"Mouldy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and she sat upon the very rock beneath which I lay among the mouldy leaves; so near that I could have reached out and touched the girl's silken ankle with my fingers. Jerry, I ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... beyond there," said the landlord, and pointed to the tree-tops of the park, above the opposite houses. Newman followed the first cross-road to the right—it was bordered with mouldy cottages—and in a few moments saw before him the peaked roofs of the towers. Advancing farther, he found himself before a vast iron gate, rusty and closed; here he paused a moment, looking through the bars. The chateau was near the road; this was at once its merit and its defect; but its aspect ...
— The American • Henry James
... apologized for it by the fact that he had been on a long tramp from Melrose Abbey to Kenilworth Castle. But I think as thrilling an evening as we had this winter was with a man who walked in with a prison-jacket, his shoes mouldy, and his cheek pallid for the want of the sunlight. He was so tired that he went immediately to sleep. He would not take the sofa, saying he was not used to that, but he stretched himself on the floor and put his head on an ottoman. At first he snored dreadfully, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... this was the first place where she had got away from a north light. Her rooms had all been as damp and mouldy as they were dark, with deep foundations of dirt under the carpets, and dirty walls. In her present room there was no running water and no clothes closet, and she had to have the dresser moved out to make room for her piano. But there were two windows, one ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... corner lay a man, crouched on a bed of mouldy furs. The cell was not often used, and was covered with decaying fungus-growth from the dampness of the past summer. When Granger tried to speak to him, his voice was drowned by the sort of noise that a dog makes when it comes out from its kennel; then he saw ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... of a Jew, dressed in his praying gown, and singing in a low voice, while behind him shone a room lighted with small candles, from which issued Sabbath smells and a quiet monotonous dreary sound of singing. Jasiek drank a few glasses one after the other, gnawed half-consciously some mouldy rolls as tough as leather, which he seasoned with a herring, and looked now at the door, now at the window, or listened to the murmur of ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... that you so capriciously push away the favours which are presented to you; but I may be more fortunate another time. Farewell, till our speedy meeting! By the way, you will allow me to mention, that I do not by any means permit my purchases to get mouldy; I hold them in special regard, and take the best possible care of them." With this he took my shadow out of his pocket, and with a dexterous fling it was unrolled and spread out on the heath on the sunny side of his feet, so ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... him talk. He leaned his elbows on the primitive table, held his head between his hands, and kept silent. His eyes wandered about the dark, mouldy den, filled with the stench of a smoking little kerosene lamp. He saw the mildewed straw in the corner, the disconnected telephone at the entrance, an empty box of tinned food on which a crumpled map was spread out. He saw a mountain of rifles, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... size two was a size too big for her. She wished she knew of any one who wore two's. Dot wore three's, didn't she? No?—two's! How lovely! Then Dot would take the shoes, wouldn't she, and save them from becoming mouldy! And she bought two pretty lace-trimmed collars, just alike—and she hated two of her things to be alike. So Dot would take one off ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... snug here,' said Mr Dennis, pulling out a mouldy pocket-handkerchief, which looked like a decomposed halter, and wiping his forehead ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... knows on," the plasterer replied, picking up his brush, "and as to the missing property, there was nowt but a few mouldy rugs and a flower-pot in the room. Some folks does seem able to work themselves up into a fuss about nothing, and no mistake! Good morning, guvnor! Drop in again some time ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one or two dark and mouldy-smelling vaults, the party ascended a flight of steps, which brought them to the hall. As Jack conjectured, no one was there, and, though a lamp was burning on a stand, they decided upon proceeding without it. They then swiftly mounted the stairs, and stopped before the audience-chamber. Applying ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... water dripping from the edges of my puttees. But I had forgotten one important item in the daily routine: supper. And I had forgotten Private Lemley, our cook, or, to give him his due, our chef. He was not the man to waste his time in gloomy reflection. With a dozen mouldy potatoes which he had procured Heaven knows where, four tins of corned beef, and a canteen lid filled with bacon grease for raw materials, he had set to work with the enthusiasm of the born artist, the result being rissoles, brown, crisp, and piping hot. It is ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... one only saw some factory chimneys and a few lofty white houses, standing alone, obliquely to the road. They passed through the Clignancourt fete, with booths, circuses, and roundabouts on either side, all shivering in the abandonment of winter, empty dancing cribs, mouldy swings, and a kind of stage homestead, 'The Picardy Farm,' looking dismally sad between its ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... attack upon Lincoln's conduct of the war, predicated upon a private letter of General Scott, the possession of which he did not satisfactorily account for. The Tribune, referring to his campaign as "a rhetorical spree," called him a "buffoon," a "political harlequin," a "repeater of mouldy jokes,"[852] and in bitter terms denounced his "low comedy performance at Tammany," his "double-shuffle dancing at Mozart Hall," his possession of a letter "by dishonourable means for a dishonourable purpose," and his wide-sweeping statements "which gentlemen over their own signatures pronounced ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... length arrived for solving the great doubt that had long perplexed the minds of the inhabitants as to whether the soil in the neighbourhood was crustaceous or carboniferous. The crustaceous party had been long triumphing in the fact, that a mouldy piece of bread had been found at two feet below the surface, when digging for the foundation of a swing erected in a garden in the neighbourhood; but the carboniferous enthusiasts had been thrown into ecstacies, by the sexton having come upon a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... have a gay season every year at the first hotels at Newport, and not be able to afford the wife a fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the servants enough food to keep them from constantly deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen, the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort, where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole time, are witnesses to what such families consider economy. Economy ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to think on't. I have us'd all means; and the last night I caus'd His host, the tapster, to turn him out of doors; And have been since with all your friends and tenants, And on the forfeit of your favour, charg'd them, Tho' a crust of mouldy bread would keep him from starving, Yet ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... therefore, allow me to meander along the meadows of commonplace. Don't expect anything of the impetuous and boiling style. We go it weak here. I don't know whether you were ever in Brussels. It is a striking, picturesque town, built up a steep promontory, the old part at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy, the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the seaport of Odessa in Russia in order to come across to see the Holy Land. They live on the charity of other poor villagers as they go, or they carry sacks of bread-crusts, getting more and more mouldy every week. Thousands arrive at the Holy Land every year just before Easter, old and frail men and women who have undergone incredible hardships. They say, "What does it matter what happens to our bodies?" and many of them die uncomplainingly. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it—I defy him—if ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the starving dog coming out, a living skeleton, from the wet, mouldy church, reminds us sharply of the changed times we live in and of the days when the Church was still sleeping very peacefully, not yet turning uneasily in its bed before opening its eyes; and when a comfortable rector of Codford thought it ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... defended her, And rode triumphant through the civil broil. Thou canst not doubt its fellow's excellence, Which Thomas, ere my coming, hath declar'd So courteously unto thee. But the track, Which its smooth fellies made, is now deserted: That mouldy mother is where late were lees. His family, that wont to trace his path, Turn backward, and invert their steps; erelong To rue the gathering in of their ill crop, When the rejected tares in vain shall ask Admittance to the barn. I question not But he, who search'd our volume, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Mr. Stevens might have been seen in his dingy office, seated at a rickety desk which was covered with various little bundles, carefully tied with red tape. The room was gloomy and cheerless, and had a mouldy disagreeable atmosphere. A fire burned in the coal stove, which, however, seemed only to warm, but did not dry the apartment; and the windows were covered with a thin coating ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again. Come to me to-morrow. Thou hast but to hold out thy hand. Meanwhile the revenues are mine. A-hawking, a-hawking! If I sit, I grow fat. [Leaps over ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... discouraging at first. Everything was wet and the bread was inclined to be mouldy and tasted of the box; but the birds were singing, the sky was bright and cool, and a fresh ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Thought." Lower down the slope lay a green-coated pond—green-coated ponds constitute a frequent spectacle in the gardens of Russian landowners; and, lastly, from the foot of the declivity there stretched a line of mouldy, log-built huts which, for some obscure reason or another, our hero set himself to count. Up to two hundred or more did he count, but nowhere could he perceive a single leaf of vegetation or a single stick of timber. The only thing to greet the eye was the logs ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to which the Micrococcus and Bacterium[10] belong are found minute organisms differing much in form and in the coloring[11] matters they produce, as that causing the red color of mouldy bread. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... two pitched battles on the way home, showed himself a more respectable antagonist, on the whole, than his assailants had bargained for, and was thenceforward contemptuously sent to Coventry. 'Yoong man,' said an old farmer to him once reprovingly, after one of these "rumpuses," 'yor temper woan't mouldy wi keepin.' Reuben coming by at the moment threw an unhappy glance at the lad, whose bruised face and torn clothes showed he had been fighting. To the uncle's mind there was a wanton, nay, a ruffianly look about ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the cubiculum no. 54, in which the paintings are, and he began to point out to me outlines of figures and objects, I thought he was laboring under an optical delusion; I could see nothing beyond a blackened and mouldy plaster surface. My eyes, however, soon became initiated to the new experience, and able to read the lines of this curious palimpsest. The dark spots soon grew into shape, and lovely groups, inspired by the purest Christian symbolism, appeared ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Staevoren town saw evil years, No ships could out or in, The boats lay rotting at the piers, And the mouldy grain ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... pleasantest of sights at any time, least of all in Rome, where the custom of washing the meat after killing it seems never to have been introduced. Next door too is an open stable, crowded with mules and horses. Those black, mouldy loaves, exposed in a wire-work cage, to protect them from the clutches of the hungry street vagabonds, stand in front of the bakers, where the price of bread is regulated by the pontifical tariff. Then comes the "Spaccio di Vino," that gloomiest ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... consisted in painting with different kinds of ink. This novel mode of writing occasioned them to invent other materials proper to receive their writing; the thin bark of certain trees and plants, or linen; and at length, when this was found apt to become mouldy, they prepared the skins of animals; on the dried skins of serpents were once written the Iliad and Odyssey. The first place where they began to dress these skins was Pergamus, in Asia; whence the Latin name is derived of Pergamenoe or parchment. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... stuff, but it takes a long time for the leaves to get mouldy, and it takes a great many, too. Arthur is rather impatient, and he used to say—"I never saw leaves stick on to branches in such a way. I mean to get into some of these old trees and give them a good shaking to remind them ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... this dismal pack. July and August,—the days are growing shorter again. "Will nobody come and take care of me, and cut off these horrid blocks of ice, and see to these sides of bacon in the hold, and all these mouldy sails, and this powder, and the bread and the spirit that I have kept for them so well? It is September, and the sun begins to set again. And here is another of those awful gales. Will it be my very last? I all alone here,—who have done ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... if Cromwells and Chathams be too old-fashioned, and translate the Semitic principle into a narrow English Protestantism, may we not have some genuine revolutionary fanatic, a Cimourdain or a Gauvain, to burn up all this dry chaff of mouldy politics with the fire of a genuine human passion? Such a contrast, however effective, would have been a little awkward in the year 1844. Young England had an ideal standard of its own, and Disraeli must be the high ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Ben, "a sailor's life is well enough, if you don't mind hard beds and harder words. If you can eat salty meat and mouldy bread it's a fine life, Archie. There is no life I'd like better if they'd give you fresher water and not quite so many cruel blows. But, if you've made up your mind, Archie, and think you can go to bed nights in a rolling, tossing sea, with the wind howling ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... impenetrable, black and choking. There was no sound, except for the occasional soft spatter of water that dripped to the stone floor from the mouldy ceiling. Then through a narrow, barred window came the moonlight in a mottled shaft of phosphorescent green, and licked its way across the floor, to the edge of the bier. It shone on two kneeling, crouching figures, and full on ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... transports; a few raisins, a little sugar, some butter (so called by courtesy); and of course my ration rum came into play. I could not get any flour, so purchased some biscuit at Balaclava. It was mouldy and full of weevils, and had been condemned as ship's stores and sold to some camp followers, but to us at half a crown a pound it was a treasure. I pounded a quantity of this as fine as possible, and mixed the material in my tin shako case, which did duty as bucket, etc., ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... fly for refuge from distracting thought To such amusements as ingenious woe Contrives, hard shifting, and without her tools— To read, engraven on the mouldy walls, In stagg'ring types, his predecessor's tale, A sad memorial, and subjoin his own— To turn purveyor to an overgorg'd And bloated spider, till the pamper'd pest Is made familiar, watches his approach, Comes at his call, and serves him ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... she came out of her swoon she never knew. The cellar was dark; but it was nothing compared to the darkness enveloping her mind. She lay there on the damp and mouldy straw, hardly able, scarcely wanting, to move, overwhelmed by the extraordinary adventure which had befallen her. Was this to be the end of the pleasant trip into the country on which she had embarked so readily only a few ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... egg-production. Skim milk and butter milk, fish scrap made from oil-free fish, beef scrap, fresh cut green bone and good grades of digester tankage are all excellent. But use only feeds of this character which are of prime quality. Oily fish, poor beef scrap and mouldy green bone ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... learning (like Sancho's jests while in the Sierra Morena) seemed to grow mouldy for want of exercise, joyfully embraced the opportunity of Waverley's offering his service in his regiment, to bring it into some exertion. The good-natured old gentleman, however, laboured to effect a reconciliation between the two quondam friends. Fergus turned a cold ear to his remonstrances, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... L.) Ay, that I'll do. The Squire's made me what I am this blessed day. I'm Squire's representative, I am, and they'll find me darned unpleasant. (He goes off L., muttering.) John Parsley ain't come; old Buckle ain't come; Mouldy Green ain't come. ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... Hips:—Gather the hips before they grow soft, cut off the heads and stalks, slit them in halves, and take out all the seed and white that is in them very clean; then put them in an earthen pan, and stir them every day, else they will grow mouldy; let them stand till they are soft enough to rub through a coarse hair-sieve; as the pulp comes, take it off the sieve; they are a dry berry, and will require pains to rub it through; then add its weight in sugar, and mix it well together without ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... incidents of our precipitate flight from that horrible place—on the extinction of all human sentiment in that tumultuous, mad scramble up the damp and mouldy stairs—slipping, falling, pulling one another down and clambering over one another's back—the lights extinguished, babes trampled beneath the feet of their strong brothers and hurled backward to death ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the torn linings hanging down in loops inside the skirts, pale and discoloured, like the shreds of banners in a cathedral; his shirt loose at the neck, his breeches unbuttoned at the knees, and a gigantic, misshapen, and mouldy pair of slippers clinging and clattering about his feet, came down the steps, his light, round little eyes and queer, quiet face peering at them into the shade, and a smokified volume of divinity tucked under his arm, with his finger between the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... back against the mouldy wall of that old stairway shivering as if I had been suddenly stricken with the ague. I had trembled in every limb before ever I heard the sound of the sudden scuffle, and from a variety of reasons—the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... a country clergyman with a narrow income and meagre table, morally becoming mouldy in the company of the scolding housekeeper, of the willingly fuddled clergyman, of a foolish young gentleman and the daughters of the house, who, with high shoulders and turned-in toes, went from morning to night paying visits, I felt a peculiarly strange emotion of tenderness and joy ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... winter. A simple test is said to be adopted by the vine-growers of the Rhine. A specimen of the soil is put into an earthenware vessel into which boiling water is poured to cover it, after which it is undisturbed for three days. If the water on being tasted gives a mouldy or salty taste, the soil is believed to ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Eurotium is the group of Erysiphei, in which well-authenticated polymorphy prevails. These fungi are developed on the green parts of growing plants, and at first consist of a white mouldy stratum, composed of delicate mycelium, on which erect threads are produced, which break up into subglobose joints or conidia. The species on grass was named Oidium monilioides before its relationship was known, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... his assent. He also added, gratuitously, that he had before now been obliged to reclaim on casks of mouldy mess-pork. At which Ocock ceased coddling his chin to point a straight forefinger at him, with a triumphant: "You see!"—But Purdy who, sick and tired of the discussion, had withdrawn to the window to watch ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... beginning. Try "Blenheim House" (all the houses here either bear ducal, naval, or frankly plebeian names, I observe). Ring: startling effect—grey-mouldy old person, with skeleton hands folded on woollen tippet, glides in a ghastly manner down passage. They really ought to put up a warning to people with nerves, as M. VAN BEERS does at his Salon Parisien. Feel as if I had raised a ghost. Wonder if she waits ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... I waited for an age in an empty office where was one chair, a table dark with years of ink splotches, a mouldy inkstand, a piece of an old almanac, and an empty gin bottle. Outside, cockle-shells were piled against the wall; then there were ditches or streamlets cutting through profuse and almost loathsome vegetation, and shining slime fat and iridescent, swarming ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... an old canvas bag, a little rotten and very brown and mouldy, but tied at the neck by a piece of stout and tarnished braid of gold. It had no name or card upon it nor letters on its side, and it lay for nearly thirty years high on a shelf, in an old chest, behind three tiers of tins of papers, in the deepest ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... to the jetty gradual she was hauled: Then one the tiller took, And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled; And one the canvas shook Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called And cursed the Harbour-master by ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cacao is an art. On the one hand it is necessary to get the beans quite dry (that is, in a condition in which they hold only their normal amount of water—5 to 7 per cent.) or they will be liable to go mouldy. On the other hand, the husk or shell of the bean must not be allowed to become burned or brittle. Brittle shells produce waste in packing and handling, and broken shells allow grubs and mould to enter the beans when the cacao is stored. The method of drying varies in different countries according ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... in the dew. Some spread the snowy canvas, propp'd on high O'er shelter'd tables with their whole supply; Some swung the biting scythe with merry face, And cropp'd the daisies for a dancing space. Some roll'd the mouldy barrel in his might, From prison'd darkness into cheerful light, And fenced him round with cans; and others bore The creaking hamper with its costly store, Well cork'd, well flavour'd, and well tax'd, that came From Lusitanian mountains, dear to fame, Whence GAMA steer'd, and ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... miserable profit, and to save the expense of wood, the praefect John of Cappadocia had given orders that the flour should be slightly baked by the same fire which warmed the baths of Constantinople; and when the sacks were opened, a soft and mouldy paste was distributed to the army. Such unwholesome food, assisted by the heat of the climate and season, soon produced an epidemical disease, which swept away five hundred soldiers. Their health was restored by the diligence of Belisarius, who provided fresh bread at Methone, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... wrong. If e'er th' angel o' life did make an error i' th' distributing o' souls, 'twas on the night Keren was brought into this world. And a say that with a cause, moreover; for th' same night, mark you, one Mistress Mouldy, over the way, was brought to bed o' a man-child. That's neither here nor there. Herein doth lie the singularity. That child did grow up to knit stockings i' th' door-way like any wench; Peter Mouldy's th' name, and a plays a part i' th' story I'm about to relate ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... to his still to obtain a supply of water. One of the casks was always left full, in case of emergency, should bad weather come on, and it be impossible to keep the stove alight. Again they were on a short allowance of food; the wet flour had become perfectly mouldy, and the biscuits were in very little better condition. Starving people ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... ornamented with mouldings in yellow stucco, most of which had fallen, and all but choked the stairs. The crude pale color of these fragments jarred harshly against the olive of the damp stone foundations and the stained brown of the mouldy brick. After my usual fashion, I set myself to explore this doorway, in my interest half forgetting my apprehensions. As I descended the steps the sound of the running water faded out, with a suddenness which caught my ear, though failing to fix my attention. ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... soot, and dust; a little mould was even beginning to form about the faucets of the tubs. The escape pipe of the sink was clogged, and he had to run his finger into it again and again to get it free. The kitchen was very dirty; old bottles of sweet oil, mouldy vinegar and flat beer cluttered the dusty shelves of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Francis's-grandfather, had commenced the ruin of the family by the building of this palace: his successor had achieved the ruin by living in it. The present Sir Francis was abroad somewhere; nor could anybody be found rich enough to rent that enormous mansion, through the deserted rooms, mouldy clanking halls, and dismal galleries of which, Arthur Pendennis many a time walked trembling when he was a boy. At sunset, from the lawn of Fairoaks, there was a pretty sight: it and the opposite park of Clavering were in the habit of putting on a rich golden tinge, which became them ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the statues of the deceased dignitaries, and various allegorical flourishes, fantasies, and confusions; and beneath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their veritable bones and dust, and probably all the Marlboroughs that have since died. It is not quite a comfortable idea, that these mouldy ancestors still inhabit, after their fashion, the house where their successors spend the passing day; but the adulation lavished upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been consummated, unless the palace of his lifetime had become likewise a stately mausoleum over his remains, —and such we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... that the granaries we had at our country seat had been secured by the revolutionary party, as well as every article of food in our town house. My mother and my younger brother were only allowed the scanty pittance of a peck of mouldy horse-beans per week. My dear father was shut up in prison, with an equally scanty allowance. But it was before I was acquainted with the sufferings of my beloved parents, that the consideration of the general scarcity prevailing ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... begins to get so could, that for want of clothing I was nearly blue-mouldy with the frost in the nights, until I could stand it no longer; but none ov the chaps had any duds to spare, an' I was clane out of me head what for ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hinges were rusted, and the floor within was choked with fallen rubbish. At length we forced an entrance. I thought I had never seen a more dreary interior. My father's old chaise was yet standing there, with both wheels off. The mouldy harness was dropping to pieces on the walls. The beams were festooned with cobwebs. The very ladder leading to the loft above was so rotten that I scarcely dared trust to it for ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... would not be so willing to leave Peggy undisturbed if she knew her real whereabouts, and was determined to say nothing to undeceive her. He felt sure that the girl had hidden herself in the summer-house at the bottom of the garden, and a nice, damp, mouldy retreat it would be this afternoon, with the rain driving in through the open window, and the creepers dripping on the walls. Just the place in which to sit and break your heart, and catch rheumatic fever with the greatest possible ease. And yet Robert said no word of warning ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... quitted London; as many hospitable carpets are taken up; and window-blinds are pitilessly papered with the MORNING HERALD; and mansions once inhabited by cheerful owners are now consigned to the care of the housekeeper's dreary LOCUM TENENS—some mouldy old woman, who, in reply to the hopeless clanging of the bell, peers at you for a moment from the area, and then slowly unbolting the great hall-door, informs you my lady has left town, or that 'the family's in the country,' or 'gone up the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... house looks like a place for lumber. There are some fine rooms, but so damp and mouldy it is quite shocking. There is a chapel completely filled with old rubbish and a plaid bed which was ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Master Burr junior! Aren't he hard on a pore fellow, who was always doing him kindnesses? Look at the times I've sat up o' nights to ketch him rats and mice or mouldy-warps. Didn't I climb and get you two squirls, and dig out the snake from ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... recorded a case in which a young girl of noble birth (whose sister 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
... he looked up from his work. Deep in his writing, he did not hear what was happening around him. But he saw that the flowers in the beds began to shake like reeds, frogs jumped about at his feet, and there was a smell of dampness that was at the same time mouldy ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the streets that are denied the gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, yet long since drearily old,—with the unattractive antiquity of old iron and old clothes,—round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words "New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion Passage, Zion ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... There is no escape from the stifling dampness of it—one cannot breathe. Over all the land it is like this, this heavy, sultry heat. It is no cooler when it rains, no dryer when the hot sun shines. It is enveloping, engulfing. In the big hotel, the leather shoes of the foreigners become mouldy overnight, and the sweat runs in streams from the brown bodies of the rickshaw boys. The rickshaw boys of the big hotel wear clothes, long legged, tight cotton trousers, and flapping white coats. ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... slumbers awake, And, leaving their mouldy domain, Make poor guilty mortals to quake As pallid they glide o'er the plain! Sure, Nature's own God is oppressed, And Nature in agony cries;— The sun in his mourning is dressed, To tell the ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... deities and semi-deities in praise of the old Prince, with the accompaniment of fireworks. Apollo rose through the air like a frog, with his blue legs and yellow arms wide apart; Jupiter's chariot rolled off; Venus bowed herself back against a mouldy cloud; and the Muses came forward in a bunch, with a wreath of laurel, which they ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... and, in short, when he perceived, at the end of its gloomy avenue, his chateau bathed in the white light, he found the spectacle rather enjoyable than otherwise. And when he had once more ensconced himself in the maternal domicile, and inhaled the odor of damp paper and mouldy trees that constituted its atmosphere, he found great consolation in the reflection that there existed not very far away from him a young woman who possessed a charming face, a delicious voice, and a ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... joined the trunk, leaving an open space, and revealing a hollow in the tree. In this hollow something caught his eye; he put in his hand and drew forth a locket, to which an old and faded letter was attached by a mouldy ribbon twisted round it. He cast this down to the aged farmer, who caught it in his hand, and instantly knew the locket which had disappeared ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... woman did the honours of the castle, showing them mouldy chapels, sepulchral halls, rickety stairs, grubby cells, and pitch-dark passages, till even the romantic Matilda was glad to see the light of day, and repose in the pleasant gardens while removing the cobwebs from her countenance and the ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... of the pepper being mouldy and unfit for use, but it was received as if it had been in good order. Though the King was highly pleased at thus easily getting rid of the damaged goods in his stores, the Moorish merchants, more keen-sighted than he was, declared, with some show of reason, that the Portuguese ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... scornfully. "If there's anything in the world I thoroughly despise, it's old, mouldy, dead men's shoes. If I were you, I'd write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... "it 'ud do your beds good to have somebody to sleep in 'em. There's that striped room smells dreadful mouldy, and the glass mildewed like anything. I'm sure I thought I should be struck with death when you took ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... more tragic in their cases, in the exact proportion of the greater preciousness of their faith. Corn hoarded is sure to be spoiled by weevils and rust. The bread of life hidden in our sacks will certainly go mouldy. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Peninsula, two British soldiers were regaling themselves after a long fast, on a crust of mouldy bread. "This is but sorry fare, Tom," observed one of them, "especially after the hardships and dangers we have suffered." "What do you mean by sorry fare," exclaimed his comrade, with philosophical composure, at the same time holding up a piece of the mouldy bread; "this is what the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... heart—living or dead though you be. And believe me, the pleasure of life is but a very little thing; it is sweet, but how quickly it passes! And the curses or praises of men—these, too, only a few mouldy rolls of books keep for decay! What profits it to Miltiades this hour, that a few marks on a papyrus sheet ascribe to him renown; or how much is the joy of Sextus Tarquinius darkened because a group of other marks cast reproach upon his name? If so be death ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Mrs. Verstage, "he may ha' come here not after liquor, but drawed by you. Then you see he's been alone all these years, and scriptur' saith it ain't good for a man to be that. They goes sour and mouldy—men do if unmarried. I think you'd be fulfillin' your dooty, and actin' accordin' to the word o' God if ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... after Mosca and Volpone have erected a stage upon the stage, Volpone enters, disguised as a mountebank, and abuses those 'ground ciarlatani' (charlatans, impostors) 'who come in lamely, with their mouldy tales out of Boccaccio.' Then there is a most clear allusion to Hamlet (act iv. sc. 6), where he informs his friend Horatio, by letter, of his voyage to England when he was made prisoner by pirates, who dealt with him 'like thieves of mercy.' A further remark of ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the most moral of towns. You pass from the railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... separated this mouldy portion of the church from the rest, stood an old monument of carved wood, once brilliantly painted in the portions that bore the arms of the family over whose vault it stood, but now all bare and worn, itself gently flowing ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... house had been occupied by a catgut maker, and the rickety shed in which he had carried on his calling still clung, sagging and broken-roofed, to the building itself, its rotten slates all but vanished, and its interior piled high with mildewed bedding, mouldy old carpet, broken furniture, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... too young, too light-hearted for this care of her uncle in which she had persisted as an antidote for Bobby's shortcomings. She was never in harmony with the mouldy house or its surroundings, bleak, deserted, unfriendly ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Madonna of Montenero at Leghorn. Instead, San Donato moved under the arm of a young girl, muffled in a shawl, skirting the bridge, the quay, the square, now in sunshine, now in shadow, and finally gained the Piazza di SS. Apostoli. Here he was conducted across a court adorned with mouldy statues, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... the exception of a rough bed. "Certainly," said I, "I am not to sleep here!" "Yes," she answered, "this is the sleeping chamber," at the same time setting down the light and disappearing. I examined the place—it smelt mouldy, and the walls were cold and damp; there had been a window at the head of the bed, but it was walled up, and that at the foot was also closed to within a few inches of the top. The bed was course and dirty; and on turning down the ragged covers, I saw with horror, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... loss of the chest, and at the hiding of it in some 'bank,'—whether underground or at a banker's did not appear. The medium's 'attendant spirit'—one 'Daisy, an Indian papoose'—says it is 'in a dark place, like a vault, and mouldy.' I am urged to inquire further. Miss Hudson, a common-looking but respectable woman of about thirty,—living in a lodging near Bloomsbury Square,—utterly ignorant who I was and all about me,—said (in her spirit voice) that I was a writer of books, and did great good, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... haughtier guise He had flung an alms to leprosie, When he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust: He parted in twain his single crust, He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink; 'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread 'T was water out of a wooden bowl,— Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, And 't was red wine he drank ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... and his big picture, which had seemed so promising the day before, looked hopelessly bad in this new mood. So he determined to take a day off, and, after his coffee, strolled out into the Luxembourg Gardens. There the statues were green with mouldy dampness, and the paths had somewhat the consistency of very thin oatmeal porridge. Suddenly the sun came out brightly, and he found a partially dry bench, where he sat down to brood upon the utter worthlessness of things in general and the Luxembourg statuary in particular. ...
— Different Girls • Various
... their fresh provisions lasted, they fared pretty well, but when these were exhausted, they were reduced to very short commons, and, as Desmond observed, "very bad of its sort." Salt junk, which had made, perhaps, more than one voyage round the world, and mouldy biscuit, constituted the chief ingredients of their meals. The midshipmen complained, but the skipper replied that he gave them the best he had. Billy especially declared that he should die of inanition. "Salt ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... grey stone-work to an unwonted warmth and life. On the south side were the young men and boys,—heavy, angular, and massive, as indeed was rather necessary, considering what they would have to bear at the hands of wind and weather before they returned to that mouldy nave ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... passageways with iron gratings, by walled-up windows, by doors that seemed to give admission to those abodes of murder, the plan of which is handed to the jury at the assizes. As she went on, there were gloomy little gardens, crooked buildings, architecture in its most degraded form, tall, mouldy portes-cocheres, hedge-rows, within which could be vaguely seen the uncanny whiteness of stones in the darkness, corners of unfinished buildings from which arose the stench of nitrification, walls disfigured by disgusting placards and fragments of torn advertisements by which ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... recognised that they were not indispensable, and have withdrawn them from circulation. As the train glided out of the station Theodoric's nervous imagination accused himself of exhaling a weak odour of stable-yard, and possibly of displaying a mouldy straw or two on his usually well-brushed garments. Fortunately the only other occupant of the compartment, a lady of about the same age as himself, seemed inclined for slumber rather than scrutiny; the train was not due to stop till the terminus was reached, in about ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Shakespeare sang, another man may know as well. As for emperors, kings, queens, princes, or presidents, he looks upon them as children in masquerade. He has no patience with the chicken-hearted who refer to mouldy records or old almanacs to ascertain if they may say that their souls are their own. Mr. Emerson is a strange compound of contradictions. Always right in practice, and sometimes in theory. He is a sociable, accessible, republican sort of man, and ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... occasionally found in New England on the shelves of old libraries, in the collections of antiquaries, or in the attics of old farm-houses, hidden in ancient hair-trunks or painted sea-chests or among a pile of dusty books in a barrel,—there are found dingy, mouldy, tattered psalm-books of other versions than the ones which we know were commonly used in the New England churches. Perhaps these books were never employed in public worship in the new land; they may have been brought ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... lifts with self-applause each lordly brow. In number boundless as the blooms of Spring, Behold their glaring idols, empty shades By Fancy gilded o'er, and then set up For adoration. Some in Learning's garb, With formal band, and sable-cinctured gown, And rags of mouldy volumes. Some elate With martial splendour, steely pikes and swords Of costly frame, and gay Phoenician robes 100 Inwrought with flowery gold, assume the port Of stately Valour: listening by his side There stands a female form; to her, with looks Of earnest ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... to the 'Golden Cross,'" he says, "then a mouldy sort of establishment in a close neighbourhood. A waiter showed me into the coffee-room, and a chambermaid introduced me to my small bedchamber, which smelt like a hackney coach and was shut up ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... entertain the new-comers for a fortnight. At the end of that time they hired a plot of ground in Cornhill of John Travers, the Sheriff of London, and there they built for themselves a house, such as it was. Their cells were constructed like sheep-cotes, mere wattels with mouldy hay or straw between them. Their fare was of the meanest, but they gained in estimation every day. In their humble quarters at Cornhill they remained preaching, visiting, nursing, begging their bread, but always gay and busy, till the summer of 1225, when a certain John Iwyn—again ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... then in rubbing, with her strong arm, everything in the room, helping the floor, the walls, and the furniture to dry from the wetting of yesterday. From the smell, she said, she should have thought that everything in the house was growing mouldy before her face. They were all aware that the bad smell which they had observed yesterday, was growing worse every hour. Roger had been much struck with it the ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... as ascertained by survey, as to leave little doubt that some European navigator must at one time or other have examined it, though his labours have been buried, as the labours of many thousands have been before and since his time, in the mouldy archives of a jealous and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... shall know the mint of daffodils, In darkened rooms where colour comes to birth, The mouldy chamber where the rose distils A sweetness that is Summer for the earth ... And all the strange, alchemic, secret spell, I shall discover, ... ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... shared their rations, plain but plentiful at first, at the last only a mouldy crust and a bit of rusty bacon. I have been upon an ambulance-train freighted with human agony delayed for hours by rumors of an enemy in ambush. I have fed men hungry with the ravening hunger of the wounded with scanty rations of musty corn-bread; ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... a-tiptoe, cut a tolerable slice off, swallowed it, put by the rest, and then came down and mixed again with his companions. He continued this clandestine business all the week, and even then the cake was hardly half consumed. But what ensued? At last the cake grew dry, and quickly after mouldy; nay, the very maggots got into it, and by that means had their share; on which account it was not then worth eating, and our young curmudgeon was compelled to fling the rest away with great reluctance. However, no one ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... of a fiery temperament, accompany this frenzy for carnage. The Carabi elaborate caustic humours; the Procrustes squirts a jet of vinegar at any one who takes hold of him; the Calosoma makes the fingers smell of mouldy drugs; certain Beetles, such as the Brachini,[3] understand explosives and singe the aggressor's whiskers with a volley ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... and grabbed the gun, but they thought I was so scared I was trying to hide; so they went around kicking things over a good deal, and swearing like everything, but I didn't care, for there wasn't much outside the tent anyhow, except the cooking things and some mouldy bread that they were welcome to if they wanted it. When they saw how it was, one of them came up towards me, and called to the rest to come on, they'd have to explore the tent ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... to do with," said Hilary, as the hours glided by, and he began to suffer acutely. Visions of delicious country breakfasts, for which he had longed, had now given place to the humblest of desires, for he felt as if he would have given anything for the most mouldy, weevilly biscuit that ever came out of a dirty bag in a purser's locker. He had fasted before now, but never to such an extent as this, and he sat upon his straw heap at last, chewing pieces to ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... youngest of three sisters, who live a mouldy old house, near Middlesex Hospital, where they have lived for I don't know how many score of years; but this is certain: the eldest Miss Meggot saw the Gordon Riots out of that same parlor window, and tells the story how her father (physician to ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in his casket, whence he produced a bundle of very ragged and smoky old bits of parchment and scraps of potsherds. These he placed in the hands of his attendants, who received them kneeling. From the very bottom of the casket he extracted some thin plates of a greyish metal, lead, I believe, all mouldy, stained, and ragged. Over these he pored and puzzled for some time, trying, as I guessed, to make out something inscribed on this curious substitute for writing-paper. I had now recovered my presence of mind, and, thinking at once to astonish ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... which Mr. Mattingford strongly disapproved. It seemed to him an insidious attempt on the part of an insidious sex to force the legal profession to throw open its doors to women. As a man who lived in the mouldy atmosphere of precedent, Mr. Mattingford hated the idea of change, and to him the thought of a lady in wig and gown pleading in the law courts indicated not merely change but a revolution which might well usher in the end of the world. So strict was he in keeping the ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... with sacks and sacks of letters and parcels. Some of the parcels were burst and unaddressed; a pair of socks or a mouldy home-made cake squashed in a cardboard box—sometimes nothing but the brown paper, card box and string, an empty shell—the contents having disappeared. What happened to all the parcels which never got to the Dardanelles ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... damaged bread at one quarter the usual price. It was all mouldy, you know," said Potts, trying to make Brandon see the joke. "I declare Clark and I roared over it for a couple of months, thinking how surprised they must have been when they sat down to eat ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... dessert. A great part of the acid juice is converted into sugar as the fruit ripens, and even after it is gathered, by natural process, termed maturation; but, when apples decay, the sugar is changed into a bitter principle, and the mucilage becomes mouldy and offensive. Old cheese has a remarkable effect in meliorating the apple when eaten; probably from the volatile alkali or ammonia of the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Amurican men are for ever sending things, and the girls just love to have them do it. Seems to me, Aunt Soph, it's about time I came over to teach you how to do things in this benighted isle! Poppar says you're all pretty mouldy, but, short of an earthquake, he can't think of anything better calculated to shake you up, than a good spell of me waltzing around. I guess he's about right. I'm never quiet unless I'm sick. There's not much of the Sleeping Beauty about Cornelia ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... bones In motion; one, on Druid-stones: Show designs for pipes most ghastly, And devils and ogres grinning nastily! Show, show the limnings ye brought back, Since round and round the zodiac Ye galloped goblin horses which Were light as smoke and black as pitch; And those ye made in the mouldy moon, And Uranus, Saturn, and Neptune, And in the planet Mercury, Where all things living and dead have an eye Which sometimes opening suddenly ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... the grouse were admirable, that everything was delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are sweeter than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... make herself invisible. In the middle of the roof of the cellar there was a little narrow air-hole, but no window. The flowering lime trees could not breathe refreshing fragrance into that abode, where everything was dark and mouldy. There was only a rough bench in the cell; but a good conscience is a soft pillow, and therefore Jurgen ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... while searching in the lumber-room for something for Mrs Forbes, she came upon a little book lying behind a box. It was damp and swollen and mouldy, and the binding was decayed and broken. The inside was dingy and spotted with brown spots, and had too many f's in it, as she thought. Yet the first glance fascinated her. It had opened in the middle of L'Allegro. Mrs Forbes found her standing spell-bound, reading the rhymed poems of the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... yearned for a bottle of rum, for any sort of strong waters indeed, guessing that a dram would help us both; and after I had made a meal off some raw pork and molasses spread upon the ship's biscuit, which was mouldy and astir with weevils, I took my lantern and again went on deck, and made my way to the galley where the oil jar stood, and here in a drawer I found what now I most needed, but what before I had overlooked; I mean ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... and giddy bell-tower and cloistered corridors, all to himself. At rare intervals, priests from Ravenna come to sing some special mass at these cold altars; pious folk make vows to pray upon their mouldy steps and kiss the relics which are shown on great occasions. But no one stays; they hurry, after muttering their prayers, from the fever-stricken spot, reserving their domestic pieties and customary devotions for the brighter ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... first place, you would eat old mouldy cake with just the same relish as if it were fresh; and this mouldy cake, which now you carefully avoid because it is mouldy, is very unwholesome food, and would poison you were you to eat ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... of the old family than to the new purchaser. And when I returned to Edinburgh, and found him still in the exercise of the profession to which he was an honour, he sent to my lodgings the old family Bible, which lay always on my father's table, two or three other mouldy volumes, and a couple of sheepskin bags full of parchments and papers, whose appearance ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... of Wilde's last years, Gide tells us that "he had suffered too grievously from his imprisonment.... His will had been broken ... nothing remained in his shattered life but a mouldy ruin,[23] painful to contemplate, of his former self. At times he seemed to wish to show that his brain was still active. Humour there was; but it ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... I attended the Catholic chapel attached to the prison—a damp unwholesome cell. I stood among a knot of prisoners, enveloped in a nauseous vapour; for there arose musty, mouldy, effluvia which gradually overpowered my senses. I felt them leaving me, and tottered towards the door. I was promptly met by a man who seemed provided for emergencies of the kind; for he held a vessel of cold water, poured some of it into my hands, and directed me to bathe ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... shout of welcome, and offered him a herring—very dried it was—and one of Master Baker Ludwick's hard biscuits. He said we were luxurious scamps with our powder, until we explained it to be the end of a rather mouldy bag of meal. He thought powdering a fine custom for young doctors, for it gave them a look of gray hair and wisdom; and he was, as usual, amusing, cynical, and at ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... chapeau bras in hand; the old room was dingy; the salmon-coloured paint had faded into a drab; great pieces of plaster had chipped off from the fine wreaths and festoons on its walls; but still a mouldy odour of aristocracy lingered about the place, and a dusty recollection of the days that were gone made Miss Matty and Mrs Forrester bridle up as they entered, and walk mincingly up the room, as if there were ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a striking picture of sweet poetic beauty. I stood in contemplative admiration meditating, as I waited for my coolies, who sat moodily under a dilapidated roadside awning, nonchalantly picking out mouldy monkey-nuts from some coarse sweetmeat sold by a frowsy female. Then upwards we toiled in the dark, the weird groans of my exhausted men and the falling of the gravel beneath their sandalled feet alone breaking the hollow's gloom. Uncanny is night travel ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... ready to yawn at every crack, all are here: poor relations in a broken-down family. But children love this yard. They come, hand in hand, with a timid confidence in their right, and ask at the back door for the privilege of playing in it. They take long, entrancing journeys in the mouldy old chaise; they endure Siberian nights of sleighing, and throw out their helpless dolls to the pursuing wolves; or the more mercantile-minded among the boys mount a three-wheeled express wagon, and drive noisily away to traffic upon the road. This, in its dramatic possibilities, is not a yard ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... weights, kissed the old woman's hand, which had a mouldy feel and a nasty smell. And the old woman, seeing the courtesy of the damsel, said to her, "Hide yourself behind this door, and when Time comes home I will make him tell me all you wish to know. And as soon as he goes out again—for he never stays quiet in one place—you can depart. But do ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile |
