, unexpectedly, though dilapidated, with worm-eaten floors and leaking roofs, had the grand air: you found in them oak balusters exquisitely carved, and the walls had still their panelling. These were thickly inhabited. One family lived in each room, and in ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... was fond of eating chalk, cinnamon, and cloves) experienced extreme pleasure in smelling old books. It would appear, however, that in this case the fascination lay not so much in the odor of the leather as in the mouldy odor of worm-eaten books; "faetore veterum liborum, a blattis et tineis exesorum, situque prorsus corruptorum" ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... The big azure dome of the sky is unclouded. The farms of Normandy, scattered over the plains and surrounded by a belt of tall beeches, look, from a distance, like little woods. On closer view, after lowering the worm-eaten wooden bars, you imagine yourself in an immense garden, for all the ancient apple-trees, as gnarled as the peasants themselves, are in bloom. The sweet scent of their blossoms mingles with the heavy smell of the earth and the penetrating odor ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the windings of the little Vale till they came to a great wall of rock that rose across it. In the rock was an opening closed by a sagging, worm-eaten door, and in front of the door hung a rusty ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... the first lines there is a wide one, crossed by many intersecting lines of trenches) he got well over them and chose a field as level as a billiard table for landing-ground. In the very center of it, however, there was one post, a small worm-eaten thing, of the color of the dead grass around it. He hit it, just as he was setting his Spad on the ground, the only post in a field acres wide, and it tore a piece of fabric from one of his lower wings. No ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... overboard during so long a passage, and thus find their way to land. But these are not mere conjectures and possibilities; for one of my people actually did see some wood in one of the houses at Wymoa, which he judged to be fir. It was worm-eaten, and the natives gave him to understand, that it had been driven ashore by the waves of the sea; and we had their own express testimony, that they had got the inconsiderable specimens of iron, found amongst them, from some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... plainly expressed joy or grief. When the steamboat winds along like a magic snail over the lakes, a stranger often comes to the church, and visits the burial vault; he asks the names of the kings, and they have a dead and forgotten sound. He glances with a smile at the worm-eaten crowns, and if he happens to be a pious, thoughtful man, something of melancholy mingles with the smile. Slumber on, ye dead ones! The Moon thinks of you, the Moon at night sends down his rays into your silent kingdom, over which hangs the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... himself also on an old worm-eaten Gothic chest, rumpling and chafing the golden or tinselled threads of the embroidered silk, so rare and so time-worn, flung over the Gothic chest, so rare also, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... house reeked of bees-wax and turpentine, to a degree that almost overpowered those pervading odours of damp and dry rot, which can curiously exist together. The old furniture had been made as bright as faded fabrics and worm-eaten wood could be made by labour; and the leaping light of blazing logs, reflected on the black oak panelling, gave a transient air of cheerfulness to the spacious dining-parlour where Sir John and his daughter took their first meal in the old home. And if to Angela's eye, accustomed to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Nazarites, for there the Nazarites cooked their peace-offerings, and polled their hair, and cast it under the pot. The northeast was the chamber for the wood, and there the priests with blemishes gathered out the worm-eaten wood. And every stick in which a worm was found, was unlawful for the altar. The northwest was the chamber for the lepers. The southwest? Rabbi Eleazar, the son of Jacob, said, "I forget for what it served." ...
— Hebrew Literature
... must still be waiting within earshot, ready to reply to our summons as soon as we deign to call them; we may even anticipate the joy they will evince when these sumptuous ornaments are restored to them, and we need to glance at the worm-eaten coffins which contain their stiff and disfigured mummies to recall our imagination to the stern reality of fact. Two other pyramids, but in this case of stone, still exist further south, to the left of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... held to my lips, thirst telling me to drink, and disgust making me dash it on the ground—only to be back at my lips the next moment. Once I was a king sitting upon a great tarnished throne, dusty and worm-eaten, in a lofty room of state, the doors standing wide, and the spiders weaving webs across them, for nobody ever came in, and no sound shook the moat-filled air: on that throne I had to sit to all eternity, because I had said I was a poet and was not! I was a fellow that had stolen the poet-book ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray gloom of the starlight. It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together, and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was surprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ships nigh to foundering. When wind sank and blue came back, we left Puerto Bello and turned again south by east, but now with crazy, crazy ships, weather-wrenched and worm-eaten, teredo pierced. They looked old, so old, with their whipped and darkened sails. And when we dropped anchor in some bight there was no gold, but all night we heard that harsh blowing of ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... foundlings, nor the "bastards of his art." He is not an indifferent, callous spectator of the scenes which he himself pourtrays, but without seeming to feel them. There is no look of patch-work and plagiarism, the beggarly copiousness of borrowed wealth; no tracery-work from worm-eaten manuscripts, from forgotten chronicles, nor piecing out of vague traditions with fragments and snatches of old ballads, so that the result resembles a gaudy, staring transparency, in which you cannot distinguish ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... pulpit and communion-table of John Knox. The frame of the former, if I remember aright, is complete; but one or two of the panels are knocked out and lost, and, on the whole, it looks as if it had been shaken to pieces by the thunder of his holdings forth,—much worm-eaten, too, is the old oak wood, as well it may be, for the letters MD (1500) are carved on its front. The communion-table is polished, and in much ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it, she will take down the great key from its nail, and swinging back the new doors of the meeting-house, will show you the old worm-eaten ones inside, which, pierced through and through with bullet-holes, once served as a rampart against the enemy. And she will tell you, in the quaint Friend's language, how her great-great-grandmother carried, over a hundred years ago, the news of the danger of her countrymen to Washington, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... his malady, had long marked out this chamber for the scene of his operations; he had observed that the framework in which the bars were set seemed old and worm-eaten; that the window was but a few feet from the ground; that the noise made in the winter nights by the sighing branches of the old tree without would deaden the sound of the lone workman. Now, then, his hopes were to be crowned. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... women, their eyes glittering with eager avarice for a chance at their millions. It seemed a joke that any sane American mother could conceive the idea of selling her daughter to these wretches in exchange for the empty sham of a worm-eaten dishonoured title. And yet it had become so common that the drain on the national resources from this cause constitutes ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... white-counterpaned bed in another, and a dressing-table on the left-hand side of the window. These articles, with two small wicker-work chairs, made up all the furniture in the room save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards round and the panelling of the walls were of brown, worm-eaten oak, so old and discoloured that it may have dated from the original building of the house. Holmes drew one of the chairs into a corner and sat silent, while his eyes travelled round and round and up and down, taking in every detail of ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... for a grown man they would have made a big armful, and when at last I toiled up to my attic, and dropped on my knees by the open window, I was shaking from head to foot with exhaustion. The dust was thick on my hands and arms, and as I turned them over eagerly by the red light of the sunset, the worm-eaten bindings left queer greenish stains on my fingers. Among a number of loose magazines called The Farmer's Friend, I found an illustrated, rather handsome copy of "Pilgrim's Progress," presented, as an inscription on the flyleaf testified, to one Jeremiah Wakefield as a reward for deportment; ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... in a sagging old frame house (from which the original paint had long ago peeled in great scrofulous patches) on an unimportant street in Chippewa. There was a worm-eaten russet apple tree in the yard; an untidy tangle of wild-cucumber vine over the front porch; and an uncut brush of sunburnt grass and weeds all about. From May until September you never passed the Decker place without hearing ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... told me about it. This Mr. Chester has made an investment in Richmond lots on information which he had no right to use. Never mind the details. If he follows that general direction, it will be a flashy success, a pretty worm-eaten crown of laurels." ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... was the room next to hers. It was a room Letty could well believe was haunted, for she had never seen another equally gloomy. The ceiling was low and sloping, the window tiny, and the walls exhibited all sorts of odd nooks and crannies. A bed, antique and worm-eaten, stood in one recess, a black oak chest in another, and at right angles with the door, in another recess, stood a wardrobe that used to creak and groan alarmingly every time Letty walked a long the passage. Once she heard a chuckle, a low, diabolical ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... War spinning and weaving were revived arts in the Confederate cities; and, as ever in earlier days, proved a most valuable economic resource under restricted conditions. In the home of a friend in Charleston, South Carolina, an old, worm-eaten loom was found in a garret where it had lain since the embargo in 1812. It was set up in 1863, and plantation carpenters made many like it for neighbors and fellow-citizens. All women in the mountain districts knew how to use the loom, and taught weaving ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... delicious places in any case, for people of thoughtful, imaginative temperament. Who has not loved a garret in the twilight days of childhood, with its endless stores of quaint, cast-off, suggestive antiquity,—old worm-eaten chests,—rickety chairs,—boxes and casks full of odd comminglings, out of which, with tiny, childish hands, we fished wonderful hoards of fairy treasure? What peep-holes, and hiding-places, and undiscoverable retreats we made to ourselves,—where we sat rejoicing in our security, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... mock dignity that stands on the lying breaths of winking courtiers? What is this farcical, factitious glamour that will not bear the light of day? The Grace of God? Ay, give me god-like manhood, and I will bend the knee. But to ask me to worship a stuffed purple robe on a worm-eaten throne! 'Tis an insult to manhood and reason. Hereditary kingship! When you can breed souls as you breed racehorses it will be time to consider that. Stand here by my side before this mirror. Is not that a proud, a royal couple? Did not Nature fashion these ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... rows of plays and poems by Congreve, Etheridge, Rochester, Dryden, and their contemporaries offered themselves to my study, as though by some furtive assignation. Among other wrecks of furniture with which the worm-eaten floors were encumbered was an old and battered rocking-horse, bestriding which I studied these secret volumes, and found in it an enchanted steed which would lift me into the air and convey me to magically ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... in truth it was but an unnatural growth of leaves, with no fruit of the season, nor even an edible bulb held over from earlier years, for such as it had of former fruitage was dried to worthlessness and made repulsive in its worm-eaten decay. The religion of Israel had degenerated into an artificial religionism, which in pretentious show and empty profession outclassed the abominations of heathendom. As already pointed out in these ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... it was on a desert island. A tent was first made with our boats' sails, by the aid of boughs, for the ladies, and we then set to work to repair the long-boat. The carpenter pronounced some of the planks so rotten and worm-eaten, as to make it surprising that she had not at once gone to the bottom, and he was afraid of doing anything to them lest he should make matters worse. Our only means, therefore, of stopping the leaks, was to nail some ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... ship. She is built of a material to which I am a stranger. There is a peculiar character about the wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit for the purpose to which it has been applied. I mean its extreme porousness, considered independently by the worm-eaten condition which is a consequence of navigation in these seas, and apart from the rottenness attendant upon age. It will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood would have every ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... It ain't up before me and I ain't passin' on it,—but one thing is certain, when a ship's made as many voyages as Lucy has and ain't been home for repairs nigh on to seven years—ain't it?" and he looked at Jane for confirmation—"she gits foul and sometimes a little mite worm-eaten—especially her bilge timbers, unless they're copper-fastened or pretty good stuff. I've been thinkin' for some time that you ain't got Lucy straight, and this last kick-up of hers makes me sure of it. Some timber is growed right and some timber is growed crooked; and when ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... old things, they are all rheumatic and stiff, but continue to live here because, poor souls, they think the rent is low. Ye gods, the place is not fit for dogs to live in, and yet he charges all the way from five dollars up for these filthy, worm-eaten, rotten holes. And yet the old decrepit inhabitants of this rich man's house unbend their stiff knees in ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... incoherence, and makeshift, varnish and gilding upon worm-eaten furniture, and mouldering wainscot, was that same Ancien Regime. And for that very reason a picturesque age; like one of its own landscapes. A picturesque bit of uncultivated mountain, swarming with the prince's game; a picturesque old robber schloss above, now ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... ancestors! In the history of the human mind there is, indeed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect, not merely for their antiquity, but for the sound condition in which I still find them, and the compactness which they still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity! and the utility and delightfulness which they still afford make them look as fresh and as ingenious as any ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... licking his hands. He turned, and Homo was behind him. Gwynplaine uttered a cry. Homo wagged his tail. Then the wolf led the way down a narrow platform to the wharf, and Gwynplaine followed him. On the vessel alongside the wharf was the old wooden tenement, very worm-eaten and rotten now, in which Ursus lived when the boy first came to him at Weymouth. Gwynplaine listened. It was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... himself on the stairs, the dark and dirty stairs, worm-eaten. A draught came through a broken pane in the skylight, and the walls were dripping. Jean-Christophe sat on one of the greasy steps; his heart was beating wildly with anger and emotion. In a low voice he ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... vision: him thought that he came to a great place which seemed a chapel, and there he found a chair set on the left side, which was worm-eaten and feeble. And on the right hand were two flowers like a lily, and the one would have benome the other's whiteness, but a good man departed them that the one touched not the other; and then out of every flower came out ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... the drawbridge into the house, and Sir Lancelot gat from his horse and tethered it to the post beside the horseblock, and so went across the bridge, which was full sodden and worm-eaten, ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... of the previous incumbents. It must not be supposed, however, that his proceedings were altogether free from contemporaneous criticism; a venerable crow sitting on a branch above him displayed great interest in his occupation, and, hopping down a few moments afterwards, disposed of some worm-eaten nuts, a few larvae, and an insect or two, with languid dignity and without prejudice. Certain incumbrances, however, still resisted the squirrel's general eviction; among them a folded square of ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... it in advance, and he will manage to make you pay double, triple, and more for it. And then we have to see so much, notably a cartoon of twelve designs by old masters, which Ardea did not even suspect he had, and which Fossati discovered—would you believe?—worm-eaten, in a cupboard in one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... reason of the River Adige, which brings a very great quantity of it from Germany, not to mention that no small amount comes from Sclavonia. It is much the custom in Venice, then, to paint on canvas, either because it does not split and does not grow worm-eaten, or because it enables pictures to be made of any size that is desired, or because, as was said elsewhere, they can be sent easily and conveniently wherever they are wanted, with very little expense and labour. Be the reason what it may, Jacopo and Gentile, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... thought he,—"a mishap at the start! I'm afraid the omen isn't a good one. However, I must kill time some way. I can't lay up here, like a ship in ordinary; better be shaken by storms or covered with barnacles at sea than be housed up, worm-eaten or crumbled into powder by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... impose on themselves a stoppage of one sou per day and per man to have wood in winter.[3339] Grain is scarce, the flour is spoilt, and the army bread, which was bad, has become worse. The administration, worm-eaten by old abuses, is deranged through the new disorder, the soldiers suffering as well through its dissolution as through their extravagance.—They think themselves robbed and they complain, at first with moderation; and justice is done to their well-founded claims. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... As to picking fruit before it is ripe! Allow me to remind you that very much fruit is never picked; some gets nipped in the blossom; some gets worm-eaten and falls to the ground; some rots on the trees before it ripens; some, too slow in ripening, gets bitten by the early frosts of autumn; while some rich, rare, ripe apples hang unpicked, frozen and worthless on the leafless trees of winter! Really, Mr. Garfield, if, after passing through the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... a barrel-hoop which fastened the gate, and it tottered over, and clung by one hinge to the worm-eaten post, from which the decaying fence had fallen away. A hall ran through the house, and on either side were two rooms. The second floor was a duplicate of the first, so that the house contained eight small rooms, nine by eleven feet, exactly alike, each with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... had their houses and warehouses all combined, with gardens at the back running down to the river Hull. Queer old places there used to be in this street, I can tell you when I was a lad!—of late years they've pulled a lot of property down that had got what you might call thoroughly worm-eaten—oh, yes, the place isn't half as ancient or picturesque as it was even ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... shaft. Jack Ryan had not forgotten his old mining habits, and he was well acquainted with the Dochart pit, or he would scarcely have dared to venture thus. He went very carefully, however. His foot tried each round, as some of them were worm-eaten. A false step would entail a deadly fall, through this space of fifteen hundred feet. He counted each landing as he passed it, knowing that he could not reach the bottom of the shaft until he had left ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... is its fitting destiny better than the silly flower knows for itself; so I wade in, heedless of wet trousers, and seize the shy lily by its slender stem. Thus I make prize of five or six, which are as many as usually blossom within my reach in a single morning;—some of them partially worm-eaten or blighted, like virgins with an eating sorrow at the heart; others as fair and perfect as Nature's own idea was, when she first imagined this lovely flower. A perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... opened upon the garden, was a large apartment, preserved almost entirely in its original state. The two principal beams of the ceiling, and the three visible cross-beams of support, had not even been whitewashed, and they were blackened by smoke and worm-eaten, while, through the openings of the broken plaster, here and there, the laths of the inner joists could be seen. On one of the stone corbels, which supported the beams, was the date 1463, without doubt the date of the construction of the building. The chimney-piece, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... A ray of light falling from heaven as if by special favor on those puny flowers and the vigorous wheat-ear brought out in full relief the dust, the grease, and that nameless color, peculiar to Parisian squalor, made of dirt, which crusted and spotted the damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the disjointed window-casings, and the door originally red. Presently the cough of an old woman, and a heavy female step, shuffling painfully in list slippers, announced the coming of the mother of Ida Gruget. The creature opened the door and came out upon the landing, looked ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... protestation were in fact the hastier part of their thought, since what emboldened them to deny the poor world's faith was that they were too impatient to understand it. Indeed, the enlightenment common to young wits and worm-eaten old satirists, who plume themselves on detecting the scientific ineptitude of religion—something which the blindest half see—is not nearly enlightened enough: it points to notorious facts incompatible with religious tenets literally taken, but it leaves unexplored ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... end of the street and the landing, what did I see of the bustle, business and life of forty-nine years ago—a small forest of worm-eaten piles sticking up in the water in front of me. They were the remains of a large dock which had been covered with warehouses and offices connected with the shipping of the port. The late Thomas Trounce, of this city, owned the property and managed it. Imagine what the arrival of a large San Francisco ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... league up the river, remains of what seems to have been a chimney, the foundation of which has been found, and indications of there having been ditches surrounding their dwelling, which was small. We found, also, large pieces of hewn, worm-eaten timber, and some three or four cannon-balls. All these things show clearly that there was a settlement there founded by Christians; and what leads me to say and believe that it was that of Jacques ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... without furniture—few empty boxes and hampers in a corner—a small window—the shutters closed—not even a fireplace—no other door than that by which we had entered—no carpet on the floor, and the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as was shown by the whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no visible place in which a living being could have hidden. As we stood gazing round, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly as it had ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... beans must not be mingled together. There are four sorts of cacao in every crop; the ripe and in good condition, the green but sound, the worm-eaten, and the rotten. The first quality is best, the second is not bad; but the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... immense strength, only to end in immense weakness. The force of the people is exhausted in indefinitely prolonging things long since dead; in governing mankind by embalming old dead tyrannies of Faith; restoring dilapidated dogmas; regilding faded, worm-eaten shrines; whitening and rouging ancient and barren superstitions; saving society by multiplying parasites; perpetuating superannuated institutions; enforcing the worship of symbols as the actual means of salvation; and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth to mouth, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... short off upon his wife, who had by this time hatched a sort of hysterical whine, which greatly moved the minister, who was in fact as simple and kind-hearted a creature as ever breathed. "And you, ye thowless jade, to sit still and see my substance disponed upon to an idle, drunken, reprobate, worm-eaten serving-man, just because he kittles the lugs o' a silly auld wife wi' useless clavers, and every twa words a lee? I'll gar ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... see ancient Icelandic manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in spirit, and longs to be out in the free air—and we are there; by Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf, out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church stands—the church that was erected from the booty ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... in keeping with the village, being old and worm-eaten, and the craziest craft imaginable. I would not have sailed one across a pond. However, I sought out the commander of this ragged squadron, and ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... complete without the rats. In stories of ghosts and murderers they scamper through the echoing rooms, and the gnawing of their teeth is heard behind the wainscot, and their gleaming eyes peer through the holes in the worm-eaten tapestry, and they scream in shrill, unearthly notes in the dead of night, while the moaning wind sweeps, sobbing, round the ruined turret towers, and passes wailing like a woman through the ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Columbus sailed south, along what is called "the Mosquito Coast," the weather grew stormy and the gales were severe. His ships were crazy and worm-eaten; the food was running low; the sailors began to grumble and complain and to say that if they kept on in this way they would surely starve before ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... the same. All that about the magpie and the woodpecker—you read it wrongly, that is all. The magpie simply came to give you my love—poor thing, she can't help having an ugly voice! And then the woodpecker—don't you see, it was just pecking out the worms from the timber—there must be no worm-eaten timber in his ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... proceeded to make a more critical survey of my room. Its look of ancient mystery was to me incomparably more attractive than any show of elegance or comfort could have been. It was large and low, panelled throughout in oak, black with age, and worm-eaten in many parts—otherwise entire. Both the windows looked into the little court or yard before mentioned. All the heavier furniture of the room was likewise of black oak, but the chairs and couches were covered with faded tapestry and tarnished gilding, apparently the ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... leave off being an old Buffoon, that is, a Lover turn'd ridiculous by Age, consider thy self a mere rouling Tun of Nantz,—a walking Chimney, ever smoaking with nasty Mundungus, and then thou hast a Countenance like an old worm-eaten Cheese. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... full of the aromatic fragrance of the falling worm-dust. All through this old box of a building dissolution was at work, with thousands of tiny creatures to aid it. At times the sound of it all rose to a tremendous crash which awoke Pelle from sleep, when some old worm-eaten timber was undermined and sagged in a fresh place. Then he would turn ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... upper room with its low mullioned window the Maid began her life. Here, in the larger room below, is the kneeling statue which the Princess Marie d'Orleans made of her. Here, to the right, under the sloping roof, with its worm-eaten beams, she slept and ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... City Council passed a Sunday-closing ordinance, and with the enforcement of this law came the discovery that through innocuous desuetude the hinges of the doors to the Sazeraz had rusted off, while the doors themselves had become so worm-eaten that they had to be replaced by new ones. The sheriff who pounced down on Billy Boyle's in his official capacity must have fancied he had struck a second Sazeraz, for the lock upon the door was so rusty and rheumatic through disuse that it absolutely refused to respond to the persuasion ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... his shoulder to the worm-eaten door, and in a moment the lock gave way. The bystanders shrank instinctively back; they were frightened. The door was wide open, and masses of vapors rolled out. Soon, however, curiosity triumphed over fear. No one doubted any longer that the poor girl was lying ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... was of planks roughly put together; now they were worm-eaten, bare, save for a thick carpet of greasy dust, which deadened the sound of booted feet. The place only boasted of a couple of chairs, both of which had to be propped against the wall lest they should break, and bring the sitter down upon the floor; otherwise a number of empty ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... box were the only seats. In the corner farthest from the light, and where the ceiling sloped down to the floor, was the only thing that could claim the name of a bedstead. Low and curtainless, its crazy, worm-eaten frame groaned and creaked ominously under the tossings to and fro of the poor sufferer, who occupied the mass of ragged coverings spread upon it. In the opposite corner was a heap of mingled shavings, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... a strange look, with half unpacked boxes serving for wardrobes, piles of band boxes, and for seats there was an array of worm-eaten armchairs, into which bits of velvet and silk, which had been cut from old dresses, had been festooned anyhow, and along the walls there were rows of rusty nails which made one think of old portraits and of pictures full of associations, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... apartments the very floors had given way; — the hangings were parted from the walls, and shaking in mouldy remnants; the glasses were dropping out of their frames; — the family-pictures were covered with dust. and all the chairs and tables worm-eaten and crazy. — There was not a bed in the house that could be used, except one old-fashioned machine, with a high gilt tester and fringed curtains of yellow mohair, which had been, for aught I know, two centuries in the family. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud 10 Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Moldering her lute and books among, 15 As when a ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... one of the many sacks, in which certainly there is only wheat. "Well, I hope it's moldy enough," remarks the inspector. "Probably there is only wheat in the other sacks, and very likely even more worm-eaten." ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Mr. Brunel visited a ship-yard. An old ship was on the dry-dock getting repaired. A quantity of worm-eaten timber had been taken out from her sides. He picked up one of these pieces of timber, and saw a worm at work, boring its way through. If he had been a proud man, he might have thrown the timber aside, and said—"Get ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... days when he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder and vestryman, and even dreamt ambitiously of a churchwardenship. He could see distinctly his own pew, with the gray, worm-eaten panels, where he had sat many and many a warm afternoon, resisting sternly, as became a man of mark in the parish, treacherous inclinations to slumber. He saw the ponderous brown gallery—eyesore to archaeologists—which held the village choir: there they were, with the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... you to no purpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallen prostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will still hang on by the mere beam-ends, and coherency of old carpentry, though in a sloping direction, and depend there till certain poor rusty nails and worm-eaten dovetailings give way:—but is it cheering, in such circumstances, that the whole household burst forth into celebrating the new joys of light and ventilation, liberty and picturesqueness of position, and thank God that now they have got a house to their mind? My dear household, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... new home. The vast and often decaying timbers, hewn out of the very forests they loved, cried out with all the old associations they bore and held them. The miniature citadel contained within the trenchant stockade, the old pelt stores, roofless and worm-eaten, the armory which still suggested the clank of half-armored men, who lived only for the joy of defying death. The factor's house, whence, in the days gone by, the orders for battle had been issued, and the sentence of life and death had been handed out with scant regard for justice. Then there ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... love," says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and worm-eaten sermons." ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the mills, a Portuguese trader arrived with a quantity of worm-eaten logs of this cedar, which he had gathered from the floating timber in the current of the main Amazons. The tree producing this wood, which is named cedar on account of the similarity of its aroma to that of the true cedars, is not, of course, a coniferous tree, as no member of that ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... he had grown a century older. All at once he heard the creaking of the boards of the stairway; some one was ascending. The trapdoor opened once more; a light reappeared. There was a tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his den; he put his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to emerge from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phoebus, twirling his moustache, then ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... 1833 a gentleman bought an estate in North Yorkshire, seven miles from any town, and built a house there. The parish was small, having a population of about a hundred souls, the church old and tumbledown, reeking with damp; the rain came through the roof; the seats were worm-eaten, and centipedes, with other like vermin, roamed about them near the wall. The vicar was non-resident, and an elderly curate-in-charge ministered to this parish and another in the neighbourhood. The customs of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... more apples; but George told him that they must first pick up what were knocked down before; and he drew the wagon round to the place where he thought it was best for it to stand. The other boys made no objection, but worked industriously, picking up all the small and worm-eaten apples they could find; and, in a very short time, they had the wagon loaded, and were on their way to the ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... in the chimney, and down came a pair of little mouldering ankles. 'What makes your ankles so small?' asked the woman. 'Worm-eaten, worm-eaten,' answered the mouldering ankles, and the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... find that he has become civilized; he has taken trouble to improve his mind, he has read books; he has even gone to the play. And his choice shows him a man of taste and feeling; a man with a memory too; for reaching a cemetery somewhere in his travels he "took up a worm-eaten skull, which he thus addressed: Perhaps thou wert a prince or a mighty monarch, a King, a Duke or a Lord. But the King and the beggar must all return to the earth; and therefore man hath need to remember his dying hour. Perhaps thou mightest have ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... it is a tree that produces only degenerate fruit, but the fruit is always of the same nature; it is knotted and covered with moss, it becomes worm-eaten, but it is always oak or pear tree. If one could change one's character, one would give oneself one, one would be master of nature. Can one give oneself anything? do we not receive everything? Try to animate an indolent man with ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... literary turn than almost any other class. The pigeon-holes are stuffed full of old papers, recipes for cattle medicines, and, perhaps, a book of divinity or sermons printed in the days of Charles II., leather-covered and worm-eaten. Still higher are a pair of cupboards where china, the tea-set, and the sugar and groceries in immediate use are kept. On the top, which is three or four inches under the ceiling, are two or three small brown-paper parcels of grass seeds, and a variety of nondescript articles. Opposite, on ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... rested for weeks in the darkest corner of the shed, Frederick Plunger, Esq. was reposing. It had been selected as the most suitable hiding-place by the conspirators. It was large and commodious, and there were so many cracks and crannies in the worm-eaten, dilapidated lid that there was ample breathing ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... who began life so poorly, and love Art because she loves us." Benoni seated himself on the arm of one of the old chairs, and looked down across the worm-eaten table at the young singer. "We," he continued, "who have been wretchedly poor know better than others that Art is real, true, and enduring; medicine in sickness and food in famine; wings to the feet of youth and a staff for the steps of old age. Do you think I ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... solum toga', in favor of their race. But it did not seem as if these bearded ancestors looked with much gratitude upon this parliamentary flower added to their feudal crest. They appeared to look down from the height of their worm-eaten frames upon their enrobed descendants with that disdainful smile with which the peers of France used to greet men of law the first time they were called to sit by their side, after being for so long ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard |
